Jim John* Jantsch, author and creator of the popular Duct Tape Marketing blog, makes a very convincing argument we all need to think and act more like marketers. That is, we should be focusing on listening, educating and building relationships:
Whenever I hear the word closing all I can think of is Alec Baldwin’s epic speech in the film Glengarry Glen Ross. Well, today’s salesperson must always be building relationships. Relationship building coupled with education makes traditional closing tactics a thing of the past. But this isn’t simply a call for more schmoozing; this is a call for genuine, mutually beneficial relationship building.
Marketing Is the New Selling :: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
*Thx to Greg Charland for the correction. 
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This hit the wire this morning:
For Growth-Focused MSPs, Two New Offers from Kutenda
Kutenda launches direct mail and lead generation programs
BROOMFIELD, Colo. – Kutenda today announced the launch of two new programs that aim to help managed IT service providers (MSPs) build and promote their businesses.
Done 4 You Direct Mail will provide MSPs with professionally designed and written postcard campaigns and sales letters, with new campaigns added each month. A second program, Local Leads for MSPs, will pair managed service providers with local businesses that need help with their IT.
“These two services are designed with one thing in mind: help our partners grow and prosper,” said Kutenda CEO Mike Cooch. “And the key feature here is that our partners are able to stay focused on what they do best—providing great service and support to their clients.”
For Kutenda, which provides a broad menu of Internet marketing services, the foray into direct mail and lead generation represents what might seem like a departure from business as usual.
“People tend think of us as being all about email, websites, social media—online channels,” said Ginevra Figg, director of marketing for Kutenda. “But we’re less about using specific channels and more about getting results for our clients however we can, using both online and offline strategies.”
About Kutenda
Kutenda helps IT service providers promote and build their businesses by delivering affordable, innovative marketing campaigns and strategies. Kutenda’s unique ‘Marketing as a Service’ model offers agency-quality campaign development at a price closer to that of simple DIY tools. Learn more at Kutenda.com.
Interested in our new services? Follow these links: Done 4 You Direct Mail and Local Leads for MSPs.
The news
This week Facebook announced that Timeline is now live for the first time for some organizations that use Pages.
On March 30, all Pages (including yours!) will get automatically upgraded, and this will mean big changes to the way your pages look and the way your posts appear.
Learn more about the change over at Facebook.
Your homework: Prepare!
To turn on your preview for the new Pages design, navigate to your business’s Page and click the blue Preview button at the top of the page. Then mark your calendar: you have until March 30 (when all Pages automatically get upgraded) to curate and optimize your profile for the new layout.
If you need help…
To learn more about how to use the new Pages, visit the Facebook Help Center. Mashable has a guide too.
Check out Fast Company’s annual list of the most innovative companies by industry. Number one overall? Apple (of course).
Download your free report: ‘How Clients Buy’ 
We secured access to RAIN Group’s groundbreaking benchmark report, How Clients Buy, and we’re sharing an abbreviated version of it with you for free!
In this complimentary draft of the report, you will find annotations personally added by Mike Cooch.
How Clients Buy provides you with the knowledge you need to:
- Understand buyers’ purchasing tendencies from where they go to find service providers to the factors that influence their decisions
- Identify areas for improvement in your own marketing and sales process
- Paint a picture of the service purchasing landscape from service spending outlook to client satisfaction levels
Click here to download your report and get over 20 pages of content including data analysis and ideas on how to act on that data with commentary and recommendations.
For more on improving your sales skills:
Check out Sellingtechnologyservices.com.
Sign up for the sales training program before 5pm ET today (Feb 24th) and pay just $97 to test drive the course for 30 days with a 100% money-back guarantee!
Happy Selling!
Seth Godin talks about how the web makes it easier to get ahead by providing great service:
Today, it’s sites like Trip Advisor and Yelp (among many others) that are transforming the way service businesses operate. Here’s how it works: at first, a business might try to ignore the system, but then they notice their customers talking about the reviews and their competitors. So some stoop so low as to attempt to game the system, sending sock puppets and friends to post reviews. But that doesn’t scale and the sites are getting smart about weeding this out. The only alternative? Amazing service. …
Some businesses see Yelp and others as a tax, a burden they have to pay attention to in order to stay relevant, and they grumble about it. Others see these sites as the opportunity of a lifetime, a chance to deliver service (which takes guts and care, more than money) to get ahead.
The Trip Advisor tail wagging the real world dog | Seth’s Blog
