April 1, 2009

Free And Valuable Internet Resources To Sharpen Your Sales Skills

Posted by Rey Villar

From email marketing to management and finances — business skills of all varieties are critical for agents and brokers to have, especially in this economy. And while they are beneficial for any situation, agents and brokers stand to gain considerably from fine-tuning their understanding of sales and marketing. As any top producer will tell you: a proactive mindset is key to staying ahead of the curve.

Don’t have a budget allotment for furthering your business education? No problem. There are a plenty of ways you can accelerate your knowledge without going in for a full MBA. Here is a breakdown of some of the best resources the web offers to hone your business acumen.

Resource Centers, Forums and Webinars

The following are resources that offer information and advice on the more how-to end of the spectrum, and often have more of a community feel. These are great for specific questions about, say, how to use social media to sell life insurance to Baby Boomers or how you can optimize your web presence in a particular market.

And really, these are just the tip of the iceberg. You will find even more resources by going to the links in the reference sections of each of these sites:

• Small Business Resource Center: SAP and Entrepreneur, one of the world’s top entrepreneurial magazines, designed this online resource to give businesses strategic insights into some of today’s most challenging issues. Registration is free and gains you access to webcasts such as “Beyond the Basics: Cost-Cutting Tips & Tricks

From the Experts,” and “Growing Your Business: Creative Strategies for Tough Times.” You’ll also find whitepapers, special reports and articles like “10 Easy Ways to Improve Any Website.” (www.entrepreneur.com/itresourcecenter)

• Entrepreneur site: The Entrepreneur site is also worth checking out for their treasure trove of useful content and how-to-style information that includes a tools and services section. (www.entrepreneur.com)

• Open Forum: This is exactly what it sounds like: an open (and free) collection of information and resources. More specifically, it is for small business owners and happens to be provided by American Express (yes, the credit card company). Despite the possibility of being spammy, their articles provide solid information and useful advice, especially their interviews with famous business owners and entrepreneurs. Dubbed “a community designed to help you grow your business,” it also offers video and a community forum. (www.openforum.com)

• HubSpot’s marketing webinars: Want to know “how to generate leads on a budget using inbound marketing”? Would you like to “use social media for lead generation”? Or maybe you are wondering if you should “always be testing: 10 tips for improving your lead conversion rate”? If so, one virtual trip to HubSpot will take care of any or all of the above. The site hosts a library of marketing webinars geared for a self-education in business. (www.hubspot.com/marketing-webinars)

• Knowledge@Wharton: Another of the nation’s top business schools has decided to take some of that knowledge and place it online. Knowledge@Wharton covers finance, investment, leadership, management, ethics and a few others. Incredibly informative and useful, this resource is a great place to start research on any marketing or sales topic. (knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/)

• Marketing Sherpa: This research firm specializes in tracking what works and what doesn’t in just about every aspect of marketing. They present case- study interviews with marketing VPs and directors as well as results from surveys, exclusive lab tests and partnered research studies. They are well respected for their thoroughness, often reviewing more than 500 research sources for data. (MarketingSherpa.com)

• Marketing Profs: This site was founded eight years ago by academic Allen Weiss, who combined marketing professors and professionals to offer advice based on theory and practice. Marketing Profs offers a good range of information through newsletters, conferences, seminars, forums and updates on the newest and best marketing tools. (MarketingProfs.com)

Websites

Many websites today serve as newswires or a sort of short-hand journalism. In practice, they can provide agents and brokers an effective way to stay on top of the business world, online trends, new technologies and industry-specific developments. Choose a few that fit your niche and subscribe to their mailing lists or RSS feeds to incrementally build your information base, or at least check in with them regularly.

The following are great places to keep abreast of marketing and sales in general, with many offering a keen focus on the world of online business:

• WSJ Small Business: This is the Wall Street Journal’s web resource for small business. This excellent site tackles the developments in the economy and various global markets that affect small business owners. Along with news items, it includes how-to articles archived for easy reference. (online.wsj.com/public/page/news-small-business-marketing.html)

• BNet: Although Bnet wasn’t launched that long ago, it has already become a major resource for all things business. This self-proclaimed “go-to place for management” deals largely with how to develop working relationships with other people and larger companies or situations. Outside of that focus, sections such as Get Inside Your Industry provide a great way to stay on top of your business niche. (www.bnet.com)

• The Motley Fool: With the motto: “To educate, amuse & enrich,” you can’t go wrong. Focused on investing and financial advice, The Motley Fool offers a smart (and often entertaining) way to improve your financial knowledge and decision making. (www.fool.com)

• TechCrunch: If your business has an online component or benefits from technology, there’s no better site for following online business news and announcements than TechCrunch. Along with obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies, they profile existing companies that are making an impact. This is a must read for anyone involved with an online business. (www.techcrunch.com)

Blogs

Blogs can resemble websites or newswires in their content, but because they are often written by industry thought-leaders or espouse a particular school of thought, they offer further insight. Additionally, they adopt a more personal style that can be a nice break from everything else you have to ingest in a day.

Find a blog that focuses on your preferred sales or marketing strategy or even a philosophy that generally jibes with your own. Then, find an author who really speaks to you and keep up with what is on his/her radar. In the best case scenario, it’s like finding a professional guru who also happens to be a columnist.

• Seth Godin’s Blog: Seth Godin is one of the planet’s most famous marketing authors. On his blog he writes about both marketing and business, with almost all of his posts containing short and very potent ideas — many of them coming from his experience with a variety of small businesses. (sethgodin.typepad.com)

• How to Change the World: You have probably already heard of Guy Kawasaki, but did you know that he blogs? Guy provides an insider look at how a venture capitalist and entrepreneur thinks, often providing hard-to-find information. (blog.guykawasaki.com)

• Harvard Business Blog: This collection of Harvard’s best business bloggers is a great source for leading-edge insight, delivered in a conversational style. While a good portion of the articles revolve around conceptual ideas and business practices, a significant amount of case studies and real-world examples rounds things out. (blogs.harvardbusiness.org)

• Get Rich Slowly: Get Rich Slowly is a personal finance blog with some fantastic motivational stories. Whether you need an overview of good personal finance habits or a little inspiration after some rough numbers, this blog will do the trick. (www.getrichslowly.org/blog)

• VentureBeat: In 2008, the New York Times called VentureBeat one of the “best blogs on the Web,” and started regularly running VentureBeat’s articles on its own site. VentureBeat covers a broad range of topics with a focus on new ventures, online business trends and entrepreneurial news. They also frequently address the larger economic or market factors that influence us all. (www.venturebeat.com)