Archive for the ‘Articles’ Category

If you really want to make it, meaning if you really want to be successful in your business then you need to learn how to go about prospecting. It isn’t enough to simply find customers; you have to find your customers. You have to make sure that you understand who your customers are, what it is they are looking for, how they are going to go about getting what it is they want and where they are going to buy from. There is a right way and a wrong way to prospect. Today we are going to discuss the right way to do it.

First I am going to go over how you should interact with your prospects and then I will cover the right way to prospect. It may be backwards, but most people want to know what it is they are suppose to do and they don’t really spend a lot of time understanding why. I cannot stress enough that you need both. So please, read what you are supposed to do, and then stay tuned in long enough to understand why.

First, you want to make sure that when you are talking with your prospects that you are smiling. Yes, I know… in the internet world the only time you talk to most of your clients is either on the phone or through the email. When you talk on the phone, make sure that you are smiling. Believe it or not the person on the other end of the phone will be able to sense that you are smiling. So smile and be sincere.

Avoid putting words in your prospects mouths. Do not, I mean never ever assume that you know what your prospect is going to say or what they are thinking. The goal is for you find out what your prospects want and need. Let your prospect do some of the talking, you will learn a lot by listening. Also you want to make sure that when you are talking to your prospects that you are asking open ended questions. Meaning that very few of your questions should be “yes or no.”

The other key element you need to remember when you are talking to your prospects, to anyone that you are wanting to do business with… be yourself. There is no point in you trying to be someone else; it isn’t going to help your business. Breathe; think about why you are in business, what gets you excited about it and then talk.

Now, those key elements will help you when you are talking to your prospects. But you also need to find your prospects. Here are three simple steps that you should be implementing and following.

1. Create a Profile of Your Prospect – I don’t mean that you need to collect a bunch of marketing data. What you need to do is think about who your customer is. Think about how they get what they want, and when they are going to want to get it. You want to be there when they are ready, so that you can “save the day.”

2. Establish the Decision Making Process – Now, you have come up with the profile, now you need to decide how their brain works. How does your client go about deciding whether or not to make a purchase? You are also going to have to figure out along the way what types of information is needed for them to make the decision. So let’s say that you are the prospect, and you are going back and forth over your product and the competition… what do you need to see or learn to help push your towards your product.

3. Create the Lead Path – This is the path that you will follow when you are interacting with a lead/prospect. So your starting point is the first contact, and you end with closing the sale.

Follow these tips carefully and you will master the art of prospecting. Which will increase your sales, your profitability and your business.

Neil Bartlett is the founder of LocalBusinessSuccess.com. Local Business Success provides Local Businesses with Tips and Techniques for getting started and/or improving their online business marketing skills. To learn more and INSTANTLY grab his FREE report “Local Business Internet Marketing Success”

When it comes to network marketing, well when it comes to any type of marketing it is important that you know as much as you can about your target audience. Let’s say that your product or service deals with helping people improve their financial future. While you would think that is something that everyone is looking for, realistically there are certain people that are demanding that product right now. You need to know who they are.

Just like if you are going after the 18 to 25 year olds females then you are not going to want to market men’s cologne to them. You may not even want to market to them products such as hair color or natural supplements… then again you may want to. The point is that you as a marketer need to know what your audience is looking for. What products are they demanding and what products are they currently using that you can make better.

Many people that are new to network marketing make the mistake in thinking that if they can find a product that has little or not competition that they have a gem of a product that they can easily make money off of. Let me give you the single most valuable piece of information you will ever come across in network marketing. You want a product that has competition, competition means demand, which means profitability.

Doing market research will help you figure out what people are looking for. You need to have a product that people already want. I know, you are saying, well if there are ten products that on the market that are just like mine, why would people want the product I have to offer?

To answer that I have to ask you another question, how many places sell burgers? How many diet pills are for sale in the supermarket? All of those people that sell burgers, and all of the companies that sell diet pills aren’t going out of business anytime soon. The key is that they all market what their products do or offer that the other products don’t. Think about it Burger King sells the fact that their burgers are flame broiled not fried. McDonald’s sells their special sauce.

