Conference calls have become a great and inexpensive marketing tool. You are able to address more people in far less time than calling them individually. It's also done for much less cost in both time and money. A Buisnessknowhow article, Top-Ten Marketing & Sales Strategies
for a Slow Economy, has some very good advice. There is one tip however, that needs some elaboration.

The tip in "Strategy 4: Collect E-Mail Addresses" is a good one by itself. Email addresses are powerful communication and marketing tools. You can use them to keep your current and potential customers updated on your products and services, as well as let them know when something new comes out. Getting those email addresses from customers can be an easy part of your sales process. For non-customers, getting their email addresses takes a bit more creativity. A solid method is to trade information, samples, or minor services for their email.

There is another way that this tip can be used. Use a conference call registration page on your website when you whatever trade for emails. Then you not only have a list of potential people to approach for sales, you can use their emails to invite them to your conference calls.

The CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs, is known for his powerhouse presentations. They include grand visuals, high-tech support, important guest speakers, and of course cutting edge Apple technology. While this is all awesome, it doesn't make him a consummate presenter. Without all the glam, Jobs embraces solid presenting techniques that make all the difference. And guess what? You can too.

Carmine Gallo of Bnet.com dissects a Steve Jobs presentation and points out the very basic, but very powerful presentation techniques used. It doesn't matter if you are standing in an auditorium, hosting a conference call, or doing a video conference, learning Jobs's speaking habits can be very beneficial.

First of all, announce a single, simple headline and make it your theme. How about: "reading this today will help you have Powerful Presentations". You want to engage your audience with this headline and give them a reason to continue to listen to you. Make your theme clear and consistent.

Follow your theme with a general outline of what is to come. "Today we will cover the four basic ways to have a powerful presentation like Steve Jobs." Your presentation should be like a story, with each section a chapter. Make it easy for your audience to follow you. When you end a section or begin another, make sure to have a clear transition. "We just covered having a theme, which is important because you have to unify each section of your presentation."

It's not only okay to be passionate in your presentation, it's required. You want your audience to be hanging on your every word, soaking up information from you like a sponge. Think of all the lectures you've been to. Like you, your audience wants to be wowed. Don't be stiff or formal, that's dull. Be energetic and passionate in your gestures, tone, and language. Use words like extraordinary, amazing, and cool. Enthusiasm is contagious, so have some and infect everyone around you.

Like you and your words, make your visuals powerful and to the point. Your slideshow should be easy on the eyes with little text, and only one or two images per slide. The information you do include should be inspiring. If you include numbers, make them meaningful. Connect the dots for your audience by comparing them to everyday things. For example, one Apple iPod has twelve gigs of space. Instead of simply saying this, Steve Jobs points out that twelve gigs is enough space to have continuous music while traveling to the moon and back. Pretty heady imagery, eh?

Don't be afraid to be dramatic. If there is something to be revealed, don't simply say what it is, keep it as a surprise. Throw a sheet over something and unveil it with gusto. Introduce new information in a startling way. Have secret guest speakers. Stand or sit suddenly to emphasize a point. Your audience wants to learn, but also to be entertained. You always want to have at least one memorable point in every presentation. Plan for it and make it happen.

Always have a "And one last thing," moment at the end of your presentation. This is an unexpected bonus for your audience that could be a reward, an announcement, or simply refreshments. It may sound insignificant, but it not only keeps your audience coming back, but also rapt with attention until the end of your future conferences.

Time is measured in seconds, used in hours, and lived in years. When you include time in conversations with your customers, you are telling them much for than what point the sun is in the sky, or the duration of an event. In addition to what's on the surface, you are revealing things about you, your company, and how you feel about the customer.

For example, if you have a one-hour dry cleaning shop, and you tell a customer that it will be an hour and a half until they can pick up their clothes, you reveal that you are either very busy, a machine has broken down, or your shop is unorganized. If you have a customer in front of you and you interrupt them to deal with a phone call, you reveal that the person on the phone is more important, your customer's time is unimportant to you, and you don't care that they made the effort to come to your store.

