Lunch, Networking and Fall Colors

Date & time:  Thursday, October 2, 2025 | 12:00 – 2:00 PM

Location:  3 Timmothy Road, Sunapee, NH

• Complimentary light lunch & beverages
• Round robin and open networking

Enjoy lunch and a short, scenic hike with other businesspeople!

• Dress for fall weather.
• Wear your hiking shoes.

Registration is required. To register, contact us online or call 603-345-7223.

A few scenes from past events…

Event Sponsor: Chuck Sink Link

The post 6th Annual Leads & Leaves Networking Event appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

What if you could expand your opportunities by expanding your interest in what’s going on all around you? Can you bring valuable, creative energy and solutions to people unexpectedly?

Can you tell me about this?

Asking the right questions, often of perfect strangers, leads to opportunities. How many stories have you heard about a seemingly random, happenstance meeting that led to something great? I’ve heard hundreds of such firsthand experiences and have a few of my own to share. I’m sure you do too.

Many years ago, I was curious about a sign I drove past that I hadn’t noticed before. I made a u-turn and pulled up to the building. I inquired about what the company did (thinking at first it was a bakery) and learned it was an industrial manufacturer of niche papermaking equipment. I got the President’s card from the receptionist and never made direct contact. I put his email address into my newsletter list and that was that. A full nine years later, I got a call out of the blue from the guy, and his company became one of my best clients for several years.

Did You Know…?

One day I was drinking a certain brand of tea in the office, and it dawned on me to call the brand’s headquarters in Connecticut. I got the VP of Marketing on the phone and told him about qualitative market research which he happened to be interested in. That serendipitous phone call led to millions in revenue for the company I worked at. I duplicated this tactic and landed business with a major coffee maker brand – Keurig – when it was first entering the commercial market. I have similar stories.

The big secret is that you can create chance meetings and opportune moments intentionally. Make it your intent to bring value to people by learning what they need and pointing them in the right direction to obtain it. This is done by asking questions, but you need to find the people to ask. Where are they? Everywhere – grocery stores, restaurants, gas stations, churches, chambers of commerce, construction sites, town offices, BNI groups, coffee shops, hotel lobbies… you get the idea. Just go to these places armed with curiosity, approachability and ideas.

Creative Solutions Nuke Objections

There’s tremendous value in expanding your local presence beyond your traditional home turf. I did this early in my career by making a tiny mom & pop print shop in the North Country a significant competitor in Southern NH and Northern MA. This was unheard of at the time. Due to high demand, logistics and shipping costs, most commercial printers only competed regionally. But I found a way to do business successfully from a long distance. I became the territory rep of my small, faraway company and confidently dispatched objections about distance, turnaround time and logistics.

We didn’t have our own trucks and couriers like other printers, but we had a bus route passing near our shop. Most bus companies gladly accept parcel and freight business, and they run most routes several times a day. Did you know that? We did, and Concord Trailways became my local service equalizer for years! As a result, I more than tripled the company’s revenue by bringing business from the populated south to the rural and sleepy White Mountains region where we had our presses.

Value Driven Field Work

It’s easy enough to show up at places where opportunities may be found but simply asking questions of strangers can be awkward. However, if you have a valuable idea to offer, it’s just you trying to help with whatever situation you observe someone in.

Whatever your expertise, if you make a “cold call” in person or inquire from a stranger about a potential opportunity, be prepared to offer real, expert advice, and be objective about it. If you get back to the person with something of additional value, you’ll likely form a relationship. Create, build and maintain those relationships and more referrals will come your way.

The post Curiosity and Ideas – a Salesperson’s Best Friends appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

Then there was poor me. I worked my tail off to get new business and produced enough to be valued. I cold called like mad, set appointments and made pitches day after day. It was a constant struggle to sustain business growth as it ebbed and flowed in spite of my mighty selling efforts. But Richard just sat there on the phone discussing business and taking big, fat orders. Either that or he would meet his clients at the plant and entertain them as they brought him more projects.

Richard’s cup runneth over while mine was either half full or half empty, depending on my attitude.

The real kicker about Richard was this. Most of the new business inquiries calling in would ask for him even though he didn’t spend time prospecting. What did he have that the rest of us didn’t?

Never Compromise Quality

Richard understood quality and he never cut corners. While I was trying to figure out ways to lower costs or match competitive price quotes to “win” an order, Richard could smoothly negotiate price increases making sure to add value to the total package.

The primary value that Richard added was quality-assurance. Richard’s clients knew that if they worked with him, they would get the best quality products available. No shortcuts, no surprises; just predictable high quality at a fair, negotiated price.

I assumed price meant everything and I was wrong.

When Richard sensed cheapness or price challenge from a new business prospect, he would usually refer them to competing manufacturers whom he knew would cut profits to keep their machines running. Better they get the difficult clients.

Quality Fuels Word of Mouth

If you’re looking for more qualified sales leads, focus more on delivering premium quality to all your customers every single time you do business. Word of mouth referrals are the best inbound leads. Quality reputations can only be earned, and if you’ve earned yours, then go ahead and promote it!

Promote the one thing that separates your quality from the rest. If a prospect happens to see your company promotion and call you after also getting a referral, the sale is yours! And that was Richard’s secret to easygoing sales success. He promoted quality assurance and all his customers backed him up.

Best-in-class quality is the goal. Your marketing and sales efforts will work better as the quality seekers in your market find what they’re looking for in your brand.

The post Quality Promotes! appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

One of my professors liked to say, “Business is people!” He often said it when he wanted to reduce student anxiety about jumping into the real world of professional work. The plain truth of that statement left an impression with me. Later in life I read the book, How to Make Friends and Influence People. Then, “Business is People!” became fundamental to my career.

Lose Yourself

When you really want to connect with a potential customer and form a good relationship, how do you steer the conversation to get their interest? What’s the best approach for getting someone to listen to your message?

You steer your attention away from yourself and listen carefully to understand their message. Then you can respond in a way that identifies with their thinking. This leads to dialog which leads to a relationship. As they find they can relate with you, they’ll become genuinely interested in hearing your message as it relates to them, including whatever it is you’re selling.

Marketing is All about Them

Your business prospect’s immediate interests probably have little to do with your product or service “solution.” They’re more likely to be thinking about their family, favorite hobby, or pressing business and personal issues. Marketing messages should align with real life experiences, both lived and hoped for.

Step into the shoes of your audience and better understand their needs, then demonstrate the value your business offers them.

Get to the Table!

To hit a home run, you must first get up to bat. A salesperson’s job is to reach out to potential new customers proactively. A marketer’s job is to create awareness and desire for a brand. The best way to accomplish both is to create an attraction in the market, not push a product or service with a lot of hype.

There is a time and place for spirited selling, answering objections and hard-nosed negotiation, but you’ll probably be absent from that table if you haven’t first developed an authentic relationship with your prospective customer. This relationship begins first in the mind of customers as they relate to your consistent messaging that speaks to their interests. It is further developed by what customers actually experience when doing business with your company.

Resist the Urge for Urgency!

Perhaps there’s some urgency indicated by your revenue projections. Maybe you really need to hit a financial target and think you should bust out and use more aggressive selling tactics. Go ahead and try. You might force a few sales through the pipeline. But what if your competition has already made friends with your best prospects by talking with them about what really matters – their personal interests and business goals?

Small Talk and Bigger Deals

People love to share their interests with those who are genuinely interested. Moms and dads do this. Decision-makers who are moms and dads and grandparents and aunts and uncles do this. And you do this. Wouldn’t it then make sense to connect on a more personal, emotional level in your messages and conversations?

Advertising should tap into personal emotions to generate recall and awareness. In sales and business development, patient relationship-building cultivates valuable friendships in your professional life which helps your business thrive!

The post Great Marketing is Not About Your Business appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

There are two ways to obtain new business. It finds you (branding, marketing, reputation & referrals) or you find it (your salesforce). When both ways work in tandem, new business fires on all cylinders but sometimes the outside selling effort needs more throttle.

Maintaining a stellar reputation through hard work and strategic marketing is a universal business ideal. Sometimes, however, it takes more than strong brand awareness to grow. It takes active messengers in the field striking up meaningful conversations outside of normal business discourse.

Why, in so many companies, is the CEO the highest sales producer even when they have a professional sales team? I believe there are 3 reasons:

• CEOs make authoritative decisions on the spot and make things happen faster.
• Buyers perceive the CEO to have the highest stakes and will have a customer advocate at the very top.
• The CEO is CEO for a reason. He or She knows what it takes to grow a business! CEOs see things from a high level and can often spot opportunities where most salespeople wouldn’t bother looking.

An Empowered Salesperson Shares Authority and Vision

When I was a salesperson, in a few firms I was blessed to have enough authority to engage company resources and had a little bit of creative vision. In hindsight, I was terrible at conventional sales practices and had little discipline in performing them. Despite that problem, I thought outside the box enough to find and score big clients like Keurig Green Mountain, Bigelow Tea, Nuance Dragon and Ansys Fluent back in my sales days working for “the man.” In each case I either made a random phone call from a hunch or pulled up to the front entrance of a shiny building and walked in inquiring.

By contrast, the last firm I worked for kept me in a tight box chained to a CRM, not to help me sell but to grow their database. I could offer the client no added value. Meanwhile, I was headed straight for the poor house and as a result, was driven to part company and start my own business even though broke at the time.

Cleared for Takeoff

When I became a CEO, developing new business became as natural as getting dressed and my sales once again skyrocketed. Now I know why. Not only do I make the decisions but I engage clients in a way that brings them real value rather than just facilitating transactions that other people must implement. Therein lies the key to leveling up your sales team’s success.

Today’s salesperson needs to be integral to the delivery of product solutions and customer service. Clients want someone who can do something for them, not simply echo their questions or concerns to a VP or manager. They want more than an advocate. They want a working associate, a partner. You want that too which proves the point.

How to Next Level Your Sales

Be sure to support your salespeople by maintaining company awareness and lead generation marketing. Now, figure out a way for your salespeople to create and bring real value to their customers – your customers. Enable them to go farther and wider for the customer than convention would suggest. Finally, get creative and get your salespeople to engage with value, instead of “good synergy” messages. Just a few of many examples:

• Make direct calls to CEOs instead of end users and their managers. Ask intelligent, open-ended questions and listen like your life and their life depends on it.
• Look around the office, shop or home for brands your company could supply and call those companies.
• Join a trade association or regional economic development organization and leverage your new member honeymoon status on the executive committees.
• Write authoritative business and industry articles and get them published. Leverage them as third party-validated collateral.
• If you’re a salesperson, publish your own business newsletter, blog or vlog independent of your company’s marketing support (or lack of it).
• Set up a weekly Zoom networking or mastermind group with an offline follow up component. Build meaningful relationships.
• Go door-to-door canvassing in a hazmat suit.
• Your idea here…

These are just a few ideas, most of which I’ve implemented with ongoing success. Now please trust me on this. If I can do it, anyone can!

The post The Sales Highway to Greener Business Pastures appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

“I know I’ll find you somewhere… somewhere you can hear my voice…”

Meet Tim, Dan, Cheryl, Jack, Dianne, Josh, and Cam

The Most Vital Branding Exercise

You might be asking, who are those people and why should I know them? They’re the folks who personify your best clients – those whose working styles and needs align with your company culture and value proposition. These names happen to be the clients who have influenced how we operate, deliver value and communicate in the market. Just as importantly, they know us, prefer our approach and collaborate in their own marketing success.

Can you automatically rattle off the first names of your best customers? If so, there’s where you’ll find your brand differentiation and value proposition.

Client Differentiation Drives Branding Value

We talk about brand differentiation in marketing. What differentiates your offerings positively over your competition? Try some reverse engineering. There’s a reverse kind of differentiation that’s so crucially important to discovering your own and growing your business. It’s client differentiation.

You need to know the common persona of customers you can best serve and who appreciate your business style. They will choose your company for the very reasons that you think they should.

As you differentiate your clients from “the masses,” you’ll better understand whom you are really serving and you should tailor your messages only to them. Resist the temptation to appeal to the broadest possible market for your generic product/service because you’ll only add more noise in the cluttered, me-too world of commercial media. Few will notice. But if you call out to specific people (if not by name, then by interest and passion), they’ll hear the message as it resonates and engages them out of the crowd. They call you, email you or message you, hoping to reach a deal with you.

The Consistency Payoff

Be consistent with messages that focus only on your differentiated and distinguished target audience. You are of most value to your narrowly defined target market and you’ll find them more enjoyable to work with. Your relationships are mutually profitable. Working with them is more gratifying and often fun.

The post Your Best Marketing Strategy Calls Your Own Flock appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

Learn a valuable sales lesson during the pandemic outbreak. Get to know every client or customer on a personal level. It’s amazing what opportunities you may find for new business. And there’s the rub. “New business” is not synonymous with “new customer.” I was taught this by business owners pretty early in my selling career but I’ll admit not learning it very well until I became a business owner.

“Some Web Guy”

A couple of our clients paused services or cut marketing costs at the early stage of the business shutdown. Thankfully, some new projects have rolled in and business has remained steady thanks primarily to current clients expanding their needs. In particular, I got to know one of them for the first time on a personal level, Chief to Chief.

As if by accident, this longtime client, after years of delegating his firm’s marketing to a manager, found out what we really do. In his mind “Chuck Sink Link” was a cost of doing business – just “some web guy” or “someone who hosts our website.” This client (the CEO, not the manager point-of-contact) got on the phone with me after a potential dispute and suddenly the relationship has taken off, and so has new business for both of us!

We finally know each other, and much better!

The client mentioned is a leading netting manufacturer in Connecticut who almost had to furlough many of his employees indefinitely because of a tremendous impact on two of their top markets – Amusements and Construction. He and his engineers turned on a dime to start producing protective masks while netting work is slow. Their employees, already skilled in various stitching techniques, made tens of thousands of critically needed masks.

Through our very first live conversation, the client discovered that we do scalable eCommerce websites, digital advertising and social media marketing. He then treated us like a business partner instead of “the web guy” and we’ve since built an eCommerce website together that generated about $50,000 in mask sales the first two days, resulting in hundreds of donated masks to organizations in need like homeless shelters, hospitals, first responders and nursing homes. The valued employees are at work, earning paychecks and their netting business is again having an upsurge in sales.

The Deeper Conversations

I’ve had deep discussions with several other clients during this apparent “reset” in the economy and our mutual support has been fortified. Together we are keeping busier than ever while being deeply concerned about the companies we know of that need to make difficult decisions. The wisdom and compassion we have shared with each other are among the intangible values I can’t put a price on and wouldn’t do without.

Hopefully, we’ll remember the really important aspects of work relationships as so many of us are forced physically apart for a while longer. It’s a great time for discovering who your suppliers and customers really are and how you can help make each other better at what you both do.

The post When is it okay to get personal in business? appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

Client – Pucuda Leading Edge

Whatever your business sector, the current pandemic slowdown is affecting you profoundly. It might be good for your company or it might be devastating but one thing is certain; you are feeling massive change underfoot and you know you must adapt.

I’m seeing some small businesses focus their energy on “cutting loss” and applying for government assistance or SBA disaster loans while some are converting their factories to make much-needed PPE for the public. Others are nurturing their key relationships and rebuilding their internal business infrastructures.

Rebuild Your Marketing Infrastructure

My clients are amazing. Most of them are stepping up their communication efforts right now, some of them big time! They have the foresight to position their businesses to be of indispensable service in their own communities immediately, and also to lead their industries during the inevitable recovery.

Image – catholicmedicalcenter.org

For example, a safety netting manufacturer in CT converted part of their factory floor to a mask production facility to make masks available for the public. Another client, a construction firm, was the first to answer the call from NH hospitals to his industry for N95 masks, donating his company’s entire stock of 200 masks to the medical team at Catholic Medical Center. This same client is working tirelessly right now on branding, marketing, PR, helping to write trade policy, and nurturing relationships with vendors, contractors, clients and business partners.

I have several other inspiring client stories but this post could get too lengthy. It’s likely that I’ll write about them in the near future.

What’s Happening Here at Home

Personally, I’ve never been busier in my life! But even though the current work is urgent and a bit stressful, I’m still using this passing crisis to reposition my business as the premium design and digital communication firm in our market with the resources and capability to scale! We’re currently in the process of building out my website’s service offerings and improving both the user experience (UX) and SEO. I even upgraded my website maintenance plan so my developer will make changes and improvements for me on-demand. This carpenter is building his house!

Most agree. Few actually do.

Client – SkiClinics.com

Remember that the best time to blow your horn is when the hall is quiet or your competition is distracted. Hmm… Here’s a thought:  People ordered to stay home or work from home are on their computers a lot. Guess where digital marketing reaches them?

Well, a past client got this message from one of my recent LinkedIn posts and decided it was time to promote his new online offerings in a big way, leading to an exciting new online marketing campaign. Check out the introductory newsletter. We’re helping to sell books and training sessions online. This new project has my juices flowing for a return to the good life we know is on the comeback!

The post That Marketing Thing – It’s now or never! appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

When I was a young, aggressive salesman, I worked my tail off to get new business and produced enough to be valued. I cold called like crazy, set appointments and made presentations day after day. It was a constant struggle, though, to sustain business growth as it ebbed and flowed in spite of continuous and mighty selling efforts.

Meet Richard

There was one senior guy on the team named Richard who had all the giant accounts and he just sat there on the phone discussing business and taking big, fat orders. Either that or he would meet with his clients at the plant and entertain them as they kept an eye on their work. I suspect they also enjoyed Richard’s company and getting out of their own office for vendor meetings with a trusted, high-quality supplier.

His cup runneth over!

The real kicker about Richard was this. In spite of his already abundant sales success, most of the new business inquiries calling in would ask for Richard, and it drove me nuts! He never cold called and he never had to bang the phone for appointments like the rest of us. The biggest and most profitable business just flowed to Richard.

I liked Richard and we became fast friends but I also envied his ability to take in lucrative business without seeming to compete for it. What did he have that the rest of us didn’t?

