From: Bob Osgoodby - bob@adv-marketing.com
The Business Organ for the Small Business Community
Sponsor - Advanced Marketing at http://www.adv-marketing.com

** Featured Article - An Action Step Is Worth A Thousand Words By C.J. Hayden, MCC

** Stupid Quotes

** Trivia

** Biz-Tips by Dr. Kevin Nunley - Search Engines

** Brain Teaser

** Quote of the Day

** A Little Levity - Birthday-Anniversary

** Stress Tip by Dr. Rae Baum

** Health Tip of the Week - Counterfeit Pharmaceuticals: A Real Problem Or Big Pharma Hype?

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Welcome

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                                               **Featured Article**

An Action Step Is Worth A Thousand Words By C.J. Hayden, MCC

We self-employed professionals spend a great deal of our marketing effort on searching for the right words. We read books, take classes, and hire consultants to help us write copy for our marketing materials. Writing sales letters, drafting brochures, and composing websites consumes hours or days of precious marketing time. But it appears that many professionals have mistaken all this wordsmithing for productive action.

Don't get me wrong; the words we use to market ourselves are important and deserve our attention. But crafting the message and delivering it are not at all the same thing. Here are some situations I've encountered with clients that illustrate this all-too-common marketing blunder.

"I spent $3000 on a brochure and I haven't gotten a single client from it."

If all we had to do in order to succeed at marketing ourselves was spend money, I suspect many more of us would have thriving businesses. But when selling your own professional services, it rarely works that way. A brochure can be a useful device for getting a prospect's attention or providing information about our services. Its true function, though, is to open the door to more conversation, not to close a sale.

Brochures don't get clients all by themselves. Before you begin work on one, you should know exactly how you will use it. Will you send it by direct mail? Distribute it through strategic partnerships? Give it to people who inquire about your services? Include it in proposals you write? What are the specific action steps you have in mind that require having a brochure? The best marketing tools in the world are worthless without a plan for how to use them.

"I can't follow up on these leads because I don't have a good sales letter."

The quest for the perfect sales letter seems to prevent far too many of us from reaching out to prospective clients. It appears that many professionals are convinced that there IS such a thing as the perfect sales letter -- you know, the one that results in your phone ringing off the hook with eager clients as soon as they receive it? Searching for this holy grail of marketing, they delay and delay until all their leads grow stale.

Instead of focusing so much on the content of your sales letters, put your emphasis on repeat contacts using multiple channels over time. Place a call, then send a note, call again, then send an e-mail. You could make contact with a prospect four times over a two-week span in less time than it takes you to write and rewrite one "perfect" letter.

A series of action steps like this will have much more likelihood of resulting in a live conversation than almost any letter you could write.

"I can't start marketing; my website isn't done yet."

The idea of marketing one's business on the web didn't even exist before the mid-90's. And somehow, we managed to market ourselves without it. Now it seems that having a website up has become a prerequisite for getting clients. Actually, the universe really hasn't changed that much.

For the vast majority of professional service providers, their first few clients come as a result of pre-existing personal connections. These clients are people they already know, or the friends and colleagues of people they know. There's no need for a web presence to land clients like these.

In fact, you'll compose a much better website after you have had the opportunity to have a few real sales conversations, so you'll know more about what works when you speak to potential clients. If prospects need more information about you, put it on paper or send an e-mail. Just because you CAN share information about your business on the web doesn't mean you have to.

Brochures, sales letters, and websites are all excellent and effective marketing tools. Writing powerful and informative marketing copy is a useful skill to learn or hire out to a professional. Just don't let your marketing get put on hold because you haven't yet found the perfect words to use. In marketing your services, actions really do speak louder than words.

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C.J. Hayden is the author of Get Clients Now! Thousands of business owners and salespeople have used her simple sales and marketing system to double or triple their income. Get a free copy of "Five Secrets to Finding All the  Clients You'll Ever Need" at http://www.getclientsnow.com

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Stupid Quotes

"Two grand slams in a week - man, that's seven or eight ribbies right there."

- Bill Madlock, Baseball broadcaster

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2 For 1 Meals

Free Diet Cookie
A Cookie and A Shake a Day
Makes the Weight Go Away.
Get a Free Sample Today
http://Pure.FreeDietCookie.com

- 6/12

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 Trivia

In a recent study, a researcher found that athletes whose teammates were in a good mood were likely to feel happy themselves. Outward signs of bliss are hard to disguise, so many people pick up on the good moods of those around them. A good mood "increases your effort and persistence in getting the job done."

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Biz-Tips by Dr. Kevin Nunley

Search Engines

Search engine databases change constantly.  They get new listings, switch their standards, drop listings, and just plain lose parts of their database.

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Kevin Nunley provides marketing and copy writing. Read all his
free tips at http://DrNunley.com

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Brain Teaser

I am a rock group that has 4 members, all of whom are dead, one of which was assassinated.
What am I?

Scroll down to find the solution to today’s riddle.

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Did You Know

    You can place a free ad for your business on our website.
        Go to - http://www.adv-marketing.com and click on
                  "Free Classified Advertising"

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Quote of the Day

"Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible."

