This might possibly be the single most important rule of business or sales.  If they LIKE you, BELIEVE you, have CONFIDENCE in you and TRUST you, then they will do business with you or buy from you.  Now, of these four things: LIKE, BELIEF, CONFIDENCE AND TRUST, which one do YOU think is the most influential?  Raise your hand if you're thinking it is BELIEF. C’mon raise your hand.  Raise your hand if you thinking it’s CONFIDENCE?  Who thinks it is TRUST?  Do I see someone who thinks it is being LIKED?

If you were thinking TRUST you’re almost right. If you were thinking LIKE, you’re right.  Here's an example. Pretend you’re a single woman; you go out on a date with a guy.  You come back and now you’re talking about that date with your mom or girlfriend.  “You know, Betty, I really trusted this guy, but I didn’t like him!”  Or, are you said, "Betty, I liked him a lot and I hope we go out again." What? "Again." I hope we go out again  Liking leads to trusting. Trusting leads to confidence and confidence leads to belief. Are you with me on this?

If you’re not likable the best thing for you to do is get out of the people business.  Get a job on the bomb squad or as a secret government assassin where not being likeable is ok.

Next, become a trusted advisor.  And,the only way that you can become a trusted advisor is to first become a friend. The only way that you can become a friend is to be liked. Right?

Bert Martinez is an international speaker and transitional teacher. Bert’s ability to help people handle their negative emotions and beliefs has earned him the nicknamed "The Emotional Engineer." Follow Bert on Twitter or Connect with Bert on Facebook.

When it comes to increasing your sales, there is a basic principle that you must remember:

Your prospects buy the benefits to fill specific needs or wants.  Your job as a business owner is to know, understand and deliver the benefits they’re looking for, which will differ depending on the needs of your customers, even for the same product or service. Therefore, it’s critical that you know the multiple benefits for each of your products and services and know exactly what your prospect’s needs and wants are. This is the essence of marketing; to create a match between your buyer’s needs and wants and your list of benefits.

There are two primary categories of information that will help you:

1. The first category is demographics. These are the characteristics that identify the ability, need and interest of a client to purchase your product or service. Demographics define those clients who need what you sell.
2. The second category is psychographics. These are the factors that identify the motivation or reasons why someone wants to buy your product or service. Psychographics define those clients who want what you sell.

As you identify your prospects’ wants and needs based upon their demographic and psychographic characteristics, compare this data with your own wants and needs. You will gain greater insight into your ideal client. Once you accurately target your ideal clients, you’ll spend less time and money to acquire them.

To start, you must research your current clients – the ones you presently deal with day in and day out. Select at least three of your current clients to interview. Perform the demographic research by personally interviewing these clients either on the phone, or in person.

Your Retail Consumers: You must know your consumers. Invest some time in understanding your prospects. Find the answers to questions like these:

• Who are your current clients: men, mostly women, do they represent a 50/50 mix?
• Is there a certain age or age range that tends to buy from you?
• Are most of your typical clients single or married?
• Do they have a high school, college or graduate degree or some where in between?
• Do you know their approximate income level?
• If not, do you know what zip code they live in? (Most zip codes contain homes or apartments that represent specific income ranges.)

Your Business Buyer: If you sell to businesses, interview at least 5-7 typical businesses you sell to. Find out the number of employees they have and their location to learn about their company culture and the number of subordinates you may have to speak with in order to get your sales message to the decision-maker.

When you sell products or services in multiple cities, you may require different approaches. For example, you may need to position your product or service differently when selling to a Manhattan-based business compared to a Houston-based business. In some cases, that difference can be day and night.

Traits and Patterns

When you have completed the interviews, compile all of the information to determine commonalities among your current clients. Collecting this information will help you find the traits they have in common, which will help in future marketing.

Having this demographic information will help you create a picture of your current clients. By identifying this client with demographic information, you can later begin your lead-generation efforts, and create a marketing message that is laser-targeted toward your ideal client. So take your time and be as specific as possible when completing these interviews.

It will pay off when you have a steady stream of ideal clients, increased sales revenues, and more profits.

