Throwing Spaghetti at the Wall

Throwing Spaghetti at the WallA while back, I read “How to Sell Anything to AnybodyThrowing Spaghetti at the Wall” by Joe Girard and one concept that stuck in my head was his point about throwing spaghetti at a wall. Joe says “if you throw enough spaghetti against a wall, some of it will stick.” He used this point to describe his philosophy on cold calling — if you call enough people, someone will eventually listen to you. The concept can be used in other areas of business such as sales, pitching ideas and even looking for a job — if you contact enough people, you’ll eventually find someone who is interested in what you have to offer. But wait, there’s more…

How to Get Others Excited About Your Ideas

How to Get Others Excited About Your IdeasWhether you’re trying to get a venture capitalist to invest in your business idea, an employer to hire you for a position, your neighbors to sponsor your for a charity event or your spouse to let you buy a new “toy,” you need to sell your idea to them. I’’s much easier to sell someone on something when their excited about it, so here are two easy ways to do just that.

Get really excited about it:

How to Really Mess Up a Sales Letter

How to Really Mess Up a Sales LetterI was recently cleaning out some old emails and found a couple of emails from a vendor that got me thinking. Before we get to the actual email, let me tell you the situation. A few years ago, I had downloaded a trial version of a piece of software. Many companies require you to provide some information prior to allowing you to download, so I had provided whatever info they had requested. It’s not uncommon for companies to have someone in their sales group follow up. In this particular case, this vendor was in the same city as me (I’ll refrain from sharing the name of the company or sales person) so a salesman emailed me requesting a meeting.

Here is the email I recieved, with the subject being “[his company name] visit – [my company name]:”

Have a Communication Fear? Here’s What To Do About it

Have a Communication Fear?  Here's What To Do About itIf you’re like most people, you probably feel some sort of discomfort speaking to groups or going up to someone you don’t know and introducing yourself. As you can imagine, you’re certainly not alone as you’d be surprised at how many people are deathly afraid of either of these situations. But the good news is that there are things that you can do to deal with your fears — and they’re not as scary as you might expect them to be.

Practice makes perfect: