Creating the perfect sales pitch

You may not be a professional salesperson, but as a small business owner you need to be able to sell like one. Unlike pitching to an investor or venture capitalist, a sales pitch is often much shorter, perhaps it is a spur of the moment encounter as opposed to a pre-scheduled appointment. You only have a small window of opportunity to get your potential client interested and ideally get them to agree to move the sales process forward.

Here are some pointers to help you create a sound sales pitch that can get even a tough audience to sit up and take notice.

India Small Business Event by HP

HP explains why printer ink is so expensive

"There's a perception that ink is one of the most expensive substances in the world," says Thom Brown, marketing manager at HP.

Well, yeah.

One might get that feeling walking out of a store having spent $35 for a single ink cartridge that appears to contain fewer fluid ounces of product than a Heinz ketchup packet.

Brown was ready to explain. His presentation included a series of PowerPoint slides aptly titled "Why is printer ink so expensive?" I was ready for answers.

When bargain ink is no bargain at all, HP offers Ink Amnesty

I admit it: I look for bargains. I've tried the generic brands in the supermarket. I once trusted a friend's recommendation that retread tires were just as good as the original brand name tires that came with a new car.That budget buy resulted in a blowout in the middle of the Mohave Desert with near-disastrous results. And I've haven't made a trade-off like that since. I learned the hard way that what may seem like a bargain is often no bargain at all -- especially when it fails to deliver as

12 tips for better e-mail etiquette

 remember opening my first e-mail account and thinking how much fun it was to send a message to a friend. However, most people now no longer find e-mail simple or fun. E-mail messaging now exceeds telephone traffic and is the dominant form of business communication. Some workers tell me that handling e-mail consumes half of their day. A recent Wall Street Journal report indicates that soon employees will spend three to four hours a day on e-mail.

Don't you wish that every person who received a new e-mail account had to agree to follow certain rules to use it? There are certain professional standards expected for e-mail use. Here are some things to keep in mind regarding professional e-mail conduct:

62 Tips to Get Unstuck in 2013

62 Tips to Get Unstuck in 2013

1. Believe in your vision and gifts when no one else believes in your vision and gifts.
2. Start your day with 20 minutes of exercise.
3. Make excellence your way of being (versus a once in a while event).
4. Be on time (bonus points: be early).
5. Be a celebrator of other’s talents versus a critic.
6. Stop watching TV. (Bonus points: sell your tv and invest the cash in learning and self-education).
   

Keep Your Ink Cartridge Healthy (and How HP Prevents Ink Drying)

here’s a lot that goes on between clicking “print” and holding your high-quality printed page. Today, Thom Brown, one of the HP Supplies Guys, takes us under the hood of the printer to show how ink, toner and paper work with the printer to create good-looking, long-lasting prints.

I’ve been reading about an interesting university study on an inkjet system using silicone to prevent ink drying that draws its inspiration from the human eye. Being a true ink geek myself, I enjoy hearing about new ideas and I find the concept of biomimicry exciting. Science definitely learns a lot from how things operate in the natural world.

Make Your Photo Prints Last Longer

Have you ever wondered what’s going on inside your printer? There’s a lot that goes on between clicking “print” and holding your high-quality printed page. In this series, the HP Supplies Guys, Thom Brown and Michael Borg, take us under the hood of the printer to show how ink, toner and paper work with the printer to create good-looking, long-lasting prints.

If you’re like me, now that the kids are out of school, you’ve been doing a lot of fun outings and taking tons of photos. When you’re ready to share those photos, you want something that looks good, not only today, but also tomorrow, next month and even years from now. This means your prints need to be able to stand up to the elements, including liquids, dust and light.

10 Things You Didn't Know About Toner

There’s a lot that goes on between clicking “print” and holding your high-quality printed page. Today, Michael Borg, one of the HP Supplies Guys, takes us under the hood of theLaserJet printer to teach us more about the tech behind toner. 

Providing the best LaserJet printing devices and toners in the world is no small task. It requires an immense amount of sophisticated technology and it’s something I’m always impressed by.  Did you know, for example, that about 70% of the imaging technology needed is housed not in thebody of the actual printer, but in the cartridge itself? It’s the core part of the operation. Here’s a little background to help you understand all that goes into an HP toner cartridge.  Ten of my favorite facts about toner: 

Manage Business Not Printers

My husband James is a consulting engineer. He is also a business owner. What this means for our household is late nights as project deadlines encroach on our evenings. As a business owner you may, like my husband, wear several hats: he is a sales person, marketer, professional expert, finance/accounting person, and even the IT strategist and repair technician at times.

James produces proposals and engineering plans andprints them out on networked single-function, multifunction or HP DesignJet printers. As a small business owner, you might have experienced the same. It’s late. You’re alone in the office. You need to deliver a proposal or drawings the next morning to your client at a breakfast meeting. You hit

Free Productivity Tools… in Your Printer!

