Archive for the ‘Small Business’ 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.

Do you have a ecommerce website? Do you need a simple method to get people to buy from your website? If you answered yes, then read on. In this article, I’ll share few tips that’ll help sell more from your ecommerce website.

Have you ever thought what makes people buy from some sites and then they avoid others like plague?

(People, Life and commitment – Photo Credit – by frerieke)

It all comes down to few simple things… One the most important factor is TRUST.

Now you might be wondering how can you build trust with a website that is so technical. The idea is to get in front of your customer and start a dialogue.

I know you are wondering but how can I do that with a website?

The idea is to start a dialogue that’s already in customers mind.

Let’s see, when customer lands on your webpage, what is going through her mind?

she’s wondering, how did she reached here? What was she searching for?

Does this page looks like it’s what I am searching for/

Does this page look like a reputed seller?

Is this the stuff I am searching for is what I want?

Do I need to buy this?

What happen if the stuff I bought is defective?

Will my credit card details will be safe if I buy from this website?

The questions like these are raging in her mind subconsciously. She’s not thinking at all about all of this stuff… It’s automatic and it happens in fraction of a second.

She makes the decision to buy or not to buy in that fraction of second. In some cases you get a break and she might think for few seconds but not much longer.

When you start answering these questions from her mind, you’ll increase your sales… PERIOD.

The questions comes down to how your website can answer these questions and make a sale.

What I want you to do is to think “How you can generate trust with a website?”

let me help you a bit. A Verisign Logo helps with credit card issues. If you put a HELP contact button. It’ll tell the customer that she can call your or contact you anytime. If you put your phone and home address, it’ll tell her, you are real person.

All these small changes are going to help generate that trust and make a sale. So Start thinking about this and improve your sales.

Last year I suffered from burn out and didn’t touched my blogs websites for 7 months. I knew I was working harder, I knew I was going to burn out but I never quit. Of course as you can guess, my business suffered.

If your are the major decision maker in your business, it makes your accountable for everything that happens. Being an entrepreneur is a High burnout job (even more than telemarketers, they can quit their jobs, we can’t).

Then I started finding better ways to improve my productivity without any burnout.

I literally exhausted myself again but this time finding way to help myself… cheh…

Then Eben pagan came to my rescue. He was recommended to me by a good friend of mine. And I took his advice and started following a simple method to improve productivity.

It’s called 60-60-30/50-10

The above numbers are all about how much work you do and then how you take a rest

First 3 numbers 60-60-30 are your work times

You are going to work for 2 and 1/2 hour block.

With every block of 60, you’ll work at 50 minutes and 10 minute break.

So you are taking break at every 50 minutes of work.

Taking these many breaks have changed the way I do things.

Those 10 minute breaks are life saver.

Remember when I am talking about 50 minutes of work, that means un-interrupted work of high quality. You just cannot check your emails, receive calls or do umpteen number of useless things.

When you get focused you produce better quality. When you get Take regular break, you become one of the rarer person who walks on high ground (err… kidding).

What you do in these 10 minutes is completely up to you.

Just do not lie down… it’s better if you move around a bit.

One thing that can help you in getting focused is Derek Franklin’s Action Machine. Put Your Own List and Add how much time you are going to spend doing each activity and Let the machine go.  Take any task you’ve been putting off, give yourself 30 minutes to get it done, start your timer, and watch what happens. Click Here to get Action Machine.

For now enjoy this Dilbert comic strip (Photo Credit Segfault)