1. Distract Them
You know what I’m talking about. You’ve been to Web pages where there were a TON of clickable links. You start clicking away, get 10 screens open… and yeah, you forget which is the original site and why the heck you were there in the first place!

This one is especially true for Internet marketers. Let me ask you… how many clickable links are on your Web page? Don’t send your customers to other places before you’ve made a sale. Once a prospect heads out for greener pastures, they’ll probably never find their way back.

2. Give Them An Unpleasant Surprise
You’ve probably made a purchase, got set to write the check and discovered extra fees that you weren’t counting on paying. No one even mentioned them until you were sitting there with pen in hand. Maybe it was that vacation package you’ve been dreaming about for a while. You’re left with a choice… grin and bear it, or walk off without the vacation.

Nothing leaves a bad taste in a customer’s mouth like last minute add ons to the price they pay. Yeah, sometimes they go ahead and go through with the purchase, but next time they’ll think twice before they trust you to give them the real scoop on the price… if they ever return.

Be up front! Are you planning to charge shipping? Don’t wait until they’ve already made the purchase. Let them know right up front. When they already know it’s part of the deal, they won’t have a problem with the fees.

3. Confuse Them
Eenie meenie minie moe… Have you ever been there… which item is the better buy and the right one for you? It could be that you walked out without making up your mind, thinking you’d return later. But now for the biggie…Did you make it back?

Customers who leave without making the purchase are at high risk for changing their minds about making the purchase at all. That’s why it’s important to keep the decision as simple as possible. Make it a “yes” or “no” choice and you’ve effectively guaranteed they walk out with the item in a bag.

The marketing place is competitive enough without making things tough on the customer. These three keys to sending customers away, are keys you’ll want to watch out for. Don’t make the mistake of wiping out your own profits.

1) Know what you want

Before the workshop, set learning goals for yourself. What do you want to learn? How can this program help you? What would make you feel that your time was well spent?

2) Ask for what you want

As the program unfolds, ask questions that guide the presentation toward the information that you need. Also, seek out specific ideas that will help you.

3) Focus on your success

Rather than fight against new ideas, greet them as possibilities. If the ideas seem unworkable, seek out ways to modify them so that you can use them. Or find parts of them that you can use.

4) Encourage the speaker

Learning succeeds best when you become involved. Thus, ask questions, make comments, participate in the projects. Pay attention. Let the speaker know that you are interested. This encourages the speaker to do a better job.

5) Care for yourself

Keep your body comfortable so that your mind can absorb more. Take a brisk walk during breaks. This increases your heart rate, which pumps fresh blood through your brain. Avoid eating a large, heavy meal. This sends blood to your stomach and away from your brain.

6) Be grateful

Thank the speaker after the program. Either write a note or stay to express your appreciation. Also thank the people who organized the event in your company. Seek them out to express your thanks.

Don’t quit your day job just yet.If you are a baby boomer looking to start a home business, there are 5 essentials things you must do first.

Leaving the security of a job with an established 401(k) plan, health insurance or other benefits can create a real tug of war for baby boomers who want to pursue their dreams of owning their own business.

Analyze Your Exit Strategy

At the time of this writing, the youngest of the baby boomers are turning 42 and the oldest are turning 60. No matter where you fall into this group, analyzing and preparing your exit strategy from your job will be crucial to your long-term success as a home business entrepreneur. Do you have adequate savings? If you’re married, will you be able to participate in your spouse’s health insurance?

Create a Financial Plan

How much is your salary now? What are your fixed, variable and frivilous expenses? Creating a solid plan so that you and your family will know exactly what the financial picture will be until your business gets off the ground and starts generating revenue.

Choosing a Business Model and Legal Entity

There are several business models to choose from; home party plans, consulting, and affiliate marketing to name a few. You have to make the decision based on your personality and what you are best-suited for. Choosing a legal entity for your business should be discussed with a tax accountant or your attorney. Options are sole proprietor, LLC or Subchapter S- Corp.

Set Business Benchmarks

You wouldn’t travel across the country without a road map, your business is the same. Setting financial and business-building benchmarks will help you to create a focused plan that will help you to reach your success.

Get a Physical

What does getting a physical have to do with your business? Once you leave your job, most likely your health insurance will change and as unfair as it may be, trying to get new health insurance when in your 40′s, 50′s or 60′s can be difficult. While pursuing your dreams of a home business is something you are probably very passionate about, if you do not have good health to enjoy the rewards of your efforts, then not much else is important.

The baby boomer generation is like no other before it or after it. Technically, we are considered middle-aged, but we are anything but middle-aged in mind, body and spirit. We know there is more meaning to life than a commute to an unrewarding 9-5 job, but there are also important steps we must take first. Planning and preparing for your home business now will lead to less headache’s later on.

It almost sounds like a chain letter and in a way it is. The chain letter is a facetious reference as so many of us have been exposed to them by now and know they are illegitimate scams. Yet the basic principles are: you give before you receive, and you give with the faith and expectation of receiving. A similar modern example can be seen in the film Pay It Forward. By giving to others, you allow good things to happen to you. And this all boils down to the simple law of attraction.

The law of attraction is like any other law of nature, like gravity. And like gravity, it is not one that has been generally discovered yet. As a result, most of us are walking around thinking in a completely disordered paradigm.

Disordered paradigms of thought are displayed over and over in history, and discoveries of natural laws and observations of reality have brought order to transform the mistaken beliefs that had been accepted for fact. You can think of many examples, such as the belief that the world is flat, or the belief that we are at the center of the universe. Or the great changes that resulted as a discovery of the force of electricity and harnessing its natural power.

In this same way, we are able to make a change in our own disordered thought patterns. Right now 99% of us are probably dissatisfied. Dissatisfaction means larger life is seeking to be expressed through us, and it is being blocked. Self-sabotage is a very real process working in the invisible realms of the unconscious mind.

The good news is there are a lot of simple, small but powerful techniques you can use to reprogram that all powerful unconscious mind of yours, to order your own life as you want it. Yes, there IS a way to eliminate the chaos in your life, and it starts within. It starts by eliminating the often unseen chaos in your own mind.

The technique in this article is only one of a vast array that you can use on a daily basis to improve your life dramatically. In this article you are learning how to use the law of attraction to attract to yourself what you want.

The law of attraction, like gravity, is undefiable. You will attract what you are sending out. Your thoughts are real in the world of attraction.

If your mind is resonating with patterns of anxiety, stress, anger, sadness, envy, grief, or any other negative emotion, you will be attracting more of the same in your life.

One step you can take to change this is to focus on giving to others before you receive yourself. In this way you are changing your vibration and your focus. And you open yourself to receive what you had been closing off before.

It is very simple to give. Give of what you have, and everyone has something to give. We all have innate value to offer the world. An abiding philosophy in the law of attraction is to always offer an increase in value, to give back more in value than you receive in money. In this way you continue to give more than you get and attract more and larger life back to yourself.

Take a moment to look within and find something, anything, no matter how small or simple, to give to anyone, friend or stranger. Start the practice of giving, and you will take one step towards raising your level of vibration and enhancing the value of what you attract in your own life. Give something selflessly today, knowing that you will receive it multiplied back in your life, tenfold.

The way I’m talking about that details can kill your business is if you focus too much on them.

Say what?

How on earth can focusing too much on details hurt your business?

Ever tried to walk on a railroad track?

When I was a kid, my aunt and uncle had a house right next to a railroad track. My uncle once challenged me to walk on the track without falling off.

Hey, it’s not like walking a tightrope. That track was as wide as my feet. Should be no problem. So I started walking it, carefully watching my feet with each step to make sure I stayed on the track. But I couldn’t get more than a couple of steps before I’d lose my balance and fall off.