To find out if there is a demand for the product that you have you will want to do a keyword search for what it is your product does. So if your product is for people in the networking industry, and what your product does is design sales letters you would do a search for premade sales letters, network marketing sales letters. When it comes to keywords you want to see that there are at least 20,000 searches for those keywords a month.

You might also want to get on a few networking sites and check into the forums and start a conversation to see if anyone knows of a program that can automate the sales letter process. This will help you see if there are other products on the market, if anyone is using them and if there is an interest in this type of product.

Neil Bartlett is the founder of LocalBusinessSuccess.com. Local Business Success provides Local Businesses with Tips and Techniques for getting started and/or improving their online business marketing skills. To learn more and INSTANTLY grab his FREE report “Online Business Success”

“Why You Shouldn’t Use Your Company Name”

One of the most important decision you are going to make as business owner is not whether or not you should be a LLC or Incorporated. It is going to be the domain name you decide to use for your website. Your domain name is going to determine how many customers visit your website… actually how many people are able to find your website. Choosing the wrong domain name will not only limit the amount of visitors that find you, but it can also cause confusion and if you aren’t careful it can land a lawsuit.

With all that could go wrong it is wonder why many website owners leave selecting their domain name to chance instead of hiring a professional to create the perfect domain name for their website and get them online. Believe it or not, most people don’t realize what it takes to create a good domain name. One that is going to get them the customers they are after. Many people fail to realize that there is more that goes into a domain name then just your company name.

This brings up an excellent starting point. One thing that you should never do is use your company name as your domain name. That statement will probably make a number of people scratch their heads and wonder, “Why not, it will make it easier for people to find my company and to remember me.” Will it really? Let’s think about this for just a moment. If you are starting up a new web business… and you are starting a website that sells organic foods, you decide to name your web business Sunshine Estates. Why not, it has a nice ring to it, makes people think about the sun and natural things. Great! Now you go domain shopping and find the www.sunshineestates.com is available. You buy the domain, put up your site… and wait.

While you are waiting to make that first sale you notice that you are getting visitors but not any customers. You also find that most people coming to your site are looking for property… or maybe a nursing home… or a warm place to visit… what they are not looking for is a place to buy organic food. See people aren’t searching for Sunshine Estates as an organic food seller because they don’t know that you have a company named Sunshine Estates that sells organic food. This brings up the question then, “How did these people land on my site?”

The answer is pretty simple, keywords. When they sat down at the computer and did a search they put in certain terms they were looking for. Which should tell you then that if you used a keyword that people might search for such as “organic foods,” “natural products,” or “fresh food” you would actually have gotten visitors that would’ve converted to customers because they found your store based on what they were looking for, not your name. Think about it, the last time you were trying to find something on the internet did you look for a company name that you picked out of the air or did you use keywords or a memorable phrase.

There are other items to consider when creating a domain name. Should you use numerals or dashes or commas in your domain name? You should also think about whether the name you are choosing is going to help you when it comes to search engines and directories. You also need to think about how quickly technology changes. The web currently looks at different parts of websites, to determine what is useful to the users that are doing the searching… part of that is the domain name.

Let’s look at a few “must haves” when it comes to domain names. Your domain name should be something that is easily to remember. It should also “command respect,” you don’t want people to come to your web business and think that you are a joke. Your domain name should also be a business asset, not a liability. Your domain name should be complimentary to your business. A flower business would not want a domain name such as www.rocksandmore.com.

This means that you want to take a little time, or invest in a service that will do the leg work for you, to find out in your niche what people are looking for. You want to then take a look at what it is you have to offer that people are going to want to buy. It is the careful combination of what people are looking for and the services you have to offer that create the perfect domain name, which is known as the category killer.

Having the perfect domain name not only does wonders for your business, but it can be an excellent financial investment for you as well. You never know when you will get that email or that phone call from someone that is willing to pay big money… not for your business, but your domain name. With this being one of the most important business decisions you will have to make that will ultimately determine the success of your business, isn’t it best that you ask an expert?

Neil Bartlett is the founder of LocalBusinessSuccess.com. Local Business Success provides Local Businesses with Tips and Techniques for getting started and/or improving their online business marketing skills. To learn more and INSTANTLY grab his FREE report Local Online Success