Sometimes it seems like I'm just an old fogey! Who out there remembers the old coffeehouses? It was a place to go to listen to folk music, drink coffee, yak it up and smoke*** well you get the idea. If you ask me Starbucks has taken the idea of the coffeehouse a bit to far.

Apparently Starbucks Coffee Co. has reached a deal to produce and exclusively release a CD of 10 Bob Dylan recordings from New York's Gaslight Cafe in 1962, when he was just finding himself as a songwriter. The Gaslight, in Greenwich Village, was a focal point of the folk revival in the early '60s."Bob Dylan: Live at the Gaslight 1962" will be available at Starbucks stores in the United States and Canada on Aug. 30. It includes the earliest known recordings of "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" and "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right."

It seems there's no end to nostalgic marketing gimmicks. What's next? Jimi Hendrix bubble-gum?

If you're a salesperson, like the great James Ng www.pcgsafety.com you can probably relate to this scenario. You spend days preparing a razzle-dazzle presentation. During the big event, you expound on the greatness of your company. You show slides of your top-notch manufacturing facilities. You paint a rosy picture of the future the prospect will have if he buys. What happens after you wrap up the presentation is anyone's guess. But two things are certain: you've spent valuable time and resources on this little dog and pony show, and you're left with the unsettling knowledge that the decision to buy from you (or not) is completely out of your hands.

Sound familiar? Probably so. And right now you may be thinking, well, that's just the nature of the beast. Presentations are no fun, but they're part and parcel of selling. Right?

WRONG!

According to Jeff Thull, absolutely not. Not only are presentations almost always a waste of time, says the strategist and business advisor, they actually decrease the chances that you'll make the sale. Think about the nature of the presentation and you'll see why it's so often an exercise in futility, says Thull, author of The Prime Solution: Close the Value Gap, Increase Margins, and Win the Complex Sale.

Jeff obviously understands the critical importance of Rule of Attraction #3 : The problem is more impotant than the solution.

Jeff goes on to demonstrate that most salespeople are spending 80% of their time talking about their solution, while the prospect may not even understand their own problem. So no matter how impressive the product or service sounds, they are not going to grasp how it applies to their situation. In addition the prospect likely has several other presentations just like ours lined up. In their mind we are merely a commodity. The only way we can win is if we are the lowest bidder, and even that doesn't guarantee success.

In our Attract More Business seminar and program we tear apart presentations. We demonstrate in a humorous way precisely where presentations go awry amd also teach a five step method to ensure that they are effective. You will never find yourself doing mindless proposals and dog and pony shows again. Check it out at www.attractmorebusiness.com or sign-up for the full day workshop. Also my Kudos to Jeff for making this rule so easy to understand and put into practice.

Mr. Apathy
Who's the bigger idiot: you or your boss? Sure, he has no clue what you do, tells stupid jokes and yells a lot. But aren't you the real idiot for staying? We help 45,000 people escape idiot bosses each week. Find a better boss now... right under your idiot boss' nose.
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That's the ad that I saw posted on a popular news website. It looks just like an article but in reality it is an advertisement for Career Builders. Today every media outlet shares one thing in common... CLUTTER! Same-old-same advertising wherever you look. Here's one that really stands out, makes a point and gets you to smile as well. However better than that it makes you want to know more. Click on the link above and you'll know what I mean.

One of the Rules of Attraction is Who we are is more important than what we do. Career Builders knows it's not about you finding something better to DO. It's about finding someone better to be with. You're not so much looking for a new job but you're looking for a new boss.

Think about how you can apply this to your business. Focus on the WHO rather than the WHAT.

We get many e-mails and phone calls asking for advice on how to increase sales and promote a business. They usually are for products and services that businesses have spent a great deal of time and money developing.

The following is a brief excert from a Los Angeles Times article (registration required) about Volcom Sportswear.

At the start, the partners didn't have any product, Brimer said, so they cranked out stickers bearing a stone logo and the name "Volcom," whose precise origins remain somewhat murky 14 years after the fact.

Soon, kids were clamoring for stuff that didn't exist."He established a buzz about the product before there was ever a product," said Brimer, whose shop would become Volcom's first retail account. "It was the most effective preemptive advertising campaign I've ever observed firsthand."

When Volcom actually delivered its first shorts and swim trunks to Frog House, they "sold like crazy," Brimer recalled.

Volcom took the typical business paradigm and flipped it upside down, much like Tony Hawk does a skateboard. And both have made millions by doing so.

Business owners and managers far too often get bogged down in the details of product development and think of marketing as a process that begins after the product is ready to be shipped. What we can learn from Volcom is that marketing is a process that should start BEFORE you spend your money developing a product or service. By doing so, you create a tremendous demand in the market, and can even use that demand to help secure funding to fully develop the product you wanted to sell in the first place!

To learn more about ways to put this into practice for your own business, check out our Attract More Business Full Day Workshops.

Imagine that you are a gazelle and you are face-to-face with a bloodthirsty, hungry lion.
What do you do?

Run like the wind - blood pumping in your veins - lungs nearly exploding. Run faster and harder with fear in your heart. You know that the lion will chase you until you tire and fall from exhaustion and then you will surely be devoured.

But wait, at the last second the lion is distracted by an older, slower, less agile gazelle. You escape as the lion is diverted. You live to see another day. Later you are grazing on the same plain not fifty feet from the very same lion and her entire pride. The lions lick their chops. They are stuffed and tired from the hunt. But you and your gazelle pals are no longer afraid.

Why?

BECAUSE THE LION IS NO LONGER ACTING HUNGRY!

Let’s face it, no matter who or what you are, when someone is chasing you, your first impulse is to run. I have found that people often feel like that gazelle. They feel like they are being hunted, stalked, and eventually chased down. It happens in personal relationships as well as in business. I guess that’s because we are taught to act hungry.

But how can you avoid this. We live in an eat or be eaten world. What if we were able to break out of this paradigm? What if we were able to present our ideas or solutions in such a way that people sought us out, rather than us having to chase after them? What if we could apply this to marketing and motivate customers and prospects to choose our company, product or service over the competition? What if team members and business partners decided, on their own, that they WANTED to, “Do it the RIGHT way” rather than being told over and over again to correct their behavior?

How valuable would it be to your business if you could ATTRACT the right kind of employees, affiliate relationships and alliances? How about customers? Imagine attracting your ideal prospect without spending a dime on advertising or putting on a big sales pitch?

Come and join me at one of my upcoming full day, Attract More Business Workshop and learn how to apply the rules of attraction to your business.

Find out more here.