My uncle taught me that the only way to walk that track successfully was to look at a point a ways down the track – not down at my feet. By setting a goal and focusing on it, I could walk on that track as easily as if I was walking right on the ground. It was only when I focused on my feet that I tripped up.

It works that way with business, too. Our natural reaction is to put all our attention into “watching our feet” as we deal with this short-term detail and that. But when we do that, we “fall off the track” of where we wanted to go.

Now, I’m not saying that we should ignore the details of our business as we gaze wistfully toward our vision of the knock-out business we dream of building. You never get anywhere without taking step after step after step to reach your goal. But you never get anywhere, either, if all you look at is the present step.

The point in the distance that you need to focus on is the need your audience has and the solution you have that will fill it. It requires you to understand your audience – who they are and what they need and what concerns stand in the way of them choosing your solution.

It’s way too easy for us to focus on details, namely, on the latest traffic building tips or tools, the latest bells and whistles we can add to our site. Details are usually driven by facts, and facts are something we feel we can learn and control. Understanding the people who make up our pool of potential customers is a lot more scary. It requires us to step outside ourselves into the hearts and minds of other people.

Given the choice between dealing with predictable facts and details or dealing with unpredictable human nature, most of us will jump at dealing with facts any time.

But that just gets us stuck staring at our own feet as our feet inexplicably slip off the track. The only way to stay on track is by looking toward your ultimate goal: you helping people solve some problem in return for them repaying you fairly for the time and effort you put into it.

That’s really the most simple definition of what business is. The details are not your business. The facts and the tips and the tools are not your business either. They’re merely the steps you take to get to that point in the distance. And the more you take that to heart, the more easily you’ll stay on the track toward your goal.

There are several compelling reasons for these buyers guides to mimic an advertisement. One is most of the time the guides are sponsored directly or indirectly (thru advertisements) by product manufactures and so the authors cannot really write against the products and therefore have to toe the line of the manufacturers. And since there is no way that the primary players of the buying and selling game, i.e. the buyer, manufacturer or an existing consumer of the product can interact it becomes basically a one-way conversation where the buyer gets to hear all good things about the product. This is more of a biased representation of the products which it features and in most cases the authors of the guides are the company representatives or other hired people having an interest in promotion of the product.

Appropriately a buyers guide, as the name suggests should be buyer or consumer-centric and primarily cater to the betterment of the consumers. If we think hard, we would know that customer satisfaction goes a long way to strengthen the business. So a true buyers guide will not only help the consumers but also the manufacturer of the products in the long run. Once a buyer criticizes a product it actually presents an opportunity for the manufacturer or the sellers to rectify that defect or lacuna or respond to the changing taste of the consumers. But unfortunately such buyers guides are not abundant in circulation and still the vast majorities are the one-way communication types where reporters and paid experts write a product review more as a part of a business deal than a critical review. Probably the authors and publishers of the buyers guide failed to realize the need of the consumers; the consumers are looking for more than brochures in the buyers guides.

So what is the choice before the consumer in the absence of a true buyers guide? Consumers gradually are learning to differentiate between biased information and true feedback. They cannot be just fooled anymore and already many consumers are turning their back to these sponsored guides. They are increasing relying on fellow consumers for information about products and services. Gone are the times when a company can form a consumer opinion by clever advertising and influence buyers to select their products. The consumers in the 21st century have a very powerful tool within their reach and that is internet. There are already hundreds of blogs which anyone can access and these online journals tell us the real consumer experience about products and services. They also narrate the harrowing experience that some consumers had to face due to unscrupulous companies and or inferior products. The information is voluntary and not paid for and so people perceive them as authentic as compared to the adverts. There are positive feedbacks too which are actually recommendations and consumers are taking cues and choosing smartly.

