Posted on: October 29, 2009 by Jordan Hardy
I’ve been asked by friends in the last number of years why I started this sales and marketing blog. There are a number of reasons:
- When I started doing contract work a number of years ago, clients enjoyed it.
- It is a pleasure helping people, so whether people I know or don’t know learn from this Website, I’m glad to have helped.
- I enjoy doing online and offline research. When I have new thoughts on an item, it is fun for me to post once in a while on this Website.
Enjoy!
Posted on: October 14, 2009 by Jordan Hardy
The most recent unsolicited email I received from someone I don’t know offering online marketing services was this morning. It amused me to no end. I think it was partly the grammatical errors that added to their professionalism. Or possibly it was that they didn’t know my name and addressed me as sir or madam. Or maybe it was the fact that the person spent a paragraph explaining they really did look at my Website thoroughly before sending me an email. But in their email they didn’t take the time to actually mention my Website name / URL! They talked about having techniques to get any Website to the top of Google quickly. They alluded to a handful of social networking Websites as examples of the kinds of sites they would automatically link me to. They feel it is effortless for them to do this work, as if their magic computer would plug my Website into the “mysterious” online world. Their ending, to gain my trust, was to offer their personal cell phone number and Skype ID.
They are probably contacting me not from jordanhardy.net, but another Website I had worked on in past years where they somehow found my contact info on a cached page.
If really this person is legit, I see some problems in their offering.
Personal Issues With Hiring this Person
- Generally when I’ve hired marketing, sales, and other team members, it has never been from unsolicited emails like this one. It has been from posting an ad on Job Websites, sorting through a huge number of applications, and finally interviewing up to 20 people to fill each open position. Or it has been through networking.
- They’re the expert? What about the fact that it has taken me a huge amount of experience and training to do this so well myself? They just happen to be gifted? How come it is so difficult for me to find high quality sales and marketing people when I hire? Just this one person will do it all for me? Wow! When I hire people, to get them very good at what I need them to do, it usually takes a lot of training, coaching, and experience.
- Where are they? What proof do I have they are really one person?
- Why is there no portfolio URL in their email letting me know I can contact them from their Website as well?
- How would I know they are actually getting me linked out there in a good and not bad way? Can they provide links that show a human has done marketing work, or will it have been that a cheap Web tool submitted automatically with many errors or submissions to low quality Websites therefore affecting Google Pagerank?
- Do they know who I am? In other words since they did now know my name in the email, what would happen if I used a technique I use with telemarketers? I’d say, well since you’re alluding to me and my Website, what is my name and what is my domain?
Professional General Issues with Hiring this Person
- It needs to be clear how they will go about their work. They need to be clear what kinds of Websites they work with, how they work, and how many of each task will be done. When work is done, they need to track it to provide to the client.
- Although in rare instances someone can find an employee like this, it would be much better finding the person from online research, a reference, or digging up their resume online.
- Spelling errors should always be corrected.
- Although there is some special magic that comes from extensive experience in online marketing, most is smart, hard work. This needs to be clear.
Although this was a bit of a long post, I had to do so to have a bit of fun.
Posted on: July 23, 2009 by Jordan Hardy
To feature a business online is an important step these days. There are 15 elements that are very important in getting your new Website online with success. Reading up online, talking with experts, and reading books
are all effective, affordable ways to build up knowledge. Here are 10 top steps with resources and tools to help bring your business online in a very effective manner.
- Select a domain name. Go Daddy and aplus.net have good domain name selection tools.
- Select a company to host your Website. As you research hosting companies online, ensure you check samples of their clients to see how well the Websites rank on search engines and how quickly their Websites load.
- As you plan your Website, a good architecture with strong Web standards and usability, is best written on paper before it is coded.
- Either hire a team to build your Website, use a tool, or you can code it yourself if you have the time to learn. Wordpress and Drupal are my favorite tools. Wordpress is good to build a blog. Drupal is good to build a Website.
- Write great copy to ensure you have the attention of search engines and users / Website readers.
- Build SEO into your Website to ensure you get traffic from good online marketing.
- Make sure you can create images as needed. Adobe Fireworks is a great image tool and there is some excellent documentation on using Adobe Fireworks out there.
