Attract Sell Keep

The ASK Workbook is the practical companion to Attract Sell Keep: The Art of Marketing Your Services. After you have completed ASK, the expert guide to building an ethical, profitable, and enjoyable service practice, put what you learned to work through these engaging and easy-to-follow exercises keyed to the lessons in the book With The ASK Workbook, you can build a practical growth plan that is specific to your business and the prospects and clients you want to serve. This Workbook is designed to be an ongoing guide. You don't have to complete all the exercises at one time. Use it as your business grows...and if you follow its practical lessons, growth is what you can expect. Attract Sell Keep: The Art of Marketing Your Services teaches service professionals how to build an ethical, profitable, and enjoyable service practice.
About the Author: About Henry When I became a Merrill Lynch stockbroker, I was shocked to learn that my financial success as a professional investment adviser was dependent on my personal marketing skills. I was handed a stack of coupons people had sent to Merrill for a free brochure and told to cold call them to see if they wanted additional information. This "smile and dial" strategy, the only marketing and sales training I received, was demeaning, frustrating and shocking, but I had no choice if I was going to make a living. It was sink-or-swim. I had a good education and experience from former jobs in advertising, market research, and franchising, but I knew next to nothing about promoting my own services. So, I started cold calling. Sure, most people hung up on me, some were angry that I bothered them, and a few had some questions. It was a rough beginning. I learned that the best way to extend the conversation before I was dismissed was to ask questions: "Are you optimistic about the stock market?" "Do you enjoy picking your own stocks?" "What criteria do you use to decide when to sell?" When I met with prospects, I asked more questions, and that usually encouraged them to start asking me some: "What did I or Merrill Lynch think about the market?" "What research did I use to identify good investments?" "What criteria did I use to know when to sell?" Of the fourteen rookie brokers that opened the Merrill office in Chicago's John Hancock Center, I led the monthly statistics in new business. This stared my life-long research to learn more about the best and most effective ways to market marketing professional services. For the next 40 years I studied what others had done, attended and gave business development seminars, and experimented with different strategies to accelerate the growth of my businesses. The results have been far more than I could have ever imagined. After nine years working for both Merrill Lynch and Smith Barney I started and sold two successful investment advisory companies, and finally retired in 2007 to write, teach and mentor entrepreneurs. This book is a compilation of the lessons I learned and is an excellent basic text for anyone who has to promote and sell their own services to earn a living. It is unique in that it offers practical, profitable, and ethical solutions for technically competent but marketing-challenged individuals.