This morning Charly and I had Jill Freeman from Roar! Sales and Marketing Training and Development on our Blog Talk Radio Show. Jill has 16 years of experience in sales, marketing and teaching small business owners how to increase productivity. Her passion is to help people to find out what they want.

Jill worked in the corporate world for a number of years and eventually it took its toll on her health and her family. So she decided to leave the corporate world and start her own business. She calls herself a “corporate drop out”.

A lot of small business owners struggle to make marketing and selling a priority. Running their business is consuming all their time and leaves no time for marketing. A lot of small business owners lack marketing skills and have no idea about all the different marketing channels and possibilities that are out there. For a lot of them, the online world is scary and confusing and they don’t have a presence there at all, but nowadays this is crucial. This does not have to be complicated, it can just be like a big business card with a summary of what you do and your contact details.

The main thing is to build a relationship with your customer, to work out what they really need and to have pride in your products and services and be happy to sell them.

Part of building trust includes referring the customer to somebody else if they are better suited to the customer’s needs.

One of the things Jill highly recommended was to join one professional group like a Business Women’s Association. There is no need to join lots of groups as you can’t get the most benefit by spreading yourself too thin.

Have a business plan, use your intuition, be prepared to question your strategies and change. Don’t cling to things that don’t work.

Jill very much believes in one to one coaching as well as group coaching. Listen tot he full interview here: