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 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.

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.

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 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)

Does he starts talking about different car parts, plugs, wires, sections and what not? or does he give you a time limit or an idea when your car will get it fixed?

But that’s the same thing most SEO experts in India are doing.

It’s the real truth, when it comes to Search engine optimization. When you go to any website SEO consultant, they’ll dazzle you with talks about .htacess, google spiders, indexing, xml, html,css on page optimization, offpage optimization, link building and what not…

If you try to go on and check SEO forums then, you’ll start wondering where do start within all the mess of this information. That’s why In this article, I am going to rip out all the un-necessary junk from SEO and give you simple details.

Why You Only Need 2 things to optimize your website?

When it comes to Search Engine Optimization and building traffic, you only have to worry about 2 things.

1. Content

2. Back Links

The Real Naked Truth to Getting Rankings

Let’s discuss the back links first- The real truth about all the optimization is that it completely depends on getting back links to your website. You should be spending as much time as possible in this work. It’s boring, it’s BORING but it’s the only thing.

If you take a look at any traffic building tactic, you’ll see it’s all about getting a back link. If you take web 2.0, publishing articles, press-releases etc are all techniques to get links.

If you do nothing else but get back links to your website, you’ll start seeing results.

Of course there are bad way to get links and good way to get links…

How you’d know the links are good?

One of the simplest way to know about links is to check “nofollow” tag. If a link is Nofollow, it’ll not have any effects in your rankings. But can you still get traffic from it? Of course.

Lets imagine, you get a link from google’s home page with a no-follow. Will it carry any weight in your rankings? Technically No. Will you get traffic? Chances are Heck Yes.. Why? because Google gets so many eyeballs on that page is that it’s maddening.

Personally I believe every link that you can get to your website will help you regardless of their “weight” in their rankings.

But if you are linking back to bad neighborhood (spam sites for example), you’ll get your ranking penalized by search engines. So be careful to who you link towards.

What role does Content play in this?

The role of content is pretty much the same as the low cut dress which reveals all the right things.

It’s to attract readers to your website.

Getting links are good, getting ranked in top 10 is good too.. But will it help you if people look at your website and pass it by?

That’s why you need content to attract people. Now of course there are always some exception. But majority of the websites need content. For example, amazon.com has millions of webpages and content on it’s site and we know how crazy business amazon.com does?

Same goes for about.com which is nothing but a HUGE content site. The content there is massive and it gets lots of traffic.

So How does it relates to your website? What can you do with this information?

It’s simple. Follow the 2 step process and get traffic.

1. Create content which attracts reader regularly.

2. Get as much back links as possible.

3. Rinse and repeat.

Next step –

If you are looking for natural SEO company which only utilize techniques that are recommended by google, then you should contact me ASAP.

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.

The bounce rate gives you an idea how much time they spend on the webpage and how deep they checked your website. The bounce rate here is way too high and they never clicked away the moment they landed on the wesites. Bad thoughts that.

What makes people stick to your website?

Before I answer this, let me ask you a question. What is more important – A unique visitor or Repeat visitor.

In normal set of conditions, website owners would like nothing more than unique set of visitors.

But in this scenario, I’d prefer ‘repeat visitors’.

Why Repeat visitors make you go ga-ga?

Repeat visitors means, they have already been on your site. Now, they came back for more. The more communication channels you create between you and your reader, the better your chances to sell them. The best thing about them is that you don’t have to spend any money/time as much for any unique visitors.

They liked your website, or your message or your content or god knows what, but they liked it. They are back for more. Wouldn’t you like to take this chance to cement a long term relationship with them?

In this long term relationship you’ll be able to sell them more and more. Can you think of elements that can help you create this long term relationships?

How these elements can get you repeat visitors?

Everything comes back to your content and how you present them. Your content will take shape in many forms from just text to Audio/video or email content. You have to build your content in a way which brings back your readers many many times.

To do this, you have to focus on “most wanted response”.

The term most wanted response was coined by Ken Evoy, a marketing genius in his own right. Every page in your website should have “Most Wanter Response (MWR)”. 

In MWR, all you have to focus on “What your reader should do when he comes to your webpage”. Notice I said, webpage, not website. Why? Because they can only surf website page by page.

At every page you have to decide what response you want them to make?

Do you want them to subscribe to your list?

