Chris Barnes

Chris Barnes is the Director of Business Development at Tarkenton Companies, with a sales and marketing background in a wide range of industries, from sports information to insurance marketing. A jack-of-all-trades, Chris has experience in many aspects of daily and strategic operations for small business.

Latest

B2B Sales Proposals and Scripts?

Cross-marketing, client referral arrangements, and client list sharing are common B2B marketing practices; however, you can encounter resistance to sharing client lists and other objections in these B2B marketing activities.

Cold Calling Techniques?

Cold calling can involve phone calls to set appointments or cold call visits to prospects to have a sales meeting or set an appointment for a return visit. Also, in many industries it is common to send letters of introduction, brochures, catalogs, or other marketing materials before calling to set appointments or making direct sales calls.

Building a Strong Banking Relationship

Deciding where to do your business’s banking business is an important question, affecting many aspects of your daily operations, such as business loans, deposits, and cash management. What are the steps you need to take to find the right bank and build a strong banking relationship for your business? Here are a few tips you can follow to develop that banking relationship.

How to Build a Powerful Sales Team

Your salespeople need to be the very best you can find, and great salespeople can be hard to find. On any given sales team, a small percentage of the force does a majority of the business, and your goal is to increase the percentage of your team that is making big contributions to your sales totals. Here are a few tips you can follow to build a powerful sales team.

When Less Is More

When it comes to running a successful business, the things you do matter. But perhaps just as important are the things we decide not to do. Identifying what activities to put in each category helps productivity, efficiency, and overall effectiveness.

How Big Is the Market

Do you know how many people out there might be interested in your product or service? Any investor or lender is going to ask how big your market is as one of their first questions, and the answer is an important factor in a business’s long-term success.

Reasonable Person Principle

Any time you get a group of people together, there are bound to be misunderstandings and disagreements. How you handle these situations is important for a strong corporate culture. The Reasonable Person Principle is a simple but effective approach to building a culture of trust.

Focus on Your Top Priorities

It seems like there’s never enough time in the day to do all the things you want to do. In fact, sometimes it seems like there’s not even enough time to do all the things you need to do! Entrepreneurs must prioritize their most important tasks to create a strong foundation for the business.

Networking for Introverts

A lot of the time, extroverts are writing networking tips for fellow extroverts. But what is the other half of the population supposed to do? With the right approach and strategy, introverts can take advantage of networking opportunities, too.

A Real Partnership is Win-Win

We all need partners—but we don’t all know what it takes to create a lasting partnership. The key is building relationships. When you build a powerful partnership based on a relationship, you will look for ways to make it win-win for all partners—otherwise, it will never last!