Remember. when you're selling to business or consumers, 80% buy within the 5th - 12th follow up. It takes persistence!

Did you know images of hot women make men feel bad, too? Everyone knows that the way women are portrayed in US culture – sexy and super thin- makes most women feel a bit like yesterday’s leftovers. When we look at how media portays women they feel inadequate - and it's no wonder, when the average woman model weighs up to 30% less than the typical woman and maintains a weight at about 18 to 25% below what is considered healthy for her age and height. But the 50,000 or so ads the average American is exposed to a year aren't just affecting the girls.

The University of Missouri found that men react negatively to unrealistic ads, too. This will amaze you, it wasn't images of hot men that got the guys feeling self-conscious - it was images of hot women. Their research began by trying to see if men were as negatively affected by men's magazines as women are by Cosmo and the like. Men that were given men's magazines like Maxim had lower self image, which got the researchers to question exactly what about the magazines cause the drop in self esteem. So they showed men just the pictures of objectified women, men, and the articles and again checked their esteem levels. They found that, surprisingly, it wasn't the images of idealized men that made the guys feel inadequate - it was the women. Even more surprising was that the male fashion group reported the least amount of body self-consciousness among the three groups - the guys couldn't care less what the other men looked like.

If you've ever been in high school, it's obvious why seeing a hot woman would make a less than ideal looking guy feel bad. I mean, what guy hasn't choked when trying to talk to the head cheerleader? Attractive women are intimidating, and the mere sight of one is enough to cause average Joe Lunchbucket to give himself a quick once-over.

The theory is that a beautiful women makes a man self conscious because he’s reminded that he's not in her league - that is, they take one look at a hot girl and quickly realize there's no way they're good-looking enough to have her. Since women have the larger investment in children, they tend to be considered the 'selective' ones, historically speaking. The men and their billions of sperm have to compete with other guys to persuade a girl that they've got the genes to be worth it.

To test this theory, they broke the men into two groups – Group A received magazine layouts of sexually idealized females and Group B received the same layouts with average-looking 'boyfriends' added to the photos, with captions about how the female models are attracted to the average-looking men. Group A men who looked at just the model were felt self-conscious.  Group B men saw that the hotties liked 'normal guys,' they no longer felt the women were out of reach.

Bert Martinez is a sought-after international speaker and transitional teacher. Bert’s ability to help people handle their negative emotions and beliefs has earned him the nicknamed "The Emotional Engineer." Follow Bert on Twitter or Connect with Bert on Facebook.

             Imagine what it would be like if you had 5-10 people who are serious business professionals, who know more than you do about business, who are expert at things that you are not, who care about your business, who care about you, who would come together as a group just to help you solve or avoid problems?  How absolutely wonderful would that be for you?  Well, that’s exactly what a board of advisers does.  It’s a tool that if you use it correctly, would literally transform your business.  

            A board of advisers offers a diversity of benefits that every business can use.

The Benefits

            Benefit #1: Problem avoidance and problem solvers. These are experienced professionals.  They’ve been around the block and they’ve learned a few things. 

            Benefit #2: An objective opinion.  These advisors aren’t married to you and they’re not connected to your business other than as an advisory board.  They will, hopefully, be excruciatingly honest with you.  And that can be a really wonderful benefit. 

            Benefit #3:  Experience is a great teacher.  Learning from someone else’s experience is the best.  Now imagine yourself encircled by people who have these benefits to offer you and your business; advisers who are willing to spend time and energy with you, helping your business grow? Can you imagine what that would do for your business? 

            Benefit #4: Credibility. Surrounding yourself with a board of advisers enhances your credibility. Now, that’s power.  You not only get to pick their brains, but you also get to use their credibility.

            The power of a board of advisers is that it allows you to multiply your assets; it allows you to leverage the skills and attributes of outside professionals with your existing skills.  In most cases, we have to pay for these services.  We have to go and spend some big money to get people to help us with our business.  Well, with your board of advisers, you get that for almost nothing. 

