Revenue Journal®

Here's a video that demonstrates the perfectly orchestrated sales pitch, shot and delivered professionally.

Email has become the message medium of our age. Just as we learned how to address and stamp an envelope, just as we learned how to fill out a FedEx form, we are now - still - learning how to use email effectively to run our businesses, and to buy and sell products and services.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time this week talking about how frustrating it is when someone doesn't do what I'm about to recommend. Suffice it to say that stream-of-consciousness, flaky subject lines don't help you manage your business or increase your revenues.

What is really happening - and we all know this, because we are experiencing it every day - is all activities, and all communication about activities, happen via email. It's become the central communication tool for all projects.

Here are some of the most common barriers to revenue that we encounter as we help our clients. Are you making one of these mistakes?

Your company name doesn't tell them what you sell. We call our company Zhivago Marketing Partners for this very reason. It would have been just as easy to call it Zhivago & Company or something similar - but that would not have answered the first, most basic question: "What does this company sell?"

If you're just starting out, make sure your name clearly indicates the type of product you sell.

If you've already invested too much in your non-specific name to change it now, then add a tagline to your logo that says what you sell. Keep it short - no more than five words. Tell them what you sell, using the words people would use to find you.

I've mentioned before that I buy a lot of software online. Recently I undertook an extensive search for software I could use to efficiently build outlines for books and other large, complex documents, because the outlining function in Word is pitiful and slows...the...creative...flow...to...a...crawl, and has a klutzy expand/contract outline function.

I must have looked at 25 programs, and trialed at least 10. For all of you out there selling software online, I have some very specific advice for you, from a buyer's point of view.

I get a lot of calls from PR folks. Each call is a sales call, which is why I'm talking about it here. Anyone who sells for a living - and that includes CEOs and entrepreneurs - can learn from the mistakes that PR houses make. This article will also help you manage your PR folks, who are probably making these same mistakes.

PR people call me because they have a story they want me to "buy" and write about. Their methods, for the most part, are pitiful. It's sad, because just about every person who calls is a decent human being who wants to do a good job.

Most of the calls come from young females who have been hired to call editors, reporters, and bloggers and try to line up an appointment with the company's CEO. They must all attend the same school of Dysfunctional PR, because they all say the same thing:

Hi, my name is Jennifer. I'm calling because XYZ company is rolling out a new widget. Did you get my press release? Would you like to interview the CEO?

I'm sad to say that they've been saying this same thing to me since 1984, when my monthly columns started appearing in a marketing magazine. After hearing the same pitiful pitch for 23 years now, it would be easy to be impatient and cross. But I was young and in PR once, so I try to help them.

True story, happened this month.

A man has recently taken up the game of golf. He is working hard on perfecting his swing, visiting the driving range every few days to hit a bucket of balls as straight and as far as he can.

As the fall has turned to winter, he has found it necessary to wear some sort of winter gloves while practicing his swing at the driving range. Normal cold-weather gloves are either too thick or not "grippy" enough to hold a club properly. So the man decides to make a special trip to a "golf warehouse" store. It's a bit of a drive, but he goes there because he knows it has a large selection of golf clothing and accessories. He is expecting to find all of the different models of winter gloves, and try them on.

Let's stop this specific, real-life story for a second and look at the broader implications. Here we have someone with a definite need. Someone who has decided what would meet that need, and is going out of his way to purchase the best solution to that need.

This is the beginning of the buying process, a moment in time that happens literally billions of times a day across the globe.

We recently moved the Revenue Journal from Blogware to Movable Type. Our experience will help you if you're considering a blogging platform, or if you're providing some kind of online tool or service.

Movable Type is a packaged software program sold to end-users (bloggers and website managers). On the other hand, Blogware is part of a package offered by Tucows to its ISP customers - which, in turn, offer the web-based blog platform program to their own customers. In other words, the customer of Blogware is really the ISP, not the blogger. This is key. When the end-user of your program is not your primary customer, trouble is sure to follow.

Why did I make the switch from Blogware to Movable type? We'll start with the white screen of death:

Here I am, money in hand, looking for a specific software solution.

While visiting about a dozen sites, several times my efforts to download are thwarted by a glitch in the process - where something should work just fine, but for some reason, it doesn't.

I usually send an email to the company when this happens. I seldom receive a reply.

Way too many software companies are asleep at the switch. They're so busy trying to get new leads, they ignore people who are much further along in their buying process.Not a good idea. It is the active buyer, the one who is perfectly willing to pay you - today (as in NOW, this minute) - who interacts with your site and sees screens like this one: