Ever been to a Minor League baseball game? These games are a study of human behavior: survival, passion, struggle, discipline, dedication, loyalty, teamwork, respect for the game. I’ve been to several Minor League games and I see these attributes being common at each game and on a higher level than at the Major League level. After all, these kids are trying to make it to “The Show”.

There are veteran ballplayers working their way back to The Show because they didn’t get a major league contract for whatever the reason. Then there are the youngsters who have not made it yet, but are struggling for survival and fighting to reach higher levels and eventually reach the Majors.

Every time I go to a Minor League game, not only do I see the survival, passion, fight, dedication, loyalty and more from the players, but I see it in the umpires, the coaching staff, the stadium workers, and especially in the fans! It can be quite a humbling experience. But these qualities remind me of how we can approach our affiliations in life, work, co-workers.

Minor leaguers barely make any a decent, liveable salary and only get paid during the season and not in the off season. They sometimes have to stay with host families rather than have their own apartments. I was introduced to a one tradition during a Single A game. These teams are primarily comprised of kids no older than 23 yrs old for the most part and usually range from 18yrs old – 20yrs old. When one of these kids hits a Home Run, a bucket travels around the ballpark where the fans donate a dollar and the kid who hit the Home Run is rewarded with the bucket. Usually the ballplayer treats his fellow teammates to a night out, perhaps a better dinner than Taco Bell. Isn’t this a great tradition? The money goes directly to the player rather than only a portion. 100% commission! I love it!

Ballplayers who are struggling to make it back to the Majors whether due to an injury, past poor performance or hadn’t got offered the Major League contract and working their way back to the Majors all display intense passion and dedication to their craft. You can even feel it in their air. But see, that is what makes attending a minor league game so special. The ballparks are smaller, cozier, less pretentious. The fans show their love by supporting these players and these teams for the love and appreciation of the game itself. There is little hype or flash to these games, especially at the lower levels. It’s the game at its purest form.

Seeing these players, the coaches, the fans, the ballpark workers all dedicate not only themselves but to each other is exactly the kind of workplace I want. The teamwork, the discipline, the respect for each others’ contribution is brilliant. If you’re good at observation, you can see the inspiration feed off of each act. Coaches learn from an 18yr old to better prepare themselves for a higher level coaching job, a young umpire learning from a coach, a young fan learning how to treat others by a kindly ballpark worker.

How can we bring these qualities into our own workplace? How about joining people who want the same success! Working together with others only helps me succeed. Would you like to join my team?

==>> Click here for an exclusive invitation to learn more

Or copy and past this link in your browser:

http://on.fb.me/PPM100

Watch the 2 videos posted there and let me know if you are up to the same measure of quality.

Join The Perfect Pitch Marketing Mastermind Group on Facebook

The Internet is a rough and dangerous place. Many are striving to experience immediate success, but do not have internet marketing mastered.  They have tested the waters and sank like a rock.

But…

There are others that have prospered.

How did I change my online marketing business over the last year? Do people really sponsor 30 people into their PRIMARY business all from the internet in under 90 days?  They SURE DO!

Here is the secret…

Mastermind with those who know more than you.

Of course you can do it all, solo.  Go about it like Rambo; buy all the products, try figuring out if it works or not, then move on to the next great training program.

Wouldn’t it just be more efficient to just “ask” and “learn” from an online marketing team who knows what they are doing?

Contact me when you are ready to rock and roll.

Strike Out Your Business Competition,
Jason Grilli

P.S. For those who understand fast action. You can join my personal mastermind team here:

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Selling is a skill where ability, cleverness and expertise are needed to win the customers attention and decision. There is a sequence to be followed in selling.  In every sale, no matter what you are selling, all the 7 steps in the sequence must be performed properly in succession in order to win.

1^st step: Make a list of your prospects.

