A great labor-saving idea for you

Yesterday we shared with you J.J. Tompkins’ great revenue builder.
Today we’ll share with you a way to save you time and money.
It’s a simple strategy. Separate your prospects from your suspects.
When I first started selling, I thought everybody was a prospect.
That's wrong. They’re not — and they never will be.
I learned to separate my prospects from my suspects — quickly.
I learned to drop suspects who said they were just "interested".
I wanted to talk with people who were "ready to buy".
They recognized they needed or wanted what I had to offer.
I only made appointments with people who wanted to advertise.
Jacques Werth in "High Probability Selling" says:
Talk only with those who want what you’re selling.
This is easy to do. It’s harder to accept as a sales strategy.
Stop wasting precious time calling on people who won’t buy.
That’s my strategy for saving you labor this Labor Day weekend.
I hope you have a great holiday with your family and friends.
I'm going to our downtown festival on Main Street.
Cut the grass and take in the Labor Day parade, too.
Next week we’ll talk about achieving your financial goals.
For a head start on improving your income click here.

A great revenue-building idea for you

Yesterday we shared with you two cost-saving strategies.
Today we’ll share with you J.J. Tompkins’ great revenue builder.
J.J. is the marketing director of News Media Corporation.
He tried a successful business card promotion in one newpaper.
Now all 71 of their newspapers offer it at least twice a year.
J.J. prints 24 cards on 11"x17" perforated glossy stock.
These folded inserts reach thousands of homes in his newspapers.
He offers it as part of an ongoing package with other advertising.
How long would it take an advertiser to distribute that many cards?
5,000 cards at 100 a week would take a year.
This promotion does it or more in a single day.
It’s a great idea for newspaper publishers and ad managers.
For my blog readers who are in other businesses, think of this:
Why not partner with your local publisher on this promotion?
Refer him to your business friends for a share of the revenue?
If you want to know how to reach J.J., drop me an email note.
My address is jerry@jerrybellune,com
Tomorrow we’ll share another cost-saving strategy with you.
To start improving your top and bottom lines click here.

Sharing your savings

Yesterday we talked about building your top and bottom lines.
Today we’ll share one strategy we’re field testing now.
One cost-saving strategy submitted in our last management survey:
Set a cost-saving goal and share the savings with your staff.
At our planning summit, we made our staff this offer:
Cut costs 10% in the next quarter and share 50% of the savings.
We identified 11 benchmarks where costs could be cut or controlled.
If you want to know our 11 benchmarks, drop me an email note.
A 10% saving is $20,585 and 50% of that comes to $10,292.
Divided equally, each of us will get $735. That’s worth working for.
We adopted another strategy also to track our progress.
We asked our Office Manager Hilda Crain to watch expenses.
Hilda will give us monthly reports on our progress.
She also will question and flag anything that appears excessive.
She is our "Cost Control Expert" who watchdogs the project.
I’ll let you know later how we do and what we learned.
Next quarter we’ll try a similar goal to boost our revenues.
Tomorrow we’ll share a great revenue idea from J.J. Tompkins.
For a head start on improving your top and bottom lines click here.

Building your top and bottom lines

Yesterday we talked about what you would do with limitless power.
Today we’ll talk about building your top and bottom lines.
Last year we posed a question to more than 3,000 eSubscribers.
What are you doing to build your top and bottom lines?
What has successfully increased your sales and revenues?
What has helped you reduce your expenses and costs?
From your answers we conducted profit-producing seminars.
Those seminars produced many other field-tested strategies.
We’ve collected 79 of them in "Terminate Your Profit Killers".
Another 79 will be out soon in "Accelerate Your Profit Builders".
Other strategies are being tested even as you’re reading this.
Here’s our challenge and our offer to you:
Send us one strategy you’ve used successfully to build revenue.
We’ll send you all those we receive from others on revenue building.
Send us one strategy you’ve used successfully to cut costs.
We’ll send you all those we receive from others on cost cutting.
Send us one of each and we’ll send you everything we receive.
And we’ll throw in a dozen we’ve used successfully ourselves.
It’s easy to play. Everybody wins. But you have to play to win.
Please send your strategies to me at jerry@jerrybellune.com
Deadline for submissions is September 10.
We’ll compile them and send them to you by October 1.
Tomorrow we’ll share one strategy we’re field testing now.
For a head start on improving your top and bottom lines click here.

What would you do if you were king of the world?

Last week we talked about what we’re teaching future journalists.
Today we’ll talk about what you would do with unlimited power.
Newspaper tech expert Kevin Slimp posed that question to us.
A group of us were discussing the future of newspapers in Atlanta.
He wanted to know how we would advise newspaper people.
The answers came rapid fire.
Ken Blum said, "Don’t give your content away on the Internet."
John Peterson said, "Be accountable to your readers and advertisers."
Ed Henninger said, "Constantly reinvent your company. Innovate.
"Concentrate on customer service. Keep the personal connection."
Phil Hanna said, "Grow the top line instead of constantly cutting."
In other words, work as hard on the revenue side as the cost side.
Kevin himself said, "Constantly improve your reproduction."
Bob Bobber said, "Rotate your sampling in growth markets.
Introduce more and more people to your community newspaper."
I say, "Get more local names and faces into the paper.
"Look for new ways to help advertisers survive and thrive."
Tomorrow we’ll talk about our annual cost and revenue survey.
To improve your top and bottom lines click here.