Seth Grodin of Seth's Blog wrote an interesting blog entry on time as the most overlooked secret of marketing. He holds that this secret has two parts: Show Up on Time and Cherish My Time. Showing up on time is a tool to build trust. You are telling the customer that you will do what you say when you say you will do it. You tell them that their time and schedule is valuable to you, so much so that you deliver your promises when you tell them you will.

Cherishing your customer's time is about respecting them. It's not assuming that your time is more valuable than theirs. As Seth writes, if you want someone to think you are selfish, then ask for a minute of their time and then waste it.

When you set up an appointment with a customer, you are creating an opportunity to waste their time. You can do many things to make sure you don't. Is the meeting necessary? Will you be helping them, or only yourself? Do you need to meet face-to-face or will a video conference be a better alternative? When are their busiest times of the day and is your appointment during one of those times?

As always, remember the golden rule and ask yourself, "Would I want to be bothered with this at this particular time?" If you respect your customer's time, your customer's will respect you.

Business traditions are changing and with them the normal ways of reaching and communicating with customers. If you haven't already done so, social networking sites have become excellent ways to get in front of potential customers and interact with them and existing customers. There is more on this in a previous post about using social networking for business. If you followed that post's advice -- or did it all on your own -- and have come across some unexpected results, possibly some common mistakes are to blame.

Putting your company out there has more ramifications than starting a personal profile. After all, you want people to visit your company's profile to learn about your business and choose to buy your products. This makes it all the more important that you don't send the wrong message. In Kelly Spors article, we get tips on how to avoid some common social networking mistakes.

First of all, when you setup a profile, you need to go all out. Simply putting your name and logo with some contact information is not going to sway anyone, much less their interest. Include a blog and fill out the "About Me" section. Show pictures of your products, employees, and building. Tell about your history, hopes and dreams, and interesting things about your company and the industry. Give a visitor plenty to look at to give your message plenty of time to sink in.

Speaking of that message, don't come on too strong. You've got other mediums that extol your company's virtues, don't turn your profile into one as well. You're not selling visitors here, you're using the profile to connect with them and let them learn more about you. "Humor often helps," as Spors writes.

Finally, don't take all that time to setup a profile then abandon it for a few months. Update it with fresh content. Add a blog entry or a news item. Put up new pictures. Do a video. Do anything to keep your profile in the "Just Updated" section of the social network's main page.

It is extremely rare that a meeting at some point doesn't have at least one person standing in front of everyone - actually and metaphorically - to speak or run a presentation. Since it's inevitable, it's always good to be able to give good presentations rather than mediocre ones.

First, let's look at some simple tips from Lisa Braithwaite for improving presentations. The first is obvious enough, but as we all know, it has been overlooked before: take your medications. How many times have you been in a meeting with a runny nose… yours or someone else's? It's noisy, distracting, and sometimes disgusting. Take the allergy or cold medicine well in advance of the meeting so you can at least appear to be feeling fine.

The next tip is again an often overlooked gem: start on time. It's disrespectful to the on-time participants if you wait for the latecomers. It also encourages and rewards the tardy participants as well. Starting on time also makes you look - and be - efficient. Enough said.

Start strong and end strong is your next guideline. You want to wake up your participants and transfer your energy and excitement at the beginning, but you also want to end on a high note, sending them out all fired up. It's simple to do as long as you pay attention to what you're doing.

Bill Lampton's entire article give us the next tip: good speakers tell good stories. A story engages your audience and can whisk away their imaginations. It helps to break up the monotony of figures, numbers, and diagrams. A personal story will endear them to you, helping to make a connection. Being known as a Raconteur, or storyteller, will make people want to be invited to your next meeting and look forward to it in the meantime.

