B2B Business Development Tools for Technology Companies with Complex, High-Ticket Sales

Audio Interviews and Programmes

Copywriting with Eugene Schwartz

Eugene is one of the classic copywriting legends. Here you hear about copywriting from a somewhat different perspective. Eugene speaks with conviction based on his phenomenal copywriting success. Also, he does it in such a way that you truly feel like you are sitting in on a personal coaching session and hearing insider secrets that will set you apart from 99.99 percent of the marketing world! This rare recording of Eugene Schwartz's speech is an outstanding piece of a true marketing genius. In this recording, Schwartz offers amazing insights into his personal methods which any copywriter or marketer can benefit from instantly. I highly recommend you to listen to this presentation.

Interview Part 1 --- Interview Part 2 --- Interview Part 3

Exclusive 120 Minute Detailed Interview With The Father of Guerrilla Marketing, Jay Conrad Levinson

This is a rather neat interview with Jay Conrad Levinson You can learn about marketing in general, but the neat part of the interview allows you to look into Jay's modus operandi. The way he thinks. And when you hear something that goes against your current belief, then listen even harder.

Interview Part 1 --- Interview Part 2 --- Interview Part 3 --- Interview Part 4

Interview With Marketing Consultant Michael Senoff

I've been listening to Michael's interviews in the last 4 or 5 years, and they are truly amazing. But here the hangman is under the noose, so to say, that is, Michael is being interviewed.

Interview Part 1 --- Interview Part 2 --- Interview Part 3 --- Interview Part 4 --- Interview Part 5

A Seminar With Direct Marketing Guru, Dan Kennedy

Dan Kennedy is one of the most respected and most expensive direct marketing experts out there. According to Entrepreneur Magazine, "Dan Kennedy has at least 101 moneymaking ideas for any business owner." Among others, Dan created Tony Robbins' television infomercials. I feel privileged to have learnt a lot from Dan through his seminars, workshops and information products.

Seminar Part 1 --- Seminar Part 2

Online Sales, Marketing And Business Development Tools and Resources

Here you find lots of neat online tools I've found valuable over the years. Some of them are free and some of them are, well... not so free. Nothing major, mind you. They are all reasonably priced.

Audio Transcription Tools

Cyberdictate is an audio transcribing service. For between 1 and 4 cents a word, these folks can transcribe any topic from accounting to zoology.

iDictate is another audio transcribing service. The general price is 1.25 cents a word plus a little per job price.

Accounting and Bookkeeping Tools

FreshBooks is an online invoicing and time tracking service that saves you time and makes you look professional.

QuickBooks Online is the next generation of accounting. It's server-based, so both you and your accountant can have access to it without wasting time on commuting to meet.

Blog Tools

Bloglines Blog Reader is a free, server-based blog reader that lets you keep track of the blogs you like re-visiting and keeping an eye on.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Sugar CRM is a free, open source server-based customer relationship management (CRM) system. It has lots of neat features which can make life easier for your salespeople.

SugarWiki: Sugar CRM Tutorial is a free, open source server-based customer relationship management (CRM) system. It has lots of neat features which can make life easier for your salespeople.

Free CRM is a simple-to-operate CRM system. It has both a free and a paid version. The paid version costs $15 a month.

vTiger CRM is a hard-core CRM system, including sales force automation, marketing automation, customer support and service, order management and other bits and bobs.

Computer Diagnostic Tools

Windows Update: This is a site where you can go to update your Windows operating system.

PC Pit Stop: This is a comprehensive range of online diagnostic tools for your computer.

Gibson Research Corporation: This is a set of tool that help you to check the security of your computer. There is a programme that lets you test your computer to see how vulnerable it is to outside computers.

Belarc: This is a little programme that, with the click of the mouse, creates a system summary on your computer. You instantly see what's inside your box.

Email Applications

If you're still using Microsoft Outlook as your email programme, maybe it's time to get rid of it. After all, why would anyone keep using the worst available tool for a specific task. There is no logic in trying to cook a gourmet meal over a the heat of a cigarette lighter.

Eudora is probably the most versatile and most intuitive email programme out there. It has lots of great features and it's easy to use. It has both a free version and a paid ($50US) - heavier duty - version.

