Archive for the ‘Business Mindset’ Category

6 Sales Leaks that are robbing you behind your back part –1.

Recently when I was talking to a business owner and we started discussing how his sales team is performing. When I had a look at his team, I noticed simple mistakes that often creeps up on you (or your sales guy) without knowing about it.

The issue is that often this leads to leaving lots of money and business on the table and we don’t know about it. Not to say that I never made this kind of mistake but it’s often easier to take a look at other business than your own from very objective point of view.

Today in this 6 part article series, I am going to talk about…

How to remove these profit leaks from your sales system?

One of the major blunder or profit leak is “Not understanding what your customer wants”.

I’ve seen this sales leak in mostly service providers. The more services you provide, chances are higher of your making this mistake.

If you are not taking care of this, then you’ll find that you are trying to shove your product or service down the customer throats.

It’s like you have a hammer and you are using it to fix everything.

When you create packages that you are going to provide, you’ll make this mistake. Why am I so sure?

Simply, because when you have a product or service package you want to sell and you’ll try to fit your package or service to every prospect you meet. As you get more experienced and to handle this issue, you subconsciously create more packages and more services.

What’s the end result of doing that?

You end up try to do too much and spread thin yourself in many areas. Then you start hiring more people and give them training and it all starts cutting down on your profit. Then you produce more packages and the cycle goes on and on.

Yikes, scary thought. Isn’t it?

How can you avoid doing this simple mistake and end the Cycle of No profit and leakage?

First step is to don’t decide initially what product suits your clients. Don’t day dream about this at all.

Second step is to build a questionnaire for your client. This questionnaire should have as many question as need to help you and your prospective client make the right decision.

Take notice of your customer’s concern, fears, thoughts and most immediate need.

And then you provide them the solution (again, don’t try to hammer it and give your package).

For example, Just couple of days ago, I had a talk with a Webmaster and Internet marketer. He need and wants were something that I could provide, but I would waste lot of time doing the set up and necessary stuff (it was related to SEO).

Within 10 minutes I realized this and confirmed it with him. Then I told him, I can give this service to him but I won’t be completely honest with it, so he should trying going for XYZ company (that I recommended).

Now in this above scenario, I could have spend another 20-30 minutes discussing and find some way to sell it to him but in long term that would have been a bad idea for me. I have to talk to my SEO team and give them additional training and provide set up just for one guy.

His needs were different and I wasn’t ready for it.

In less than 10 minutes I made this decision. Remember I don’t want to follow the endless cycle of spreading myself thin and then losing control of it.

So, you have to spend some time understanding what your client wants and then decide what is the right option. Hammering everything you see is not the right approach for it.

In earlier section of this article “How to sell with Ecommerce website?”, we talked about the mindset when a customer arrives on your website. Today in this article, I am going to discuss other factor that’ll help you sell more.

In my last article, we discussed small factors that influences customer subconsciously. In this article, we’ll discuss factors that makes customer to buy something.

Are you marketing to prospects heart or to the mind?

When a customer comes to your website (webpage) to buy or research about a product, then she’s in a phase which will eventually leads to her buying it.

It completely depends on you to make the sale as easy as possible. For example, if you are selling a Widget A and there are 100 different websites selling Widget A then how are you going to influence her state?

Words create images and images creates emotion.

Tom Hopkins, top sales trainer uses this quote often in his seminars. Words create images and these images leads to emotion and these emotions leads to buying your product.

What words you use in your webpage is going to create the influence factor in your product description.

In Copywriting world, we have this quote.

Benefits appeal to emotions
Features appeal to logic
Logic justifies emotion and
Emotion justifies sales.

What does this tell you?

So the word you use have to include Benefits and Features.

You have to appeal to your customers login and emotion.

What you should do with your description?

Your goal to provide as much information about your product as possible. Most people who like to buy do their research and then decide what to buy. When you are writing description of your product, present a complete picture about your product.

Present all the benefits, features, guarantees and everything down to small detail. Remind them that they are making the right decision to buy with you.

Yes, Images Create Emotions too…

(Yummy, that picture creates salivating emotions by Pink Sherbet Photography)

Like the image, if you love food, you’ll love this image. Image of your product, or result will also help you.

That’s why most websites uses photos to show their product.

Again your goal is to make a sale. If you can include a mouth watering image for your product, you can increase the chances of the sales.

