Mike Crandall

When running a business or non-profit, there are many KPIs-Key Performance Indicators—you need to track. How many new contacts is your sales team making each week? What is your revenue YTD? What is your profitability?

Marketing has just as many potential KPIs as any other area of your business, maybe more. But there's one that is generally far more important than the others...

Whether you realize it or not, you're probably already familiar with Sandler Rule #34: Work Smart, Not Hard. Working smart is all about investing your time wisely and not wasting it. It's about using various tools, tactics, and platforms to save time and optimize your results.

In the world of marketing, there are plenty of tools out there that can save you time and make the most of your resources. Here are three quick tips to market smart, not hard.

In Sandler, we teach salespeople a lot about psychology and communication. It's all about getting past the other person's preconceptions, not sounding like everyone else, and having a real conversation.

So it shouldn't be a surprise that you can apply many concepts we teach in Sandler to your website to cut through the noise.

Have you considered any of these concepts for your website?

In sales, showing up is important. We talk to salespeople all the time who close deals in part because they were the only person to return a call. It makes a huge difference!

Similarly, showing up online is extremely important. If you're focused on making it easy to do business with you—and you should be—then you need to be easy to find online.

Want to be easy to find online? Here are some platforms and tactics to consider.

Want to improve your sales calls and meetings, have clearer next steps, and even improve your closing rate? One of the best ways to do that is to do a better job preparing before your sales call.

Think about highly respected professions. Whether it's architects, engineers, doctors, accountants, airline pilots, ministers, or teachers, they all have one thing in common. They all plan in advance.

Let's look at the advantages of pre-call planning in sales, how you should plan, and a tool we have available.

In 1969 the book "I'm OK—You're OK" was published, and for many, it introduced the concept of transactional analysis. Later, David Sandler took those concepts and applied them to the world of sales. Many of those concepts apply to marketing as well.

Your time is your most valuable asset. Nobody knows that better than business owners. As a result, you should guard your time closely, investing it where it can do the most good and get the best ROI.

So do you think your time is better invested in marketing or selling?

If you're like most people, you're annoyed by all the things you "have" to do to stay relevant and top-of-mind with your clients and prospects.

Listen to any online marketing expert, and they'll tell you what platform, tool, or content you simply must do in order to reach people—and of course, that just happens to be what they're an expert in.

An up-front contract is a Sandler concept that seems logical once you hear about it, but so few people use it. It is when two or more people meeting together agree on precisely what will occur during the meeting.

Have you ever scheduled a meeting on your calendar with a beginning time but no end time? Have you ever thought a meeting was going to be about one topic but the other person thought it was about something else entirely?

An up-front contract is all about getting on the same page as the other parties in two areas: behavior and expectations.

Let's take a look at why you should consider using up-front contracts, the key elements of an up-front contract, and finally, an acronym that can help.

Have you ever been frustrated by trying to market your organization with nothing to show for the time, money, and energy you invested? Or maybe you're intimidated by that very thought, so you haven't invested much at all in marketing your business!