Coach's Corner
by Fred Albrecht
I have heard from many of our reps and I can tell you, the enthusiasm and energy is amazing. 35 Sales Reps and 6 from our office attended ASI Orlando and 15 Sales Reps and two from our office were at the PPAI show in Vegas. Many others are attending the Proforma Regional Meetings. All in all, it makes for a great way to kick off the year. In our last edition, I asked three basic questions, Who did I meet, What did I learn and what an I going to do next? Check out Chris Bowles' reply, he told me exactly what he learned, who he met and what he plans to do next, in fact he followed it up with a business plan for 2014. I received 4 other written plans this week as well. I guarantee you those who sent me their plans will succeed and achieve their goals. Chris was kind enough to allow me to share his knowledge he gained at the Orlando ASI Education sessions. Thanks for sharing the wealth, Chris. (see article below)
New Format coming for our Sales Achievement Edition: While normally this would be the week we would include the "December" and final 2013 Sales numbers, we have decided to alter the format somewhat and not make that a "part" of the regular weekly "Albrecht Advantage". We will do a monthly "Sales Achievement" edition which will be out during the week next week for the first time. It will include more information than ever before as well as success stories from our reps.
Share your knowledge: The number one request from all of our reps is to include more "Success Stories" for our Albrecht Advantage telling one another WHAT you are selling, to Who and how they are being used by your customer. I need your help, please help your CSR by giving them details on some of the more "special" projects when you place the orders. I will be tapping into their knowledge of your specific orders so we can spread the word to all of your peers.
Fred Albrecht
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  I am proud to announce the recertification of Proforma Albrecht & Co. as a woman owned business enterprise. For the past 10 years, I have worked hard to continue to ensure the growth of Proforma Albrecht. One of the tools our sales reps have enjoyed is the ability to distinguish ourselves as a woman owned business. We are one of the largest promotional companies in the industry registered as a WBENC certified woman owned business. Proforma Albrecht & Co. was ranked the 8th largest woman owned business in Cincinnati in 2013, based on 2012 revenues ranked by "The Cincinnati Business Courier".
The Women's Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC), founded in 1997, is the largest third-party certifier of businesses owned, controlled, and operated by women in the United States. WBENC, a national 501(c)(3) non-profit, partners with 14 Regional Partner Organizations to provide its world class standard of certification to women-owned businesses throughout the country. WBENC is also the nation's leading advocate of women-owned businesses as suppliers to America's corporations. WBENC's MissionThe Women's Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) is dedicated to advancing the success of Corporate Members, certified women's business enterprises (WBEs), and government entities in partnership with its Regional Partner Organizations (RPOs). Who Does WBENC Serve?Major corporations that pay membership fees and have an active Supplier Diversity program or will have one, within 12 months of membership, are classified as Corporate Members. Corporate Members must also demonstrate a commitment to actively conduct business with WBENC-certified WBEs. Women-owned business entities that apply for and are granted WBENC certification, and have paid all relevant fees are classified as WBENC-Certified WBEs. WBENC-Certified WBEs are not classified as members of WBENC, but are classified as Beneficiaries. The collective interests of WBENC-Certified WBEs are represented by the Women's Enterprise Leadership Forum composed of a group of WBEs appointed to the Forum by their certifying Regional Partner Organization or a Corporate Member with which they do business. What does this mean for you? As a Proforma Albrecht sales rep we have taken advantage of opportunities that assist our larger clients to achieve their diversity goals. These clients generally have websites allowing you to register as a WBENC woman owned business minority supplier. Existing clients like University of Cincinnati, Toyota and Independent Blue Cross are all examples of companies where this has benefited our reps. In addition we have had several local sales reps participate in local WBENC networking events. To learn more you can visit www.wbenc.org or Google your local chapter. Each local chapter has their own guidelines with respect to local participation from national accounts like ours. What we have found is the more you participate, the more you will open up networking opportunities for yourself. We also are very careful to include our certification with every RFP response as it will help further our ability to distinguish us from our competitors. ~ Suzette Albrecht |
Up Close & Personal - Chris Bowles
Annette and I have been married for 24 years this August. The single best move I ever made was to marry "up". Annette teaches AP Calculus and AP Statistics but still keeps me around for some reason, I'm a lucky guy. We have two daughters, Amanda 20 and Samantha 16. I've been selling promo for about 12 years. Before that I was in retail management for about 15 years. When I'm not working I like to play golf and volleyball as well as stir the pot!While in Orlando I hit an education session about goal setting put on by Chris Vanderzyden. I'm not sure if you know her or if you've had the chance to hear her, but I found her to be one of the most dynamic speakers I've heard in a long time. I thought I had a plan for 2014 but after hearing her speak I'm revisiting my plan to include more detailed, specific steps. As part of her presentation she invited us to hit her web site and register so we could download her white paper. Typically I don't play that game because I don't want the emails that are guaranteed to follow but I did it this time. Her paper, 12 Steps to Ramp Up Your Sales and Drive Profits, is actually very good. It gets to the point and spells out some great things that help get you focused on what matters. None of it is earth shatteringly new, but I found it a good quick read to get back on track. There are some very good dialogue techniques for asking for referrals and a method of requesting to connect on LinkedIn that makes a lot more sense than the stupid canned email that LinkedIn gives you. I've attached the link to the white paper if you want to read it for yourself. So that's the biggest of who I met, what I learned and what I'm going to do with it from Orlando. Looking forward to a great 2014. Her website is www.chrisvanderzyden.com Click here to download her paper "12 Steps to Ramp Up Your Sales and Drive Profits"
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Right click on the image to save for yourself to email to your customers.
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Right click on the image to save for yourself to email to your customers.
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Starline January Specials
Check out this weeks featured products from Starline.
Click the image to visit the website for complete details.
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SanMar - OGIO Gear New Products
Check out the new OGIO line from SanMar.
Click the image to visit the website for complete details.
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The Single Most Important Habit of Successful Entrepreneurs
by Dan Kennedy
 In his book No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs, business coach and consultant Dan Kennedy reveals the steps behind making the most of your frantic, time-pressured days so you can turn time into money. In this edited excerpt, the author describes the one habit you should adopt--and stick to without fail--if you want to be successful.
I'm sure there are exceptions somewhere, but so far, in 35-plus years of taking note of this, everybody I've met and gotten to know who devoutly adheres to this discipline becomes exceptionally successful and everybody I've met and gotten to know who ignores this discipline fails. Is it possible that this one discipline alone is so powerful it literally determines success or failure?
The discipline I'm talking about is punctuality -- being where you're supposed to be when you're supposed to be there, as promised, without exception, without excuse, every time, all the time. I cannot tell you how important I believe this is. But I'll tell you some of the reasons why I believe in its indescribably great importance.
First of all, being punctual gives you the right-the positioning-to expect and demand that others treat your time with the utmost respect. You cannot reasonably hope to have others treat your time with respect if you show little or no respect for theirs. So if you're not punctual, you have no leverage, no moral authority. But the punctual person gains that advantage over staff, associates, vendors, clients, everybody.
It is my conviction that a person who cannot keep appointments on time, cannot keep scheduled commitments or cannot stick to a schedule cannot be trusted in other ways either. There is a link between respect for others' time and respect for others' opinions, property, rights, agreements and contracts. A person reveals a great deal about himself by his punctuality or lack of punctuality. As a general rule of thumb, I use this as a means of determining whether or not I want to do business with someone. And, when I violate this, as I occasionally foolishly do, I always get burned.
Let me give you one example. Dozens of years ago, a person seeking to do business with me arranged to meet me at an airport, where I had a 90-minute layover. We agreed, and I confirmed by fax that we would meet at my arrival gate, at my arrival time, and then go to that airline's club room right there on the concourse for the meeting. When I arrived, the guy wasn't there. Some ten minutes later, I'm paged and told to meet him in the main terminal where he is because he ran late getting to the airport. It takes me ten minutes on the tram to get to the main terminal, and I have to cut another ten minutes of our meeting to allow time to get back to my gate. I have to go through this to meet with a man so disrespectful of a commitment made and of my time that he cannot organize his life to arrive at a meeting on time in his own home city. If he could not be relied on to honor such an easy commitment, why should anybody believe he would honor more important ones?
Still, violating my own rule, I went ahead and accepted this guy as a client. It was predictably ugly. He lied, he cheated, and he was completely disorganized, dysfunctional, and unreasonable. He sucked up a pretty good chunk of my time, and it cost me thousands of dollars to get rid of him.
Now, here's a "success secret" for you: I'm not the only person to have figured out this punctuality-integrity link. I'm just not that smart. I've stumbled on something that a whole lot of other smart, successful, and influential people already know and secretly use to make their determinations about who they will buy from or not buy from, do business with or not do business with, help or not help, trust or distrust. If you are not a punctual person, others you wish to positively influence negatively judge you.
If you think that successful people-people you want to deal with-do not have their own little "systems" for judging people, you're very naïve. Not only do they have such a system, most successful people make a point of having "instant reject criteria," to save time in determining who they want to deal with and who they don't.
One of my earliest business mentors said that there were only two good reasons for being late for a meeting with him: one, you're dead; two, you want to be.
So, to borrow from Dale Carnegie, if you want to win friends and influence people, be punctual. And, if you'd like to save yourself a lot of time and trouble, start using this as a means of judging those who would do business with you.
Dan S. Kennedy is a strategic advisor, consultant, business coach, and author of the popular No B.S. book series. He directly influences more than one million business owners annually.
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How Observant Are You?
Just think, these companies paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to dream up this stuff! You will never look at these logos the same way ever again!
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Do you see the arrow between the "E" and the "X", its in white.
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The 2nd and 3rd "T's" are two people enjoying a tortilla and a bowl of salsa.
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The world's most famous bike race. The "R" in "Tour" is a cyclist. The yellow circle is the front wheel of a bicycle, the "O" is the back wheel.
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The arrow means Amazon has everything from A to Z
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There is a dancing bear above the "ble". Toblerone chocolate bars originated in Berne, Switzerland, whose symbol is the bear.
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See the "31" embedded in the "BR"? Thirty one-derful flavors!
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Northwest Airlines. The circle is a compass. The arrow in the upper left corner is pointing.
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See the gorilla and the lioness (in white) vacing each other?
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The smiley half face is also a "g".
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The emblem for the Milwaukee Brewers. Baseball glove forms an "M" and a "B". This logo was designed by a college student.
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Custom Logo Design for YOUR Clients!
Do any of your own customers need custom logos designed? You too can offer your customers custom designed logos at a fraction of what an ad agency would charge. Check out this portfolio of logo designs from Leigh Anne - Art Dept. Inc. Many know her as the "go to" lady for vector art, but she does much more than that.
* Vector art conversion
* Logo design
* Brochures
* Flyers
* Direct mail
* Point of Purchase
* Menus
* Sign design
* Email blasts
* Facebook & Web graphics
Click image for a full size look.
Call Leigh Anne aka "LogoLeeLee"
804-739-1198
logoleelee@hotmail.com or artdeptinc@verizon.net
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If you would like to review any of our past issues, we now have them archived.
Click Here for the archive page. |
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Fred Albrecht 513-753-2580
Proforma Albrecht & Co. |
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