Sales Toys Make Selling Fun

Some of you readers (and most of my clients) know that I spent many years in the promotional products/advertising specialty business.  In its simplest (and most under-utilized) form, ad specialties are typically inexpensive giveaways at events and tradeshows imprinted with a company logo or marketing message.  At their weakest, ad specialties become part of the landfill (California government even instituted a BAN on promotional products in 2011!)  At their strongest, ad specialties are an effective and creative means of making a memorable impression on a prospect and a way to meaningfully connect with existing customers.

My success in the sale of promotional products always sprang from the creative twist I could put on a marketing message, and my knack for finding clever new items (or find clever new ways of using traditional specialty items.) My ability to adapt ad specialties to the benefit of my clients is actually the way I was first referred to as “Don The Idea Guy.”  Writing a book on the subject of marketing through the use of promotional products has been on my development list for several years.

Back in 2007 I started a  blog dedicated to profiling the best ideas and uses for promotional items. Whether they were ideas I put into action for my clients, or new ideas that I saw others use and wanted to share with my own audience, SalesToys.com was going to show the most creative examples of ad specialty marketing that I could find.  As I am want to do, I get distracted with other projects of more immediate importance and my updates to the site grew less and less frequent.  I think in the back of my mind I knew that the concept of “Sales Toys” could actually be much more than what I had originally envisioned.

I believe that I’ve now found the focus for the site and the associated domain name
I still have much love for the strategy and creative uses for ad specialties. They’re fun and effective and I’ll always find a way to incorporate them into marketing campaigns as the opportunity arises. In addition, I also love discovering great new tools that make sales and marketing more fun for professionals in any industry. The best online video sites, blogging tools, and contact management systems are always more effective and efficiently used when they are fun. There’s no reason business can’t be less like work and more like play.

Now is the time to reboot the SalesToys.com website!
The site still provides creative ideas for the use of imprinted promotional products, but its focus has been expanded to also include coverage of the best (and most fun!) business tools, websites, and software to make running a business (especially for professional salespeople) more fun to run.

The site is now back up and running with new posts (and new ideas) to share with the world.  I hope you’ll take this as an invitation to visit (or revisit) SalesToys.com and see some creative ideas put into action, as well as check out some of the cool tools (toys!) that I’ve run across and feel are worthy of further investigation and evaluation.

SalesToys.com is also a resource for putting your ideas into action
You can reserve domains for your special projects and sign-up for hosting using the SalesToys domain and web hosting services.  There is also an online catalog where you can search for many of the promotional products I profile in the blog (I call it the Toy Box), and request quotes for adapting the items to your own campaigns and purposes.

Visit the new SalesToys.com and see how you can have more fun marketing your business, making  sales, and making meaningful connections with your clients.