 - Saint Francis of Assisi

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Solution to Riddle

Mt. Rushmore.

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A Little Humor

Birthday-Anniversary
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

A man entered a stationery store and asked the clerk for a 'birthday/anniversary card.' The clerk replied, 'We have birthday cards and we have anniversary cards. Why not take one of each?'

The man said, 'You don't understand. I need a card that covers both events. You see, we're celebrating the fifth anniversary of my wife's thirty-fourth birthday.'
 

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I accompanied my husband when he went to get a haircut. Reading a magazine, I found a hairstyle I liked for myself, and I asked the receptionist if I could take the magazine next door to make a copy of the photo.

"Leave some ID, a driver's license or a credit card," she said.

"But my husband is here getting a haircut," I explained.

"Yes," she replied. "But I need something you'll come back for."

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A student at our high school a few years back, having had his fill with drawing graph after graph in senior high math class, told his teacher,

"I'll do algebra, I'll do trig, and I'll even do statistics, but graphing is where I draw the line."

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A patient, while recovering in the hospital from a heart attack, met this over-zealous evangelist. After listening politely for over a half-hour on how thankful he should be to have been spared, and how he should repent at once, he was asked if all of his sins had flashed before his eyes during the heart attack.

The patient responded, "Don't be ridiculous. The attack lasted only 6 hours."

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The most powerful force in human nature is inertia.

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Stress Tip
by Dr. Rae Baum

You will find this "Stress Tip Message" helpful to stay focused and on purpose.  You can put this message to work by reading it often throughout the day.

Prioritize your daily "to do" list by what is most important and rewarding for you.

 - Dr. Rae

~ Need help with this "Weekly StressTip"?
Invest in yourself, contact The Baum Group
at http://www.YourStressMatters.com/contactus.htm

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Health Tip of the Week
by Dr. Earl Mindell

Counterfeit Pharmaceuticals: A Real Problem Or Big Pharma Hype?

"Pharmafakes" are an increasing problem in developing countries, where desperation is high and oversight lax. Criminals who are willing to take advantage of those who most need the help of conventional medicine—selling them worthless, inactive substances packaged as medicines—are laughing all the way to the bank, leaving death and distrust in their wake. Drug dealers and other underworld types are finding that trafficking in fake prescription drugs has a profit margin even better than the sale of illicit drugs.

The New York-based Center for Medicines in the Public Interest estimates that global sales of these fakes will reach $75 billion by the end of the decade. Many of these counterfeits originate in China and India. The U.S. FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has warned American consumers looking to Canada for affordable medicine to watch out for Canadian companies suspected of selling fakes via the Internet.

The counterfeit scourge has struck hardest in Africa, where AIDS drugs and the anemia drug Procrit have been counterfeited widely, threatening the very lives of those reliant on these drugs for survival—especially children. Fake insulin kills diabetics, and fake injectable adrenaline—used to re-start the hearts of anesthetized people on the operating table—has left many others dead.

On the other hand, some argue that the issue with pharmafakes is being over-hyped by drug companies seeking to continue gouging the world with 1,000 percent markups on the drugs they make and sell. These dissenting voices claim that Big Pharma and the government are collaborating to crush any valid competition from the little guys by trying to scare the public away from anything Big Pharma didn't make and sell at their high prices. And the truth is that some pharmafakes are just as good as the real thing, and are sold at much lower prices. But there's almost no way, at least abroad where regulation is lax, to know which are dangerous or useless fakes and which aren't. What's a consumer to do?

In the United States, legislation is underway to strengthen oversight with stricter licensing requirements for pharmacies and tougher penalties for counterfeiters—possibly, giving each drug batch an electronic "pedigree" that would be impossible for counterfeiters to duplicate. Just be cautious about buying drugs from the Web—be sure you're buying from a reputable source.

This situation really plays up the differences between Westernized nations where the more dangerous issue is the overuse and over-prescription of overpriced me-too drugs that turn out to be more dangerous than the condition they're hyped to treat, and poorer nations where the need for real drugs is far more dire. There's no question that unethical creeps are causing hundreds, even thousands, of deaths through drug counterfeiting in Third World countries; overseas, the problem is much more serious and will probably get worse before it gets better. If you want to do something about that, contact your elected officials and the offices of the Pan American Health Organization (the U.S.-based regional office of the World Health Organization), and if you have to travel abroad, be cautious about buying drugs in Third World nations.

An overhaul of public health, with reductions in overweight and obesity and drastic shifts in diet and activity levels in Western nations and better control over deadly diseases like AIDS in Third World countries, would do a lot to discourage counterfeiters because the market for costly drugs would drop. For yourself and your family, only use prescription and over-the-counter drugs when you absolutely have to.

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To learn more about how Dr. Mindell can help you get into the best shape of your life, visit: http://freelife.com/Sites/keith/Redir.cfm?page=/info/nutrition/nutritionhome.cfm

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Publications of Interest

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Admit nothing, deny everything
and make counter-accusations.

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Copyright – 2007

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