The easiest way to find prospects is to ask for referrals. Possible channels to look for referrals are:

• from current customers who have bought your product/service and are satisfied with it
• from your networking contacts who know your business and would highly recommend it to people they think would need your product/service
• from your business contacts who would gladly trade leads with you for something in return

2^nd step: Analyze your leads

Go through each prospect and get to know them on paper before you go meet them or talk to them. Get to know their position in the company, group or family.  The idea is for you to determine whether they are in the position to decide whether to buy your product/service or not. No matter how good your sales talk, if they are not the decision maker, you cannot lead them to choose to buy.

3^rd step: Start to make contact

Make the call or send an email to set an appointment to meet with them. Make the purpose of your appointment clear to them from the start, which is that you’re to meet with them to make your presentation. When they agree to an appointment with you that will help you feel certain that they will be open to your talk and will encourage you to make a persuasive presentation.

4^th step: The sales pitch

This is the all-important step of the sequence. To give a convincing pitch, you will need to make use of 2 key players — information and persuasiveness. Give out clear and pertinent information where all their possible questions about your product/service are answered that they won’t even need to ask. Professionalism will always impress and your sales pitch is the only part where you can do that. So, take a good amount of time and effort in preparing your sales presentation.

^5th step: Move to close the sale

Once you’ve made your sales pitch, ask at once for the sale. You need to move in directly, with confidence and poise. Your self-assuredness will catch on to them, if you give your prospects  a bit more time to think, some may hesitate and you might end up losing their sale.

^6th step: Deal with any negative response

Not always will the 1^st pitch be successful. When you encounter a negative response, then counteract positively. Whether you face a refusal or a hesitation from your prospects, don’t leave it just like that, deal with it and work against it by negotiating. Find out the reason for the refusal or hesitation and then compromise with a solution. If for instance the prospect says that the price is too high, give a discounted rate if you can, if you’re not allowed to lower the price, then offer a freebie instead that will be really hard to reject.

7^th step: Ask for new referrals from your new customers

You will need to find a new set of referrals anyway to start the cycle all over again, so the best people to ask are your new customers because the sale is still fresh on their minds and their enthusiasm about your product or service is still high. Remember to ask for complete names and contact numbers.  Any free information they give out to you about their referrals should be voluntary, you shouldn’t solicit any other info from them except for the basic name, title and contact numbers.

From here, the sales sequence ends and will begin again.

Starting a business is easy; keeping it going is the hard part. Every new business will stumble many times at the early stages. There is always a learning curve. It is the businesses that learn enough through the stumbling process that will ultimately become successful.

In my opinion many internet businesses do not survive through the stumbling process mainly because of two things:

1. owners come into it with the get-rich-quick mindset,
2. they expect that what works for others will work entirely for them.

The hype will always be present in marketing, whether on the internet or offline. The people who are really ready for entrepreneurship will instead keep things real.

Reality is that an internet business is hard work. It takes a lot of research and planning. It requires investment in time, effort and money for all the trial and elimination it has to go through as it finds a firm footing in its specific niche. It takes insight, flexibility and persistence to make many parts of the business to work together well to get the needed results.

Insight

Business acumen is a talent common to the bigwigs. It is an intuitive ability to see clearly the nature of your market and its consumers. A clear perception of how your product can offer value to your targeted customers will help you understand how to market it to them properly so you can get high sales ratios. Perceptiveness will help you find solutions to every problem with the aim to survive and stay afloat.

Flexibility

There is no one-size-fits-all method of marketing. Don’t easily buy into what other “marketing gurus” sell out there which hype that they have the automatic cash machine that will make you rich overnight. It is okay to use other people’s programs but do your research well before you buy anything and keep an open mind about using their method. What works for them, may or may not work totally for you. Some components in their method may work for you, some may not.  Your product and market situation will be uniquely different from theirs.  Have the flexibility to change things up to suit your needs. Test one out, test several out if your budget can allow, then be innovative and creative and tweak things until you find a marketing method that works for your product and the market situation which it is in.

