What’s one of the the biggest objections during the holiday seasons? “Call me after the holiday is the second most-heard objection in sales during the holiday season (first and still champion, the “price objection.” Third being, the ” think about it objection.”). It comes up year after year and salespeople get stalled year after year, unnecessarily. Here are some strategies that will help keep your sales on track.

“Call me after the holiday” Humbug. It’s an excuse for decision makers to put buying decisions on hold. But the worst of them are the Christmas to New Year, “Call me back after the holidays,” and “Call me after the first of the year.” Two of the most hated phrases in sales. (They still rank behind “We’ve decided to buy from someone else.”)

Call me after the holidays is not a real objection. It’s worse. It’s a stall. Stalls are twice as bad as objections. When you get a stall, you have to somehow dance around it, and then you still must deal with the real objection before you can proceed.

1. Prevention – the best cure. If you know this objection is coming, do something BEFORE it happens. Prevention of objections and stalls is the most obvious, most powerful, and least used sales technique. Here are a few prevention methods.

* Start in early November to create urgency.
* Set price raises in September to take effect January 1. Announce them right away and communicate them weekly into the holiday season.
* Create a holiday special. Have a five day sale in December.
* Offer December price incentives or special value incentives.
* Throw a holiday party. Invite prospects and customers, and offer them a “Tonight only deal.”
* Hold a series of teleseminars/seminars that are about important issues to your prospects and customers. Have the best one just before the holidays. Serve great content.
* Create an internal sales contest with a great first, second and third prizes.
* Build relationships all year long.

Here are 9.5 more winning tactics to use that will help overcome the stall:

2. Be funny. Say, “So many people have said call me after the first that I’m booked until April. I do however, have a few openings before the first. How about it?” Making the other person laugh (smile) will go a long way towards getting past the stall. An alternative joke is, “What holiday?”

2. Close on the stall. “What day after the first of the year would you want to take (would be most convenient to take) delivery?”

3. Firm it up, whenever it is. Ask, “When after the first of the year? Can I buy you the first breakfast of the new year?” Make a firm appointment.

4. If it’s just a callback, make the prospect write it down. Call backs must be appointed, or the other guy is never there when you call. Writing it down makes it a firm commitment.

5. Tell them about your resolutions. “I’ve made a New Year’s resolution that I’m not going to let people like you who need our service, delay until after the first of the year. You know you need it.”

6. Offer incentives and alternatives. Invent reasons not to delay. Bill after the holiday. Order now, deliver after the holiday.

7. Question them into a corner — and close them when they get there. “What will be different after the holidays? Will anything change over the holidays that will cause you not to buy?” (Prospect’s answer — “Oh no, no, no.”) “Great!” you say, “Let’s get you order in production (service scheduled) now, and we’ll deliver it after the holiday. When were you thinking of taking delivery (beginning).”

7. Agree. Then disagree. I know what you mean…lots of people feel that way. Most don’t realize that the money wasted between now and the first of the year, will equate to a huge savings if they buy now. Are you sure you want to waste the money?

8. Get a video or written testimonial. Ask someone who bought before the holidays and was glad they did to write you a two paragraph letter. Get one paragraph about the value they received and how they originally wanted to wait. The second paragraph should be about how happy they are about your service after the sale. Similar situations are more powerful than your sales pitch.

9. Drop-by Selling – with holiday cheer. Use a small holiday plant or gift to get in the door.

10.5 Create urgency. There’s a product or delivery back-up after the first — schedule now.

The Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 (SBJA), signed into law in September, adds or renews several attractive tax incentives for small business, and makes other important tax changes you need to be aware about.

100% Exclusion of Gain on Sale of Qualified Small Business Stock: Historically, 50 percent of the gain from the sale of qualified small business stock held at least five years could be excluded from income, but remained subject to the alternative minimum tax. The remaining 50 percent of such gain was taxed at 28 percent. The exclusion percentage increased from 50 percent to 75 percent for qualified small business stock acquired after February 17, 2009 and before 2011. Confused? Wait it gets better.

SBJA increases the exclusion from 75 percent to 100 percent for qualified small business stock acquired after the enactment date and before 2011. In addition, there is no alternative minimum tax imposed on any gains eligible for the 100 percent exclusion.

While the 100 percent exclusion is a significant tax benefit, taxpayers must act fast, you only have until the end of the year to acquire the qualifying stock. Here are a few of the rules: The stock must be original issue stock in a C corporation held by a non-corporate investor, the gross assets of the corporation may not exceed $50 million at the time of distribution, and the corporation must be engaged in ongoing business.

Shorter holding period for S Corporations:
Historically, an S corporation that had converted from a C corporation generally was required to pay built-in gains tax on any assets disposed of within the first ten years of converting to S corporation status. This preserved the C Corporation “double taxation” model for appreciated assets held at the time of conversion. In 2009 and 2010, an S corporation could sell built-in gain property without paying a corporate level tax as long as the corporation had held the property for seven years. The new law reduces the holding period on these assets in 2011 from seven years to five years. This means that C corporations that filed Subchapter S elections effective for the 2006 tax year (or earlier) can sell built-in gain property without paying the built-in gains corporate level tax.

Startup Expense Deduction Increased:
Generally, taxpayers may deduct up to only $5,000 of startup expenditures, subject to a phase-out threshold of $50,000, and the remainder must be amortized over 180 months. The new law increases the maximum deduction to $10,000 and the phase-out threshold to $60,000. This provision only applies to startup expenditures incurred in the 2010 tax year.

Self-employment Health Insurance: Individuals subject to self-employment tax may not deduct health insurance for purposes of calculating net earnings subject to self-employment tax. Only for 2010 tax year will taxpayers be allowed to reduce their net self-employment income by the cost of their health insurance.

Cellular Telephones No Longer Listed Property:
Under prior rules, cellular telephones (and similar devices) were considered “listed property,” and were subject to specific requirements for the business use of the property. Now that employer-provided cell phones are routine, the new rule removes cell phones from the definition of listed property allowing the IRS to determine that the personal use of cell phones provided by your business may constitute tax free fringe benefit to employees. Woot!

Increased Reporting Requirement:
The health care reform act imposed onerous new reporting requirements on taxpayers beginning in 2012 by requiring 1099 reporting on all payments of $600 or more for both goods and services, and extended the reporting to corporations. While there is broad support in Congress to scale back or even repeal that provision, in the meantime Congress has piled it on by imposing even more information reporting requirements on taxpayers. Rental real estate income, traditionally exempted from the reporting requirements, will now be required to report payments of $600 or more to a service provider beginning in 2011. Individuals who receive a minimal amount of rental income (defined by the Treasury Department) may be exempt from these requirements.

Penalties:
Congress increased the penalties that apply to the failure to file correct information returns (e.g., Form 1099 or Schedule K-1). The increases apply to both the penalties applicable to each such failure ($100 up from $50 unless corrected immediately), and to the maximum annual limitation ($1,500,000 up from $250,000 unless corrected immediately). What would taxes be without penalties?

In our last few coaching calls the topic of productivity has come up so I thought I would share this simple strategy that has helped me improve my productivity significantly.

One of the best strategies (and the most simple) to improving how much I produce in a day is this: When you wake up in the morning (or afternoon like some folks), immediately sign on your computer and start working on one profitable activity for 30 minutes.

Don’t check email, workout, take a shower, eat breakfast, watch TV, or anything else until you get that 30 minutes of solid work complete.

I know this sounds simple, best ideas are, but it really does work. It gets your brain focus and thinking about the activity throughout the day, before anything has the chance to distract your energy. If you suffer from ADD it helps keep you focused instead of jumping around.

Now… when I say profitable, I mean cash, income, revenue, something other than reading emails, posting on forums, checking affiliate stats, etc. Instead, build a website, do some niche research, review your resume, continue working on a product, add something to your auto-responder sequence, read a How-to book, etc.

I know this:

When I start the day off gaming, my day is spent playing video games.
When I start the day checking emails, my day is spent checking emails.
When I start off working on a product, my day is spent working on my product.

It’s a simple strategy, but it really works. And it doesn’t take a lot of practice getting used to.

Try it for yourself for a couple days, take notice of what happens, and I can guarantee you that you will like the results!

Drop comment and let me know what you think – thanks.

Google is rolling out a nationwide update that drastically changes the way prospective customers see you and your competitors through what Google calls “Place Search.”

The new integrated results combine your organic and local rankings in a new Google algorithm intended to make finding businesses easier.

If you’re like us, you’re constantly looking for things in your neighborhood, whether it’s [restaurants in zurich] or a new [sales trainer in houston]. If you specify your location in your query, Google often show your results on a map. But we’ve noticed that much of the time users make simpler searches, like [restaurants] or [dentist].

Google just finished the worldwide rollout of local search results on a map, which will now appear even when you don’t type in a location. When you search on Google, Google will guess where you are and show results near you.

How does Google guess your location? In most cases, they match your IP address to a broad geographical location. You can also specify your likely location using the “Change location” link on the top right corner, above the map. Google is smart and they try to make their guesses as good as they can be so that whether you’re shopping for [groceries], [sporting goods] or [flowers], or looking for your [bank], your [gym], or the [post office], you can just say what you want, and Google will try to find it right where you are. You can also search for specific stores or street addresses near you, like [cornelia st cafe] in New York, for example.

If your Google Place page has pictures, your position on the search engine results pages will also be more prominent.

There’s much more to be seen and discovered regarding this update. We look forward to working with our clients sites to be sure they maintain strong rankings.

For further information on the subject, check out these blogs:

Place Search: a faster, easier way to find local information – from the Official Google Blog

Getting First on Google – First Page Results

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