10 LinkedIn Tips for Building Your Business

When I got to like 60% of my Linked In profile, a year ago, I thought that I was doing well. Apparently some people have moved on up to the Olympic class of being a Linkedin’er. This will open your eyes to marketing help that you never knew existed and if you did then you are in a different league.

Our goal is to give our members a way to keep themselves up with all marketing in this day and age. This article qualifies. If you are not on Linked in or treat it like facebook, you will find this article interesting. If you are and think that you are totally using tool, guess again.

There are some videos that did not come over with my copy. This is the link to the actual article with comments: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/linkedin-tips-business-building/

- Mel

Sales Pros Kansas City 5/18 Speaker, Guest List

Speaker: 

 Paul Welsh, principal of Welsh Writes - pwelsh@welshwrites.com - www.welshwrites.com

New Member & Special Recognition: 

Marilyn Cragun: Marilyn gave each member of the club that was present a copy of Mary Kay Ash’s book, Miracles Happen to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Mary Kay. Please consider a note of appreciation to Marilyn. mcann67@gmail.com - www.marykay.com/mcragun

First Time Guests : 

Ruth Dusterhoff - couchescurious@att.net - gently used furniture
JoAnn Andre - events@gulledgefamilywellness.com - Gulledge Family Wellness

Returning Guests: 

Sharon Cox – Sharon_cox@us.aflac.com
Suzette Burton - sburton@thehouseofrocks.com
Bill Fitzpatrick - bill@wdfsolutions.net 

Thank you to the speaker, the guests and especially Marilyn for her generosity. Thank you to all our members for another great Sales Pros meeting.

Have a great month selling, and don't miss Mel's round-table on June 1st to discuss how to SWOT test your clients. It will be at the First Watch in Shawnee at 7:00am, breakfast not included, but you can order off the menu.

Richard Lohrmeyer
Property Tax Advisory Group, Inc.
Visit us at: www.ptag.com

Join us this Friday, May 18th @ 7am for another great speaker!

Paul Welsh

During his career, Paul J. Welsh has held management positions in corporations, publishing companies and advertising agencies.
 
He has founded or co-founded six businesses. One business he co-founded started from scratch and employed 75 people when he sold to his partners. Three of the six businesses remain in existence and only one went belly up. The latter taught Welsh that you learn from your time as a mutt as well as being a St. Bernard. When you go belly up you can’t wait around for someone to scratch your tummy.
 
Welsh has been an advocate for small business and entrepreneurism since 1979, almost two years before co-founding his first business.  That was his focus when he served on the Board of the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce. He served on the Small Business Public Relations Committee and chaired Small Business Brain Exchange.
 
He was a founding Board member of the Metropolitan Entrepreneurs Council with people like Neil Patterson, co-founder of Cerner, and Marvin Manlove, a founding principal of 360 Architecture.  Welsh has testified before state legislatures on small business issues.
 
His advertising writing work has been recognized nationally and internationally with awards from CLIO, New York Ad Club, New York Art Directors Club, The One Show, Print Magazine, Communications Arts, Magazine Publishers Association Objectives & Results, the National Agri-Marketing Association among others.
 
He was named AAF-Kansas City 2001 Advertising Executive of the Year.
 
In the past he has served as an adjunct professor in marketing communications at Avila University, The Art Institutes International and has mentored many collegians in various scholarship programs.
 
Paul Welsh’s advertising, promotional and editorial writing work can be viewed at www.WelshWrites.com

Nine Ideas to Help Your Business Survive and Thrive

Anytime is a great time to increase productivity. In this economy, you need to have the capacity to handle today’s business and continue to grow. When demand returns and your rate of profit will be higher. Meanwhile, you save expenses now and improve cash flow from higher turning assets. This makes your company stronger and your people more capable.

Here are some ideas on how you can improve performance:

• Identify and protect your positions at your most profitable accounts.
• Define how you measure productivity for your business and each department.
• Analyze your business for the best opportunities to increase productivity.
• Change processes, the organization and technology based upon profit prioritization.

• Reduce your employee expense by doing each process, just once. 
• Stay on top of your Average Days to Pay and AR Totals
• Use technology to reduce expenses and to better market your products.
• Consider new ways to go to market and to prepare for the post recession.

• Increase inventory turns and receivables turns to reduce asset costs while maintaining demand.
• Adjust your pricing strategy to maximize margins while remaining competitive.
• Review personnel and overhead expenses, pruning where feasible.
• Examine your customer base and find the customers that have staying power and pay their bills.

• Utilize technology to analyze what your customer is buying or not buying from you and your company

• Seek ways to redeploy resources to fund growth initiatives.

• Studies have shown that companies that invest in sales and marketing during recessions or at anytime, grow at a much higher and more profitable level while others contract.

Selling Through Social Media

Mike Montague from Sandler Sales Training in Kansas City will be hosting our roundtable discussion this Friday at First Watch in Shawnee from 7am-8:30am.

The topic will be "Selling Through Social Media." Mike will answer questions and lead an open discussion about how to use social media in the sales profession and how to get started on the four main social media sites:  Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google +.

Join us for another interesting discussion this Friday!