Jay Aho, Chief Executive of Gen18, famous for his driving sales video blog joins us today for his rant on typical marketing.  When did we start putting our logo on coffee mugs and feeling good about that as marketing professionals?  If our efforts in marketing don’t help a client through the buying process, what’s the point?

In today’s episode, Jay Aho, The Driving Sales Guy talks about leveraging webinars for the sake of value delivery, and to drive your own profitable sales.

We have all be there, on the receiving end of a terrible sales pitch.  In this edition of The Driving Sales Video Blog, Jay discussed two of the worst sales efforts he has ever seen.  In addition, Jay gives some encouragement for anyone considering going in to business on their own.

Over the past few months, I’ve enjoyed writing on a variety of business and technology topics.  I knew that the day would come when I would focus the Gen18 blog to a more concise topic, and that day has finally come.  Welcome to the new, Driving Sales blog.  I’m your host Jay Aho, The Driving Sales Guy.  As you will see in the upcoming posts, much of our content will come from the road!  Video blogs live-ish from the streets, on the road to sales success.  I hope you enjoy the new direction.  Put your seatbelts on… it’s sure to be a wild ride!

What an interesting event this morning.  Moving the D Forward: Own Your Future, was presented today at Wayne State University.  This panel discussion was moderated by Murray Feldman, the Business Editor at WWJ Newsradio 950 and Fox 2 TV.

So, here are a few of the best ideas for the growing business or entrepreneur:

1) Harras the media: Lauren Thomas, Owner, Ladels Children’s Book Boutique in Corktown has experienced wonderful success with free publicity.  Eventually a publication will run an article about you just to get you off their back!

2) CONNECT!: I personally signed up for Fusion on the spot, but get connected with any number of business associations, chambers, etc.  Mentioned by name were OpenCity, Fusion, Hispanic Business Alliance, and Southwest Detroit Business Association.

3) Seek small business resources:  There are resources out there, but they don’t find you.  You must go find them.  SBA.gov, micro-loans, and others.

www.gen18.com or followed on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jayaho.

I remember when I was a new sales manager back in the early 1990’s (wow… that sounds so last century), I had this client who was amazingly belligerent.  They complained about everything: product quality, prices, everything you could imagine.  I remember the company president at the time told me that I could invite this client to go elsewhere.  I decided to have a little fun with it first, and started charging him full retail for our products, which was somewhat unheard of in that market at the time.  To my surprise, he continued to buy… at least for a few months.  Then he fired himself, and took his business to a competitor.

I was happy to see him go.  It made a definate improvement in the moralle at our shop.  Scott Sheaffer has a great posting about the value of firing clients.  You should try it!  If you have a client that sucks up your life for very little value… fire them!  You’ll be glad you did.

I posed a question to some peers in the marketing community this week:  “Where do you begin for a client who has done almost nothing to market themselves, but now wants to do everything that you have opened their eyes to?”

Corinne Elletson responded with what I felt was a great answer:
Quoting me: “But now that their eyes are open, they are like a nervous shotgun”

You said it, Jay! I have been in the same position, providing new insights to clients on what is available these days in regards to business marketing. They are quick to get revved up and want to do everything all at once. If they try and manage everything at once, they can get burnt out quickly and disoriented.

I personally like to try an focus them on building up one avenue, be it Social Networking through Blogs or sites like LinkedIn, or online webconferencing and seminars. Then, once that media is established and flowing without a great deal of effort, I recommend expanding to something else. The one you start with is most often defined by a few points: money available to invest, demand from the consumer and time and resources availability. The biggest of those three is the consumer demand. You can plan great seminars and online webcasts, but if your customers are not interested in seminars and webcasts you are at a dead end before you start.

In most cases, with the clients that I work with, video blogging or webcasts are the most successful starting point. They give focus and a schedule to the “happy trigger finger”. But again, what works for one type of business and their customer base may not work for all. So, you always have to keep the audience in mind.

Richard Stiennon, the acclaimed network security expert and NetworkWorld security blog author opened my eyes last night to his most recent Internet security concern: Twitter Squatting.  (Nice to be closely connected with a visionary… you get a 12 hour jump on some of their ideas.)  I’m sure you have noticed domain names that were taken by people who didn’t actually own the brand name.  The same will happen with Twitter id’s.  What about your business?  Have you registered the Twitter names that are associated with your brand?

Jay Aho is a Sales, Marketing, and PR Consultant from Detroit Michigan.  He can be reached at www.gen18.com or followed… where else… on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jayaho.

I learned something fascinating recently as I was evaluating the effectiveness of our website.  Did you know that the length of your domain name registration can effect your ranking in the search engines?  So a domain (all other things being equal) that is due to expire in six months will have a lower ranking than one that is due to expire in 3 years.  Today, domain name registration is so inexpensive, you may as well buy 10 years!

There are lots of ways to improve your website, including but not limited to:

• Metadata
• Heading Summaries
• Image Summaries
• Permanent Redirects
• Inbound links
• Blogs
• Social Media
• and RSS Feeds

Jay Aho is a sales, marketing, and PR consultant from Detroit Michigan.  He can be reached at www.gen18.com or followed on Twitter at: www.twitter.com/jayaho.