Google GMail is a free server site email system. It is free but, unlike Yahoo or Hotmail, it's not packed with cheesy advertising.

IceMail is a server site email system. It means you can check your email from any computer in the world.

Mozilla Thunderbird is a versatile and free email application

WebMail is a server site email system. It means you can check your email from any computer in the world.

File Transfer

If you have some large files to send, then you can use one of these babies. They are very reliable.

Dropload let's you send large files. The biggest size is 100MBytes.

Dropsend let's you send large files. The biggest size is 1 GigaByte. You can also backup and store your files on their server. The size depends on the option you purchase.

FileZilla is a kick-butt FTP (File Transfer Protocol) utility that allows you to upload you web pages to your server. Just like any other Mozilla programmes, this too is very reliable and simple to operate. You can download the user manual too.

Send This File is another utility to send large files. You just enter the recipient's email address and Bob's your uncle. And you can even send files to multiple recipients.

You Send It allows you to send files up to 1 GigaByte in size.

Google Utilities

Google Analytics: is a lot more than a typical traffic and website analysis software (giving you typical stats like referrers, pageviews, search engine traffic, keywords, etc). It can also do split-testing and tracking conversion.

Google Answers: This is basically a massive brain on tap. For $2.50 you can ask any question and an army of experts at Google give you the answer. You can also check your question because if it has been answered previously, then you've got your answer for free. This is like having a research team at your fingertips.

Google Apps for Your Domain is a free suite of online tools, including Google email, Google Talk, Google Calendar and Google Webpage Creator.

Google Catalogues: Google has scanned all the catalogues that is available, so this is good both for shopping and finding great sales copy written by top pros.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets integrates two previously separate applications, the word processor and the spreadsheet. And the "Chat" feature is now available in both applications.

Google Fight: This tool compares two keywords and gives which one ranks higher in terms of number of searches.

Google Images: The most comprehensive image search on the web with some 390 million images.

Google News: With its 4000 continuously (every 15 minutes) updated news sources this is most probably the most up-to-date news source on the whole web.

Google Notebook Google Notebook is an personal online storage place for chunks of research materials. It even offers a browser plug-in to copy bits and bobs from the web the web, save images and file bookmarks.

Google Press Center: This site actually shows you the search patterns, trends, and different things that people are searching for on Google in virtually every country. It gives you the top 10 in each different area. If you go through it, you can see the top things people are looking for. It also shows the declining things people were looking for.

Google Spreadsheet is a free online spreadsheet that basically 100% emulates the Excel spreadsheet. The hosting of the files is done on Google's server. Really neat stuff.

Google Toolkit: is all the tools Google has ever developed.

Google Website Optimizer is a free online multivariate testing tool that takes the guessworkd out of testing your landing pages. It helps you to see which page resulted in the highest conversion rate.

Google Writely is a free online wordprocessor. It also imports and exports various file formats, including MS Word, Rich Text, HTML, OpenOffice, image files, and even zipped files.

Graphics Utilities

Barry's Cliparts is a an extensive collection of free-to-use cliparts.

Colours On The Web is a neat little utility that helps you to select the right colours for your website. There are so-called safe colours that show nicely on each browser, and there are some dodgy colours which you'd better avoid.

Cooltext is a pretty neat free graphics utility that can help you to create various graphics elements for your site. It's 100% web based, so you have nothing to download. Make a note of your graphics setting and then you can return for further editing later.

Formatpixel is an online graphics editor. It has both a free and paid version, depending how many projects you want to work on.

myImager is a free online graphics editor. You don't even have to download it to your hard drive. You do all the editing online. There are some minor limitations though. Files must be smaller than 500 KBytes. Also, all images are deleted daily at 12:00 AM PST, so make sure you download your images right away.

Xara is a suite of drawing programmes that is modularly built, so you buy what you need. In contains seven modules, but my favourite is Xara Webstyle 4. With it you can design your custom bullets, buttons, backgrounds, headings, dividers, logos, banners, navigation bars and menus. It's really versatile, and the price is a small fraction of what Photoshop costs.

