Wow, check out the interesting news over at Search Marketing Gurus. A couple of people are taking up residence over at KeyRelevance and somebody else is going to be joining the Gurus gang. I won’t spoil the surprises…go see what Li, Bill, and Fangirl are doing and how podcasts fit into it all as well.

Original post by DazzlinDonna

The Oscar-winning movie The Music Man contains a key scene that says a lot about sales. The main character, Harold Hill, sells student’s music instruments and uniforms under the false premise that he’ll remain in town as the music teacher. When the scheme unravels, the little boy he’s befriended accuses: “You’re just a liar! There isn’t a band!” Harold Hill’s response is classic. A sad look comes over his face and he says: “I always believe there’s a band, kid.”

While Harold Hill was just a con-man, his remark contains a truism about sales. In order to sell at the highest level, the sales pro must be congruent in his or her beliefs. In the case of a flimflam artist, that requires the sociopathic behavior of lying, both to the victim… and to oneself. In the case of honest selling, that congruence can only be achieved through matching your honestly-held beliefs with the honest attributes of what you’re actually selling.

Without that congruence, the customer will tend to feel that something is “off.” Daniel Goleman, in the book Social Intelligence, explains that a million years of evolution has given human beings the capability to automatically “read” facial expressions, voice tonalities and body movements to confirm whether somebody else constitutes a threat. As a result, most people are pretty good “lie detectors” and thus can tell, at a visceral level, whether a sales pro is being honest or not.

There is an important lesson to be learned here. Ron Willingham, author of Integrity Selling for the 21st Century, says that your success as a sales pro will depend heavily upon whether you have congruent answers the following questions about your beliefs:

• What are my basic values about people and life?
• What do I think selling is all about?
• Do I believe that I can take the necessary steps?
• How committed am I to taking these actions?
• Do I believe in the product or service that I’m selling?

If your answers to these questions are incongruent, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be able to sell at the highest level. You’ll find it extraordinarily difficult to perform the basic mechanics of selling, because everything you try to do will force you to fight an internal battle withing yourself. And, of course, most customers will sense this and be reluctant to buy from you.

For example, if you truly believe that “it’s a sin to tell a lie” you’ll probably flub the close if it requires you to misrepresent your product. Similarly, if you’re not truly committed to helping a customer, your protestations that “you’re only here to help” will fall flat and simply generate skepticism. Ron recommends that every sales pro take some quiet time and go through that list of question, answering each one truthfully, and then examine the answers for incongruities.

In a future post, I’ll tell you what to do if your beliefs aren’t congruent. Unless, of course, you want to be like Harold Hill…

Original post by Geoffrey James

The Oscar-winning movie The Music Man contains a key scene that says a lot about sales. The main character, Harold Hill, sells student’s music instruments and uniforms under the false premise that he’ll remain in town as the music teacher. When the scheme unravels, the little boy he’s befriended accuses: “You’re just a liar! There isn’t a band!” Harold Hill’s response is classic. A sad look comes over his face and he says: “I always believe there’s a band, kid.”

While Harold Hill was just a con-man, his remark contains a truism about sales. In order to sell at the highest level, the sales pro must be congruent in his or her beliefs. In the case of a flimflam artist, that requires the sociopathic behavior of lying, both to the victim… and to oneself. In the case of honest selling, that congruence can only be achieved through matching your honestly-held beliefs with the honest attributes of what you’re actually selling.

Without that congruence, the customer will tend to feel that something is “off.” Daniel Goleman, in the book Social Intelligence, explains that a million years of evolution has given human beings the capability to automatically “read” facial expressions, voice tonalities and body movements to confirm whether somebody else constitutes a threat. As a result, most people are pretty good “lie detectors” and thus can tell, at a visceral level, whether a sales pro is being honest or not.

There is an important lesson to be learned here. Ron Willingham, author of Integrity Selling for the 21st Century, says that your success as a sales pro will depend heavily upon whether you have congruent answers the following questions about your beliefs:

• What are my basic values about people and life?
• What do I think selling is all about?
• Do I believe that I can take the necessary steps?
• How committed am I to taking these actions?
• Do I believe in the product or service that I’m selling?

If your answers to these questions are incongruent, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be able to sell at the highest level. You’ll find it extraordinarily difficult to perform the basic mechanics of selling, because everything you try to do will force you to fight an internal battle withing yourself. And, of course, most customers will sense this and be reluctant to buy from you.

For example, if you truly believe that “it’s a sin to tell a lie” you’ll probably flub the close if it requires you to misrepresent your product. Similarly, if you’re not truly committed to helping a customer, your protestations that “you’re only here to help” will fall flat and simply generate skepticism. Ron recommends that every sales pro take some quiet time and go through that list of question, answering each one truthfully, and then examine the answers for incongruities.

In a future post, I’ll tell you what to do if your beliefs aren’t congruent. Unless, of course, you want to be like Harold Hill…

Original post by Geoffrey James

Making money on the internet is a never ending battle of (1) optimization, (2) writing, (3)link building and (3)time management. If you, like me, run more that one site then the last one is the most crucial as the writing, optimization, and link building need to fit in with your schedule. This is especially important if blogging is not your “career”.

This is where the process really comes into play. Everyone has their own style so everyone’s process will be different. The important thing is to understand how you are going to get the above 4 things done. Here is a overview of the process I go through:

Writing:

Set up Google Reader with a keyword search for each one of the topics I write about on sites such as Google News, various blogs I follow, and other sites. For example, on my The Running Guy blog I have a search for “running a marathon”. This way I can see topics for potential articles and for other people’s articles that I could comment on to help build links.

Optimization:

I try to do one thing per day on each site that helps me do some SEO optimization. Following my SEO Book as a guide for best practices, I pick one thing that I could do to improve my rankings. I know I have a long way to go but every small step counts.

Link Building:

Link building is all about getting links to your sites on as many quality sites as possible. I try to email one webmaster per day to request a reciprocal link. I also try to comment on other quality blogs and ensure my signature and link is included. One caveat on this is to ensure you are providing quality comments and not just 1 - 2 word comments that point to your site. You will not get any value out of this.

Time Management:

This is the toughest one - especially if you hold a full time job, a family, or whatever else that eats your time away. Add in writing, link building, SEO optimization and multiply this by 3 sites and you will quickly run out of time. Here is what I do:

1. Use my HTC S710 to do my writing, while I take the train to work. I can write an email to myself with the post and then quickly upload the post to the site when I get home.
2. I set up a calendar item for each day to remind myself of which blog I am to write to today. This focuses me on one post per day and provides some structure to ensure I post consistently.
3. Once the post is posted, only then do I focus on link building and SEO optimization. Posting consistently is more important than anything.

This process works for me, let me know what works for you.

Reminder: SEO Book is the standard in SEO optimization. It has worked for me and many more bloggers who are WAY more successful than I am.

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