What a Board of Advisers Is and Is Not

             Don’t confuse a board of advisers with a board of directors.  Most of us have heard of the term, ‘board of directors,’ and we sometimes confuse that with the board of advisers.  Let's explore the real difference between the two. 

            Directors are elected to an office and they’re appointed to serve for a particular term.  They get compensated for their time which means they have a legal responsibility as well as a moral duty to do the best job they possibly can do.  Directors usually have a stake in the company so there may be legal consequences for their actions.

            A board of advisers is different.  Advisory board members are unpaid.  They don’t have any legal responsibility.  They still have moral obligations to give the best advice possible.  This simple difference, that they don’t have a legal liability, means that they’re not going to be sued for the advice and the counsel they give you.  That difference alone makes these two boards extraordinarily different. 

            A mastermind group is another term that you might be familiar with.  A board of advisers is different than a mastermind group because your board of advisers has come together for the sole purpose of helping your business.  A mastermind group is a group of people coming together to help each other; each member expects to get something in return. 

            Again, with a board of advisers, they’re all coming together to help you so you can imagine the tremendous power you’re going to be able to exert by having all of these people focused on your business. 

The People You Want

            Here are some items to consider as you get ready to put together your first board of advisers.  I would suggest you leave it fairly small.  I tell my clients not to have more than 5-7 members.  As your experience and comfort grows, so can your board of advisers.  By keeping the board small, it becomes a nice unified group.  It becomes a group that you get to know and quite candidly, they get to know you.  And so all of you can focus your effort and energy on the one thing that’s most important . . .  your business. 

            I also want you to choose members who are not "yes"men.  You want people who will challenge you.  This is tricky for some of us; we want people who will agree with us.  You may want to surround ourselves with people who will say "yes" all the time.  A good board of advisers will challenge you from time to time.  I’m not telling you to go find some butthead who doesn’t agree with anything you’re doing. Far from it.  However you want people who are not afraid of you and are professional, who will tell you their opinion.  You don’t always have to take their advice but I do want you to listen to it.  And if you surround yourself with a bunch of yes people, that may not happen and then what is the point of your board of advisers?

            You want these people to be supportive of your objectives.  You want people who have your best interest in mind.  One last thought. You want to find the best people for your business, not the easiest ones, not the ones that’ll say yes the first time you ask them, but the ones who could make the biggest difference in your business.  If you constitute a good board of advisers, you are halfway home.  A good board of advisers will literally transform your capacity as a business owner. 

            When you surround yourself with people who have credentials, people who know more about business than you, imagine how much credibility that lends your business and credibility is power.  When we borrow money, create new relationships, do almost anything in business, people are always looking to see if we you are credible. 

Problems 

            A good board of advisers will help you avoid problems and some of the pitfalls of business management and growth.  They will also help you solve existing problems.

            Now, when you face a problem, you can benefit from the wisdom of a trusted group of advisers.  They aren't there for you to vent or to listen to you brag. But, they do represent a group of peers who are every bit as successful as you are and who have seen some of the very problems  you face.   So get people who will complement your weaknesses; not play to your strengths.

Questions

Questions - If you have questions leave me a comment or send me an email.

Until next time -  You Were Created to Succeed!

This is how you get involved with Success Television and get your voice heard! Sign up for Twitter or Facebook, find Bert, and let him know what you think about the issues of the day. What’s making you mad? What’s got you concerned? Where are we missing the boat? How can we help your business?

Follow Bert on Twitter

Connect with Bert on Facebook

"We've become a nation of whiners when dealing with this economy."  Phil Gramm former U.S. Senator.

The economy isn't so bad we're just emotionally unfit. For many of us, it's the first time we've faced adversity.

Luxury items are still being bought just not by as many people and that is probably a good thing because people are planning and managing their money better. There is peace and power in living below our means.  Is that an emotion that we need to make stronger? What about delayed gratification? Isn’t this a muscle that sometimes becomes weak during good times?

People have to educate themselves about what's really happening now. We are going through a transition. It's change and every generation has faced some pretty tough changes at some stage. Let’s look at the Greatest Generation. A person born in 1910 was witnessing the Great Depression by the time they were 19. When they were 32, they would have witnessed one world war and the start of another.  That's adversity.

