Professional development – Page 6 – Tom Fuszard's Business Builder

Sell more successfully with benefit-oriented copy

December 11, 2015February 23, 2014 by Tom Fuszard

Do you want your audience to respond to your messages? Of course you do. One tactic that will help immensely is to stress benefits instead of features.

Features, you recall, are the elements or components of your product or service. Benefits, on the other hand, are what the customer will experience by using your product or service. Features are tangible, while benefits are intangible. As a marketer, you should strive to touch on those intangibles; play to your customers’ emotions.

Take a cue from the national advertisers. Some of the themes you’ll see and hear include:

Develop leadership skills for efficient, motivated staff

December 11, 2015February 2, 2014 by Tom Fuszard

Leadership is critical for any organization, according to Kerry G. Denson, but often managers just don’t have the “tools”–the training–to be effective leaders. That can hurt the organization at any level.

Denson is a retired brigadier general from the Wisconsin Army National Guard and operates his own business, Applied Leadership. He offered his thoughts during a presentation to the Wisconsin Business Owners Lunch & Learn on Friday. During his 40-year military career, Denson observed what motivates people. Knowing this allowed him to create “Leadership Tools” for his own “Leadership Toolbox.” Through his leadership workshops and other presentations, Denson shares these tools so that managers can become leaders.

Leadership is a universal human trait. “We all respond favorably to good-quality leadership,” he said. True leadership results in a motivated, efficient organizational culture.

Sound advice from Jay Leno

December 11, 2015January 27, 2014 by Tom Fuszard

What can Jay Leno, one of the top comedians around, teach entrepreneurs and other business people? Quite a bit, if you read his book, “Leading With My Chin.” While chuckling through all 270-plus pages, I discovered some kernels of wisdom that everyone can benefit from. Jay is where he is today because he followed two important tenets. I review those, and add one of my own.

1. Determination to succeed. I wrote about work ethic in another column. Jay provides a pretty good picture of what’s necessary to establish yourself in comedy: Drive long distances, work in awful conditions for little or no pay, deal with heckling (including being struck by an unruly patron and having live cigarette butts thrown at him). Conditions may not be as bad today as they were in Jay’s early years. But there’s no mistaking the need for effort. You have to be willing to put in the time if you hope to succeed – in any endeavor.

“I’ve never been better at anything than anybody else,” Jay writes, “which meant that I would always just have to work a little harder to keep up or maybe even pull ahead.”

He put in the effort, and it paid off. Handsomely. (As you know, Jay is ending his nearly 22-year “Tonight Show” career in early February.)

Important tips for building sales

December 11, 2015January 11, 2014 by Tom Fuszard

Professional development is important for any business person. But that’s especially true of sales people. I recently had the pleasure of sitting in on a very valuable presentation by Larry Cockerel. Here are some reflections of that seminar.

Larry, a veteran sales development and training specialist from the Milwaukee area, started off by reminding us that sales is all about attitude. “We have choices to make everyday,” Larry said. “We can choose to put on a positive attitude.”

Larry invited the audience to rate their levels of confidence, belief and courage. These were on a 1-5 scale. Larry pointed out the pitfalls of rating our confidence too high or too low. Too low and we don’t feel we’re able to accomplish anything. Too high, and you may fall into that trap of thinking you have it all.

What’s in your dream folder?

December 11, 2015January 3, 2014 by Tom Fuszard

If you’re like most successful business people, you regularly set goals and objectives. You post your list prominently and review your goals regularly. Doing so keeps you focused and motivated. Would you like to take your personal development further? Perhaps enhance your motivation and therefore the chances for success?

Create a dream file. That’s right, a dream file.

You see, one problem with a list of goals and objectives is that it’s just words and numbers on paper: There isn’t a visual aspect to your list. How, after all, do you visualize a new and higher annual income?