But the battle against biased information that seek to influence and misguide consumers can only be won if there is a larger participation. It is time for consumer action that makes sure consumers reclaim their rights and their voices are heard. Also they deserve timely action as they are tired of the slow and often ineffective consumer forums that have a very poor record in India. In the backdrop of a weak consumer rights protection system and many vested interests only consumers can help fellow consumers and they can do so without spending any money or much effort. There are already few websites available where a consumer can find out feedbacks about a product and also write a review for others to read. But again discretion should be applied as some of the websites contain many bogus reviews and also paid inserts. Consumer blogs are also very good source of unbiased and authentic information. The best part is that a consumer can also interact with the author and can ask specific questions before making a buy decision. So if you are a smart consumer better listen to your folks than an expert when you want to buy a product next time. Dont worry too much about the experts, you can be an expert overnight and all you just need is to write product reviews which are eagerly waited by other consumers who want to read them.

In order to be remembered and noticed by the boss you will need to:

1. Be friendly and pleasant. Have a nice thing to say to everyone, ooze good manners, and have a ready smile and caring attitude. Dont be brash and ride rough shod over others or be judgmental.

2. Refrain from gossip. It is the one thing that can make life uncomfortable. Know whats happening in the office but stay away from discussing it or spreading things however tempting it may be.

3. Update your skills and knowledge constantly. The world today moves at a fast pace and one needs to keep up with technical innovations as well as global business trends. Make all efforts to be ahead of developments in your field of work.

4. Be efficient in your work and have facts and figures at the tips of your fingers. Always prepare for meetings well be a visionary and make suggestions that can be backed up by action. When you speak it must be pearls of wisdom.

5. Practice the art of listening. Analyze what others know and can tell you. Absorb knowledge like a sponge. Never restrict yourself to only your department. It pays to know other functions of the organization.

6. Be a leader in all aspects. Be the first to accept extra responsibilities, to take over someone elses load when they have problems, lend a hand when a team is working to achieve a deadline. Make valuable suggestions. Let people know they can depend on you for just about anything.

7. Respect and obey the rules of the office. Be disciplined and spread the culture to all others.

8. Always be in control, never appear to be stressed. Keep personal life and work separatenever form a relationship with a colleague or boss. Dress well everyday and stand tall.

9. Be methodical and organized in your work. Use filing methods that anyone can useif you are away anyone in your department should be able to locate the papers. Keep your work area neat, computer files uncluttered. Device a workable backup schedule such that under no circumstance is your work lost. Disaster management measures must be in place.
10. Be poised, stylish, and approachable. Look good and smell goodexcellent personal habits are always appreciated. Carry breath mints in your pocket along with a fresh hanky. Keep a laundered shirt on hand for emergencies.

It takes more than talent to impress a boss. Be ahead in the race for success.

But cold calling is an art-form. It can be daunting, its always a lot of work, and you always need to make a good impression. So you need to do it right. Following are some tips which will help you do just that.

1) Record everything

Always write down all details of every phone call. Write down any names and titles you learn. Not just the name of the person youre trying to contact. The receptionist’s name can be vital to remember as they’re often gatekeepers. Write down when you called, and when you said you’d call back.

2) Use a database or spreadsheet to record everything

Youll never manage by hand, and Excel spreadsheets arent user friendly in the long term. If youre prepared to invest in a real CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool, thats a great idea. If not, you there is a cheaper alternative. I created my own database using Microsoft Access. Visit http://www.divinewrite.com/downloads/contacts and jobs.mdb to download a 208KB working copy for FREE. Youll need Microsoft Access 2000 to run it. Im no database expert, so its not a work of art. Itll certainly get you started though. (TIP: When using the database, press Ctrl + ; to enter todays date.)

3) Always call back when you said you would

Dont let them down. They may not even remember that you committed to calling back. But if they do, and you dont meet your commitment, youll lose valuable credibility and respect. And wherever possible, work to their schedule. You’re here to help them, not make things harder.

TIP FOR COPYWRITERS: If youre an advertising copywriter or website copywriter, ask to speak to the Marketing Manager (or if the person who answers the phone says they don’t have a marketing manager, ask for “the person who looks after your advertising & website” – all businesses have that person – it’s generally one of the owners).

