John E. Kennedy, the Father of Modern Advertising, said "Advertising is salesmanship in print." The more understanding you have of sales, the better advertiser or marketer you will be.

Be and you’ll be more interesting. Learn to become an effective listener/observer. You’ll learn valuable information that you can use in varied ways. Remember to listen for problems that you can help people solve.

The best salespeople have the best questions. The question has a powerful effect on people, whether someone asks us or we ask ourselves. Questions are also a great rapport builder.

Become a professional problem solver. Identify a meaningful problem that your prospects have and you can solve. Restate the problem and how you’ve solved it. Every person and business has problems. You may have a solution, or you may know someone else that does whom you can recommend.

Learn the "Four P’s" of the "Marketing Mix" - Product, Price, Place, Promotion. Under each category are many tactics that can be utilized strategically to optimizing your response and sales. In order to make superior tactic decisions, you must be aware of your options and their advantages.

Use formulas and checklists and lists to plan, develop and check over your marketing. E.g. AIDA, Bob Stone’s Seven-Step Letter Formula, Tom Collins 28 Rules for Good Direct Marketing packages, Joan Throckmorton’s Five Big Rules, Henry Hoke Sr.’s Four P’s, Richard Bayan’s list of Words-That-Sell, Eugene Colin’s Nine Guideposts for Creative Thinking, James Webb Young’s Five-Step Process for Creative Thinking, Susan K. Jones’ Ten Steps to Personal Creativity, the Four P’s of the Marketing Mix.

Plan your marketing way ahead. Develop and maintain an annual marketing calendar. Allow time to develop copy and get assistance from third parties. Each year you can improve on your plan. Eventually your marketing plan and calendar makes your business more salable.

Tap the power of Memetrics - MEME’s to generate WOM - word-of-mouth.

Give "the gift" that shows you care. Ad Specialties are effective if they’re well chosen versus the clichй items that people have come to expect and take for granted. Look for gifts with high perceived value but low cost. Spend more money on VIP (the top 20%, strategic partners, etc.). Consider tickets to special events way off in the future so that the recipient has plenty of times to be reminded of your generosity and you can get the best possible seats.

Make it easy and enjoyable to do business with you. Like your customers and they’ll like you. People do business with people they like and they don’t do business with people whom they don’t like. It’s that simple. Keep in mind what’s important to people by remembering this simple acronym - L.I.R.A. - People want to be Liked, Right, Important and Appreciated!

Figure out what your customer is really buying. Anthony Robbins says that "people don’t buy products, they buy states." Zig Ziglar says that everyone listens to the radio station WIIFM - What’s In It For Me.

People buy: benefits, solutions, promises, credibility, your people, wealth, success, happiness, security, love, acceptance, reputation, impressions of others, hope, expectations, stature, freedom, comfort, safety, image, power, attractiveness, stress reduction, etc.

Miss your inactive customers. Miss = Care, which triggers trust which = business. Missing is a gift of emotion which creates a feeling of emotional reciprocity.

Determine your prospects and customers fears, as they relate to your product, service, doing business, doing business with you or firms like yours. Be able to articulate their fear. (Often times emotions are not self-recognizable. In addition, people are generally uncomfortable expressing their fears. Fear is a sign of weakness and most of us are conditioned evolutionarily to not show weakness. Therefore, you may need to use techniques that psychologist use such as projection.)

People have limited patience. Provide ‘interim satisfaction’ - these are immediate rewards for every step your prospect takes.

Develop your Networking Strategy. It should include these seven things:

The first challenge to be overcome is the consumers "negative inertia." Negative inertia is the fact that consumers are generally predisposed to NOT buy now. We need to develop simple, non-threatening and attractive reasons for consumers to get involved with us. The mere act of involvement stops the negative inertia and reverses the momentum into a more positive buying direction.

Recognize the need for repetition. Budget and plan for it. (Residual, Moving Parade, Try Different Offers, TOM, Database Maintenance, Relationship Building.)

Don’t just sell Features (impersonal and boring). Don’t stop at Benefits (Impressive but skeptical). Offer "Applied Solutions" - Personal Enthusiasm over the opportunity -Self-interest.)

Build enough clear and desirable value into your offer to Tip the Scales of Desire. Make the trade of dollars for goods or services feel more to their side than yours.

Understand how to communicate from both a left and right brain vantage. Be able to present yourself, your company and your offerings both ways.

The message in your advertising should be worded to suite your specific target audience. Don’t try to be all things to all people or you will dilute your impact. Your audience should be able to identify with the ad, or not. Your headline is the first means of qualifying your suspects.

Use direct response advertising vs. institutional advertising. Your offer should be compelling and your call-to-action should be straight forward, understandable and specific.

Fire your Big Guns first - sell the more meaningful benefits early. Ladder your benefits from your customers’ point of view. In your marketing communications, concentrate on your customers’ most desirable benefits.

Never under estimate the power of any of the following in your marketing and advertising to increase responsiveness and sales: urgency (later is never), special deals & promotions, bonuses and incentives.

Don’t be above the use of tried & true advertising gimmicks such as stickers, contests and other direct marketing tools for creating involvement and lifting response.

Eliminate or reverse the consumers risk. Reward the consumer just for looking or trying. Figure out what your customer is afraid of, and reassure them.

Use guarantees to increase sales and profits. Guarantees solve problems that don’t exist yet. From the customer’s point of view this reduces their risk. From the marketer’s point of view, by reducing risk they increase sales. Think about the present value return on guarantees. For a cost you probably won’t have to incur in the future, you’re going to get a sale today. Furthermore, the way you pay for the cost of backing your guarantees in the future is through the profits on your increased sales today. Therefore, if you don’t flaunt guarantees then you end up with the costs but not the sales.

Synchronize with the consumers’ critical impressions & expectations. Make sure you have a congruent meta-message. The meta-message is the unconscious or subliminal message your communications carry with them.

Be a wordsmith - When it comes to writing good copy, there’s no such thing as a "throw-away." Everything, every word, punctuation, the style and tone, is a conscious intention to better communicate and to maintain the interest of your readers. Use magic words and phrases (words-that-sell). These words and phrase carry more weight. They strike an unconscious chord which gives them greater impact and more lasting impression.

Think of your print materials as vehicles which take your reader’s eyes for ride. Don’t steer your reader’s eyes off the page. If your piece is confusing or hard to read you’ll lose the reader along the way.

Make it as simple and easy as possible for consumers to respond. Use 800#s, faxes, email, reply cards/envelopes, simplify forms, directions must be easy to follow, etc.

Put your company name and phone number on every separate piece.

Use lift letters, testimonials and endorsements to build credibility.

Pay extra special attention to the "hot spots" in any medium Examples of hot spots are the headlines in your ads, the reference (re: ) and postscript (PS) in a letter, the address on an outer envelope, the order or reply card in a direct response campaign, etc.

Test key elements in your marketing. Such as headlines, offers, lists, etc.

Educate your customer. Tell, don’t sell. Help people to appreciate what you and your product or service does for them. Explain the reasons why it is superior. Tell them to what lengths you had to go to make it so. People appreciate you and your message far more if you to take the time to educate them.

Your own boredom with your advertising is no reason to change it. A successful campaign theme can stay in use for a quarter century, let alone a few years. Changing or dropping a campaign that is effective simply because you’re tired of it is one of the more common marketing mistakes. This is not to say the you shouldn’t be continually testing new ideas or elements, but there’s a difference between a test and changing the campaign concept or dropping an effective ad.

Use Icons and symbols that communicate spontaneously.

Find excuses to run a sale. A "Sale" triggers a reflex reaction, like coupons. Holidays, anniversaries, seasons, causes for celebrations, turning points, to raise money for something, etc. The word "Sales" provides the consumer’s mind a logical reason why they can expect better values.