Steve Mertz is one busy blogger! Sales Presentation Training is just one of his three blogs. The others are In Cash Flow We Trust which was his first blog, started in March 2005, and, since August of this year, Search Engine Optimization for Start Ups. The total blog postings for all three blogs in August approached 30.

What’s a poor reviewer to do? I don’t have the time or expertise to comment on Cash Flow or Start-ups per se. A quick glance tells me they are actually more attractively designed than the Sales Presentation Training blog. I’d say the cash flow blog is clearly where Steve’s main area of professional expertise lies. He makes great comments in all of his blogs. He’s doing the right thing in cloning his activity this way – building his reputation with different audiences.

So like a movie reviewer, I’ll focus this review on his main NSA-related blog, Sales Presentations Training. Other works by the same director have their own flavor.

Blogging since: March 11, 2006
Posting Frequency: 4 – 5 times a week
Post Length: 50 – 500, average 200
Aesthetic Appeal: Bare bones standard template
Graphics: Scattering of photos and other images
Categories: Career Training, Executive Speech Coaching, Humor, Mystery Shopping, PowerPoint, Presentation Coaching, Presentation Skills, Presentation Tip, Presentation Tips, Presentations, Presentations Strategies, Presentations Training, Public Seminars, Public Speaking, Public Speaking Fears, Sales Presentations, Sales Presentations Training, Sales Resources, Speech Coaching, Telephone Coaching Program
Blogroll: 22, including 17 NSA “buddies” – thanks Steve!
Target Audience: Salespeople & financial advisors in the financial services community
Comments allowed: Yes
Trackbacks: No
Alexa.com traffic ranking: 3,984,515
Sites that link to this blog: N/A
Yahoo Links: 730

Review:

This blog gives an occasional nod to Steve’s Financial community roots:

I was recently speaking with a mutual fund wholesaler who asked for advice. First, a definition, a mutual fund wholesaler is responsible for convincing brokers, financial planners, etc…to sell their mutual funds to clients. Typically, the wholesalers offer to buy lunch to advisors and make the case for their funds-wholesalers have a ton of competition, just like in your businesses!

However, the focus of this blog is on Presentation skills. He comments on a broad range of typical NSA topics including:

Steve knows how to talk to salespeople. He offers a series of tips for the sales professional:

and much more.

Steve offers personalized coaching via the phone for $300/hr and group coaching calls for salespeople for $97/month.

Steve is an active member of the NSA/Colorado chapter and has written up useful reports of their meetings. The September 9th meeting featured Ford Saeks, Tim Gard, CSP, CPAE and Debra Fine.

Suggestion: If other NSA members blogged their meetings, with links to the speakers websites, we’d grow a national data-bank of reports that anyone could check out to see what NSA is up to. How cool is that!

I’d love to see Steve’s Sales Presentation Training blog brought up to the standard of the Cash-Flow blog, which has quirky posts on Jimmy Hendrix and Nick Nolte to make financial points, as well as extra functionality such as Blogger talkbacks, and posting to Digg and de.licio.us.

There’s also room for expanding the ‘salesperson advice’ category beyond presentations to an audience into the 1:1 communication skills that that financial advisors need to cultivate along with their stock picking and risk management skills. The challenge, however, is to focus on a niche, as NSA member Michael Lee does for the real estate salesperson selling to ethnic minority customers.

At the end of the day, Steve has to sell the financial advisors who are his market on his value. He needs to answer the unspoken question Why should they listen to him? This blog is a tremendous boost to his credibility.