Lampton also gives us some guidance on using gestures to improve your presentations. While gestures are confined to physical, face-to-face meetings, or video conferences, like a smile, they can still be noticed by your participants through your voice and tone. One of the main points to remember is to never plan a gesture for a certain part of your presentation as almost all of the time it looks unnatural.

Another good tip is to only use gestures that are appropriate or natural for you. Just because it looks good on someone else, does not mean it will look good on you. Finally, don't forget about your facial gestures. Let your face muscles relax and mimic the tone of your message. If your face is off, your other gestures, and quite possibly your message will be ineffective as well.

A presentation is the one moment where all of your planning and practice comes together in a short period of time to convince another group of people to agree with you. It's rare to get a second shot at something like that, so any preparation you can do in the meantime is crucial.

Oh, and don't forget to smile!

There are two sides of the coin of technology.  One is the shining benefits we get from good tech, the other side is the sacrifices we make to have it.  Telecommuting is a new form of work only made available in the last fifteen years.  With advances in telecommunications, the internet, and cell phone technology, telecommuting is not only a feasible choice; it's sometimes the best choice.

There is a problem with telecommuting however.  When an employee telecommutes, they are in their home office all day alone.  There aren't any of the frustrations or annoyances that come with going to work, but nor are there any of the benefits.  There aren't any impromptu break room conversations or bouncing of ideas off your neighbor.  It's easy for a teleworker to feel cut off or out of the loop.

There are things you can do to keep a cohesive, team atmosphere for your remote employees.  In Jody Gilbert's article in TechRepublic.com, we have 10 tips for remote workers that help to bring them in to the office in spirit instead of physically.

The tips to make the remote worker still feel a part of the company include three that bring the employee's work to the company.  Conferencing technology is the way to do this.  In conference calls, you get their ideas through their voice.  Video conferencing shows their face and yours, giving the impression that they are in the room, or at least down the hall.  Web conferencing shares their work in a collaborative way that includes you and the worker, no matter how far away they are.

President Kennedy's words are burned into our minds and immortalized for time untold. Behind the man and his message was Ted Sorensen, JFK's advisor and speechwriter. In Sorenson's new book, he gives his perspective of the events of that presidency, as well as some basic rules he followed to make Kennedy's speeches so memorial. Carmine Gallo, Businessweek.com contributor, chose a few basic tips to share from Sorensen's book. It doesn't matter if you are giving a keynote address, speaking in a small conference call, or expressing yourself in a letter, these rules can help your message go out clear and powerful.

• Don't take a minute to say what you could say in a few words. Maybe even before they realize it, your audience could get bored and distracted as they figure out you have been taking too long to make your point.
• Use words that describe specifically what you want to say. Don't resort to catch-phrases or clichés when a single or a few perfect words will suffice.
• Organize your content in a simple, orderly fashion and clue your audience in at the beginning. Start with the theme or purpose of the meeting and how many major parts they should expect. Then verbally guide them as you go along. "Our third point of Organized Speeches deals with clarity."
• Never forget the most important part of your speech is the ideas you are conveying. It doesn't matter how good it looks in a PowerPoint or how technologically advanced you're A/V equipment is, if you have a banal message, you will have a banal presentation.

These are just a few of the tips Gallo wrote about. Visit his article for more or go to the source in Ted Sorensen's book. Regardless, embrace these ideas and make your presentations shine. Your audience will thank you.

We start with a quote that explains this particular method of salesmanship: "Selling is the art of creating a desire in the mind of a buyer and satisfying that desire so that buyer and seller benefit." Creating a desire is best seen when you’re buying a car. The salesman and his no pressure tactics make it easy for you to justify letting him talk and show you around. Sitting in a car is harmless, right? No. What the salesman is passively encouraging is your mind picturing yourself driving the car and claiming ownership; creating a desire to have that car.

