Sharon Tieman

I was lucky enough to interview Sharon Tieman as part of our regular teleseminar series. Here are a few interesting things about Sharon’s life I would like to share with you.

Sharon is probably best known as “Madam Marketing”, because she has really learned how to take a business and grow it quite quickly.  The other fantastic skill that Sharon possesses is the ability to negotiate in such a way that everyone involved ends up feeling like they have won.

One of Sharon’s important tools in negotiations is being part of a mastermind group – a group of individuals whom she trusts and respects and can bounce ideas off of.  People she can go to and ask for help, and whom she can learn from. With a mastermind group like that, Sharon explains how you suddenly have people you can talk to about how much you should expect to pay for certain business services or products, and how to work out deals among one another.

Before Sharon started working her businesses online, she actually owned a couple stores that sell items to restaurant owners.  Her marketing was allowing those off-line stores to become quite successful quickly, and she was thinking about what location she would want to open her next store.  When Sharon was approached by a web designer about taking her store onto the internet, she was pretty hesitant about it because she didn’t consider herself a very technical person.  After running the numbers and working it out; she found that while it did cost a sizable chunk of money to get the site up and running, the opportunities to have the staff fill orders during the slow times was a good one, and two and a half years ago Sharon put her first store online.  It more than doubled her sales.

As Sharon began thinking about adding her third store, the money and time it would take to select a location, build the store, hire new staff- etc- it was all adding up and Sharon decided instead to put her third store completely online rather than have a brick and mortar business for it.  A web store can more than pay for itself within twelve months of operation – but the costs of opening a brick and mortar location takes much longer than twelve months to begin turning a reasonable profit.

In growing her businesses, Sharon has learned about the power of negotiating, and believes that 90% of negotiating is simply having the courage to ASK for the deal.  Her ACE formula is used regularly to gain lower prices or better deals:

A:  Ask for the deal!

C: Cordial – just be nice!

E: Explain the reasons for negotiating – how it is a win-win situation for everyone involved.

The next time you need to negotiate, why not give Sharon’s ACE formula a try for yourself? To learn more about Sharon Tieman and our other Wonderful Web Women, visit www.wonderfulwebwomen.com

Tags: Article, Guest Expert Stories, Guest Expert Stories Article