Hey everyone, happy sabbath! Today I had the opportunity to be blessed with a story about an African Christian who wanted to live out loud for Jesus Christ and died for what it is he believed in. How many of us are willing to do that. What you are about to read is something that I hope can change your life as I believe it has changed mine. I pray in my heart that we all can learn to live out loud for Christ.

I am a part of the fellowship of the Unashamed. I have the Holy Spirit
Power. The die has been cast. I have stepped over the line. The decision has
been made. I am a disciple of Jesus Christ. I won’t look back, let up, slow
down, back away, or be still. My past is redeemed, my present makes sense,
and my future is secure. I am finished and done with low living, sight
walking, small planning, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tame visions,
mundane talking, chintzy giving, and dwarfed goals.

I no longer need preeminence, prosperity, position, promotions, plaudits, or
popularity. I don’t have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised,
regarded, or rewarded. I now live by presence, learn by faith, love by
patience, lift by prayer, and labor by power.

My pace is set, my gait is fast, my goal is Heaven, my road is narrow, my
way is rough, my companions few, my Guide is reliable, my mission is clear.
I cannot be bought, compromised, deterred, lured away, turned back, diluted,
or delayed. I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice, hesitate in the
presence of adversity, negotiate at the table of the enemy, ponder at the
pool of popularity, or meander in the maze of
mediocrity.

I won’t give up, back up, let up, or shut up until I’ve preached up, prayed
up, paid up, stored up, and stayed up for the cause of Christ. I am a
disciple of Jesus Christ. I must go until He returns, give until I drop,
preach until all know, and work until He comes.

And when He comes to get His own, He will have no problem recognizing me. My
colors will be clear for “I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the
power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes..” (Romans 1:16)

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Prospecting for new business from your desktop.

Business is grown in just three ways – grow your existing account base, develop new revenue streams with new products or ideas or get new business.  All three options have their own positive and negative effects on a business but all three have to be considered in a slow economic times or when your business has reached a certain level of market maturity.

This article will focus on gaining new business through prospecting.  Each company has a set of key elements that bring its product or service to the market. These key elements are presented to a targeted group of prospects who have the need for your product.  Locating this targeted group can sometimes be elusive and the lack of new prospects will deter the growth of your business.  So how does a company look for new prospects?

The internet allows us an affordable way to do our own searching for prospects.  I have worked with a sales person lately who needed to open up 16 new accounts a year selling a high end hair treatment and shampoo line. The opening order cost for any new account was a minimum investment of $3,000.00.  After understanding who will use the product and I turned to the internet for some quick searching.  Sometimes entering a key word or description of the product will turn up hundreds of potential customers. In my first online search I came up with thousands of hits. I used a drill down technique for each search. By simply adding the word “Florida” after the key words and a comma, I was able to narrow the list down just to the specific targeted territory.

Another internet strategy I use is to enter a key word for who would use the products. In this case I entered “high end hair salons, Florida” and “hair salons and spas, Florida”. This resulted in another list slightly different then the first but added several hundred additional more prospects.  I also looked for competitive websites. There are times that a competitor will post their entire account list on the web – yours for the taking.

Now that we have some new prospect names – what do we do with them?  Here is where most companies, sales managers and sales reps fail.  It can be a daunting task to have 43 pages of new prospects. Where does one start? My first suggestion would be to go through the entire list and read the name, location and type of account they are if this information is available.  Often times it would be a good idea to share this list with your controller or “accounts receivable” person within your company to see if you can eliminate any deadbeat accounts. If you have a sales manager it might be a good idea to share this list with them also to see if there is any history there.  I would not suggest eliminating any names because you don’t like the area they are in or the name of their business. Remember, a good sales person does not make the decision for the buyer and one should never be quick to discount new business.

Qualifying the prospect is the next most important thing to do.  It’s time to make sure that they fit your customer type and that they will have a need for your product or service.  Go to their website and look around – you may find out that they already buy your competition or have a missing need to fill with your product. You can learn a lot about a company from an on-line search. I would also call them up. The first call is an exploratory call. If it’s a large company and you get the receptionist see if you can ask some qualifying questions to that first screener. Questions I have used are “Do you currently sell or use (enter your product or service hear)? If you get a yes, dig some more on the who, what and how much? If you get a “no”, find out if they ever tried to sell or use your products? If it sounds like a possibility for a customer, ask the screener for the person who is in charge of making that buying decision. If they can set up an appointment for that person do so on the call. There are times when you make one call and get to the decision maker immediately. In this case, I would recommend a conversation that starts off with “I hope that you can offer me your opinion about my product or service” and then get into some qualifying questions.

Close the deal. Not the door!

Contact us to

help your sales

team makes the numbers.

www.EKNLinks.com

Phone 1.954.558.9599

Don’t forget while we are prospecting to ask for referrals and leads to new business. Sometimes the next big contract comes from your last source of business. If you provide a valuable product or service and maintain a professional and courteous relationship with your customers-they will refer you to others.

Ken Ninomiya has marketed and sold products internationally for nearly 20 years. He holds an Executive MBA from the Chapman School of Business, FIU and currently is VP of Sales and Marketing for EKN Links. EKN Links is a solutions company for domestic and international businesses providing sales, marketing, Public relations and business strategies. Ken can be reached at kenninomiya@eknlinks.com or www.eknlinks.com.

By Ken Ninomiya, MBA, Professor

VP Sales and Marketing of EKN Links

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How many of you have put your heart and soul into something and it just didn’t turn out the way you had originally planned? I know I have time and time again. I sometimes feel like I do all that I can to learn only the hardest lesson in this life, which is you simply can’t. What exactly is considered to be a failure though, is what I continously ask myself as I continue on this journey I call life. Is it really trying my hardest at accomplishing something and then falling short of my goal,  or could it be the not trying at all that would have made it a failure. I would definitely say it would be the latter. You see, how would we ever know if we would be successful at something if we in fact never tried it? And yes, the reality of this life is that we probably won’t succeed at everything that we do, but in a sense trying it out is a success in itself and while were at it, if we do put God first and it is his will for us to succeed, then we really shouldn’t worry about not being successful. I know that we all have things that we wish we were better at or even question as to why we even bother wiith trying to do them in the first place, I too ask myself these questions, but anytime I ever feel like giving up or like I’m failing at what it is I’m trying to accomplish, I simply pray and ask my Heavenly Father, that if it is his will that he allows me to be successful at it, because all I can really do is try.

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I get ask all the time which anti-virus software I like to use and I always reply, since I got introduced to this technology ideal I have been using Norton and I have no complain really. Then I get asked, is it free, no it is not you have to pay for it. I sometime suggest AVG as a good free anti-virus software but now I think I am going to move over to the Microsoft product. I have been using Windows Defender to help me combat the malwares and anti-spywares out there. Microsoft Security Essential is a FREEEE anti-malware solution that is available to you for your personal computer or laptop. This program will help your computer to fight against viruses, spyware, adware and other malicious software. All you need it to make sure your computer or laptop is running windows XP with at least service pack 2 and higher, windows vista, and windows 7. If you are not sure how to find out which service pack your computer has do the following:  From your computer, click start, find the My Computer icon, right click then click properties.

Once you can identify that you have service pack 2 you can download and install the Microsoft security Essential. At the present time this application or program only runs on 32bit processor not 64bit. For more information and download go to: Microsoft Security Essential

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