“In the midst of our holiday “madness,” we often forget that
what most people want, more than anything else, is to be
truly appreciated by us. The best gift we can give to the
people in our lives is the gift of our true appreciation and
love.”
– Mike Robbins, author and speaker
The real world….
If you can anticipate objections,
you can prevent them from occurring.
Sounds simple, it just requires preparation and practice.
It takes time, creativity, and focus to make it happen.
Please try it.
Your reward for superior effort
will be superior sales…
which leads to a superior wallet.
source: The Sales Bible
I tried to call some of my clients and asked what they want salespeople to do, how they want salespeople to act and what they want salespeople to say.
I listened and I wrote:
I hope this helps…
Whatever the method of data collection, the same set of variables can be measured. You can learn about your website’s traffic and plan ahead to maximize the opportunity that you have within that short period of time.
The definition that follows are generally accepted within the Internet industry:
In order to be meaningful these measures must be taken during a specific period of time. That leads to an almost endles set of metrics that can be produced, depending on the needs of the marketer, for example:
AWStats is a good web statistic report that you can have on your server to help you keep track with your website’s traffic.
Here are some insights for our Monday morning about dealing or working with others…
“Natural talent, intelligence, a wonderful education – none of these guarantees success. Something else is needed: the sensitivity to understand what other people want and the willingness to give it to them.” – John Luther
“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” – John Maxwell
“The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.” – Theodore Roosevelt
“Assets make things possible. People make things happen.”
“In getting along with others, 98% depends on our behavior with others.”
Some people love HTML email and some people hate it. Some love the simplicity of text-only emails, while others praise the flexibility and good looks of HTML. Should we use CSS or tables? And what do we do when images are “blocked”?
Most of us think that if we can design a web page, then we should have no problem in designing HTML email. Well… almost. There are a few guidelines to follow that can ensure the best results for you and your clients.
The guidelines fall roughly into these recommendations: how you should design your email, how you should code it and finally the essential content you should include. Before we get into it though, let’s get one thing settled once and for all.
These guidelines are for relevant, permission-based emails being sent only to subscribers who have opted in to hear from your client specifically on the topic of the email. So if you’re a spammer, look away now!
Design for images being turned off
Any of your recipients who use AOL, Outlook 2003/2007, Outlook Express and Gmail will never see the images in any emails you send them by default. For some people that can make up at least half of all the people they ever send email to.
Here’s an example of just how ugly things can get. This is an email I received from Apple.
The Apple HTML email I received with images turned off
The same email from Apple with the image turned on
Luckily I recognized the sender and enabled the images right away, but how many of their recipients got the version without images and deleted the email immediately?
We know that images get blocked and that this will affect the design of your email – but blocked images are by no means a show stopper. All you need to do is follow a few simple guidelines when designing your email and you’ll forget that image blocking was ever an issue:
To backup these recommendations, here are a few examples of emails that have been designed with these guidelines in mind. Notice how readable they are even with images disabled.
Designed by Jon Livingston, this email looks great with images enabled, but the large, clear title in the header still makes it recognizable to those with images turned off.
River City Church newsletter with images on
River City Church newsletter with images off
By following the guidelines mentioned above, you can ensure the best email experience for your recipients and hopefully the best results for your client.
“No matter how much work you can do. no matter how engaging your personality may be, you will not advance far in business if you cannot work through others.” – John Craig
Should we lower our price to attract more customer? ABSOLUTELY NOT!
“Being the least expensive won’t get you anywhere if the prospect has no confidence to buy. Many times low price actually scares the buyer.” – Jeffrey H. Gitomer.
1. Establish A Presence
Approximately 100 million Americans have access to the World Wide Web (WWW). No matter what your business is, you can’t ignore the millions of people on the Net.
2. Make Your Information Accessible
What is basic business information? Think of your own customized Yellow Pages advertisement: Your hours, the Nature of your business, your Practice Areas, your Accomplishments, Honors and Awards, how to contact you. The location of your office and directions to how to get there. Additionally this advertisement would allow customers to contact you immediately or even chat with you online if there is that feature installed. If you could keep you customer informed of every reason why they should be represented by you, there is not much reason you don’t have a business deal there.
Making business information available is one of the most important ways to serve your customers. But if you look at serving the customer, you’ll find even more ways to use internet technology. How about making forms available to pre qualify for loans, or have your staff do a search for that classic jazz record your customer is looking for, without tying up your staff on the phone to take down the information? Allow your customer to punch in sizes and check it against a database that tells him what color of jacket is available in your store / all this can be done, simply and quickly, through the internet.
3. Create a 24 Hour customer Service – Customer relation is the entire buzz nowadays.
People are always talking how good of a service to a customer would make them to come back and patronize your business again. Through the internet now, you can serve your customers online 24/7. You can answer their questions through emails, or send them loyal customer discounts or inform them about new products available. You can send them newsletters or article to make them feel belong to a community or anything else you can think of that could not be done in the past which have to be done manually and tediously. With the Internet you can create an excellent customer relationship service with 24/7 ability.
4. Network
In the business world connection sometimes means everything. A smart business man understands that it is not what you know but who you know to allow you to move forward. Maybe you know that passing out your business card as much as you can, will increase your chance of a business deal or a meeting. Then think about this what if you can send your business card or be present on a search list when someone is looking for a specific service online to thousand or even hundreds of thousands of people online. How much greater potential of a business deal are there?
5. Sell Products and Services
Having a website would enhance your chance of selling something. This statement is not made boldly on speculation and can be explained by simple common sense. A few years ago if a telemarketer wants to sell something he can only rely of his talent of speech and in the 3 minutes time frame the listener is willing to five him to convince the listener. Having a website however would revolutionize all that. You can now let potential customer take all the time they want to browse through information, products, qualities, feedbacks from previous buyers of users. You can convince a potential customer through high resolution picture, music and virtually no time limit. Compare this to the traditional telemarketing or paper brochure and you would find out you have more convincing power and more money left when trying to sell a service or product online.
6. Make Changing Information Available Quickly
Ever in the situation of having to change information on paper after one is printed and find it impossible or time consuming? If you did then you would appreciate the flexibility of online information and mass publication through email. With electronic publishing you can send important promotions, news or anything you want to your subscriber or potential customers. No need for pens or printing on paper as electronic publishing changes according to your needs not you accommodating what you have. You save energy, time and money through one simple step.
7. Reach a Highly desirable Demographic Market
People who use the internet is usually college educated or being college educated. This concludes to the fact that college educated people make higher salary or soon to make a high salary. Therefore it is safe to say also the purchasing power of these people on line would be stronger than those on the streets given the chance you have products to offer online. It would also be safe to say that since the world is going to the phase of more and more people getting online, the prospect for online marketing would remain strong.
8. Statistics/ Tracking & advertising
One benefit of advertising on the internet is the ability for you to see statistical and demographic reports on who visits your website. Other than that you can see from the report where your visitors are from, which pages they are in the most of their time of visit. Knowing this information can help you tremendously in where you want to place or target your market according to the statistics. All of these can done economically through the website you have.
9. Answer Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Answering a phone call and answering the same question over and over again is time consuming and inefficient. However it is also crucial for potential customer to get this information. Post those frequently asked questions on a web page and you will have removed another barrier to doing business with you and free up the phone operator for some real operator business.
Before you start searching for the hosting company, you should set your goals. Below are three levels of needs that will help you in finding the most fit hosting service for you.
How much server capacity you need?
This is the basic of the basic in hosting requirements, Your options here will determine all the other requirements as well as the limit of growth for your website. There are three components to a web server capacity: hardware processing speed, hard disk capacity, the operating system and web server application, and finally, the traffic bandwidth. The options you take mostly depend on: the purpose of your website, the size of content and the amount of audience you are targeting, and last but not least, the success of the marketing effort you do to promote the website. For example: an online gallery website requires more hard disk space and bandwidth to store and download photos than a blog website. A forum website open for public requires more processing speed and bandwidth to handle multiple users at one time than a customer portal with restricted number of users. Are you planning to move data and process from MS SQL database? Then your server setup is more compatible using Windows and IIS. Are you investing on advertising in major media? Then you should be ready to have large bandwidth to handle large number number of customer visiting your website.
Most hosting companies have two general options regarding the server capacity: shared or dedicated. Shared means that your website resides in a pool server where other websites also reside. In this one you might still have fixed hard drive space and bandwidth, however, you will share the processing speed of the server with other customers. Dedicated service, on the other hand, allows you to have the entire server dedicated to your website (or websites if you have more). You will have all the flexibility to fully utilize the resources available and upgrade the hardware, but this may come at a much higher cost.
What are the functionalities you need?
At this level of needs you should probably understand that your website can function more than just an online business card, but rather a tool or vehicle that can drive your business at a higher speed. The answer to this question will cover the additional softwares or features available on the web server and the specific technology behind them. Aside from the web server application, these are the most common software bundles that hosting usually provides: server-side scripting support, mail server, FTP, and database service. A single option that you choose at this level might not limit the growth of your website directly, but combined, they will have significant impact on your site. For example: if your website function as an e-store, you would probably need database and server side scripting support to store all the product and order data efficiently. If you need full control to modify every little detail of your website page and files, then it will be better for you to have FTP access to the web folders. If you have a customer portal where you will need to send mass announcement or newsletter, then a mail server application will be a good addition on your server.
How are you going to manage the website?
As your business grow, you would consider some alternative in managing your website. The answer to this question will help you determine: the access level to modify the server configurations and features, and the support that the hosting provides. Some hosting companies only provide limited control over their services and server setting, in which, one must login and go through a control panel interface to create or add pages, email accounts and database. Other hosting companies, especially on their dedicated service, provides full control to the server, giving you an administrator access to install / modify the system configuration through the shell access. Regarding the support, some hosting companies provide unlimited maintenance support with 24 hours toll free number, while the other companies only provide email / online ticketing system to report the problem.
How much are you willing to spend?
Capacity + Functionality + Support = Price of investment
This is always true most of the time. Everything has its price, the more you are willing to invest, the better service you’ll get on your hosting service.