A Vision in a Time of Peril

It's hard to see the big picture in times of turmoil. Let's go back to Wednesday, March 4, 2009. That day, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, the richest individuals in America, wrote a letter to David Rockefeller, President of the Rockefeller Foundation. The letter suggested a gathering of their billionaire friends to discuss giving.

The letter was mailed in the backdrop of a tumultuous week. By that Friday March 6th, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached its lowest point in twelve years, free falling 52.9% from two years before in the good 'ole days of 2007 prosperity.

March 6th, 2009 brings back vivid memories. I was visiting the White House with a group of young entrepreneurs with The Summit Series. The White House Office of Public Engagement had put together the session to discuss their plans for the Economic Recovery Act. As Jason Furman, the Deputy Director of the National Economic Council, spoke to our group, the market was in freefall.

While the media was anointing The Great Recession and debating whether it would become a depression, Gates and Buffet had the fortune and foresight, to bring together their friends for dinner in New York to discuss how to give back.

Have you ever engaged the idea of starting your internet home business? That sounds just perfect to most of the people. If you have, then you have probably seen the massive opportunity the Internet Marketing is offering. Many people wish to start without big investments, and that's fine, and it is possible.

Whatever your Internet Home Business venture might be, if you want to succeed, you will need some proper tools. That's a fact.

So, what tools exactly am I talking about?

The Tool 1 - A Website...

You don't need to have one if you don't want to, but don't expect to have much success with your efforts on the long run.

The biggest advantage of having a website is that you get to control the content. That's essential to the success of your internet home business. Another example-having a website is like owning a store where you can direct the traffic to, and not owning one is like having to go to search for the sales opportunities with a bag on the shoulder!

People continue to say how cold-calling is dead and how in today's environment, it no longer can be cost justified. The answer in my book is both "yes" and "no." Let me deal with the "no" first.

In the past few months, I've watched numerous salespeople shift all of their prospecting efforts to developing social media with such vehicles as Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook. The problem with this is it becomes a giant time sucker. The payout of social media in terms of developing sales short-term is very poor.

To develop a social media strategy requires time, and I'm a firm believer it must be incremental time. You can't allow it to take away from your current sales development strategy. Now, I'm astute enough to know that this may change, but we're not there yet. Salespeople who spend their time dealing in the social media world at the expense of time spent on normal sales development do so at great expense.