So, the Boomer generation has had it fairly easy. We've all experienced some personal pain and I'm sure you've experienced it in your family. I have in mine. But, we haven't had an experience on a cultural level to the extreme that we are starting to experience now. Even 9/11 didn’t seem to phase us for that long; we acted quickly and moved on. From the Baby Boomer generation on down, we haven't been adversly tested.  We've lived through a period where mortgages seemed to good to be true so we bought houses we couldn't afford. Times were so good few asked why or how long it would last?

The question is, when challenges happen, what do you focus on? Do you focus on asking, “Why is this happening to me?”  Or, do you ask, "Is this a chance for an opportunity or personal growth?

Look at people like Lance Armstrong or Michael J. Fox or Bill Bartmann and their reaction to adversity.

We've also had an opportunity to be honest and open with our kids and talk to them openly about what our family is facing and others are facing so they realize money does not grow on trees?

Our economy isn't so bad in comparison to two thirds of this planet which lives on $3-4 a day. We're stronger than we think and we can train ourselves to take advantage of these changing times. To adapt, to overcome, to thrive!

This is neither the first time we’ll be tested nor the last, so here are 3 strategies to help you get Emotional Fit starting today:

1. Train your mind. When I was broke and starting my career trying to figure out what to do, there was no Internet. It’s funny but I’m old enough to remember those days when I would go to the library and read biographies about survivors of concentration camps or athletes like Og Mandino and learned how they got through their setbacks? I learned about their emotional fitness. 

2. Take control of your body. Our body, emotions, and our minds are linked. Realize fear and depression is physical and if you can get yourself working out intensely, your blood circulating, whether it’s power-walking in the mall, lifting weights, running, you're making a positive change and lifting your mood. Hormones are being released that will give you strength and creativity. If you don’t face your fear, it’s the end; you go into hiding and begin to die.

3. Find a few role models  The world has great role models that have overcome great obstacles. And sometimes that role model is in the mirror; it’s you because you’ve faced crisis before and survived, maybe even thrived.
 

Until next week -  You Were Created to Succeed!

This is how you get involved with Success Television and get your voice heard! Sign up for Twitter or Facebook, find Bert, and let him know what you think about the issues of the day. What’s making you mad? What’s got you concerned? Where are we missing the boat? How can we help your business?

Follow Bert on Twitter

Connect with Bert on Facebook

By being resourceful, we can accomplish great things. We just need to take inventory of the resources we have and use them in creative ways. Here's an example: I used frequent flyers miles to pay for tuition. That's right! But, you're not reading this to hear about my tuition bills.

As I had mentioned in my last blog, I wanted Arnold Schwarzenegger to help me take over Carolco Pictures. Only one problem; I didn't personally know Arnold and even worst, he had no clue I existed.

So I started asking everyone I knew or came into contact with if they knew Arnold. Everyone was saying, "no" or, "yeah right" or "good luck." Anyway, I continued to press on even though I was short on cash, time and contacts. I need to mention that at this time in my life I was living in Salt Lake City, Utah a wonderful place to live but NOT a power player when it comes to big business or Hollywood.

I was driving to the premier of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, staring Robert De Niro. In the car is Mark, a print broker, and his wife, Susan, who is a stay at home mom. So, without fail, I ask Mark if he knew Arnold or how to contact him. He said no. Suddenly Susan exclaimed, "I don't know him but I know when he'll be in town next." My head jerked to attention. Simultaneously, Mark and I asked,  "How do you know?"

The manager at the supplement store told me Arnold was coming into town to present an award to Senator Orin Hatch. "Wow, can I call the store manager and speak with him?" I asked. She gave me his name and number.

I then called the store manager and he explained that Arnold was coming into town to present Senator Hatch an award from the Weider company. I asked if I could attend the program and he said I would need to check with the Wieder company because they were putting on the event. I asked for and he gave me the contact information I needed. Weider Publications, LLC owns and publishes health and fitness magazines.

I contacted Don at Weider company and asked if I could attend. He said, no, unless I was involved with the media.  I responded , "Do you need more media coverage?" After further discussion, he agreed to let me attend if I could bring some media. I promised I would and I did along with video cameras and everything, kinda. I knew a buddy who was a cameraman for one of the news stations and he showed up with another friend who wanted to break into the news business so we were all set. Don was happy because we looked official enough which made him look good.

Arnold gave a great talk, very funny and the audience ate it up. After the talk, Don introduced me to Senator Hatch, Joe Weider and, finally, Arnold.  We chit-chatted for a few seconds and took a photo.  After a few more minutes, I moved in for the kill. This was my only chance. I'm thinking, "If Arnold says yes, it will change my world."  I explained the overall concept for taking over Carolco and Arnold listened intently.

"What kind of interest do you have?" I asked Arnold. He paused and said, "I don't think I would be interested at all." He explained about prior commitments and gave me some history about Carolco's management. We discussed the project for a few minutes longer, out of courtesy for me, I suspect. Ok so I didn't do business with Arnold but I believed the strategies were worth the headline. Now let me ask you - if you're going to be turn down by a possible investor who would you like to be turn by a small shot or a big shot?

The Rest of the Story:

Twentieth Century Fox bought Carolco's assets. Arnold went on to make a few more movies and then become Governor of California. Me? Well, I learned a great strategy that has allowed me access to very successful and influential people including: Wayne Huizenga, Gerry Robert, Brent Spiner, Patrick Snow, and Bill Bartmann, just to name a few. If you would like to build your contacts and accelerate your success follow these actions.

Actions

1) Make a list of your current resources

2) Make a list of the different ways you can use your resources - be creative

3) Identify people that could help you and start asking everyone for an introduction

You Were Created to Succeed!

This is how you get involved with Bert Martinez and Success Television and get your voice heard! Sign up for Twitter or Facebook, find Bert, and let him know what you think about the issues of the day. What’s making you mad? What’s got you concerned? Where are we missing the boat? How can we help your business?

Follow Bert on Twitter

Connect with Bert on Facebook

Do you remember learning how to ride your bide? Sure, you faltered a few times, fell off, and scraped your knees. But, it wasn’t long before you were soaring on two wheels! Riding a bike for most of us was achieving a big goal. Maybe our first taste of success. Success is as simple as riding a bike.

You Can Do It With What You Have

            Sam, a kid from my neighborhood, received a brand new bike. My brother and I, on the other hand, put my bike together from used parts.

Sam was very proud of his new bike, and he wanted to challenge someone to a race around the block. I accepted the challenge and won. That left an indelible impression on me about resources. I discovered that it’s all about what you do with what you have. And it taught me this: Whatever you have NOW is all you need to get you to the Next step.

You don't ALWAYS need money or contacts or whatever you need to be more resourceful.

Let me give you another personal example. We needed to buy a house, but we were limited financially at the time. I retained the services of a real estate agent and began the process of looking for a new home. I didn’t tell the agent that we had less than $800 in our savings account at the time. Within a short time, we found a home and made an a ridiculous offer. We wanted the seller to pay our down payment and all our costs. The agent requested $1,000 earnest money to complete the required paperwork. It was $1,000 we simply didn’t have, so I turned him down. I never explained our financial situation but quietly wrote a $100 check. The agent thought I was kidding. He explained that in his 15 years of selling real estate, he had never seen a deal go through with $100 earnest money. I insisted that he try, and the agent wrote the contract. A few days later our offer was accepted.

Need one more example? I wanted to take over Carolco Pictures, Inc., Carolco had produced some of the highest revenue grossing movies ever made, including Terminator 2, Basic Instinct, Cliffhanger, Total Recall and the Rambo. But now, they were broke and had been delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. I had met with their CFO and quickly realized I need lots of money and some big names to help pull this off. Arnold Schwarzenegger quickly came to mind; only one problem I don't personally know Arnold and even worst he has no clue I exist. Want to know how I met and pitched my deal to Arnold? The simple strategy I used will blow you away and the results will surprise you.

