The Get Together – an organization of Houston area business leaders dedicated to helping Faith Based nonprofits – has brought the WorkFaith Connection to the attention of the Price of Business Show and it will be the beneficiary of a remote in February.  The exact date and location are yet to be determined.  Read more here…

One of Kevin Price’s favorite guests, Steve Moore of the Wall Street journal, will be on the Price of Business Show Monday, January 5th, to discuss the national economic situation.  Note: the story says both the 5th and “today.”  Moore will be on the 5th.  The story is distributed through our partners at Emailwire.com.

Kevin Price of the Price of Business Show (M-F at 11 am on CNN 650) was a guest on ABC 13 on Christmas Eve discussing the retail situation locally and nationally.  Read the rest of the story from our media partners at Emailwire.com.

• Hand-Tossed  Brick Oven Pizza
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We have been in the process of upgrading our servers because of the huge volume of traffic we have enjoyed on our web platform.  As a result of our transition we have had problems with our email as of late.  If you have had email that has bounced back, please feel free to send it again.  We apologize for the inconvenience. 

On Wednesday, December 3, the Price of Business will be joining Lifestyles Unlimited at El Tiempo Mexican Restaurant (the 1308 Cantina, 1308 Montrose).  This will actually be a Lifestyles Unlimited event for which we are playing a supportive role.  We will keep an eye out for friends of our media and have some on the Price of Business based on time.  However, we will also have scheduled guests, so it won’t quite be the “free for all” that we are famous for.  But we suggest you come and have a great time with some of the best Mexican food in Houston.   Find out how to get there here.

We will begin airing our show at 11 AM at the restaurant, Lifestyles Unlimited will follow, and For Your Health will be right after that.  Come and enjoy great food and great programming.  If you have questions or simply want more information, call Stacy 832.643.2953 or email her at SWalston@HoustonBusinessMediaGroup.com.

The PriceofBusiness.com, HoustonBusinessDaily.com and other affiliated websites underwent a major crash over the week.  It is very close to 100 percent and we appreciate the patience demonstrated by everyone.

Some of our Advisors had difficulties posting their articles.  As a result a special announcement will be made by experts who post two articles next week to make up if they didn’t get one up this week.

Again, thank you for your patience and your continued support of our media.

We are sure you have noticed that the newsletter has under gone several changes.  The reasons for them are multi-fold

• We have out grown our previous newsletter service.  Our old service was deigned for small newsletter publishers in everything from cost per newsletter to style.  We needed to take it to the next level.
• The Houston Business Show is now the Price of Business (making us poised to taking our message around the country) and we have changed the ezine to Houston Business Daily to reflect those changes.  We have listeners all over the country online and we are expecting those numbers to only grow.  The ezine is still weekly, but the website it reflects changes daily.
• The technology behind this ezine is very cutting edge and will allow us to reach all new levels of automation.  As our media expands nationwide and our number of readers grow, this technology will facilitate that expansion.
• The new format was developed by our team and they are able to take the newsletter into new directions as our audience demands.

Speaking of that, we want to hear from you.  How do you like our new ezine design and how can we make it better?  Any and all feedback will be appreciated.  Contact kj@kjprice.com.

We want to know: Do you like the style?  Do you like the topics?  Are there other areas of expertise you would like to have included?  Are there experts (including yourself) that we should be visiting with?  Plus any of your own important suggestions. 

The first ten respondents will receive a pair of tickets to the Texas Renaissance Festival.  Please be among the top ten.

Share shifting is a term used to describe moving a client base from your competition, to you. Share shifting is not getting new businesses to try your product line; it is taking a current client database (clients already having needs and currently using your competitors) and moving it to your database (they use you). There are “X” dollars spent on any product line at any one time. The objective within share-shift marketing is to move more of those finite dollars spent on any product line into your business unit. You will be going for a bigger slice of the pie, but it is still just one pie that has not gotten any larger, just your portion of it has.