4) Always try to get on with the gatekeepers

Receptionists and personal assistants have great influence, and quite often do more of the real work and decision making than the person youre trying to contact! Make friends with them and youve got a foot in the door. (But dont waste their time or crawl they get a lot of that!)

5) Keep it short n sweet

When you do get to speak with someone, keep it short ‘n sweet unless they want to talk a lot. The purpose of the phone call is to get their attention, let them know you’re there, get their name and contact details, and assess whether they have any requirement for your services. (TIP FOR COPYWRITERS: If youre an advertising copywriter or website copywriter, you might have called about brochure writing and then find out they need web writing.)

6) DONT HARD SELL!!!

Dont pressure people or make it hard for them to get off the phone. Tell them what you do and that you’d like to send them an email with a link to your website with samples and testimonials (or with an attachment containing samples), then leave them to it.

7) Follow up with an email

If you have permission, always send a follow-up email and do so immediately. Be specific in your subject line. (TIP FOR COPYWRITERS: If youre an advertising copywriter or website copywriter, use the words “advertising copywriting” or website copywriting in the subject. Most people don’t get many emails with this in the subject line, so it’ll be distinctive and probably wont be snuffed by their spam filter if they have one.) Address the email to them (e.g. “Hi Joe”), keep the email short ‘n sweet. Include only the essential info, make it easy to read and conversational, and bold the important words or phrases as they’ll probably only skim it. Include a link to your website, reference the day and date you talked on the phone (and thank them for that time), mention any names you learnt (e.g. receptionist’s name, especially if the receptionist gave you an email address but you didn’t actually get to speak to the decision maker), tell them that you’d like to follow up in a few weeks (assuming the conversation indicated that this would be a good idea).

Follow up with another call

If the lead looks promising, make sure you follow up. And when you do, always mention the day and date of the original call, as well as the fact that you sent an email. Give a quick summary of who you are and what you do, and say that you’re just calling to make sure they got the email. Most of the time, youll find the lead will talk to you about your services, if only to remind themselves of what you do!

9) Dont expect to make too many calls

On a really good day, I’ve made 80 cold calls. Most days, though, you should be very pleased to average around 40. Youll spend a lot of time playing telephone tag.

10) Dont leave message

Unless you absolutely have to (or youve just about given up on the lead), dont leave messages. Most people have trouble returning phone calls from people they know and like; returning phone calls from someone whos trying to sell them something isnt high on their list of priorities.

11) Dont expect to qualify too many leads

Depending on your business, if you get one good lead a day, you’re probably doing very well.

12) Dont expect immediate conversion

Unfortunately, most leads take a long time to come to fruition (up to 2 years). So you have to be prepared to be patient.

Good luck and happy calling!

In particular, you must stay abreast of changes in your competitive environment, and remain fully apprised of mechanisms that will enable a response fast enough to keep you in the game. This article will look at one of those mechanisms, access to capital and through that, free cash flow. In doing so well use an intuitive framework, peppered with some economics. Why? Intuitive analysis is ideal for answering specific questions; in this case What will best enable my firm to manage rapid changes to competitive economic conditions and stay in the game? And Ill use economics because of Steven Levitt, Americas most outstanding economist under-40, who along with Stephen Dubner considers that if morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work.

By speaking to specific anchor points, strategic issues affecting the access to capital problem can be explored and initiatives developed to allow a timely solution. In short, its the fastest and most accurate way to answer the question you face, because its easier to understand and doesnt get bogged down in extraneous, unnecessary analysis.

One of the anchor points in contemporary business is access to capital, especially when it helps maintain free cash-flow. In many respects they are one and the same thing, the difference merely being access to capital is a necessary precursor to free cash flow (you cant use it until you have it). And everyone needs it. Payroll, materials, overhead, and debtors taking anywhere from 45 to 120 days to settle their accounts, using your firm as a surrogate line of credit.

