Business Tips

Act2 Strategists' business tips cover every aspect of business with short, easy-to-read ideas for improving your personal and organizational performance.

• When qualifying a prospective customer during a sales call, try listening more than speaking. In the early stages of the selling process, it’s more important that you learn about their needs, perspectives, purchasing habits, timeline for buying, and budget than tell them every detail about your product and company. Careful listening will get you the information you need to tailor a truly effective sales pitch.
• Use your email subject line prudently. Make sure the line is brief, yet descriptive of the content in the body of your message. Think about what the recipients will be motivated to do when they scan their inbox and see your subject line. Will they open the email to read more, move it into a file folder to process later, or hit “delete”? And, what if they need to sort through their messages three months from now to revisit your topic? Will the subject line help them intuitively sort and retrieve your message?
• When you’re in charge of a meeting, make sure you’re prepared with these three things: An agenda, a purpose, and a clock. If you don’t have all three, consider cancelling rather than asking everyone to endure another ill-planned, meaningless, time-wasting event.
• When introducing a new employee, consider a written announcement, along with “walk-around” introductions. With both communications, be sure to tell people the new employee’s name, title, the location of her workstation, and how in what capacity she will be interacting with others. Clarifying roles and relationships is key to boosting everyone’s productivity.
• How do you respond when you answer the phone and the person on the other end is cold calling? Resist any temptation to rudely dismiss the interruption and try this line, “We’re very pleased with our current supplier and are not sourcing other vendors. I’m sure you can appreciate our loyalty in the same way that your best customers remain loyal to you.”
• Networking events require that you are comfortable with approaching people and making small talk that can jumpstart a conversation. As you are driving to your next event, prepare yourself by thinking up three topics or three questions you can share with anyone. For example, you can talk about today’s headlines, the latest celebrity gossip, or your most recent big purchase. As for questions, try these: “Everyone seems focused on their frustrations, let’s talk about what’s working right at our companies. You go first.” Or, “I have to give a big presentation next week, do you have any pointers you can share with me?” Or, “I just discovered a cool function in Microsoft (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook). What’s your favorite Microsoft tip?”
• Resist the urge to multi-task during your next conference call. If the topic is worthy of calling a session, it is worthy of your full attention. Clean off your desk, sit with your back to your computer ― or better yet, turn it off ―, and practice active listening. Imagine the productivity boost if everyone on the call was so intent!

• The first step in creating an effective promotional campaign is to determine you’re target audience. Who you sell to will determine what you say, how you say it, where you say it, and when you say it. Be specific in defining your target audience and you’ll do a better job of reaching them. Along with basic demographic information, take the time to learn, for example, who they listen to, what they read, when they listen to the radio, where they shop, and how they make purchasing decisions.