Alexandra Levits Water Cooler Wisdom Do You Know Your Sales Terms

Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom Do You Know Your Sales Terms You know the feeling. You’re meeting with someone fromsalesor marketing and you’re listening attentively as they passionately describe their project. You want to understand what they’re talking about, but you don’t have an MBA and some of the vocabulary is just lost on you. However, you don’t want to sound clueless, so you don’t ask. We hope this post with common sales terms definitions offers some relief and can serve as a handy reference in the future! AIDA An acronym that stands for Attention/Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action.These are the individual steps of the sales funnel (see below), in which your pool of potential customers moves from large to small as prospects get closer to a sale. BANT An acronym used for qualifying leads, which stands for Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline. Salespeople use this to assess whether a prospect has the money and the decision-making power to result in a sale, and also whether your product or service solves a critical customer problem in the right timeframe. In other words, BANT helps salespeople determine if all the stars are aligned for a deal to take place. Buyer Persona Based on research and outlining what, where, when, why, and how a customer buys. Buyer personas are often provided to salespeople to educate them about the ideal prospect and about the most effective way to approach that prospect. Churn Rate A metric based on the value of the customers you retain. To calculate churn rate, you take the number ofcustomers you lost in a given time period and divide it by the total number of customers you had at the very beginning of the period. For example, if you had 100 customers at the start of the year and only 80 customers at the end of January(discounting brand new customers), your churn rate would be: (100-80)/100 = 20/100 = 20%. Closing Ratio The percentage of prospects thata salesperson closes successfully.This ratio is used for all sorts of things, including individual salesperson performance, evaluation of profits, and sales forecasting.The better qualified a salesperson’s leads are, the less likely they areto be turned down(and the higher their closing ratio generally is). Qualified Lead A prospect that learned about your product or service, was interested, and contacted your organization to receive additional information. This kind of lead is most likely to result in a sale because half of the work is already done! For more where these came from, head on over to Intuits Fast Track blog.

Personal Branding Interview Jeremy Schoemaker - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Personal Branding Interview Jeremy Schoemaker - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Today, I spoke to Jeremy Shoemaker, who has successfully branded himself as Shoemoney across the web.   He is an internet entrepreneur by trade, as well as a speaker and top blogger.   In this interview, Jeremy talks to use about how hes branded himself, some of the tricks hes used to stand out, why hes succeeded blogging and the benefits hes received. How did posting the picture of you with the 6-figure Google Adsense check impact your personal brand? Do you think that was your tipping point for brand awareness? Really at first nobody noticed it was just another picture in the photo gallery then it quickly became the most popular photo and has been every since. I would say its pretty huge from a personal branding perspective. Its amazing when I meet people at conferences like the creators of icanhascheezburger.com, perezhilton.com and countless other sites that tell me that Google Adsense check picture was their inspiration to create the website. Why do some bloggers change their content when they become more successful? Why havent you? I think probably because my blog has never been my primary business. It accounts for less then 10% of our companies revenue. I think if it was my only source of income I would worry all the time about what I write and what people think of it and that would drastically alter the content. You have many women with shoemoney promotional gear on your blog. Have these items helped you with branding? In what way? I think catering to the female audience has done well for branding. Many websites/brands only have mens styles. Also we sell 5x more mens shirts then womens but women send in more photos. You remain one of the more transparent public figures on the web. Why should other people consider this and has it helped you connect with your audience in a more meaningful way? I think sharing your failures and successes with your audiences is the only way to go. I am a very open person about my life experiences in the blog and in person and its always done me well. People cant relate to someone who only talks about their successes. But someone who weighed 420lbs, was in massive credit card debt, and can barely spell . most people can look at that guy and say wow if he can do it why cant I. What indirect benefits have you received from your popular blog? How has the blog helped promote your brand? Its given me a huge platform to launch our own products. For instance in 2007 we launched a display advertising company called AuctionAds. Within 4 months the company had over 25,000 publishers and was bringing in over 3 million a month in revenue. We sold the company 4 months after launch. Most of the success was leveraging connections built from the blog. The relationships is by far the biggest thing. I usually can score all press passes (sometimes even airfare and hotel expenses) to any conference anywhere in the world. This is an amazing way to connect with the marketing departments for huge companies like Fox Interactive Media and Facebook (both who have since become sponsors of shoemoney.com and my other ventures). Jeremy “ShoeMoney” Schoemaker is a SEO expert, entrepreneur, founder of ShoeMoney Media, and co-founder of the AuctionAds service.   In March 2007, Schoemaker and his business partner David Dellanave launched AuctionAds, an eBay affiliate marketing service that serves eBay auction ads on contextually relevant sites. The service won an eBay Star Developer Award (it was named the “eBay Most Innovative Application- Buyer”) at the eBay Developers Conference. In July 2007, performance marketing company MediaWhiz purchased Schoemaker’s majority ownership in AuctionAds.   ShoeMoney’s blog was named Best Affiliate Marketing Blog of 2006 by Search Engine Journal. He is a frequent speaker at search engine marketing and affiliate conferences, and co-founded the Elite Retreat conference.   Schoemaker attended Western Illinois University. While still in college, Schoemaker founded his first business, making Macintosh gaming sites, and later created ShoeMoney Media Group (SMG).

