Tag Archives: 2009

Late start to tell you a story?

Himalayan Spring in the SlideShare Tell A Story Contest
I will tell you a story about the highest, poorest and most beautiful land of our Planet. A story in colors, fresh images, high-definition video and original music, which I brought from my last month’s visit to Nepal and the Himalayas. Is it created for the SlideShare’s Tell A Story Contest ? Yes and no, but you can still vote for it, if you like it. Once upon a time on the long way to the top of the world…

View more presentations from Vellyslav Petrov.

Caviar globalists? No more

Caviar days are over at WEF

Caviar days are over

Every year in late January, like today, heads of the leading companies worldwide go to the Swiss resort of Davos.

Around 2,500 participants from over 90 countries – politicians, artists, leaders and NGO campaigners jet off for a week of networking events and workshops “for a better world”.


Fighting the crisis or having some fun in the snow?
Economic times have become harder. Paying members are about 1,000 companies, non-business participants attend meetings for free. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are not attending this year, Bono and Peter Gabriel are.

US president Obama has told several of his biggest people to stay at home.
The key players of the world economy China and Russia are side by side.
The event is just a very high-powered talking shop. Some launch global initiatives to fight poverty and epidemics, other get an opportunity to make their case and meet people who have the money to help them.

Caviar, lobster and Dom Perignon are out. Ham, cheese and wine are in. Caviar parties by top Wall Street bankers used to be the top buzz for the annual Davos forum, but the belt is tightening today. Leading banks like Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan, are not holding parties anymore.

Aren’t these people who want to solve the world’s problems the same who caused them?

Bad news for our Caviar SEO campaign today.
I should stick to tiger shrimps for dinner.

See you at the top!

Sales automation for more free time

Yesterday I’ve got another “better ranking” request. Strange that most of the companies I know strive for “more traffic and better ranking“.
And they stop there, sticking to couple of web pages, which no one visits, when they should look for more leads, more sales and happy, loyal customer.

Many businesses owners talk like internet victims:

“ Network marketing is broken and it’s hard to fix it. We had a strong desire, but it doesn’t work.It can’t help my business, because it’s complicated, expensive and takes years.”…
…“With all these 470 million active websites, prospects are overlooking our website for someone else…Making our site stand out is as realistic as winning the lottery”.

…unless you have the knowledge of how to make your website work for you.

What about if they used the wrong technique?
What about if we start doing the predictable and simple action in the right way – automatically. Manual business software just don’t work! You must get a better system and put your business processes on autopilot. Technology can turn the nightmare into a simple, predictable and working process.

Yes, they are so wrong, especially within the current recession.

Today the average adult spends up to 3 hours a day more on the Internet than they spend watching TV. About 70% of the EU and US populations regularly use the Internet. Over 1.3 billion people in the world are online,
ready to make a purchase if they find something worthwhile. Online shopping has increased by as much as 50 % over the last year. Geography can no longer limit the number of sales.
The reach of customers is absolutely amazing! There has never been a more accessible market in any other decade. Using the web correctly can popularize your brand and produce more customers than was ever possible before.  Only 4% of small businesses are currently selling online! Where are you, where is your competition? Are you using the web to your maximum to grow your business? If you don’t get on it, you’ll be left sitting on the porch with your product. Sure, everyone is not a prospect and chasing all of them goes nowhere. But getting them come to you first, finding you, instead of you finding them is the real thing.

Let’s take a real-world example

Sales Automation

Sales Automation

With 14000 searches daily for a specific business niche, they get around 1000 visitors (organic / referral /ads), from which some 25 make orders the same day. What happens with the other 975?98% of their prospects, marketing opportunities and even BUDGET is thrown away!

975 opportunities, some of which they have paid to have, but they lost, because they didn’t follow-up them.

They just tune, educate and send the potential customers to their competitors?! If we don’t grab at least their emails today and follow-up later, we are in a huge, money-eating hole.

Not maximizing your web presence can have devastating consequences.

No matter how great your product is, some people are simply not ready for it. Customers buy when they are ready to buy, not when we are ready to sell. They act according to their own, incalculable reasoning. That doesn’t mean, that they won’t buy, most of them will. If you do follow consistently and automatically, there is where exponential growth happens. You need to be there when your prospects decide to give your product a try. But, you also need to be there when your customers make a second or third purchase. You should be there to promote up-sells and cross-sells, building RELATIONSHIPS. It’s our responsibility to create moments of interaction with our prospects, to maximize those moments, close more sales and grow our business.

Have you ever felt like walking zombie?

We all (small and big) have the “overwhelmed workaholic” pain and there are days when we even can’t get a decent sleep. We forget to live our life, to devote time to favorite activities… this reflects in our family, budgets, dreams, happiness and every other personal area. The Cure?

Automating and doubling our sales. It’s not only possible, it’s measurable. Plus it removes the lack of time and energy, the inability to break free!

Today there are thousands of CRM, salesforce automation and business process management solutions. Millions of people use them every day to follow up, educate their prospects and customers, cultivate lasting relationships and maximize the value of their database and businesses. Assign ALL your leads the value they deserve. Treat each prospect as if they were already your customer, and remember that a vast number of them will be. You’re never going to be able to give your customers the best deal. But, by treating your customers the way they deserve, they will be creating customers for life. Reselling (cross-selling and up-selling) is much more profitable. One who spends significant amounts of money in your business, loves you, and brings in dozens of referrals.

There are just 4 key actions, which produce 80 percent of our sales:

  1. Increase your rankings with the art and a science of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
  2. Update your content-rich and effective website, capturing as many leads as possible.
  3. Use a full featured web-based CRM system to follow-up and support all your contacts.
  4. Track, measure and optimize the results with usability, performance and split testing.

When you test and measure, you’re bringing marketing to a scientific level.
You don’t have to rely on instinct or hope anymore.

Define, Empower, Liberate and Enjoy more free time in 2009!

Incorporating automated Internet systems to your present business structure often results in an exponential gain in productivity, it adds impact and consistency to your sales process.
I can do the same for your company. I’ve spent the last several years working with many types of traditional offline and online businesses, helping them do more and most of them have benefited from using these strategies.

Even this post is an initial conversation, a chance to begin a relationship.

You’re important to me, so please let me know what you think.

Smart & Creative gadgets 2009

After a deep research for my smart tools upgrade, Santa brought me a new smartphone, camera, monitor and MIDI controller.
They all share a common trend for 2009:  slim and stylish design, hundreds of consolidated features, precise touch control and web-native applications.

Smartphone

HTC Touch pro

HTC Touch pro

If you need mobile office power, fast clickable touchscreen, QWERTY keyboard, GPS and Wi-Fi,  you probably will check the top5 business smart-phones: BlackBerry Storm, Palm Treo ProNokia E71 and Sony Ericsson Xperia X1, Tmobile G1

…but you may end your holiday with HTC’s Touch Pro, like I did.

All you need – wherever you are.

Digital Camera

Canon PowerShot SX1

Canon PowerShot SX1

Recently gone through some hunting, I  decided to compare Canon EOS 450D with the new Powershot SX1.  The pictures from the dSLR were comparable to the ones by the SX1, which is a great hybrid – crisp macro and enormous telephoto zoom in a one-hand package was a perfect fit.
If you wanna get rid of your old and heavy SLR,  Canon SX1 is empowered with features never seen before on a compact camera:

  • 20x wide-angle optical zoom
  • 10 Megapixel CMOS
  • new DIGIC 4 processor for fast performance
  • 4 fps continuous shooting and
  • full HD movie capture!

2009 will be the year of the rich, detailed, crisp full HD images in a wide ISO range of shooting situations with full manual control on the move.

All-in-one LCD Monitor

Samsung T260HD

Samsung T260HD

I was tired of messing with 3 screens in the studio, so an upgrade to a full HD, crystal clear LCD monitor with integrated DTV tuner was a perfect fit.
The Samsung T260HD is a 26″ Widescreen full HD+ (1920×1200) resolution with embedded DTV tuner, 10000:1 dynamic contrast, 2 invisible built-in SRS TruSurround speakers and 5ms grey-to-grey response time.
The viewing angle in both axis is over 160 degrees, so I can follow what’s is going on literally from everywhere, even from the bent glass bathtub. Finally all video cables go to the same unit – Analog RGB, DVI, HDMI, Component, and TV.  The only problem I had was, that there is no VESA wall mount, so I had to mount it on a wall TV swivel/ tilt stand.

MIDI controller/ Stage piano

KAWAI mp5

KAWAI mp5

8 years later I’m happy to get back to daily jam sessions with hundreds of native sampled instruments, played on an advanced hammer action professional stage piano. After testing CME VX8 and Yamaha Motif XS8, I decided to stick to KAWAI and their 80 years of piano sound experience. The new KAWAI MP5 is sure to satisfy the most demanding performer’s need for impeccable sound quality, responsive touch, 4 zones and powerful control.  Not to mention using it as master 88-key MIDI controller in your  home-based studio. Boasted with 256 high-quality instrument sounds,  including Kawai’s famous Concert Grand piano, the sound is awesome! Hope to find a KAWAI K1 library, which was my favorite 12 years ago.