Every single word matters. Words are never neutral. Every word that does not help sell or market your product, hurt. 

I have known executives who spent 45 exasperating minutes trying to explain a product to me. I finally figured out that his entire concept could be described in two very simple sentences.

All of us have sat through at least one awful sales presentation, and most of us have also delivered one at some point, too. It is obvious to the audience that they are watching a bad presentation, yet every day, presenters continue to deliver presentations that do not resonate with their customers and prospects.

As we exit 2008 and enter a prolonged period of economic challenges, it will become increasingly important to deliver a concise message that connects with our audience. We are all going to have to become better presenters, and can start by avoiding the five biggest mistakes that presenters make:

Stop reading: We have all listened to a sales guy read word for word through his entire presentation. How boring. Unless your audience is a nursery school class, they can read too. Your slides are for the benefit of the audience, not speaking notes for you. They should support what you say, not repeat it.

Kill ‘em with content: For some reason, salespeople have this instinctive belief that if a few words are good, more must be great. It is what you leave out, not in, that counts.

Barney meetings: The lovable purple dinosaur is the symbol of all useless meetings. “I love you, you love me,” but nothing ever happens. These are the meetings where we listen for an hour, nod in agreement, and then never see each other again.  Every meeting needs a purpose, and more importantly, it needs clear next steps. If you want your customer to do something, ask them for it.

Product diarrhea: Nobody cares about your product. Sorry, but they don’t care about your technology either. I come from the software business, where it is common to have a 45-slide deck that is 43 slides of technological garbage. Customers do not buy technology or products, they buy benefits and solutions to their problems. Take the number of technology slides in your current pitch and cut it in half. Then cut it in half again. Use those slides instead to tell them why they should care.

It is YOUR fault: You never want to be the one telling the classic salesperson sob story where you are selling an “amazing” product, but the customer was just too “stupid” to get it. It is never the job of the customer to understand your message. Every customer buys things for a reason. Your job is to understand those motivations, and present ideas that will help their business.  It is always your fault if your message does not work. 

So what should you do? Here are four easy ways to make your presentations much better:

10 slides or less. Guy Kawasaki, the original Apple evangelist, has a rule he calls 10/20/30. Which means you should have no more than 10 slides, no longer than a 20-minute presentation, and no font smaller than 30 points. You should work continually to deliver fewer slides, less bullet points, and simpler language. 

When in doubt, take it out. If there is any question as to whether a given slide will benefit the audience, yank it. You can always verbalize something not in a presentation, but everything you leave in creates a more complicated story. In business, simplicity sells.

Ask for the business. The last slide on EVERY sales presentation should be clear, tangible next steps. You will never get what you do not ask for. So ask for the business, but make sure you can articulate how everything benefits the customer.

No surprises. Suspenseful movies are great, but nobody likes presentations like this. Provide a clear overview on the first slide. Tell them exactly what you are going to talk about and why it matters to them in the first 60 seconds. Demonstrate that you respect their time, and understand their needs.

Sales can be both the hardest and the most rewarding job in the world. It chews up and spits out those that do not take the time to understand and present from their customer’s perspective. It is merciless to those who waste their customer’s time.

Next time you fire up PowerPoint, make every word count.

On Thursday, Facebook announced the general availability of Facebook Connect, a service that allows its users to stay logged into their Facebook accounts while surfing other sites. The idea here is to save users from having to fill out yet another registration form or memorize another username and password. It essentially allows them to visit other sites using their existing Facebook identity.

The Economist calls Facebook Connect “an ingenious stab at solving several nagging problems at once.” Prior to FB Connect, users could post links back to their social network by clicking a button that said “Share This” or something similar. Now, Web users can interact with friends while on another site. For example, they can see what news stories their friends are reading or how they rated a story or what comments they left while on a third party news site.

The report points out that this greatly lowers the barrier to entry to new visitors who don’t want to go through the hassle of registering just to interact with a given site. In exchange for allowing Facebook users to stay signed into their accounts on their site, Web site owners are granted access for one day to the visitor’s public information on Facebook. Dave Morin, a Facebook Connect manager, calls this “dynamic privacy”, meaning that wherever they are on the Web, users will be able to take their privacy settings with them, choosing who among their friends will and won’t be able to see what they’re up to.

Gamers more used to battling demons, giants and dragons may soon be tacking another mortal enemy - the tax man.

Slowly but surely authorities around the world are turning their attention to online games and virtual worlds and the tax-exempt status of the economic activity taking place within them.
They are places where people can make virtual millions selling land, property, weapons and even people. But as tax havens their days may be numbered.

In October, China’s tax authority announced that it would focus on a previously ignored sector of its economy: the trade in virtual goods and currency. Sweden and South Korea have also moved to clarify the tax rules for virtual money.

Cost plus
Many people sell gold, items and even characters via online marketplaces for many popular games - often a new World of Warcraft player will buy a character from a veteran because they don’t want to work their own way up the ranks.

