Has your sales staff become complacent and stale or maybe one person is pulling all the weight for your business? Maybe you are tired of having to cattle-prod your sales team on a weekly basis or could you be the three-person-show with one member dragging you down?
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These days with the continuing onslaught of new advertisements and information to attract our attention, it’s a wonder that we are able to get any work done. It’s even more important for the business development person at an advertising and marketing agency to stay focused and continue to penetrate a prospect’s world via all different kinds of communication. It may take offline resources and it may take online resources. You’ll have to be creative and think OOB.

As the business development person in your agency, you probably network a lot and are already well established and connected within your community and niche. This article is based on the knowledge that you have experience prospecting and developing new business for the agency.

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During a recent exchange of emails with a colleague, he mentioned “out of the box thinking.” His comments came along at an opportune time since we were preparing for an event in the fall. Some of his ideas will hopefully be implemented as they are out of the box and really great. “Out of the box” (OOB) pretty much sums up what I did with one of my small businesses for many years. We stepped out of the box, went against the grain and stretched ourselves in all areas of our business. This led us to working on many projects, and even a new company.
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For over two decades, I have worked in and around small business with business owners and their staffs. In all my years of doing this, I have never run into, or worked with, a specialist whose job was to find and help solve sales, marketing, and advertising issues in a small business and then back away until needed again. During my years operating as a retailer, wholesaler, and service company, I wish I had access to someone who could have offered an unbiased, outside perspective without long-term retainers and marketing gibberish. Well, I finally decided to formalize what I’ve been doing for years, and that’s to provide a small business coach without the strings attached.

This month we are launching Dave K’s “Small Business Coaching” for those that need help and assistance in their small business. You can check it out here at Dave K’s “Small Business Coaching” and even sign up for a Special FREE Report that I prepared just for this launch.

Now many of you entrepreneurs are out there searching just like I was years ago.
Maybe you just want and desire an honest sounding board. Well, you’ll get the ‘Straight Skinny’ when you need to ‘talk to the coach’. It could be that you’re overwhelmed with too many things to do and not enough time, or maybe sales are not there and you don’t know which way to turn. For some it’s probably just simple things like how to drive more traffic to your website. Others are more complicated and need constant help with ongoing issues. How about more efficient ways to run your business, so you can have a balanced lifestyle? Wouldn’t that be great!

No matter where you are in your small business we’ll begin with an evaluation of your particular Strengths versus Weaknesses – and then look at how to best proceed. So if you are feeling like you need help, we are here when you’re ready. Check it out and get your Special FREE Report at Dave K’s “Small Business Coaching”

“The Importance of a Professional ID Package”

Since I started my first ad agency in 1988, I’ve seen more articles and opinions about branding. Everyone has their own opinions about this very overused and misunderstood word, but the simple fact is that most business owners don’t really understand why their logo and ID package should be professionally designed.

In my opinion, branding starts with your ID package; which includes logos, slogans, colors, graphics, fonts, and integration into the marketing. If this package is designed correctly, you can make your business look like a million bucks.
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“Use This Key And Unlock The Door
To Your Next Big Client”

This is a first for us here at clickandmortarblog.com in that we are introducing audio in this article. Press play and listen in or you can just read the article below.

If you like this format, please let us know by emailing us at

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I’ll always remember the call I received while we were early adopters on the internet. It was from a scientist stationed in Antarctica, and he was inquiring about purchasing a foosball table when he returned from his stint down on the faraway frozen continent.

We received many calls from people all over the world during the six years we operated both online and offline ventures. It was the wild, wild, west, and I was right in the middle of it all.

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In all my years of being involved and around sales, marketing, and advertising, it surprises me how many small business owners don’t have someone working on business development. Many an owner and manager I’ve met should be the biz dev person but they just don’t have the desire or truly understand what to do. I think this comes back to a couple of things and those are sales and social interaction.

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“How to Increase and Add Value for Less Than Ten Bucks”

In this three part series it is my hope to open your eyes to the world of ad specialties and specifically coffee mugs. Pictured above are my favorite mugs, not in any specific order. In my opinion, mugs are the best ad specialty to utilize because they sit on your client’s or prospect’s desk all day long. Whether you operate an on-line venture or traditional off-line store, it makes no difference.

This is a really simple concept: use the mug, cup or whatever ad specialty that you have to increase value, show appreciation, and keep you in front of that prospect or client.

I’m a sucker for high quality ad specialties. Notice I said high quality. These are the ones that last for years. Some of my favorite jackets, hats, and mugs were ones purchased while our family was on holiday. Some were given to me as samples and some were ones that we were utilizing in our marketing…

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How are you doing with your transition to the web? Is your business really using the internet to drive traffic, or do you just have a static website with some content on it that costs you money to maintain? Today’s topic is about driving traffic, and there are quite a few ways to do this including search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, blogging and links…

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