Perseverance

There is some misconception about perseverance in business I believe. The general definition of perseverance is steady and continued action despite difficulties or setbacks. In a sense this is true but it is very ideal. In my practical and realistic way of thinking, perseverance is steady and continued action despite difficulties or setbacks while keeping losses at a minimum. You have to know where and how you’ll persevere. That takes figuring out what the mistakes are and what solutions need to be made to keep going. You can’t keep losing dollars month after month with one method that’s not getting you results. Neither can you try out one method after another without tracking your progress and understanding clearly when and what to change up. At some point, some things have to work out and some things have to be discarded. Perseverance for me is get somewhere as you keep trying. You need to make decisions, and have direction in order to make things happen so that the business actually produces results.

The true formula for success in business is a combination of the right idea, the right timing, the right method, the right attitude and the right action.  A product or service backed up with a good amount of capital to promote it aggressively to a receptive audience using the right marketing method and performed with determined action will bring the business into circulation and carry it through the early years and even further.

Many startup business owners find it tricky to make online marketing work. It can definitely be overwhelming and it doesn’t help that there is an overloaded of information out there on so-called miracle products that mislead with their overhyped marketing pitches.

We can’t put all the blame on the buzz and hype for our confusion, though.   I’ve always believed that a business owner who is ready for success understands beforehand that there is no quick way to riches and is prepared to put in the hard work rather than spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars to get himself scammed. Yes, there are many great products that can help but still it’s the business owner’s job to create his game plan.

How do you create the game plan for your online marketing?

Get The Big Picture

Understand what your overall strategy is from the start. There are many parts to put together and many tools to use to build those parts.  So, as business owner, you will need to make decisions on what parts to work on to start the game while keeping in mind future growth. Where do you start? What can you start? What do you need to start? How much will it all cost initially? What do you do next?  How far can you go now? How far do you plan to take your business?  At the same time as you’re thinking about your overall strategy, you’re also making step-by-step action plans. It’s easy then when you have a rough draft to see how you want things to be, you have a road map to follow to actually get things done and you have a way to track how you’re progressing towards achieving your goals.

Lay A Strong Foundation

One key to your online marketing success is to have foresight and to think long-term. This mindset can save you thousands in renovating and rebuilding from the ground up in the long run. You can’t limit your thinking to just surviving the early stages. Your step by step action plan for putting the basic elements altogether should input too how you can take your business to the next level. A well made online marketing system has all the most important parts at the core but also has room for expansion.

A strong foundation includes investing in a: 1) business name, 2) website and blog structure that brands you , 3) Getting listed at search directories, and 4) keywords to help search engines include you and to help customers find you in searches.

Build Up

A strongly built online marketing system can withstand the changes that are made to it. In short, it’s flexible to accommodate many different methods to advertise and sell and the advancements in technology.  It is important to mix-up your marketing strategy so that you have several channels to build web presence and bring in profits. There is a broad range you can combine to boost marketing and sales, pay per click advertising, article marketing, facebook and twitter marketing, video marketing, local search and mobile marketing.  It’s also critical to track to improve performance. Check what action plans are working or not, what channels make money or not, what keywords don’t generate profits, and then adjust and upgrade where needed.

Building up the online marketing system is a continual process and marketing mistakes can cost you thousands of dollars. The trick is to start with what you can control and then as you’re training by experience, you make changes and improve it.

Check out my winning online marketing system! Tested and proven for 2 years as it successfully builds my business empire!

Just when we thought we had social media all figured out, here comes one more marketing channel that needs to be part of our business model if we want to compete in the 21^st century market arena. Mobile marketing is a new platform with another set of rules and an altogether different lineup of vocabulary and metrics.

There are many ways to do mobile marketing, there’s mobile search, mobile video, MMS or mobile social networking to name a few. These high-tech methods have their place with big-name corporations that have the technical savvy to launch this type of campaigns. But these methods are clearly out of reach to the small or medium-sized businesses that cater to consumers who are average income earners. For one, these mobile methods require technically sophisticated devices which most consumers cannot afford. For another thing, they are costly for most businesses to implement as they will need to hire mobile marketing firms that cost thousands to be able to do this.

Mobile marketing via SMS is a cheaper and easier alternative for both consumers and businesses. Texting is the most popular way to communicate nowadays with nearly every American consumer familiar with using it. Most, if not all, mobile apps, support text messaging.  SMS marketing has also the farthest reach among all the other methods of mobile marketing.

With outgoing bulk message rates costing only a few cents and monitoring response rates and tracking costs performed with the help of software that’s easily available to get, any small business on a tight budget can immediately put into operation an effective and powerful mobile marketing plan by means of text messaging.

SMS has a very high and very fast response rate among American consumers. A recent survey done by the Direct Marketing Association showed that 70% of consumers responded to a marketing text message and only 30% responded to a marketing email message.

Text messages are direct and interactive. SMS alerts can be sent out in large volume in just one click and consumers can read your marketing offers the instant they get it and respond to it right away direct in the palm of their hands. Because texting is familiar and quick to do, consumers jump at the chance to answer short ads, polls or surveys on their mobile phones rather than spam pop-ups and banner ads in their cluttered emails.

Text messages are easy to measure. You can see consumer response to your marketing messages as soon as you send out a text. If consumers find value to your offer, they’ll respond right away by flocking to your store and even making a purchase. If consumer response is slow, you can change up your ads quickly to get better ROI.

Keep in mind these two tips when doing text messaging:

Run effective messaging campaigns – With only 160 characters to work with, you’ll have to learn to compose short messages that build your value and which contains calls to action that are readily understood. Two essential points to put in: What is the offer?  How to redeem the offer?

Don’t spam – There are guidelines for best business practices in the mobile marketing channel.  If you conduct your business in a professional manner at all times, you protect your brand in the process which has long-term pay offs to your company image.

Text messaging is extremely popular because its easiness and simplicity account for the high level of consumer acceptance. SMS marketing can provide small and medium-sized businesses with a different tool that’s a proven method for lead generation and sales acquirement in the mobile marketing channel.

If your business relies heavily on local residents to bring in revenue, then local mobile marketing is the fastest way for you to get customers in nearby areas to your doorstep. Local mobile marketing is simply doing your marketing and advertising through any mobile device.

It pays to go local and mobile because:

• 74% of U.S .consumers do local searches (source: Kelsey Group)
• 61% of local searches result in a purchase (source: TMP.com)
• More than half of local searches are made by means of a mobile device, i.e. a smart phone, tablet, or GPS
• Mobile users all around the world is 3 times more than internet users
• By 2013 more people will access the internet through mobile apps than from a desktop

There are many creative ways to do local mobile marketing but the most popular method for small local businesses is by means of text messaging. If your business can afford to, you can choose more elaborate ways to integrate local mobile marketing in your business by hiring a professional agency and having them take care of everything for you. You can also opt to get your own short code for a campaign and spend around $500 to $1000 per month just for the short code plus spend extra costs for marketing and advertising it. The easiest and cheapest way to get started on a text messaging campaign is to get an unlimited plan and register with a mobile marketing firm which will allow you to use their shared short code.

Texting can be compared to opt-in email, but with faster and better results. Text messages are read right away and can be acted on instantly. Email messages on the other hand can stay unnoticed for several days.

Get your local mobile marketing started right away otherwise your competition will outrun you.  Here’s how you can begin:

1^st Step: Choose a mobile marketing company

• Make sure they can handle high-volume texting
• Make sure they support all carriers
• Make sure they have easy- to- use software
• Check if they have advanced features which you may want to expand to down the road

2^nd Step: Register your business name or keyword.

This keyword is your business name which customers will use to send a text message to in order to join your SMS list. Register this keyword to the mobile marketing company you have chosen.  It will look like this for example: “Text KEYWORD to SHORTCODE to join our messaging list.’

3^rd Step: Promote your keyword or business name.

Place your text code in all your marketing materials as a way to announce and publicize your business and also collect potential numbers/subscribers.  Customers will subscribe automatically through their own mobile phones.

4^th Step: Start sending your promotional offers!

• Create messages that are simple, clear and 160 characters short
• Log on to the website of the mobile marketing firm you have selected
• Type your message and then send it

It’s that easy to get started! And of course, follow best practices and allow your customers to opt-out. Don’t forget, too, to track your results and adjust your campaign so you can keep getting higher ROI.

Taking your business local and mobile will definitely place it in forward position and help it move ahead.  Be found where your customers can find you and help them find you fast through local mobile marketing.

If done correctly, social media can grow a group of loyal followers for you that will be always ready and willing to act upon your offer.

At first, an interested group will come into your site and take a look at what you have to offer. And then, if they like your offer they will make a purchase and help you spread the word about your site turning them into supporters of your business.With this group of followers recommending your site to others and making purchases, your business grows faster and becomes increasingly profitable.

Photo Credit to jscreationzs

How do you know that your social media plan is being implemented correctly? You will need to track your progress.

It is important to track results in your social media plan because it’s the only way to gain clear insight if social media is indeed beneficial to your business. Tracking your progress will help you see the following clearly:

1. If your social media goals are dead on to your overall business objectives, and
2. If the goals are really coming to fruition.

Here are the steps you need to take when tracking your social media progress:

Step 1 – Align social media goals to overall business objectives

The real value of social media is in helping you accomplish your businesses’ bottom line. Every engagement towards the community of followers will need to take in the big picture in order for your social media plan of action to be strategic and for results to be on target. It is not a standalone activity that can be carried out separately but will have to be integrated into your other marketing vehicles to accomplish all the goals of the business.

Step 2 – Determine your key performance indicators

While aligning your goals will help you understand what you are looking for in social media, your key performance indicators will help you understand the results you are getting. More specifically it will help you see if the things you are implementing in your plan of action are working or not.

Are you getting followers? Is engagement active in profile pages? By how much is the number of followers growing? Is site traffic up?

How do you keep track of conversions? Are followers converting to supporters? Are people sharing/recommending/linking to your content? Are they acting on current product promotion offers?

How do you build customer loyalty? How do you retain your followers and keep them interested? Are there customer issues? How are you resolving them? Are you giving business updates to your supporters?

Step 3 – Choose your tools for measurement

These two are the best free tools you can start out with: Google Analytics and Yahoo Analytics. I started out using Google Analytics and my own WordPress site statistics to measure performance. If you need help understanding how to use these tools, I recommend you check out this site: Comparing Google Analytics vs. Yahoo Analytics. It will show you a very comprehensive comparison of the two tools in slideshow format so you can decide on your own which is best to use for your own social media plan.

Step 4 – Interpret and evaluate results

Evaluating your results will give you a clear picture of where your leads and sales come from.

Did most come from Facebook or Tweeter? Did you get any from any particular site you were targeting? What content are people recommending/sharing or bookmarking the most?

Doing social media without a clear understanding of its results is like doing something blindly. Without a clear view of its purpose, you are unable to understand the outcome and unable to control the consequences. It is pointless even attempting to make sense of it, hence social media becomes a waste of your time.

Bonus Tip: If you’re using several social media sites to market your small business, you can get help managing all your sites using this particular social media management tool . It helps me to automatically broadcast my posts , but more than that it’s an easy set-up that works like an automated sales funnel that helps me identify potential leads which I can target my marketing to actively so that I can turn them into buying customers! You can get it here right away, social media marketing app. I f you need more info on it, tweet me a question right here and I’ll get back to you as fast as I can!

When I started out my blog about 14 months ago, social media was at its peak. Everyone was using it and everyone was saying that if it wasn’t part of the marketing mix that I was missing out on a great source of traffic.

So I got into social media because I needed traffic for my blog. In the beginning it didn’t do so much. I admit I expected fast results because that was the hype I heard from all around me. Then I found out that other marketers didn’t do so well at the start too but they kept at it and in the long run got the results they needed.