The two most obvious moments when taxes could be applied are when virtual goods are sold for real money on places such as eBay or when a transaction happens in-game.

Ever since eBay removed itself from the game asset business some time ago, millions of gamers have awaited a trusted marketplace to trade wow gold and other stuff, including game accounts. PlayerAuctions is significant for a few reasons. PlayerAuctions (www.playerauctions.com) cuts out the gold-selling middleman by connecting buyers directly with sellers, it GUARANTEES all trades for buyers and sellers, and the LA-based company is backed by Itemmania, a giant in Korea’s RMT market that has more than 2.5 million registered and LEGAL users.

It will be interesting to see how places like PlayerAuctions and other online marketplaces will respond to the demands for taxation of its members.

According to Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2008 report, the majority of bloggers surveyed currently have advertising on their blogs. Among those with advertising, the mean annual investment in their blog is $1,800. The mean annual revenue is $6,000 with $75K+ in revenue for those with 100,000 or more unique visitors per month. Read the rest of this entry »

I have uploaded a number of new pictures of past and current sewing projects. You can find them on Flickr. I have 3-4 four more dresses to add. I also need to find someone who can help me pull together a nice Majestic Design Website. I can certainly design and make a beautiful dress. Where it comes to html however… well, that skilled is lacking.

On November 11, I’m launching a phenomenal new MMO marketplace, PlayerAuctions (www.playerauctions.com) where Gamers looking to enhance their gameplay and escape the tedious grind of leveling up can dominate in-game with better prices on gold and other MMO game assets. PlayerAuctions.com is the most secure marketplace to buy and sell MMO game assets – with a number of safety precautions in place to make the process full proof and traders happy.

To celebrate the launch, PlayerAuctions is offering a free Papa John’s pizza for every buyer that completes three purchases by December 31st, and will waive all commission fees for any seller’s first five completed game currency orders.

Anyway, check it out and let me know what you think.

Good looks equal higher pay. According to this New York Times article a few days ago, studies have estimated that unattractive men and women earn five to ten percent less than those considered attractive or beautiful. This was a study published in the American Economic Review in 1994.

Does that hold true across the board? Well, again in 2005, another study was published concluding that the “discrimination was consistent across occupations, so that even a computer programmer buried behind a desk could suffer from the plainness penalty.” Interesting. Read the rest of this entry »

“Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”

When the European Union expanded eastward in 2004, Ireland opened its doors to workers entering from former communist states to help maintain record economic growth. Now, immigrants are heading for the exit.

The number of people leaving Ireland next year will outstrip those moving to the country for the first time in 14 years, according to Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin. The biggest exodus will be among the 170,000 workers who arrived the past four years from Poland and other east European states. Read the rest of this entry »

As you have heard me say in the past, PR is extremely cost effective. In a lot of cases the cost is zero, but PR is not limited to just sending out press releases.

Your visibility will increase with powerful publicity. Publicizing your business, you or your services will help increase the value of each to you and your whole target audience.

The idea is that publicity will bring the news of your company to the world, online or off, computer or no computer. The basic weapons that can be used to do this are a press kit, a company background piece, press releases, story ideas, and articles or columns about your firm, as mentioned in the article section above. As you can see there are many vehicles to distribute through the media, even though the most important of all is the press release.

A press kit can include the background piece, press releases, photos, story ideas, reprints of previous articles about your business, a list of customer references and anything else that the news media might find newsy or just be a simple fact sheet on you and your company. If you provide the media with news that will appeal to their readers, you will gain instant credibility and have a very valuable promotional relationship. This can be very powerful from a marketing point of view.

There are also a host of online magazines that might want to post your story, article or information. (This is related to both press releases and the article campaign mentioned above.)

A publicity campaign should begin with a master plan. The more newsworthy you make your company, the more coverage you’ll get. And publicity will earn credibility that advertising just can’t buy. Your goals should be uniqueness, timeliness and top-of-the-mind awareness. With publicity and visibility, your company profile raises and your client and prospect level rise as well. Market For Profits will put this together and manage it on a consistent basis for you.

One successful story about your company can result in free publicity is advertising worth hundreds and thousands of dollars.

Part of managing the total marketing campaign and especially the Public Relations portion is supplying the media with a unique story that will grasp their reader and viewer audiences. Press Releases also have a dramatic impact on customers and your targeted prospects.

PR is one of the most cost effective parts of marketing that an organization can undertake. The cost is in the development of an organized campaign and the writing and distribution of press releases. There is usually no cost associated with printed pieces or placement into publications. Because of this it is considered to be very cost effective. There is definitely a knack to writing a “newsworthy” press release even though sometimes the goal is awareness and promotion. Editors do not like promotion so crafting a press release to appeal to an editor is key. Now there is no guarantee that any press release will ever be published but with a consistent professional newsworthy approach with reputable editors of reputable publications, probability is good that some press will be gained and awareness will increase. Press releases are also great vehicles for communicating with clients and prospects. Putting them on a website is a very effective means of promotion to your captive markets. It also further substantiates your place in the marketing and your credibility in your field.