Miscellaneous

AdFlip: This is the world's largest collection of classified ads that have appeared ever since 1940. The annual subscription is $102.

Answers: is an online dictionary. It offers an interesting programme to download that sits in the background. When you ALT-click any word or phrase in any document, web page or software, a little window pops up and gives you a dictionary, encyclopaedia, almanac, references, web searches, wiki entries, translations, thesaurus and all sorts of bits and bobs.

Archive: This tool enables you to search for old versions of websites.

Biz Stats: Free and instant business statistics. You can compare your business with your competitors.

Copyright Free Government Reports: This is a collection of copyright free information reports on a road range of topics, ranging from cars through travel to business.

Free Lunch: A web's largest data library. Massive collection of economic, demographic and financial data for market research.

iDictate is a transcription service. The neat things is that the transcription is done by humans but by computers. They even offer a 1-800 recording service to record your messages.

Merlin Data Systems: This is widely used website by private investigators to find information on people and businesses.

Price Watch: This is a price watching service for computer parts. You can obtain the at-the-moment price of any computer component price.

RhymeZone is a a tool that helps you to find words that rhyme. You can also find famous quotes, passages, adages or various document. You can search word variations, antonyms, homophones, spellings.

Sales Circular: This is a collection of special promotions companies circulate in newspapers. But here you can actually compare the deals and cherry pick the best.

Spreed: This is combined collaboration tool, including file sharing, screen sharing, presentation, voting and other bots and bobs. It has both a free and paid version.

Textalyzer is an online readibility analisys tool. You type in your text and Textalyzer tells you everything you want to know about that piece of text. You can easily find out even what your mother would prefer you not to know.

Website Monitoring : This is a neat little utility that monitors your website and reports to you if it is up and running or down for some reason. So, if your site is down for an extended period of time, you can kick up a fuss with your hosting company. It has both a free and a paid, thus more sophisticated version.

Who's Mailing What: This is the world's largest collection of direct mail copies. Again, all the great stuff written by the geniuses. For an annual subscription fee of $127, you have access to the greatest direct mail campaigns that have ever been created.

You Should Meet: While LinkedIn is a great mass introduction programme, You Should Meet is a one-to-one introduction platform. If you know two people and think they should know each other, you can go to this programme and make the introduction. This site also enables you to track your connections and introductions.

Office Applications

Cute PDF is a downloadable free PDF converter.

Dabble DB helps you to create database applications all online. It’s pretty easy to use but is flexible and powerful.

Docudub PDF Converter is another free PDF converter, but the conversion takes place online either in real time in front of your very eyes and under your very nose, or the converted PDF file is emailed to you. Neat stuff.

GoToMyPC is another remote access tool to access your computer from other locations.

One System Solutions is a acomprehensive onmline business management system, including CRM, e-commerce accounting.

Open Office is Linux's response to the MS Office suite. It includes the same elements but here and there offers even more. For instance, using Open Office's wordprocessor, you can directly create PDF files. And it doesn't crash.

Primo PDF is a free downloadable PDF converter. You create your document in your favourite word processor and then print it out as a PDF using Primo PDF.

Webex is a web conferencing, video conferencing and online meeting services.

WebEx PCNow 3.0 is a tool to access your computer from any corner of the known and less known corner of the universe from any PC or Mobile Device.

Wufoo is a special programme for creating online forms.

Zoho is an online office suite that includes lots of free elements, like wordprocessor, spreadsheet, presentation package and planner, and some paid applications, like the CRM and project management components.

Project Management

BaseCamp is a subscription-based project management system, central information repository and a collaboration system. It comes with message boards, group emails, whiteboards, file sharing, to-do lists, milestone planning, discussion room, goal setting, and more. One of the many benefits is that it keeps a pretty accurate "paper trail" of communication.

Dotproject Project Management Software is a free open source server-based project management software your team members can reach from any corner of the universe. Features include User Management, Email based trouble Ticket System, Client/Company Management, Project listings, Hierarchical Task List, File Repository, Contact List, Calendar, Discussion Forum, Resource Based Permissions, GANTT charts and others.

Egroupware is a free, open source server-based enterprise ready groupware software for your network. It enables you to manage contacts, appointments, tasks and many more for your whole business.