Remember – A single Picture can create effect of thousand words.

What You should do with your pictures?

If it’s possible, you should add demo in Picture or Movies. These days, adding a movie has become very simple and easy. You can do it in few minutes and present a complete new viewpoint to your customer with your movie presentation.

“I loved it, You should love it too…”

If you have testimonials for your product, then you should add them too. Customer often believes that their problem or issue is unique. They don’t want to be your guinea pig to test out your product. They want assurance that they are making the right choice.

There’s nothing like testimonials that can achieve that. If you are providing testimonials then they better should be from real people. Do not fabricate them.

Testimonials add credibility, assurance and customer feel safe.

Did you notice testimonials on Amazon.com website? Most of these testimonials are pretty much un-edited. The bring confidence in buyer about the product and the website.

Words, images, Videos, testimonials and guarantees are the simple factors that will help you sell more products.

Oh… I just realized, I didn’t even discussed price as major factor… Why? because it is not an important factor (I’ll tell you some other time why price doesn’t matter).

About The Author

Varun Pratap is Business Growth Specialist and SEO expert in India. His blog http://www.varunpratap.com provides tips, ideas and his thoughts on marketing your business, life and much more.

You see so many statistics online about how much people have increased their online spending, Yet it seems you are not getting any sales? So what can you do in this situation?

You have to understand what Triggers people to buy?

Just couple of weeks ago, I was working on my PC and noticed the performance issues. I didn’t care much about it as I was concentrating on my work. In the evening, when I switched on my computer, It gave me “boot failure error”. My heart literally sank, as my most of the work was in the hard disk.

Quickly I boot up another PC and used this hard drive to connect with it… It took me few tries to get it connected and only then I was able to take the back up of all the important data.

When I sat down and started thinking I noticed few things that would have clued me in to its issue.

1. Slow performance

2. Buzzing sound

The moment I realized I rushed out to buy a new hard drive. Why Because I didn’t want to lose my data.

What does this story tells you?

I gives you a clue to the trigger I want to talk about.

I bought a new hard drive because I didn’t want to lose my data.

Why is that important?

Because The data I wanted to save was the work I was doing for my client. I didn’t want to delay the deadline for the work and have to spend all my time to work from scratch.

Was is worth buying a new hard drive?

Yes, at least I was tension free and could focus on my most important task.

There are 2 things in this story.

1. Afraid to lose.

2. Tension in my mind.

When you have a problem, you immediately want to look for solution. That’s the trigger you have to use to get people to buy.

Remember, “Customer buy for their own reasons not for yours”.

When you put problem in the front and remind your customer how they’ll lose out, it makes them agitated. It increases stress and they want to get rid of it in any way possible.

So when you are working on the copy of your website. Think

Are you using customers major problem to get their attention?

Remember the old age formula – Problem – Agitate –Solution.

Notice I didn’t notice the issue about my hard drive until I saw the error. The moment you see a problem, you first response is to find a solution. And that’s how you get people to buy.

If you are starting your own business. You have to create a business map. Business map is just another name for creating a business plan. It’s just that Map is easily accessible and understood than a complicated plan.

Technically you should think and plan for next 12 months.

Think about…

1. What are your goals?
2. What are the key factors that stands against your goals?
3. What are the key factors that’ll help your goals?
4. What is your projected result in next 12 months (In terms of customers, profit, income etc)?
5. What is your core message?
6. What kind of products you are going to sell?
7. How are you going to promote your stuff?
8. What marketing techniques you are going to use?
9. What is your client profile and demographics?
10. What kind of existing products and companies you are competing?
11. How you can utilize a chink in armor of other companies marketing strategy?
12. What kind of media you’ll utilize in generating footfalls?
13. Are you going to use web site as one of the revenue generation tool?
14. How you’ll get traffic to your web site?

This is just a small list of questions that you should be asking yourself and trying to find answers for.

You should at least study for “Core Message”, “Client Profile and Demographics”, “Analyzing your Competition” and “Your major marketing strategy”. All of this will help you create your “USP – Unique Selling Proposition”. USP can play a major part in your business success.

You should remember this is work in progress. As you start working and growing your business, chances are you’ll change the main profile and strategies. These are not written in stone, so don’t worry about them. This is just a good start up profile you should at least study.