Most everyone has an online avatar. Whether it’s your Facebook picture shown to your friends or your LinkedIn picture with your resume, everyone’s putting their mug shot online. With the introduction of YouTube, easy-to-use video editing software like iMovie and inexpensive video cameras like The Flip, it seems like everyone is taking the next step from pictures on the web to videos on the web.

And web videos are a natural extension of your sales and marketing efforts. It’s a great way to quickly and accurately get your compelling message across to a large number of customers and prospects. We’ve been exploring adding video to the Inquisix site not only to educate members but allow members to tell their own story to fellow members.

Since we don’t want our videos to win awards on “America’s Funniest Home Videos”, I sat down with Inquisix member Catie Foertsch of OurTownProductions to learn more. She talked about her 6 tips to making a better video. I’ll summarize them here but you should go to her website for the complete details.

Catie’s 6 tips to a better video

• Start with a script
• Be Yourself
• Use a quality microphone
• Use lots of good lighting
• Frame your face well
• End video with a call to action

Jump start the economy.

No we’re not talking about recently passed stimulus bill. Or even a bailout.  We’re talking about something more tactile, more visceral– more like an A+B=C.

John Jantsch, of Duct Tape Marketing, and Inquisix have joined forces (with some other amazing sponsors) to promote Make a Referral Week, this March 9-13th.  The goal is to generate 1000 referred leads to 1000 deserving small businesses.

This is a good thing.  For you. For the economy.

So take the pledge.

It’s tough times. Everywhere you turn negative economic indicators are released, reports on recessionary fears, and opinons on the impact of the economic stimulus package crowd the news.  Overwhelming problems and few solutions.

It is time for small businesses to take matters into their own hands.  Positive changes in small business can have a positive impact on the economy. Hey, it’s no biggie surprise to the rest of us that small businesses basically drive the economy.

As a class, small business:

• represent over 99.7% of employers;
• employ over half of all private sector employees;
• generate between 60%-80% of new jobs in the last decade; and
• produce more than 50% of non-farm private gross domestic product, or a GDP of roughly $6 trillion.

As John Jantsch sees it, “Make a Referral Week is an entrepreneurial approach to stimulating the small busienss economy one referred business at a time.  The goal is to generate 1000 referred leads to 1000 deserving small businesses in an effort to highlight the impact of a simple action that could blossom into millions of dollars of new business. Small business is the lifeblood and job-creating engine of the economy and merits the positive attention saved for corporate bailout stories.”

It’s Inquisix’s hope is that this one week further highlights the power of the referral. Referral prospects are less price sensitive, and, as Joanne Black, author of “No More Cold Calling,” points out “[a] referral is pre-sold on you … and [you] get a new client over 70 percent of the time.” We believe that by highlighting the high ROI benefits of referral networking, more businesses will permanently adopt this as a new strategic marketing tool, which will translate into healthier bottom lines. Good for them. Good for you. Good for the U.S. economy.

So be among the 1000+ small businesses to get new business the week of March 9- March 13, 2009. Take the pledge. Give a referral. Get a referral.  There will be an exciting schedule of programs to tune into featuring Ivan Misner (founder of BNI, author of Masters of Networking,) Bob Burg (Author of Endless Referrals, The Go-Giver,) Bill Cates (author of Get More Referrals Now,) Guy Kawasaki (author of Reality Check,) Scott Allen (author of The Virtual Handshake) and Susan Solovic Wilson (of SBTV.com) to name  few.

And for the social media savvy, follow the action on twitter and connect to tweeps partaking in Make a Referral Week (Add the hashtag”#MARW09″ to the end of your tweets!)

Happy Connecting!

Make it relevant

I’m a big fan of Kevin Sasser’s The Sales Wars blog.  He  must be really busy in his day job because he’s not posted in almost 2 months.  Well, my wait is over and as usual, I learned something and laughed at the same time.

Definitely read the full blog post.  After the funny analogy, Kevin writes about a colleague who is putting together an agenda for marketing to update the sales team.  The standard agenda is suggested:

• Our company overview
• What we see happening in the industry
• Our “vision”
• Our unique approach

To which Kevin figuratively sticks his fingers in his mouth at the thought of listening to all that.  What struck me is that the sales team is probably doing the same thing to the prospect!  You are polite while marketing pitches you but you’re secretly daydreaming or reading your BlackBerry under the table.  Wanna bet your prospect is doing the same as  you pitch?  Kevin suggested the following agenda for marketing.  I suggest you follow the same agenda when selling to prospects:

• Why you are in my office taking up my time
• My problem that you can solve for me
• How you will solve the problem in clear, concise, concrete terms
• The benefit that you will deliver to me that your competitor can’t

As I get reminded at home, it’s not about me, it’s about what’s important to them!

Jill Konrath, author of “Selling to Big Companies” and Razi Imam, CEO of Landslide Technologies are discussing new Sales 2.0 technologies for helping salespeople win big corporate accounts. The event is being moderated by Nigel Edelshain, CEO of Sales 2.0.

I will be there as a guest of Nigel.  Will you join us there?

DATE:
Tuesday, October 14, 2008

LOCATION:
The Penn Club
30 West 44th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues)
New York, NY 10036

AGENDA:
6.00PM – 6:45PM Networking and Hors d’oeuvres
6:45PM – 7:45PM Presentation and Interactive Discussion
7:45PM – 8:00PM Wrap-up & Networking

Register here for this event. I look forward to meeting you there.

I’ve been reading a new blog from Geoffrey James over at BNET called SalesMachine. He’s generated some controversy, both intended and unintended, about selling. This is good for his blog, of course, because it’s getting people there to comment.

He recently posted a commentary on, “Should Sales Run the Company” where he quickly said -

Absolutely

He feels that the sales function in a for-profit organization should be leading the way. Not running the ship, mind you, but the group that leads the rest of groups to the destination. I titled my blog posting, “Preaching to the [sales] choir” because sales people already agree with his posting – we’re the only ones out on the street talking to customers and prospects alike on what’s going on and getting feedback from the only people who matter – those who buy our offering.

Of course, lots of non-salespeople are reading his blog….and disagreeing. His follow-up posting responding to these comments is an even better read than his first post. Much like one of my favorite sports columnists, Michael Silver, Geoffrey takes their comments and comes back swinging. Yeah, this is fun!

For many of us, the end of the calendar year coincides with the end of the sales year. Have you made it yet? Will you (and your customers) enjoy the time between Christmas and New Year’s because you’ve already delivered your revenue committment to senior management?

When you need a quick break from all the holiday cheer and want to recharge those sales batteries with some quiet time then consider catching up on your sales reading and learning. But don’t have time to read all the new books on selling? Would you like the Cliff Notes versions instead? The Top Sales Experts website has just the booklet for you – and it’s co-authored by many of the top sales experts.

I like “Leaving PowerPoint Behind and Make the Person-to-Person Sale” by Joanne Black, author of “No More Cold Calling” and guest blogger on this site.

Another good article is “A Glimpse at Sales 2.0 – the Potential and the Pitfall” by Keith Rosen. As salespeople, many of us started selling in the days laminated presentations and always making sure there was change in our pockets for the pay phone. Today we’re using web-based conferencing and wouldn’t be caught dead without our cell/PDA. So what’s next?

Read the article. Read them all – in the the order they interest you.

Which articles did you enjoy best?

Happy Selling!