You need one of two things in place to sell any item: the clients either want or need your product line or a combination of both. Without a want or need from the client, you cannot sell much of anything to anyone. So, the advantages of share shifting over getting new customers/clients are:

• The want and need are pre-established

• The client is already buying, so spending habits are historic, thus forecasting can be done for pre-qualifying their future spending consumption

• Having purchased from your competitor in the past, selling strategies on your product line’s advantages over your competition can be highlighted and exploited

• A pre-qualified database for quicker sales effectiveness, ramp up/your “low hanging fruit”

• Builds revenues in a soft or downward trending marketplace

• No wasted time on “uncovering” needs in your sales stage progression. Due to this, you can move the client quicker through the sales pipeline to the purchase phase

With share-shift marketing, your top-line growth will be faster than with most other sales campaigns, due to the fact that you have an accelerated cycle built into this sales effort. So, go on out there and get a bigger piece of that market share pie, before someone else does and then throws it in your face.

Second, the meaning of the adjective radical is “not bound by traditional ways or beliefs.” Here are the “must dos” of a seasoned business unit’s radical salesperson and marketer.

No stone goes unturned in your search for new leads and clients; no sales idea is to silly orstupid to try; you sell to everyone, every day, no matter what their size; you sell more than you market; you utilize yield management techniques; you just do not leave collateral, you collect a database for follow-up; you go down swinging and then get back up for another round; you are always in “selling mode;” you network, not just talk to people; you are “it,” no one but you can make it happen; when you fail, you succeed by learning from it; you start your day with a goal and focus on its achievement; you look for ways< to sell to prospects that other are not; you carry your business cards with you everywhere; wherever you go you see a future client; no matter how many no’s they have given you, you write down phone numbers from passing businesses on the street; you see customer obstacles as an opportunity to get testimonial referrals from them by meeting their expectations; you work on the probability theory; you radiate confidence and bring direction to clients; you take ownership of your sales 100%; you are out finding new revenue generation that your competition never knew existed and selling to them before they do; you see doors of opportunities, not slammed ones in your face; you are asking for the sale every time, in all possible ways, with each client you communicate with; you are a relentless “door knocker” and grass roots marketer; you look at your sales reports for new business that purchased from you; you drive the desire and passion for each sale with every presentation; you fight tooth and nail to retain a client and make new ones every day when you come into work; you smile until it hurts just to go to bed and wake up to attack your business leads all over again tomorrow.

Are you ready for the challenge? Are you ready to become a radical salesperson and marketer for your business unit? Why not? Are you afraid to get a little emotional about your sales and marketing? Only emotional selling sells to clients on a regular basis with consistency. No one wants an order taker in their sales department; your product line is not that special to afford you that luxury. If you are not emotional about the product line that you represent, your sales will never reach full capacity.

Oh, by the way, the above sentence is the longest sentence in this article. Do you know the reason why? Because it is aggressive and unconventional and “not bound by traditional ways or beliefs,” just like what a radical sales and marketer for your business unit needs to be.

Go be radical today!  http://theprofitrepairman.com/

If you liked Tom Marquardt’s article above you will love his new book, “My Little Black Book to Success,” which Tom and HBD wish to provide for free.  This is an excellent guide for small business owners on issues ranging from everything from accounting to marketing.  It is normally $15.88 in print, but it is yours free in its entirety just by writing swalston@HoustonBusinessMediaGroup.com and put “free book” in the subject line.

Controversial and best selling author Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute will be on Friday’s Price of Business Show (11 AM on CNN 650).  Host Kevin Price stated that “Murray has long been an inspiration to me.  My book, “Empowerment to the People” drew heavily from Murray’s ideas and research.  Murray’s latest book, “Real Education” may be his most controversial book yet.  In it, he seriously challenges the idea of mass higher education and demonstrates concerns about the larger social and economic consequences of such an emphasis.

In a recent article in The American magazine, Murray wrote: To ask whether too many people are going to college requires us to think about the importance and nature of a liberal education. “Universities are not intended to teach the knowledge required to fit men for some special mode of gaining their livelihood,” John Stuart Mill told students at the University of St. Andrews in 1867. “Their object is not to make skillful lawyers, or physicians, or engineers, but capable and cultivated human beings.” If this is true (and I agree that it is), why say that too many people are going to college? Surely a mass democracy should encourage as many people as possible to become “capable and cultivated human beings” in Mill’s sense. We should not restrict the availability of a liberal education to…(read more)”