Solution Quest

Recently several high profile cold cases have been solved with the aid of genetic genealogy. This has raised many questions and some confusion about genealogical DNA testing. At the September meeting of the NC chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists I addressed these issues. If you would like know more you can visit

www.sqgenealogy.com

An owner of a company providing self defense training asked how can I get more people to notice my business? Here is my answer:
Your question hits at the heart of the purposes of marketing.
​Making people aware that your business exists.
​Making people aware that you provide something they need, i.e. you have a solution to their problem.
​Marketing needs to be intentional. You should develop a marketing strategy/plan then implement the plan. (yes I stole that from that old adage :plan your work and work your plan).
​
​In making your plan you should have at least 6 steps:
​ 1. Review all of your past and current clients and determine the following for each one.
a. Why did they want your service
​ b. How did they find your service
​ c. What do they have in common
​2. Develop and or revise your target clients based on the results of your review of your clients
​3 Add to that target base with those you think you have been missing.
​4. Develop planned steps to communicate to those target clients:
​ a. Social media marketing
​ b. Making presentations to groups like women's clubs, church groups, exercise groups Service organizations like Rotary, Chamber of commerce, etc.,
​ c. offer seminars or presentations at gyms, coffee shops,
​5. Use professional looking collateral and advertising materials, Cards, flyers, posters.pens etc.
​6. Constant marketing including car signs or wraps, business wear and always wear a name badge with your company name and your name. You will be surprised at how much interest you can elicit at the grocery or other stores or at social occasions.

​Equally important as your plan is working the plan. Most marketing programs fail or do not yield what they should because of lack of continuous work. You must be willing to put in the time to see the full potential. That means every day you must be on the attack to make people aware. Your business may be about defense but your marketing needs to be in offense mode.
​All the best
​Bruce Allen
​Solution Quest

I was recently asked "How do you get past a gatekeeper who says no one here is interested in your services/products." Here is my reply: This requires a multi-pronged attack.
​1. Do your homework! Find out all you can with an eye to discovering why your services meet their needs.
​2. Find all of the contacts you can and search for them on sites like
Alignable and LinkeIn. The higher on the ladder the better.
​3. Look for trade associations that the firm or contacts may belong to and find out when they meet and if you can join in some capacity to get to the membership lists. (Should be a lot of additional firms you will want to contact here.)
​4. Work the networking and trade associations until you can get a contact that will invite you in past the gatekeeper.
​All this presumes the company was already qualified by you as a target worth going after. If it was a cold call with no real prequalification you may want to consider re-evaluating your strategy or if your strategic method includes cold calls then accept the gatekeeper and move on so you don't miss other cold calls.
Cold calling usually requires a relatively large number of calls to effect success. It becomes a numbers game. A detailed study of sales techniques and successes miraculously determined that those sales people who make the most sales are those who make the most sales calls...!

Family History involves a wide variety of things. My sister and I are lucky to have this profile of our father published in the Lima News, September 30, 1958. The article was written by our uncle, Mark Alonzo Cole, my mother's brother.