a recent posting dedicated to best practices for online marketing Charisse Lewis moved on LinkedIn discussion. Charisse is asked to questioned (paraphrasing) "Would you allow your sales representative to go out searching for a mess doing business crosslinking, sales call etc, if you truly want to increase sales ?"

Her remarks reminded me of another publication of Jonathan Farrington, and before the specific number of business professionals who are in a mess of business cards. In six months, he wrote, if I remember correctly, 90% of all the business cards he had received the cross outs, hand-written new numbers, e-mail address or addresses.

marketing efforts of web pages to blogs to business cards and even hand-written notes must be clear, sharp and professional achieve their predetermined results. These activities should always be aligned in his marketing plan of action and should include education based marketing approach would not hurt. Sales Coaching Training Council: Education based marketing is focused on educating your potential client does not injection prices, products, or proposals that are going to enact a product or sales approach based on

A good friend of mine Bill Napolitano said: "There are a lot of the captain of his wing." The adoption of this role creates what I call "spray and pray" behavior with the hope something sticks.

Charisse in his blog made ​​a great point about asking for help. For example, for making my blog sale, I sought the help of Matt Geier Sales Corner. He is now working on arranging the banner on my main web page.

Business people, including professional sales people sometimes do not make the necessary outreach, and then end up with less than desired results. Although I'm not a marketing expert, my clients do not ask my opinion on the marketing copy and web pages. Knowing some basics about writing copy and search engine optimization, can be educated (to share my knowledge) and continue to build those relationships with their customers.

Invest time to make sure your cards are professionally produced no cross outs or handwritten or e-mail. Review their website and blog (if you have it and you really should, I might add) to ensure that it is clean and not messy. Review all your marketing materials. Finally, go back to a marketing action plan, executive summary of your marketing and your core positioning statement to make sure their actions, they are all in alignment. By taking this action, you should increase your sales because you work smarter not harder.