Come back next week and find out for yourself. Yeah that's right. I want you to come back next week and discover how a simple strategy has allowed me to meet and connect with some of the most powerful people in the world.  From doing business to being invited to prestigious events and award shows I use this simple strategy. Learning this very simple strategy will be worth your time.

Until next week -  You Were Created to Succeed!

This is how you get involved with Success Television and get your voice heard! Sign up for Twitter or Facebook, find Bert, and let him know what you think about the issues of the day. What’s making you mad? What’s got you concerned? Where are we missing the boat? How can we help your business?

Follow Bert on Twitter

Connect with Bert on Facebook

Are you into social networking? Do you belong to one or more social networking sites, e.g. LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, or Facebook? The tips listed below will help you manage your time and get more networking done in the shortest time possible.

1. Schedule time to work on your page or site. Treat it like a meeting. Schedule how much time you want to spend developing your page for each of your networking sites. Also consider having a weekly agenda or list of items you want to complete. Now, block that time and commit yourself 100% to the completion of the meeting's agenda.

2. Quality Time. Depending on the usefulness or quality of the site, you may consider how you divide your time. Example, if you believe one site is more useful or better than another for your business or for maintaining friendships, you may schedule more or less time per week or per day. There are some sites I commit 20 -30 minutes per week while others I commit 1 hour per day.

3. Plan Your Work then Work Your Plan. As mentioned above prepare an agenda or list of tasks to complete; remember it's another meeting and you want to accomplish specific items. Read blogs, send messages, update profile, send friend requests, or make some comments, etc., I think you get the idea. Decide what you want to accomplish and as Larry the Cable Guy would say "git-er-done."

4. Time Saving Tip. If you're a member of multiple sites you may want to manage the emails received from your sites. In my opinion most of the emails and alerts can wait until I log in. I only want to respond to friend requests or specific questions that are sent to me and not to the entire site. As you develop relationships, you can exchange emails with those contacts that you trust. To control which emails you receive on any site visit the email options on your setting's page.

5. Celebrate Your Accomplishments. Give yourself a HI-5 for completing the tasks you completed. Don't feel bad if you can't complete everything; most of these sites won't make you rich or even generate huge profits. They're low cost (free to join but require time) and I feel most have value but they won't replace daily marketing and sales strategies.

6. Start with the End in Mind. This is probably the most important point. Ask yourself what is the result you desire from networking? Do you just want to extend your brand's awareness or maybe explore new customer service options? Or, do you want to explore new of ways of building relationships with your customers? If you have a specific goal in mind, networking will be more valuable and more lucrative.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you everyone for your emails and feedback. Next week will be discussing how to get what you want with what you already have. Why NOT having "the money" or "the Contacts" isn't an excuse.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is how you get involved with Success Television and get your voice heard! Sign up for Twitter or Facebook, find Bert, and let him know what you think about the issues of the day. What’s making you mad? What’s got you concerned? Where are we missing the boat? How can we help your business?

Follow Bert on Twitter

Connect with Bert on Facebook

Why do you crave certain foods while other foods leave you feeling flat? Would you like to know how to control your cravings?  The steps below will help you engineer your eating for success? This is not some fast weight loss diet or no carb diet or even a diet program. This is about engineering your emotions or associations with food.

Think about your favorite foods (you may need to close your eyes to visualize this) and find out how all the different foods you eat appear.

Let’s take chocolate cake as an example. Notice how you SEE your chocolate cake. Is it richly detailed 3D right in front of you? Is it a big picture or a small movie or a still photograph?  On the other hand, let’s picture a less desirable dish. Does it appear in drab grays and blacks? Is it a photograph down in the corner?

So if you want to eat better food to meet your health goals, systematically change the the way you view food. Make the chocolate cake or other sweets less attractive in your mind’s eye; black and white, flat or make the picture in your mind small and fuzzy. This will reduce its attractiveness immediately. Also increase the attractiveness of healthier dishes; making them more colorful, richly detailed and 3-dimensional.

