Green Apple Sales Blog

First off forget about the down economy.  Opportunity is always abundant in the US.  Sometimes there are even better opportunities to be had during bad times.  Things are not as bad as the media makes it seem.

Second, Double your efforts.  Start doing some serious networking.  Carry a fistful off business cards with you everywhere you go.  Attend some local networking events.  Get to know all the other business owners around you.  Get on the phone.  Make contacts always.  Business slow?  Get on the phone, get on the phone.  I can not stress that enough.  Send emails out as well.  Just connect to as many people as possible.

Third, increase your marketing efforts.  Start implementing previously unused techniques.  Have you ever paid kids in the neighborhood to deliver flyers?  Run a small targeted postcard campaign?  Do you have a website?  If you have a website are you utilizing SEO and other digital marketing techniques.

Fourth, Set a goal to achieve and commit.  Something short term and outside your usual production scope.  You have to push yourself harder than before.  You only truly perform when you attempt to do things you are not sure you can achieve.  So do not be modest.

Fifth, be positive and make friends, the more friends you have, the more business comes to you.

Get moving….

Cheers,

Dan O’Callaghan

A lot of business owners do not understand what a website really is well here goes.

A website is a 24 hour interactive business brochure. It displays your products to the entire world all the time.

A website is a targeted marketing tool. Once you have a website you need to build it to market customers. The nice thing is this form of marketing is much more targeted. For instance if you sell wicker furniture in Orland Park, Il you could send out a thousand postcards and hope to get to people who want Wicker Furniture, or you could optimize your website so when 400 people a month search for “Wicker Furniture” in Orland Park they find you on page one of the search engine. That is a lot of qualified traffic, and it cost less.

A website helps you build customer lists that you can market consistently. This is opt-in marketing from people who want to receive your specials.

These are a few points if you want to know more call me.

Dan O’Callaghan

To often do you see companies with people sitting behind their desks stressed about the stability of their job.  Times are tough and the economy just is not getting better.  The inflow of business has been cut in half and the company is going to have to start cutting people.

So they just sit and wait.  WHAT?  Why?  because I am not a sale person, beat it.  Get on the phone.  Stand up for your company and your job, i don’t care if you mop the floors, start drumming up some business.  If not do not complain when your job is gone.

If people would just sell they could solve all of their problems and others.  I have seen owners of companies just sit there sh-t because it is warm.  I do not accept that, not from myself and sure as hell not from others.

This is America, nothing has changed.  There is a ton of opportunity out there for every business but remember this ‘Good things come to those who wait, but only things left behind by those who hustle.’ -Abraham Lincoln

I wake up everyday grateful for opportunity.  It is there for us all.  Feelin down, business slow, need a little motivation?  A kick in the Arse?

Give me a call, quit making excuses and get selling!

Dan O’Callaghan

Check out www.shareyoursoles.org It is a charity that was founded over a decade ago and has brought tons of shoes to people in need in over 40 countries including right here in the USA!

I am the President of Green Apple Sales, an internet marketing and web development firm based in New Lenox, Il.  I have been hunting for the last 6 months for a good solid charity to sponsor.  I looked at quite a few and spoke with the manager or director.  I did not feel personally or emotionally impacted by any of them.

Then I get an email from a friend Mary about Mona Purdy at Share Your Soles in Alsip, Il.  Mary explains that their website is never up to date and it is hard to find someone to do it consistently as they are all volunteers.

I told her I would give her a call.  We spoke and set up a day to meet.  I went to the warehouse to take a look at the operation and speak with Mona.  Wow!  That says it, huge, tons of volunteers, probably 200,000 pairs of shoes and everyone is working.  If you are in Chicago and you do not stop in to see this place you are really missing out.

Mona is a very real person and she is as genuine as they come.  I stayed for over 3 hours as she explained all about Share Your Soles while directing and talking to everyone else.  I left knowing exactly what they are about and I was overwhelmed by the first experience of being there and seeing so many people working together for a good cause.  I guess this proves the world ain’t all bad.

As you have probably figured out Green Apple Sales now proudly sponsors Share Your Soles, and we will be donating many of our services.  I suggest you go take a look for yourself.  After you do… I can almost guarantee you will be compelled to get involved in some way.

Even if you can not make it out there, or you are not near Chicago go to the Share Your Soles website and make a donation they have a ton of shoes and need more funds to clean and ship them.

Dan O’Callaghan

Alright listen up because I am tired of explaining this over the phone.  This will help anyone with a computer…who does not know.

Three simple things to keep your computer running faster:
1.) Clear your browser.(internet explorer, firefox, I recommend the Google Chrome browser)  How do I clear the browser? look for tools on your browser and delete all of the browsing history, cookies, cache.  Uncheck your saved “forms & password” so you don’t delete those.  Close the program.
2)If you are on a PC run “disc cleanup”  You can find this by going to the “start” botton then “all programs”-”System Tools”-”Disc Cleanup”  Run Disc cleanup.  If you have a MAC (and you should) you do not need to do this, it maintains itself.
3)Again if you have a PC…when “disc cleanup” is done run “disc defragmenter”  Go back to the same place you found disc cleanup and the disc defrag.. is right near it.  Defragment your C: drive.  When it is done.  Restart your computer.  Again if you have a MAC (and you should) it has a Journaling file system and it does this all by itself.

I know most of you will need to use all three steps because you have a PC.  Get a MAC.  If you are stuck with a PC check out LINUX, thousands of “distros” start with Ubuntu it is simple, they are all free.  Oh yeah it will run faster than any windows “distro”.

I dual boot my MacBook Pro with Linux (Ubuntu 9.04) and MAC OSX.  LINUX has no chains, you have access to everything and you will learn quite a bit about computers learning about it.