Buying a car is a process filled with high emotions and creating a desire seems to fit nicely, but it’s hard to picture how to create desire in a person so they buy, say a toaster. It may not be noticeable or in large amounts, or just fueled by necessity, but desire is still present. This is the thinking of Alan Fairweather in his article, How to be a Powerful Persuader.

To sell something, you need to persuade someone. To persuade them, you have to change their mindset. To change their mindset, you have to create a desire to change their status quo. To do this, Fairweather has listed several traits that you must have or use. You may notice that many have something to do with trust. The reason for this is that people buy things, or allow themselves to be persuaded by those they trust. Here is a list and brief descriptions of each:

Belief - Successful persuaders believe in themselves and what they're talking about.
Enthusiasm – You need people to be enthusiastic about what you are selling, and you must lead the way by showing the passion and enthusiasm in you.
Knowledge – You have to know what you're talking about and be able to answer all their questions.
Empathy - Put yourself in the other person's shoes. What do you think is important to them? Consider carefully why they should accept what you're saying.
Persistence - If you want to persuade someone, don't give up on the first "no" or rejection of what you say. Persist and persist - but do it nicely!
Energy - Put energy into all your interactions with other people. Energy fuels enthusiasm.
Consistency - Everything you do or say is important, everything counts. If you're trying to persuade someone to keep their promises, then you must always keep yours.

In the early part of the new millennia, there was a thriving underground movement on the internet that was centered on dating and social networking websites. Early risers to the top included Friendster and Facebook. In recent years, the king of social sites, MySpace, went corporate, Facebook opened up to users who weren't students, LinkedIn went after professionals, and a little company called Twitter burst onto the scene. One thing in common with all of these sites is that they are all social tools designed to connect their users in new and interesting ways.

In an article in BusinessWeek, Karen E. Klein writes about how inspiring these social networking sites have become, not only in how they do what they do, but in how they have leapt to the forefront of our social conscious and begun to affect our economy. In her article she answers the question: How useful would these sites actually be for a business?

A profile of your business on MySpace can create some publicity, though you would have to make most of the first gestures to your target market. However, you could link it to your business's profile on Facebook and capitalize on the extensive group and network capability there. You and all of your leadership – including whichever employee wanted to help out – could network your profiles on LinkedIn and tie them to the company profiles on MySpace and Facebook.

That all builds up alternative web presence; now it's time to do some communicating. This is where Twitter comes in. Twitter is a website that allows a profile – in this case your business -- to message all of its "friends" at once through texts, emails, and instant messaging. In addition to that, fans can elect to "follow" your company and receive those same messages. Get enough of a following, and there could be some real movement the next time your company twitters, "Check my myspace page, new product out today!"

Listening may seem like just one of several sensory input systems - it is - but it also is the lynch pin for much of what makes us be able to get through life. Listening well will help you remember more and more clearly. It will help you focus on instructions given and then later when you are following them. Listening helps with your personal and professional relationships.

Being a good listener is not something you are born with; you have to work at it. Since all of us are different, some may have to work harder than others. For example, if you are excellent with remembering faces, but horrible with names, this doesn't mean you have a bad memory; it means you are a bad listener. And if you have a tough time with faces… you might need glasses. The good news is that we all have the ability to become better listeners.

Here are some things to consider for improving your listening:

• Accept everything the person says. Judging and evaluating the content of what someone is saying -- while they are saying it - guarantees that you will miss some parts. Take in everything, then examine it.
• Don't get hung up on how they tell you something. Possibly you may not like a person's speech style, or their high-pitched voice. Ignore how they are saying it and concentrate on it.
• Don't interrupt. It may seem obvious to point out, but often we formulate our responses and rebuttals even while the other person is still making a point. Let them finish, then it's your turn.
• Get your body behind your ears. Make sure you keep eye contact. Lean forward to show interest. Try not to cross your arms.
• Repetition of key points at opportune times is a good memory trick, but it is also a good way of letting the speaker know you are still following them. When they know you are paying attention, they will put more of themselves into what they are saying.