Access to capital becomes an even larger issue in the business environment described earlier, where speed to market and the ability to tool-up (increase production) are crucial to meeting ever shrinking delivery timelines. Many of us have experienced the elation of being awarded a large tender, something that will fill the order book for the next six months, immediately followed by the hangover that comes with the realization that the firm will struggle to fund the project based on existing and forecast cash flow.

Small-to-medium enterprises encounter particular problems when it comes to cash flow and capital access to fund growing operations, to the point where lack of access is an issue that can threaten continuing operations, even in a rising market. Balance sheets take time to build, and it is against this security that banks will lend.

Developing initiatives to tackle this problem involves looking at some existing options and making a comparison, arriving at a decision that best enables a solution to the problem at hand. In this instance, a comparison of bank funding against invoice factoring provides insight into possible solutions for the capital access / cash flow problem.

Everyday economics can inform this comparison, particularly the study of incentives – how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. Lets start with banks.

Bank lending requirements are invasive and restrictive. They often engender a feeling that you have to bare all to borrow a nickel. They would naturally dispute this claim, but lets return to the incentives what is their incentive for lending you money? To earn a return off your efforts. Certainly nothing short of this, and these days they also use lending as a lever to win the biggest share of your wallet from their rivals, trying to have you as a customer for life, growing with you and your business. When you add the fact that a surplus of people requiring credit exist in the market, they can afford to be choosy and do the economically rational thing be risk averse. Risk aversion drives the mortgage a bank puts on your house to ensure they get paid, and is what drives them to lend against strong balance sheets. They look at balance sheets in an accounting fashion, weighing up tangible, realizable, liquid assets like cash and real property, apply a formula and lend in accordance with how the result stack up against their risk matrix. Your continuing success is of interest to them only to the extent that it enables you to service (and ultimately repay) your debt, generating an ongoing margin on their investment.

An overly simplistic description, the point being to illustrate that all of this takes time, and is structured around heavy regulation and evaluation constraints. Lots of time, and lots of influential rules. First, for you to build your balance sheet, and second, to get it appraised to a point where your banker might open or extend your credit facility. During that time, the window of opportunity to fund that large project, manufacturing expansion, or operations in a rising market quickly passes, leaving you out of pocket your application fee and if successful, servicing an even larger debt you might not need.

Turning to invoice factors, the incentives might seem the same, but how they view obtaining their return is slightly different. While banks rely on their acumen in accurately predicting your ability to repay a debt, invoice factors rely on their skills in accurately assessing the ability of your customer base to pay you. A lower perceived risk aversion with invoice factors plays a small part, but it is how the factor views the overall situation that is different from traditional lending. To begin with, factors recognize your accounts receivables as assets, just like the bank. The difference is that an invoice factor considers your receivables a quickly realizable asset, and is prepared to purchase the rights (and risks) of collecting your outstanding invoices.

Put another way, in economic terms the invoice factor recognizes your receivables as assets with a future value in cash flow terms, and provided their assessment of your customers is favorable, they are prepared to effectively provide a market for those assets. This market closes with your transaction selling them the invoice however; there is no secondary market like junk bonds or other derivatives.

Access to capital through factors is more expensive than traditional lending, and this is due to the risk premium attached not to you, but your customer base. This is not surprising, and you and I would probably do the same. Returning again to economics and our study of incentives, a rational person requires a premium for every extra unit of risk they take on. A bigger incentive for a perceived higher risk. In the case of factoring, the premium is higher than equivalent bank lending rates, as the risks are considered slightly higher when the security is not real property, rather a first position claim over all of your receivables. Your risk exposure is lower than collecting the receivables yourself (invoice factors are very good at mercantile operations) the higher fee charged by the factor compared to the bank is simply the premium you must pay to lower that exposure.