Do you want them to follow a certain link?

Do you want them to buy something?

Or Do you want them to take another action?

So exactly what this will do?

First thing it focuses their attention to something you want them to do (or going to do anyway).

Second thing it kicks off any goofs, who are there just for a joy ride.

Third thing, it starts to filter different type of visitors.

Do you think all of this work will be pain in the neck? Of course it’ll. It’s your business, if you don’t do it, then who will?

Remember when readers are there, get them to act.

If you need any marketing help/advice, then click here.

My method or simplified idea is based on 3 sub ideas.

1. Attracting Traffic, leads and clients.

2. Building Relationship with your prospects.

3. Selling to your prospects and make them keep coming to you.

No matter what techniques you use, they’ll come under the above 3 points. Now what I highly recommend you to pick a simple technique that you can follow (for each steps). You should focus on ONE technique and master it.

For example, If I am good with using blogs to build, attract traffic, then I should spend as much time as possible with blogs. When I’ve master one technique, I’ll move on to learn new ways to generate traffic.

This is how you should attempt to learn internet marketing. Otherwise, you’ll end up with plethoras of techniques and won’t have any idea what to do with them. In last 6 years, though I know tons of techniques, but I’ve mastered 5–6 different ways to do it. 

Selling is all about building relationship with your prospect. If they don’t know you or about your product/service. They’ll never buy from you. In any case, if they do buy, chances are they’ll shop somewhere else for next time.

That’s why my 2^nd step is about Building relationship. And that’s before we start selling to them.

3^rd step you have to worry about is selling them and make them keep coming to you again and again. If you are able to follow the 2^nd step, then you won’t have problem with selling.

Again, the idea of using one technique work wonder in this step. I can write powerful emails and sell my products. It took me about 6–8 months of experimenting before I succeeded in using emails as tool to sell.

So, Of course there is a learning curve as you can see. But it’s worth every second.

So what you can do now?

Simplify your marketing plan and implement it. No need to find out 100 different techniques to build traffic or sneaky little tricks to sell your products. Be Authentic, Be Yourself.

If you need any help with any of the steps above, you can always ask. I can help you with marketing strategies or may be guide you in building relationships or write your sales copy.

Though I don’t claim to be SEO expert or pretend to act like that in forums, I’ve been doing SEO for last 6 years. I have seen ups and down and have a foot in the SEO market. When people see how much SEO people are charging, they also put up their shop.

Before I talk about some things that are used by SEO pretenders blatantly, I say “SEO is expensive, no doubt about that”. That’s why Shop around and look for people who know what they are doing.

1. Crazy Hosting prices – SEO pretenders literally murders your bank account by charging exorbitant prices. For most small business, you won’t have to worry about too much traffic. Often these pretenders talk about services(and functions) they provide with the hosting and charge HIGH prices.

It completely depends on your website material, if you are going to need expensive servers or not. In most cases spending 100 dollars a month for server is way too much.

2. Mind boggling Web design charges – Mind you, we haven’t even started talking about SEO and you have already emptied your pockets by now. Again small business does not need any complicated design.

Most pretenders use “Personalized website” as slogan and charge Super high prices. When you can easily put up a template and get a personalized template for around $1000 (or you can spend less than $100 to get a general template and get it personalized).

Again the problem is all about knowing the right information, right people. Of course most business owners rather spend money than doing the research (that’s why I recommended right people).

3. SEO practices – White hat, black hat or Grey hat – Which color do you wear?

If you are asking about SEO plan, then do ask for what kind of Hat your SEO expert wears. Almost all of SEO guys are pretty much in Grey category and are very good with black hat too. Those who claim they are White hat are just liars.

For those who doesn’t understand about hats –
White hat SEO – Good practices accoridng to google, yahoo.
Black Hat SEO – Bad practices frowned by google, yahoo.
Grey Hat SEO – middle path, very fine line to walk.

If you talk about techniques, it’s better to ask for 2^nd opinion about hats. I normally say, most good SEO spend their time with Grey hat walking a very fine line. But they often tone down their skills and dabble in white hat for the sake of their client’s website.

This is part where people charge for arm and leg. That’s why I am highly recommending you to ask for second opinion. If you need second opinion, You can ask for my help for SEO. Someone who has been doing SEO for last 6 years can give you far better 2^nd opinion.