If you recently purchased a HP Officejet, HP Officejet Pro, or HP Laserjet branded small-business multifunction printer, chances are that you now have access to the HP ePrint technology and several business apps that could be very useful for your business. Just look for the eprint icon on your printer, printer box, or printer documentation to confirm.

  

ePrint

The ePrint technology for instance gives you the ability to print from any mobile device (your phone, tablet, laptop…) by sending your documents — e-mails, office documents, pdfs, photos, etc — directly to your ePrint-enabledprinter. And it’s so easy to use! HP’s ePrint-enabled printers each have a unique e-mail address that allows you to print in the same way you send an email. Simply email your document to your printer’s email address from anywhere and your print will be waiting for you when you arrive! It’s that simple! If you can email it, you can print it!

New Printers Designed for Small Business Efficiency

Now there’s a printer designed especially for the unique needs of small businesses. The launch of HP’s new line of small-and medium-business-focused printers is giving customers more choices than ever to save money and time.

The introduction of new printer and cloud-based content management solutions so that you can print from cloud-based applications also mean that your business can reduce costs and increase productivity on the path toward a digital office.

Sales Close for “I just don’t have the time.”

When someone says they don’t have time for your opportunity, to book a party, or even just to meet with you, with sincerity say, “I understand, Mary. We all have 24 hours in a day, don’t we? Most people work eight hours. Then, they sleep about eight hours. 

How to Be Great at Sales (and Enjoy Yourself)

Sales can be frustrating and complicated, or it can be very simple. Now when I say “simple,” I don’t mean that it is not difficult. Selling is difficult. However, once we take out some of the complications you’ll be able to sell more, and, hopefully, enjoy yourself.

I know the frustrations. I remember when I first got into sales, I thought it was going to be easy. I thought that all I had to do is be a good talker, have a nice smile, knock on doors, and the sales would start coming in. I learned the hard way -- after being fired from one of my sales jobs -- that success in sales required much more. I learned that it is an art; to be great at sales, you have to work on yourself as much as you work on the job.

Stay One Step Ahead of Your Printer Problems with HP Partner Managed Print Services

Managing your printers and copiers may not be something you think about until there’s a problem. Why not let HP Partner Managed Print Services (MPS) worry about printermanagement why you focus on everything else you do?

That’s exactly what Bank of American Fork (BAF) did- they use HP Partner MPS to manage their printing environment so they can focus on providing exceptional customer services. According to Rick Colburn, vice president and controller, “The high performance and reliable uptime we get from HP ensures that when customers walk in the door, we can take care of their needs on the spot with no downtime, no hassles.”

Ten Steps to Professionalism in Sales

A  professional is a person who has dedicated him or herself to a career — regardless of the field. It’s the opposite of an amateur. Professionals also make more money; could there be a relationship behind that fact? You bet. In selling situations, and in life, the way you present yourself plays a big role in how people think of you and how much people pay attention to what you say. A dedicated professional commands more respect than a casual amateur. Always.

Step #1. Your Attitude.  Are you a professional? If so, let everyone know it. If not, maybe that’s why you’re not as successful as you would like to be.

Excel tips for handling rows and rows of data

Managing huge amounts of data in Excel can be painful if you don’t know how to handle it properly. These tips* will boost your effectiveness and make you feel more confident with hundreds of rows and columns.
 1. PivotTables
PivotTables are probably the most overlooked yet most powerful feature in Excel. They are great if you need to quickly analyse, sort and summarise large amounts of data in a worksheet or database file. And all this with simple drag and drop.

Let’s say you have a list of products and categories in an unsorted table where you want to know the total price of all the products in one category. Sure you could do the usual stuff and sort

62 Tips to Get Unstuck in 2013

62 Tips to Get Unstuck in 2013

1. Believe in your vision and gifts when no one else believes in your vision and gifts.
2. Start your day with 20 minutes of exercise.
3. Make excellence your way of being (versus a once in a while event).
4. Be on time (bonus points: be early).
5. Be a celebrator of other’s talents versus a critic.
   

Beware the humble office printer

When you think about protecting your business from security risks, what comes to mind? Most likely, you’re not thinking about your office printers. But you should.
Printers found in many businesses these days do more than just print. Many of them also scan, copy, fax and receive print jobs through a network connection. Like a computer, printers are equipped with processors, hard drives and operating systems—and are thus susceptible to the same threats that commonly plague PCs.

Selling Is Persuasion, Not Force

This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

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Your client’s contract is up. You need the renewal. But your client is dragging their feet. So you decide to ratchet up the pressure and start withholding. You withhold support. You withhold some orders. You believe that by withholding, you can ratchet up the pressure on your client and get your contract signed. They need you, and you have the upper hand. Or so you think.

Or maybe you want to create a sense of urgency, so you make your dream client a time-sensitive offer. If they don’t place their order by the deadline, “poof,” the offer disappears. Now they have a compelling offer; scarcity works. Or does it?

These are both tactics. They both sometimes work. But they’re force, not persuasion. And selling is persuasion, not force.