HyperOffice web collaboration and online intranet software.

Zimbra is a web-based open source messaging and collaboration solution.

Search Engine Tools

Googspy is another keyword generator. They keyword list is incomplete, so it requires some extra work.

Lexfn is another keyword search tool. Type in your keyword and you'll get a number of related terms and concepts.

Quintura Search is a free theme-based keyword search tool. You type in the main word and Quintura gives you the relevant synonyms that are contextually related to your original word.

Spyfo helps you to find keywords your competitors are bidding on. It also tells you about their daily bidding budget, their bid positioning, organic listings and the number of their competitors.

Visual Thesaurus generates visual trees of related keywords in a visual way. Actually it looks like a mind map, so you can easily see all your related keywords and the relationship between them. You type in one term and get a set of related words. After trying the free demo, you can get the full version for an annual membership of $20.

Wordtracker is the best and most effective keyword research tool out there. You can use either the free limited version or the paid full-blown version. When I need is, I buy the service for one day for about $7.00US and on that day I do my keyword research. Simple.

Stock Photography

Big Stock Photo is another stock photo site. For $1-2 you can buy a broad range of photos.

iStockphoto is another huge stock photo collection. For $1-2 you can buy a broad range of photos.

Free Royalty Free Stock Photography: Well, there is not much to say here. High resolution photos and they're free.

Stock.XCHNG: The leading FREE stock photo site!: Well, there is not much to say here. High resolution photos and they're free.

Survey Tools

dPolls.com is an online polls repository tool. It helps you to survey your tarket.

Survey Monkey is another survey tool. It's free.

Web-Based telephony

GotVMail is a web based telephone system.

Skype is a web based telephone system. Now you can call from your computer to telephones, and can receive calls from phones to your computer. It has both a free and paid version.

Web Browsers

Mozilla Fireox is - in my opinion - the best browser you can find under the sun. And by best I mainly mean being the steadiest browser. yeah, and it's free too.

Opera is another great browser. It's a touch more sophisticated than Firefox, including a feature that lets you control the system with voice.

Website Credibility

As you're putting together your website, there are certain credibility issues to consider. These are minute details that can make or break your website. So, here are the resources from which you can learn the rules. Stanford University has a 10-point list to guide you on building credibility into your website. These guidelines are based on three years of research that included more than 4,500 people.

Stanford Guidelines for Website Credibility

What Makes Websites Credible PDF File Report

Website Text (HTML) Editors

Yes, you can buy Dreamweaver or other fancy web editors, but if you don't have highly complicated sites, one of these free web editors will do a pretty nice job. But these are not graphics editors. You're working at a code level, which takes a bit of learning, but also gives you maximum flexibility.

Mozilla Notepad++ is a pretty versatile HTML editor. And just like any other Mozilla items, it is pretty reliable.

ConTEXT is another free HTML editor. Before Notepad++ I used ConTEXT for a long time and I really liked it.

PSPad is another free HTML editor.

Website Editors (WYSIWYG)

NVU (pronounced N-view, for a "new view") is a free WYSIWYG HTML editor. You can also edit files on your server without downloading them first onto your machine.

Website Templates

This is a broad range of web resources, like templates, buttons, backgrounds, navigation bars, menu systems and all bits and pieces. it's really neat.

Free Website Templates both for business and personal use. They are actually pretty neat templates. Nothing fancy, you don't really need fancy stuff. The success of your sites lies more in your content and sales copy.

Free And Low-Cost Website Templates And Clipart is a collection of templates, buttons, clipart and anything you can imagine you need for a website.

Best Website Templates is a collection of quality website templates at affordable prices. Templates start from $50. Make sure you select an HTML or CSS based template, and stay away from search engine unfriendly dynamic or flash templates.

Website Tutorials

This is a collection of various tutorial sites dealing with a broad range of building web pages.

Web Monkey is a web building tutorial split into three sections: Beginners, Builders and Masters.

The Web Design Group was founded to promote the creation of non-browser specific, non-resolution specific, creative and informative sites that are accessible to all users worldwide. The WDG offers material on a wide range of HTML related topics.

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