- Get a great coding tool to use quickly or in detail as needed for Website posts. Adobe Dreamweaver is terrific and there are very good books one can use.
- Work on conversion and optimization techniques to ensure people don’t just visit your Website, but that they do convert to a lead or sale.
- Leverage landing pages into your website.
- Bring your selling online as well as offline.
- Test, test, test. This means look at your Web analytics and optimize what you do based on your Website statistics.
- Roll out useful, creative new Website enhancements as often as you can.
- Listen to user feedback.
- Keep track of new Web trends.
Tags: business online, new website, Online Marketing, results, SEO, usability, web architecture, web hosting, web tools Filed Under: Building a New Website, Businesses, Online Marketing, SEO, Sales, Website Analytics, Website Sales, Websites
Posted on: May 24, 2009 by Jordan Hardy
There are quite a few kinds of sales positions, each with different drawbacks and benefits for employees and employers. This post discusses my observations on various types of sales positions a sales professional can choose from.
- Sales Manager – This position can be inside or outside sales. I’ve found this works best when I was a sales manager who was both out in the feld with clients, out in the field with staff, and at the company offices at times. This position is typically a base salary with flexible hours and location due to the range of client and company needs.
- Inside Sales with Base Salary and Commission – This is a good position for the employee as not only is there a base salary, but also commission. It is possible to build close internal business relationships, of course as well as client relationships. The drawbacks of this position for the employee are that it can be more about the hours than work done, and may include busywork at a desk. The drawbacks of this position for the company include extra time, training, and money invested in an employee that may or may not end up being good at sales.
- Outside Sales with Base Salary and Commission – This is an ideal sales position that can either be the one where a salesperson starts out, or a position the salesperson and company agree on after a trial period. My preference is that the employee start out commission only and then within weeks or months grow into base plus commission if things go well. The benefit here is that both sides can find out if the position is a good fit.
- Inside Sales with no Base and Commissio Only - I have not seen this often and do not feel it is a good idea for anyone.
- Outside Sales with Commission Only - This can be more ideal for a company than salesperson to start since only the salesperson is taking a risk. The company can hire a number of salespeople for similar positions and give each minimal training. For sure some salespeople will fail and others will do well. In my experience, it works best that after a couple of months, a new successful salesperson on commission only talk with the company they are working for. If they are doing well, it will be important to know future plans of the company in regards to territories and future hiring. It will be important over time that the salesperson and company have a strong trusting relationship so that everyone is appreciated.
- Telemarketing from Home – These days there are many people posing as companies, as well as companies looking to take advantage of people. If a person decides to do telemarketing from home, it will be crucial they they get proof of what will happen for calls that convert to leads or sales. It will be important that time spent is rewarded.
- Sales Assistant or Intern – Many companies or people these days may try to get someone for free or almost nothing as this may be first experience for the employee. If it is a good opportunity with a company of notable size or quality, this can be a good opportunity. If this is a small questionable business that is taking advantage of someone, then it may be time to think twice and ask more questions of the employer and what they do.
Click here to read about Jordan Hardy who wrote this.
Posted on: April 10, 2009 by Jordan Hardy
About Managing
When I was young, I had the opportunity at the age of 14 to manage staff members for my parents. Ever since then, I have been in leadership positions, managing anywhere from a couple of vendors to teams of over 50 people. Now that I’m in my 30’s and many years ago graduated from college, management and building of teams and strategy is something I’m very familiar with. In the last couple of years I have become a VP, a temporary consultant for other companies, and a temporary director to help other companies.
If you would like to learn to manage, I would suggest getting started somewhere by reading, taking classes, locating a mentor, and most importantly putting yourself in a position to learn to manage people. It may just be that you start by managing one person, and even that may help get your foot in the door to learning.
About Sales and Marketing
Before and during college I had many opportunities to manage staff, sell to clients, and work with customers. After college I was extremely interested in selling and marketing. To bring this to a new level in my 20’s, I spent a lot of time reading books and magazines from experts, taking extra classes at local colleges, and most importantly selling and marketing my own products and services. Within months of graduating college, I was hired by the world’s largest Orchid company where I then managed, trained, advised, wrote for trade journals, and gave seminars to the public to sell Orchids and teach. A few years after that I grew to another opportunity and kept selling, marketing, and managing.