The difference that factors provide is speed of access to capital, and what happens when you default. Default on the bank loan, you can lose your business, even the family home. Factoring is not quite as drastic, although the sums of money involved are invariably smaller. There are two types of factoring products available, recourse and non-recourse, and again, the difference comes down to assumption of risk, and the premium asked to assume the risk of non-payment on an invoice. With recourse factoring, you remain liable for non-payment by your customer, and with non-recourse, the factor assumes the risk up to a point, and at a higher premium.

In summary, there are merits and pitfalls in both traditional lending and factoring. These are volatile economic times, and having been burnt a number of times during boom times of the previous two decades, banks are far more risk averse, holding tight reign on their credit standards. So in light of this information, we return to our problem, looking to answer the question: Which of these approaches best delivers the flexibility I require to allow me the opportunity to prosper in a fast-changing business environment?

For many businesses, the answer lies with invoice factoring, which delivers in excess of $1 trillion in credit across the continental United States. As with all business situations there are caveats, or described another way, arrangements that if not continually monitored can become a comfortable security blanket that might actually be slowly suffocating you.

It is easy to become accustomed to continuing access to cash flow through factoring. It is also easy to feel at ease knowing you are backed by a massive publicly traded institution like your bank. Management and owners of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises should continually remind themselves that the study of incentives works for them too. Constant review of your capital funding and cash flow arrangements is essential to ensure that the deal you end up with is the best for your firm, and not others. Its all about getting what you want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing.

1. Test and Evaluate
Have you ever wondered just how much of your advertising budget should go toward experimenting with the latest marketing strategies? Marketing gurus say… spend 20 percent looking for new and improved marketing methods, while the remaining 80 percent uses the “tried and true” marketing strategies to keep the profits flowing.

2. Capture Attention on your Website
Use headlines that leap out and grab the reader’s attention to moment they open your Web page. Hey, they’re just like you… if their attention isn’t caught immediately, they ‘re ready to surf on the more exciting things!

3. Use the Best-Kept Marketing Secret – Postcards
Postcards are quick and easy to read, not to mention the fact that you can shave off a great deal of wasted advertising expenses by targeting your market. Hey, they’re cheap and convenient for you, and they get read more than other types of advertising materials… a winner all the way around!

4. Let Customers Sell You
Some things sound better coming from someone else. Yes, it’s hard to brag your business up as effectively as a satisfied customer. Testimonials are evidence that you deliver what you promise. Paste them across ads, your Website, and any other sales copy you happen to distribute.

5. Just Ask
Great salesmen take the time to listen to the questions the customer has, identify their wants and needs, then ask for the sale. That’s right, they’re not afraid to just ask them to buy! Sometimes customers just need that little bit of pressure to cement the deal.

6. Raise the Value
Sometime value is only in they eyes of the beholder. You can raise the perceived value of your products by pointing out benefits that consumers may have overlooked. While you’re at it, raise the price. Yeah, we all know that more valuable items have higher price tags! Don’t be surprised if your profits skyrocket.

7. Make it Easy to Decide
Have you ever had a hard time deciding what to buy? Uh-huh, you don’t always come to a conclusion immediately. Every time a customer walks out of the store without making a decision, you take a big chance on losing the sale. Keep the options to a minimum to maximize the sales numbers.

8. Break it Down
Got a big ticket item? Break the price into bite sizes for more appeal. Yeah, 90 cents a day sounds much cheaper than $325!

9. Create Bonuses
An unexpected bonus with a purchase makes it seem like you got a lot more for your money. Keep customers smiling when they walk away from the cash register, and they’ll keep coming back for more.

10. Handle Customer Complaints With a Little TLC
Don’t waste time getting to the bottom of the problem. Customers want to feel they are being heard, or they wouldn’t take the time to complain to you. Are you afraid that you’ll be losing profit, if you have to bend too far backwards to accommodate them? Think of it this way… an unhappy customer you turn into a happy customer will become a loyal customer. Yeah, it’ll pay in the long run.