I promise this strategy will have a big and automatic affect on your eating habits. You might think, ‘ it’s too simple.’ When you know how to do something, it is easy. Learn it, practice it, and put it to work for you.  Remember, just like riding a bike or tying your shoes or most things in life, repetition is the mother of skill.

You’d be surprised how many people FAIL to motivate themselves. They have poor flat pictures of their work or fuzzy black and white images of their goal or reward. No wonder they’re not motivated.

Now you have a strategy to help you get what you want, what you value. The bigger, richer, more colorful and more 3-dimensional your mental pictures, the better your motivation and actions become.

Google has a very helpful service which can help you get more publicity. And the best part it’s FREE!

It's like a having a media clipping service which scrutinizes both the web and Google News database, then sends you an email as soon as something you're interested in appears in the search results.

For instance, let's say you're a big fan of “Glen Beck”. You can set up a Google Alert for
“Glen Beck”. Then whenever Google finds anything mentioned in a top news story or on the web, you'll get an email including the web site address so you can go see where
and how “Glen Beck” is mentioned.

To set up your own Google Alerts for free, just go to http://www.google.com/alerts (read further down for using this service and its paid alternative).

The exciting thing is you can use this service to grow your business in all sorts of ways.

Some of the obvious ways to use it includes setting up alerts to see what others are saying about you or your business online: 'discover' what they saying about your competitors; find out about new developments in your field of expertise and/or discover some other businesses with whom you might want to ally yourself in some way.

This service is also one of the best publicity tools ever created and it's FREE! Here are three tips to use Google Alerts to get media exposure:

STRATEGY #1 –
Obtain IMMEDIATE publicity by tying your product or service with breaking news stories.

One of the best and easiest ways to get FREE publicity is to be able to comment on what's already in the news. For instance, one of my clients is Gerry Robert, a book writing coach, wealth expert and author of the Millionaire Mindset. One of the strategies we employ whenever an alert pops up having to deal "Wealth, Book Writing, or the Economy" in America or Canada, is to contact newspapers and radio/TV shows in that city immediately and let them know we can comment on what’s happening.

Robert once asked me, 'But how will I know when a related story hits the news?'

My answer: "Google Alerts."

The results will blow you away!

STRATEGY #2 –
Build friendships with media contacts who discuss your topic.

Another of my clients, Patrick Snow, also uses Google Alerts service in a very systematic way to get publicity.

Here's what Patrick does: First he set up alerts to track stories written on his area of expertise, which is "Success, Selling and Families".

When he gets an alert email pointing him to a good story on that subject, he then sends the journalist who wrote the story a short email saying he enjoyed article and offers a sincere compliment.

His email stands out because journalists don't often hear from their readers and when they do it's usually to complain. Within his email Patrick mentions his website CreateYourOwnDestiny.com to reinforce his credibility.

If the journalist writes him back and thanks him for his comments, Patrick then offers to send them a free copy of his book and mentions he's happy to be a resource on any future stories they might do on this or similar topics.

Patrick Snow has made the front cover of USA Today and multiple TV/Radio interviews.

STRATEGY #3
The Hook is more than a Book

Authors are always asking me about what's a good 'hook' or angle to use when approaching the media. I'll immediately ask them, “What hooks have others used in your industry?”

Usually they don't know, but by using Google Alerts (or even just searching the Google News database at http://www.google.com/news) you can quickly find video clips, articles in which others with similar expertise are quoted.

For example, let's say you've written a book about "Selling." Suppose also that you're based in Phoenix. One day you discover a story in the New York Times about Selling in the New Economy. Well, if it's newsworthy in New York, it's probably going to be considered newsworthy by the media in your city. So pitch your local media on doing the same story, only this time they'll be interviewing YOU as the expert.

Here are a few words of advice on implementing this strategy:

Use quotation marks to narrow your alerts. For instance, I have an alert set up for "Bert Martinez" to receive more exact search results since I'm not the only person in the world with that name. I avoid getting a lot of off-target alerts.

You Were Created to Succeed . . . .with Publicity.
Bert Martinez
www.bertmartinez.com