Have an expert help you identify and solve your company's operational and staffing challenges

We help clients solve critical business problems by reviewing strategic and mission-critical goals and issues, assessing the current situation, identifying and quantifying gaps, developing recommendations and road maps to solve key problems. This could include strategic planning and alignment, process improvement, establishing measures, work restructuring, leveraging of competencies and addressing leadership challenges.

	Collins Management Services, Sandy Collins Results oriented consulting firm that partners with clients to achieve and sustain high impact business results. CMS also offers public and private Sharpen Your Skills business workshops. Offering: Business Services, Career Development

Integrated b2b marketing communications to raise your visibility, increase inbound qualified leads, and shorten your sales cycle.

Improve you B2B marketing communications. Elevate your brand above the crowd. Have one of these professional experts help you capture your audience's attention, raise your visibility, increase your inbound qualified leads, and shorten your sales cycle:

	True Vine Marketing Communications, Rich Carvill Offering: Marketing Communications

	Kroner Communications, Marilyn R. Kroner Offering: Business Services, Marketing Communications, Public and Investor Relations, Sales and Marketing, Trade Show Services, Writing and Editing

	POP!, Mr. Joel Kirstein Proprietary-level that moves the needle forward for clients with results that resonate in the market space with a RETURN-ON-INNOVATION! Offering: Graphic Design, Marketing Communications, Sales and Marketing

	Impact Marketing Communications, Cindy Skerjanec branding, brand identity, brochures, marketing strategy, marketing implementation, websites, collateral, message development Offering: Marketing Communications, Sales and Marketing

NineBark Marketing Offering: Marketing Communications Attention!, Daryl Toor Offering: Marketing Communications, Public and Investor Relations, Web Site Developers Marketing Resources Ltd., Michael T Brandt CBC Marketing Resources Ltd. is a business to business marketing consulting firm helping B2B clients implement and improve marketing efforts. Offering: Marketing Communications, Sales and Marketing

Interesting post - 8 Common Mistakes in B2B Social Media Marketing. http://ping.fm/KZo4b

Custom websites for small business

Need help with your business website? Want your content and messaging to be the best they can be? Let your website stand out from the crowd. Have one of these professionals build you a totally unique site that captures your audience's attention:

1. KKf Marketing, Linda E Hardman CBC
   Colorado interactive web site developer, small business and association websites, ColdFusion, custom websites, e-commerce integration.
   Offering: Marketing Communications, Web Site Services
   
   
   
2. Spot-On Marketing, Sheryl Dawson
   Web design and development, SEO, Online marketing with New Social Media and Networking, 10+ years of experience.
   Offering: Graphic Design Services, Marketing Communications, Sales and Marketing Services, Web Site Services, Writing and Editing
   
   
3. Jennifer Gabrielle Heller
   Offering: Graphic Design Services, Marketing Communications, Sales and Marketing Services, Web Site Services, Writing and Editing

Master the sales process. 13 wk course teaches strategy to take prospect from initial meeting to long-term business relationship. http://ping.fm/N64HW

Go to Market Implementation

Independent consultants and experts who will help you launch a new business and help your business launch new products and services:

1. MBCST- Marketing and Business Concepts, Dan Hellman
   
   
2. JWconsulting
   
   
3. Impact Marketing Communications, Cindy Skerjanec
   
   
4. NineBark Marketing
   
   
5. StratDV, Joe Stephens
   
   
6. Attention!, Daryl Toor
   
   
7. POP!, Mr. Joel Kirstein

Expanded Huffs List to include free soloprenuer business listings. Sample: http://ping.fm/I1IjJ

Self employed? Help us make Huffs List work for you. http://ping.fm/FL1O4

Good blog on new FTC rules: http://ping.fm/LeZqx

Blog: how should we sell Huffs Listings on value versus price http://ping.fm/wRHgO

Huffs Listings: Price or Value. That is the question.

In our League of Extraordinary Salesmen class, our instructor and master salesman Hugh Liddle has asked us novice salespeople to list the three things about our product or service that are of value to our customers.

For most customers price by itself is not the key factor when a purchase is being considered. This is because most customers compare the entire marketing offering and do not simply make their purchase decision based solely on a product’s price. In essence when a purchase situation arises price is only one of several variables customers evaluate when they mentally assess a product’s overall value. KnowThis.com

According to Tessa Stowe, in 4 Secrets to Selling Value Versus Price, learning and applying her secrets will guarantee that your prospects will see the value in your products and services so that price is no longer the issue. Secret #1: Forget about selling and trying to get your prospect to buy your products and services. Secret #2: Have your prospect tell you the value (instead of you tell them). Secret Number #3: Have valuable conversations. Secret #4: Add your value to their value.

Wow! This is good stuff. Easy if I were communicating face-to-face with my customers. Much more difficult in the impersonal morass of the Internet. So how do I foster an online environment where independent businesspeople and solopreneur prospects tell me what the value is to them for having an optimized doorway to their entire online presence? That's a mouth full.

I face the following challenges on www.huffslist.com:

1. How does one create value for just another online business listing service?
2. How does one differentiate a Huffs Listing from social media?
3. How do we overcome the fact that this is a fledgling business directory and doesn't yet have over 1 million listings (which, by the way, is our goal)?
4. How does one make it imperative that, as an independent businessperson, if you want more visibility on the web, you need a Huffs Listing.
   

