About the How-To Guides for Designers
The How To Guides are created and maintained by Fresh Tilled Soil, a privately-held Boston-based design firm. We created the How To Guides out of frustration with the lack of real-world guidance provided to designers. We are committed to creating a full range of guides that help designers do everything from market themselves to do great designs. We've been building websites and marketing them since the earliest days of the web.
Fresh Tilled Soil is a living example of how our principles can be put into action. With only $2,500 in startup capital we have created a million dollar design firm serving clients from Fortune 50 to startups. We’d like to teach you to do the same. We are passionate about design and helping other designers find success. Hope this helps.
Current Guides
- The Lens: How to Sell Without Selling
- Rapid Prototyping: Building Web Apps Without a Spec
3 Myths of Selling
Myth 1: The economy is in a slump
Other versions of this are, “our industry is going through a slump”, or “the macro economics of our space have affected performance.” We hear these excuses all the time but there is little truth beneath them.
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Myth 2: cold calling works
The quantity vs. quality is the most damaging and ubiquitous argument in sales conversations. For generations we have been led to believe that the input is directly proportional to the output.
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Myth 3: We need better sales management
Related to excuses about quantity is the excuse about sales tools. Sales managers love to blame the tools and tactics they use. Regardless of the technology available there is no tool that can improve sales.
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