The Warm Hand Of The Familiar

Professional Marketing Associates Posted on by

Have you noticed we’re living in a world of short attention spans and constant distractions? But maybe you were busy checking email or Facebook and didn’t notice.

Distraction and the pull of novelty are so rampant now that a recent Microsoft study found people have an average attention span of 8 seconds, down from 12 seconds in the early 2000s when cell phones first began absorbing a tidy percentage of our attentional resources.

While our 21st century brains are becoming more and more are addicted to novelty and distraction, our yearning for the things that are familiar and predictable has grown as well.  A recognizable world is a safe world, and familiar situations provide a sense of security. Continue reading →

Why incubating sales leads makes such a huge difference

Professional Marketing Associates Posted on by

Anyone who earns their living in sales (or has seen the movie Glengarry Glen Ross) knows that not all leads are the same. Some are “sales ready” from the get-go and others need to be nurtured and coaxed along.

Nurturing leads is the popular expression these days, but we like the term incubate better. Incubation is a process that provides optimal conditions for growth and development.

You might be getting new business leads from trade shows, your own teleprospecting efforts, referrals from other clients, or even from a serendipitous meeting at a dinner party or your kid’s soccer game. Continue reading →

The Door You Want To Open

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Think your prospecting emails might be landing in the same folder as those confidential requests from that Nigerian prince?

Take heart, today we’re going to show you seven proven strategies to get your prospecting emails opened and read. Let’s be clear up front though, that we’re talking about direct messages to individual targets, not bulk email blasts to purchased lists. That’s another thing entirely.  Continue reading →

We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat

Professional Marketing Associates Posted on by

Are we?

When we realize that the challenge before us is more daunting or complex than we thought, the tendency is to want to throw more resources at it – more money – enlarge the team – extend the deadline…

But maybe all that’s needed is a fresh approach. Maybe there are some other details or data that can tilt the game in our favor.

Sometimes we’re just looking at it from the wrong angle and seeing it from a different point of view will enlighten us.

And sometimes it just may not be worth wrestling with at all. Without giving in to discouragement, we can agree that there are other and better ways to spend our time and more promising channels to get where we want to go. Continue reading →