Rosh Hashana forces big decisions about work

Rosh Hashana forces big decisions about work One of the first major religious decisions that young, Jewish professionals make is whether or not to go into the office on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. Most Jewish holidays start at sundown, a safe time to leave the office. However, Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are all-day affairs, and this year Rosh Hashannah starts tonight right in the middle of the week. Rabbi David Lerner, says the first time you decide whether or not you are going to work is a big decision. I cant think of another event like this in Jewish life, he says. Sarah Maltzman is typical of those twentysomethings deciding how to prioritize work and religion. She does not go to synagogue regularly but grew up in a family where people skipped work on the high holy days. Now, as a teacher, she, too, will take time off. But she will work one of the two days of Rosh Hashana, because she says she doesnt want her students to have too many days in a row with substitute teachers. If I were in a 9-to-5 job I would feel more comfortable taking time off, she says. There is no law granting the right to take off work for religious holidays, but according to Linda Saiger, executive director of Chicagos Council on Jewish Workplace Issues, most people are able to get the days off if they want them. The question is: What do people want? There is a lot of peer pressure to stay home and observe the holidays. By some estimates, more than 95 percent of the families affiliated with a synagogue show up on Yom Kippur for a day of fasting and self-reflection. In fact, such a large percentage of the Jewish population stays home, that some schools close, some stores close, and towns with large Jewish populations seem to completely shut down. However, there is also a lot of pressure to go to work. In some industries, like investment banking, people rarely take time off for anything, doing what it takes to get the job done and make a good impression. Jessie Bodzin is managing editor of Heeb, a magazine for hipster Jews. She says that one of her friends had a new job with a heavy workload, so she went to work and fasted to allay some of her guilt. But Bodzin doesnt recommend this tactic. This is the worst of both worlds, because she got a headache from fasting without the benefit of self-reflection, Bodzin said. Another friend of Bodzins went to synagogue in the morning, then to work, then back to synagogue. For him, maybe the guilt of going to work was abated because Bodzin said he ended up spending more time in synagogue than he would have had he not gone to work. Some of the most complicated decisions arise when a twentysomething relocates for work far away from family. Many feel compelled to take the day off, but have nowhere to go. Leah Furman, author of Single Jewish Female: A Modern Guide to Sex and Dating, says that some people dont go into work because that would be breaking tradition, but they dont necessarily go to synagogue all day. For some people, its a time to get together with Jewish friends, she says. Maybe they go to synagogue for a little while and then they go with friends out to lunch. For those on looking for meaning, Lerner reminds them that the core issue is not about missed deadlines at work or used up vacation days: There is a lot that people can do to have impact on a broken world, he says, and the high holy days call to us, motivate us to do this. For those who forgo the pursuit of synagogue tickets, Esther Kustanowitz, author of My Urban Kvetch, points out an enticing alternative: Thats two full days out of the work week for Rosh Hashana, and if you take three more vacation days you can go away on a trip for nine days.