As a first step, I need to gather information. Would you please take a couple of minutes and complete the following questionnaire. Go to Questionnaire

Thanks bunches,

Linda

Huffs List welcomes Collins Management Services, partnering with clients to achieve and sustain high impact business results http://ping.fm/tnJfl

Customer service that makes us memorable

In 1906, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto created a mathematical formula to describe the unequal distribution of wealth in his country, observing that twenty percent of the people owned eighty percent of the wealth. In the late 1940s, Dr. Joseph M. Juran inaccurately attributed the 80/20 Rule to Pareto, calling it Pareto's Principle. Dr. Juran's observation of the "vital few and trivial many", the principle that 20 percent of something always are responsible for 80 percent of the results, became known as Pareto's Principle or the 80/20 Rule.

In 20th century corporate sales, gurus applied this to doing business where 80% of your business comes from repeat customers and 20% comes from new. Today, you could almost re-phrase it even further as 80% of your business comes through referrals from satisfied customers and 20% comes from off-the-shelf new customers. Whittling it all down, this means that truly satisfied customers are your greatest source for new business.

So when you have an online business and someone actually finds you in this morass of the Internet and becomes your customer, the big question is how do you turn this customer into a 'satisfied' customer who will refer your products and services to their friends and associates? The answer? You need to give them customer service that makes you memorable.

In a League of Extraordinary Salesmen class, we sales novices brainstormed this very question. Words were brought up, such as follow-up, ask them what they need, be punctual, answer their questions, smile and be friendly (difficult to do in an online environment), serve, create a partnership, give referrals to them, give details, find your commonality, send articles, be available, and communicate. What these all have in common is communication. You need to communicate with your customer.

Now I have to say that I'm thoroughly human and, looking for the Golden Fleece, have signed up to find out how to make money. Now these guys COMMUNICATE. I'm not sure how effective it is, but I'm deluged with emails: "I'm throwing you a lifeline!", "UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!!", "Exciting announcement of November Promotions", "Fall Asleep, Wake Up Rich!", "Some great stuff....", "Important (from my lawyer)", or even "I have THE survival kit you need!" And this is just a portion of my November's emails. The one thing all of these have in common is that they want to show you how to spend money to make money. Wow!

You must first capture your customer's attention. To do this, you have to separate your communications from the riff-raff. The best way is to have your communications be two way. 40% of successful selling today is building rapport with your prospect. So build rapport with your online customers. Following are some simple rules:

• Communicate, communicate, communicate.
• Always make your communications worthwhile.
• Share with them how you want to better serve them.
  
• Let them know how much you value them.
  
• Send professional looking emails.
  
• Apply the KISS principle (keep it simple stupid).
  
• Never ask for money.

In return, ask your customers to communicate with you by letting you know how they use your products and services. Ask them to tell you how you can improve your customer service to them. Make sure that, when they do reply, acknowledge their reply and state how valuable it is to you. Once you have built rapport with them, go ahead and ask them to help you by giving references by:

• Blogging about your product and services.
• Mentioning your products and services in their social media postings.
  
• Letting their friends know that they, too, can rely on you.
  

Huffs List welcomes Jonathan Wilkins of JWconsulting, offering marketing communications services. http://ping.fm/2qGQE

Starting 13-week sales training class: The League of Extraordinary Salespeople with Hugh Liddle, Red Cap http://ping.fm/gCFHD

Huffs List welcomes Michael Brandt of Marketing Resources LTD offering sales & marketing and marketing communication services http://ping.fm/F1MfQ

Speakers - now promote all of your speaking engagements on Huffs List

Speakers now have the ability to publish a complete list of their appearances in one calendar on HuffsList.com.

A number of sites, such as Meet-Up.com, are awesome for promoting scheduled events and speakers. Huffs List, on the other hand, offers professional speakers the ability to publish all of their speaking engagements in one place — personal appearances, seminars, podcasts, and webinars.

The Huffs List Calendar includes a ton of great information about these personal appearances, including the type of event, topic, dates and time details, description, a list of speakers (if more than the professional), web site link, location, and a list of keywords. Viewers find specific events using the calendar's nifty search facility.

What's more, all of the appearances are listed on the professional's personal Huffs Listing, which is a fully search-optimized web page that is all about the professional — a portal to their entire presence on the Internet — their key services and products, bio, web sites, social links, literature, articles, and links to products for sale.

Huffs List welcomes Elvi Bjorkquist of the Elvi Design Group, providing imaginative design that adds ROI. http://ping.fm/I4u8i

Consultant, freelancer, solopreneur? Expand your client exposure. Find expertise. Your resource. Your success. http://ping.fm/mjLyn

Bloggers 101 Haiku, BMG, Social Media Boot Camp

My tongue-in-cheek whittling down of a presentation given by Doyle Albee on Increasing Reader Engagement Across Corporate Blogs to the Boulder Marketing Group (BMG) Social Media Boot Camp:

Bloggers 101 Haiku
Find related blogs,
Join streams and be not stupid,
Comment, comment, comm....

This was an awesome boot camp, covering a broad range of topics in and around social media, such as how Qwest takes customer service to Twitter, the future of PR, how companies have moved beyond the buzz, a panel on social media for small to mid size companies, corporate blogging, and using a branded online community in your social media strategy.

Furthermore....

Thanks to Thomas Krasomil, read these two blog posts on the topic of the U.S. Air Force's excellent flowchart for responding to blog posts:

http://blog.ogilvypr.com/2009/01/air-forces-rules-of-engagement-online-that-is/

http://blog.ogilvypr.com/2009/03/air-forces-rules-of-engagement-round-two/