So I stuck with it and slowly learned along the way what I wanted to get from it and how to get the results I wanted from it. As with every new activity, there’s a learning curve to social media networking.

Design Your Social Media Plan To Accurately Fit Your Needs

When I learned what I wanted out of doing social media and when I figured out how to use the tools , it started to bring in more traffic and exposure for my blog and my business overall.

This is the best tip I can share with you about doing social media for your business: You have to learn to use social media the right way for your own needs. There is no one size fits all social media strategy. What works for me may not work for you. But, overall, you will need an active plan to map things out and direct your way.

These types of questions came to my thinking as I went on with my social networking campaign:

1. What are your goals? What do you want social media to do for you?

2. How do you achieve the goals? Knowing what you want, what then is your plan of action to get things moving? Under these you might have to consider:

• What tools will you use?
• How active will you be?
• What activities will I apply in my profile pages so that everything I post, share, tweet, like or bookmark will give people the idea of what my business is all about?
• What activities do I participate in to build interaction? What content from others that I find relevant to my business do I recommend and share to my community to keep things tied in?

3. How do I know what activities I’m doing are working or not working? What else can I add into my strategy to improve it and get better results?

4. Now that I’ve got the traffic and exposure, what do I want the traffic to do and how do I get them to do that? Be ready to convert your traffic to bring about your bottom line.

One tip: You understand, find out things and gain know-how when you’re hands-on. As these ideas came about, they aided me in my planning as I designed my own social media plan.

If it is done in the way that fits to your own needs then you can make social media work for you.  It takes much thinking, planning and implementing but soon you will get results out of your social networking efforts if you don’t give up.

I’ve said it often enough in the past that your success in online marketing depends on your online marketing system, which is your strategic funnel for capturing leads and converting them to sales. I’ve also said many times that online marketing , especially in the starting stage, will take up much of your time, attention, energy, and yes, a significant sum of money so you can invest in reliable tools and products that can help you out.

Most of the hard work involved is in the trickiness of figuring out what parts and pieces to put together in  your own online marketing system so that all the bits and pieces work together  effectively once up and running to automatically generate traffic, conversions and sales.

Your online marketing strategy is key to your online sucess!

To put all the info together now so that we can see the whole idea, here are the 9 components that make up a complete online marketing system.

1). A website that is attractive, functional and easy for your customers to use

2). A content system

• that communicates to your customers engagingly
• relays the purpose of your business effectively
• suggests helpful and useful information or materials that they can use for themselves
• informs your audience about your products and services and updates them regularly of new happenings

3). On-site optimization – Investing in legit and correctly done SEO goes a long way. Your website’s framework has to be effective for the search engines to capture easily. Web pages, posts, internal links, keywords and images you use will have to be planned for the long-term and tracked and updated regularly.

4). Off-site optimization – You have to invest in link building in the right way so that you stay on top of your competitors. You have to rank high and be visible all the time so that your customers find you first rather than lose them to the competition.

5). Local search strategy – I believe this is the best way for small businesses to be more visible nowadays especially since Google supports it in a major way. Creating a plan for your business to be found in local searches should be one of your top priorities.

6). Social media strategy – You need to be in sites where your local audience is. Your social media plan of action should be:

• active and busy,
• happening frequently to establish a pattern,
• monitored regularly for effectiveness.

7). Email marketing – A very direct and personal way to reach out, market and sell to your opt-ins successfully because they’re interested and receptive to your information.

8). Video marketing – A more powerful and engaging tool to talk to your audience since high traffic is in video sharing sites. I suggest a mix of text and video content to stay creative.

9). Analytics – The tools you use to measure and analyze your website activities are the only way you can understand how effective your marketing mix is in converting your website traffic.

How strategic the entire online marketing system will be is all up to you. You alone can make decisions on which tools, channels and methods will fit perfectly well into the marketing mix to make it powerful in producing your desired results.