Over the course of time and even a few career moves, it finally became clear why Richard excelled. He understood quality and he never cut corners. While I was trying to figure out ways to lower costs or match competitive price quotes just to win an order, Richard was increasing the prices his clients would pay while at the same time adding value to the total package.

No Surprises!

The primary value that Richard added was quality-assurance. Richard’s clients knew that if they worked with him, they would get the best quality products available. No shortcuts, no surprises; just predictable high quality at a fair, negotiated price.

Meanwhile, the corners I cut in quality specs to compete on price were making some customers question the value they could expect from me in the future. It took me far too long to realize that not everyone wants more for less. I assumed price meant everything and I was trying to appease prospects I assumed were cheapskates.

Give back… to your competition!

True, there are plenty of cheapskates out there but in reality, there are lots of good people in the business world who understand what things cost. “You get what you pay for.” Those were Richard’s people! They knew that Richard understood the vital nature of high quality in manufacturing. When other people like them heard of Richard’s business approach and they needed our products, they called Richard, who else? And when Richard sensed cheapness or price challenges from a new business prospect, he would cheerfully (and wisely) refer them to competing manufacturers whom he knew would cut profits just to keep their machines running.

Be the person you would call!

The lesson here is that if you’re looking for more qualified sales leads, maybe you need to focus less on sales promotions and more on delivering premium quality to all your customers every single time you do business. Quality reputations can only be earned. If you’ve earned yours, go ahead and promote it!

Promote the one thing that separates your quality from the rest. Promote it everywhere you can.  If a prospect happens to see your company promotion and call you after also getting a referral, the sale is yours! And that was Richard’s secret to easygoing sales success. He promoted quality assurance and all his customers backed him up.

Make best-in-class quality your goal. Communicate what that really costs and clearly demonstrate its value. Then deliver the best quality consistently to build your reputation. Your marketing and sales efforts will work better as the quality seekers in your market find from you the really good stuff they’re looking for.

So first ask, is your stuff really that good?

The post Quality Sales Promotion appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

Stop demanding leads!

Every business owner and salesperson wants qualified new business leads that they can close, add to the client list and so build their business empire. If they could reduce their time spent prospecting and just focus on closing more deals, business would be sooooo much better! But is that realistic? Probably not.

There are all kinds of lead generation programs out there that vary in firepower and sophistication. Most of them utilize a combination of digital platforms that, when integrated, allow you to target demographic and interest-specific audiences, and follow them around on the web and with emails. They include various levels of personalization, even to the point of feeling creepy and intrusive.

The B2B Marketing Reality

You can definitely increase your website traffic and generate inbound “leads” with a well-programmed campaign. Up to a point. There’s a point at which message saturation occurs and no amount of great marketing will deliver new customers when there aren’t a bevy of needy prospects in your market during your campaign. This is the reality of most B2B marketing!

You hit up the same finite universe of potential buyers with a drip campaign hoping some will just peel away from their current business relationships, open an account and place an order with you. But the real qualified leads are few and far between, so what can you do?

The Crux of Business Growth

Unless your messages are relevant to their thinking and well-timed to their needs, prospective business customers couldn’t care less about your drips and drabs following them around in browsers and delivered in emails. But when they’re ready for change, you need to have readied them to think of your brand first. So the question becomes, how do you maximize your current market share and position your company as the category leader when the market expands?

You build trusted relationships based on an authentic brand. And these relationships can begin with simple awareness and grow from there. Yes, it’s about branding again!

What do you do better than most if not all of your competition? Figure out how to make that fact resonate in every company message. Make it the foundation of your sales, marketing and PR. Don’t stray!

As your prospects notice the consistency in your value proposition and hear about your work in media or word of mouth, they might actually become excited about the chance to do business with you when the time comes. You may be unaware of any relationship brewing with your prospects as they are mindfully starting to develop a relationship with you. Then your phone rings and it’s them!

The B2B Marketing Bonus

Each new relationship offers additional marketing and sales momentum!

While B2B marketing may seem a bit humdrum compared with consumer or lifestyle campaigns, business clients tend to be much higher stakes customers who depend heavily on your services. The relationship is important because they are trusting some part of their business to your care, and as they grow to enjoy working with you and your team, your best form of advertising comes free; a testimonial, a kind word… a referral and another new client.

When you’ve been at this game a while, you realize that without a brand name – one that people in your market have reasons to talk about – your sales will remain flat. But if your company works hard on consistent brand awareness, sales growth becomes less of a challenge and more of a fulfillment – an answer to your market’s call.

The post Lead Generation or Seed Germination? appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.