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An Often Overlooked Strategy for Getting Your Foot in Door By Kathleen Gage

Most companies are constantly seeking efficient and cost effective marketing and promotions strategies. It’s likely they are also seeking strategies to increase sales through obtaining key information. Regardless of industry, almost everyone has heard or read arguments saying sales and marketing are separate, while at other times hearing and reading they are interconnected.

The fact is that you have to market your product or business in order to find prospects to sell to. On other hand, your level of professionalism as a salesperson will directly impact your marketing message. Simply put, everything you do is a part of your marketing. Without effective marketing many people won’t know what you are selling. The two go hand in hand.

In process of selling you must be able to address question most prospects will ask: “What can you do for me?” This question can be answered by content of your marketing material as well as your responses while meeting with a client.

While you can tell your prospects and customers how absolutely wonderful you are and all you can do for them, an even more effective strategy is for someone else to “blow your horn.” A customer who is willing to answer that question for your prospect oftentimes adds to your effectiveness and credibility in sales process.

One of best ways to do this is with written customer testimonials. Testimonials can be very effective in positioning your product or service and may give that extra little push when a potential client is trying to decide on whether or not they will be doing business with you.

How to avoid mistakes that undermine your credibility

You’re probably already familiar with spell checker built into your software. Some work automatically as you type, others only run when you activate them.

Spell checking is just start of your proofreading tasks. Don’t let simple grammatical errors, or text omissions, sabotage your message. Here are some things to check for that go beyond capabilities of your software program’s spell checker.

But, spell checkers are not infallible! Know what yours checks—and what it doesn’t check. Does it check text imported from other programs? Does it flag words containing numbers?

Spell check limitations

Monitor your spell checker’s recommendations. Make sure each suggested replacement is a correctly spelled version of original word, and not an inappropriate substitution. Double-check spelling of proper nouns and industry-specific terms. Use care adding them to your custom spell check dictionary, or they will be misspelled forever!

Grammatical errors

Watch for homonyms—correctly spelled, but misused words—such as to, two, and too, or affect and effect. Most spell checkers are not context sensitive. Watch for singular nouns paired with plural verbs, and vice versa. Make sure you have used correct punctuation, like Em dashes (—) to indicate duration, instead of two hyphens (- -).

Check all dates, times, prices

Have someone else verify dates, times, and prices. It’s both costly and embarrassing to send out information that you have to immediately correct. Pay particular attention to numbers. Transposed numbers, i.e., 1,324 instead of 1,234, etc., are very difficult to notice. Before submitting a proposal, posting web content or distributing a newsletter, call telephone numbers, visit web sites and send e-mails and faxes requesting return confirmation.

Make sure you have included all ordering information necessary for recipients to respond. Order your own product, to check autoresponder performance.

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