Doing a good job at follow-up is a piece of cake. You just capture every lead or potential referral partner you run across, then place a call or send them something, or both. If you don’t make a sale right away, you calendar them for the next follow-up and do the same thing again. Pretty straightforward, isn’t it? So why is follow-up such a problem? Here are the four most common reasons, and what you can do about them:

1. Prioritization. With an activity that you must initiate, it’s easy to let other tasks come first: responding to incoming calls and mail, reading what drifts into your inbox or crosses your desk, going to meetings and conferences, and oh yes, doing the client work you get paid for.

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Many aspects of business are driven by numbers, but marketing often seems to be all about words. Whether it’s naming your business or brand, coming up with a tag line, or writing copy for your website, you probably spend a big chunk of your marketing time trying to find just the right words to use.

While you’re busy hunting for the perfect words, your business cards don’t get printed, your web copy doesn’t get posted, and your marketing emails don’t get sent. When you don’t have adequate marketing tools in place, you don’t market. No marketing; no clients. And all for the want of a few good words!

For major projects like a website, brochure, or postal direct mail campaign, hiring a copywriter may be a wise investment. But there are also steps you can take to improve your own ability to communicate about your business in writing. Here are four strategies you can use to break your marketing writer’s block without breaking the bank:

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Most of the information and effort aimed at getting more clients focuses on promotion and attraction. You’ll find plenty of advice on how to tell the world about your business, make the phone ring, or get inquiries to arrive in your email inbox. But once you’ve been marketing yourself for a while, you discover that turning those prospects into paying clients can be pretty darned difficult. I find that many professionals are simply not prepared to sell to the prospects they attract. Read more

Entrepreneurs are creative people, and frequently come up with new ways to do business. So many, in fact, that you need to choose wisely about which ones are worth your while to pursue. Making the right choice requires more than just determining profitability, Read more

To increase your chances of getting your ezine or marketing emails past spam filters, it’s a good idea to ask your subscribers to “whitelist” your address with their email provider or spam filter. But many of your subscribers won’t know how to do this. Read more

Your prospect should do most of the talking in a sales presentation. But wait, don’t I need to tell them all about my products or services? Shouldn’t they learn about everything I offer? Didn’t the prospect invite me to present to them? Read more

I made a big pot of soup this week for a potluck gathering with friends. Making soup is not a process you can rush, but it is well worth the wait. Read more

Many business owners start the year with a written list of things they intend to accomplish, yet by year’s end these goals have either been forgotten or left by the wayside, ready to be recycled for the coming year. Read more

LinkedIn is the largest professional social networking site online with over 74 million users in the U.S. and over 200 million users worldwide as of January 2013. Using LinkedIn as a networking tool can help expand your network of contacts, clients, leads, and referral partners. And just like networking in person, when networking on LinkedIn, first impressions count. Read more

This is not your typical fishing story. This is about fishing for a whale, and not the kind that lives in the sea. A whale is the kind of client that can make a significant positive impact on your bottom line. There are three strategies that can hook you a whale: Read more