Author Archive for Dave McCubbin
Dave McCubbin is a serial entrepreneur and teacher at heart. He has been a corporate trainer for the past decade and has extensive small business experience. In his free time he thinks of revolutionary ideas only to forget them the next minute.
Getting Customers to Pay Bills On-time
Business owners, entrepreneurs and the like are pretty well known at not being able to get customers to pay outstanding invoices. And that is no good- playing bill collector is not the most glamorous side of running a small business. The interesting part is business owners are getting better at the collection process.
Here are some [...]
How to Get (Legit) PR
It’s no secret that business people use the media to promote their business. One can argue that 75-80% of ‘news’ is really a thinly veiled promotion. Article marketing has become the rage and can be very effective. The issue starts when article marketing becomes article spamming and the whole thing blows up in your face.
For whatever [...]
Time to Increase the Marketing Efforts
It looks like we may be headed for a downturn in the economy. If this is the case now is NOT the time to ratchet back your promotional efforts, instead consider doing the opposite. Note: this in no way implies you should break the bank and go broke through a massive campaign, rather use prudence. [...]
People Skills Still Reign Supreme
At the risk of telling you the obvious, the ability to work with people is (still) the number one asset any entrepreneur can possess. Let’s put this to the test. Have you ever seen someone who has a great product (or service) but when they try to describe it to you they sound nothing short of [...]
Chik-fil-a and the Power of Words
OK, I’ll be the first to admit I love a good Chik-fil-a sandwich; it seems I am not alone in this because every time I visit the place is packed. Granted they have a great product but did you ever notice the caliber of people working behind the counter? They are very well trained and extremely [...]
How to Lay Off Employees and Save Face in the Process
As economic times get tight some solopreneurs may find themselves in the position of having to decrease staff. This can be very difficult for everyone involved so we’d like to offer some heartfelt advice but, before we go any further let’s set some basic ground rules:
Letting people go is never easy (read: it sucks)
Despite your best [...]
Sales Start Where Marketing Ends
Cold Calling. The brief mention of this subject will create a rise in people. The type of reaction you get from a salesperson is “it’s part of the game” and I agree. For the others, meaning the people receiving the call is typically one of contempt, disgust and general frustration- myself included. For the record I hate [...]
How to Handle Sales Objections
How often have you left a sales meeting (or sales pitch) beating yourself up for not closing the deal when it was well within our reach? And then begins the process of guilt, self- condemnation and intense scrutiny of our actions. Our minds overload with thoughts of all the things we should’ve said and all [...]
How to Influence the Sales Process
As some of you may know for the past several years I have been teaching the Martial Arts, one of the topics I focus on is how to talk yourself out of a bad situation. Some people may know this under a different name, verbal de-escalation. The trick to effective verbal de-escalation is to use empathy. Granted [...]
How to Motivate People and It’s Not What You Think (part 3)
In the last part of this article we will examine the remaining motivator, Conceptual, and tie everything together. Let’s get to it…
The Conceptual person can be identifed by their deep quest for knowledge, data and reality. They love to learn, tend to be objective in approach and favor critical thinking. They don’t like opinions and [...]
