How to Remove Barriers To The Sale
Copyright 2006 Bernadette Doyle
When a client is thinking about hiring you, two major questions in their mind are: Can this person deliver what they say they can deliver? and Will their approach work in our particular business? The trouble is no client can really answer these questions until after they have hired you. And thats the catch 22. This is a major stumbling block which can delay if not totally grind the sales process to a halt.
You can probably think of situations with your own prospects where this is the case. Its a frustrating stalemate.
Yet for professional service providers, there is a way out of this frustrating conundrum. Promoting your own training courses or seminars can help you avoid this stumbling block because it gives your prospective clients a chance to sample you at low cost and risk for both parties.
Heres how it works. Think about the REAL reasons why people hire you. For example, if you are a marketing consultant, people arent hiring you because they want a consultant: they want a marketing system that gets results! If you are a sales trainer, they arent hiring you just for training, they want to increase sales. If you are an accountant, chances are they want to lower their tax bill.
If you can identify the core reason why, you could then offer a seminar built around that topic eg How to Use Low Cost Marketing Techniques to Attract an Avalanche of New Clients or How to Double Sales Within the Next 90 Days of How to Reduce Your Next Tax Bill: Secrets That The Government Doesnt Want You to Know.
Dont offer a FREE seminar. Your knowledge is valuable and is worth paying for. You will attract better quality prospects and serious buyers if you charge a fee. Now you have something that you can offer to prospective clients, that gives them a chance to sample your approach, and also get to know you better. The beauty is: instead of you having to invest your precious time in sales meetings, theyre paying for the privilege!
So you get positive cash-flow and a chance to demonstrate your expertise and build your relationship with potential clients. They get immediate solutions to their most pressing problems at lower cost and financial risk. Everybody wins!
And, if you structure your event well, a good percentage of attendees will want more. They will want your expertise, hands on help, or your expert guidance as they implement your ideas, and now having had a chance to see what you can offer, they will be more than willing to pay.
So running your own events will not only bring in positive cash flow but can also give you a chance to showcase your expertise and have clients sample your approach before they commit to hiring you and thus remove a major barrier to the sale.
How to have lasting relationship with clients?
Clients are the most precious assets for a business. Without clients, there can be no business. With poor quality of clients, the business will be poor and if you manage to get very good clients and retain their loyalty, your business will only go up and up. This all sounds very exciting. But it is not easy to get very good clients and all the more difficult to retain them. After all, whatever you do, your competition is trying the same and may use better techniques to get business. Are there any innovative approaches to client relationships?
We are talking about direct sales in this discussion and not about selling merchandise to large consumer base. For example if you are a contractor maintaining air conditioners in clients work places. Or a direct seller of computer hardware to business buyers, and all such businesses where your sales to individual clients are large, and you are in direct contact with clients.
The first need is of course client satisfaction. If the client is satisfied with your response time, after sales service and can depend on you, pricing may become secondary. All clients do not buy from a supplier whose sales at the lowest price. If your product cost is a small percentage of clients total expense or if your product is essential for your clients, you are onto something good. How to retain such clients despite all the competition? What are the other factors than client satisfaction?
Relationship is one such other major factor. Do you relate with your clients only professionally, or are very good friends? Both these extremes can hurt. For a long-term business relationship, good friendship is not good for health of your business. Any problem in the personal friendship will directly affect your business. What if you relate to your clients mechanically in a professional style totally devoid of personal touch? You know the answer yourself.
What is needed is a relationship that does not border on personal friendships, but crosses mechanical approach. A fine balance between personal and professional.
How to Create a Better News Release
Many organizations and businesses want media coverage of their activities, and at the same time many newsrooms are looking for local (or even national and international) topics to cover. If you’re belong to an organization that wants coverage, you can increase the odds of getting it by following a few simple news release (or press release) conventions.
First, you must have something new or different to say. As the name News implies, the media want information that’s new or at least updated. At the same time, reporters and editors want information that’s relevant to their readers; choose your media targets carefully, and tailor the content of the release to their audience).
Second, your headline should be as interesting as a newspaper headline. It should promise something new, dramatic, or timely. Make the editor or reporter want to know more. Remember, though, the claim should be credible and relevant.
Third, in the first paragraph of the body, get in what journalists call the Five Ws: Who, What, Where, When, and Why. In fact, try to get them into the first sentence, and if you can’t, at least start with a clear concise statement that summarizes the story.
Traditionally, reporters have tried to get the essence of every story into the first paragraph because they didn’t know where, or whether, their stories would be cut. So, they start with the most important information and end with the least important. That way, no matter where the story was cut, the best material stayed.
Fourth, write and rewrite your news release many times before ‘releasing’ it. Use active verbs and transitions (from sentence to sentence, and paragraph to paragraph). Boil down the content as much as you can; two pages is acceptable, but one is better.
Fifth, follow this standard format:
At the top of the page, write this, in all caps:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Usually this will be left-justified)
Or, if you want the release to be held until specific date/time, write something like this:
FOR RELEASE AT 10 A.M., AUGUST 23
(But don’t necessarily expect the embargo to be honored)
Skip a line and then put in contact information, as in:
Contact: Robert Abbott
Telephone: 403 555-1234
Email: robertabbott@anycompany.com
Skip another line and add your headline (centered, and use title case or all-caps):
Perpetual Motion Machine Unveiled
Now, the body of your news release, which should not exceed two pages.
At the end of the body, add three number marks with single spaces between them, as in:
# # #
Repeat your contact information at the end , as in:
Robert Abbott welcomes your inquiries at 403 555-1234 or by email at: robertabbott@anycompany.com
Sixth, prepare yourself for reporters’ questions
It goes without saying, of course, that you would prepare yourself for questions from reporters if you send out a release. I would recommend you write out a list of questions that seem likely and prepare bullet-point answers for each of them. That way you’ll be ready for most of the questions. However, don’t read the answers back to reporters; just use them as a guide. At the same time, assume you’ll get questions you simply can’t predict. Answer them as well as you can; and if you can’t answer, your best bet is to tell the interviewer you’ll need to get more information, and will call back after you do.
Harvard Drug Research Fraud and Cover-up: How Off-Label Profiteering Works
Harvard Drug Research Fraud and Cover-up: How Off-Label Profiteering Works
Drug company money influences and corrupts research. That is a given.
What is less understood is why drug manufacturers spend billions for research on off-label uses for their products - uses that were never cleared with the FDA when the drug was submitted for approval.
Off-label use allows drug companies to get “through the back door” what they could never, and I mean never, get away with by going directly to the FDA for approval for a new use of a product - what is known today as an off-label use.
You would hope that researchers wouldn’t corrupt the commercial experimentation of a new, or off-label, use of a drug to treat children by covering up their consulting fees from Big Pharma. But that’s what happened.
More important than what happened is why it happened and at the bottom of all this is a terrible mistake the U.S. has made in allowing the exploitation of off-label use.
The devil is in the details, so here is the story as it has unfolded.
Leading Harvard professors studying off-label uses, the gold mine of the drug industry, have violated National Institute of Health reporting requirements when more than $10,000 has been received from a subject company, according to the New York Times, “Researchers Fail to Reveal Drug Pay” June 8, 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/us/08conflict.html?em&ex=1213070400&en=9971013dfd33290a&ei=508720say20are%20sorry&st=cse isn’t enough.
If Harvard doesn’t fire them, it will be complicit in the cover-up.
Throw them off campus. Ring the bell loud and clear that no matter how renown or stellar, if you don’t play by the rules, you can’t play at all. And the NIH should forever ban them from receiving grants.
Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water. Once appropriate punishment has been served, give these researchers a chance to polish their tarnished reputations. Allow them to conduct research under the supervision of a responsible administrator who knows that “veritas,” means truth, accuracy, honesty, and uprightness and that it’s more than just a motto.
Onward.
Richard Alexander
http://www.alexanderinjury.com
Greetings Card What, When and How :
Whenever you need to wish your friend or acquaintances happy and belated birthday, or wish your near and dear ones merry Christmas, or send your beloved one happy valentines day wishes or just say hello or give a get well soon message to your bosom friend , you just go to a greetings card outlet or visit an online greetings card website and send the desired card. Have you ever wondered what greetings card is all about and how did it originate. If you have the desire to know, this article is for you.
So, lets start with what is a greeting card. Originally, greeting cards derive from postcards ( which are single sided without the fold ) and are an illustrated, folded card usually featuring a message of greeting or other sentiment. They can be either printed or handmade. Now, with the advent of Internet though, virtual greetings cards have evolved which doesnot fit into the above-mentioned definition. Although greeting cards are usually given on special occasions such as birthdays, Christmas or other holidays, they are also sent on ‘non-occasions’ to say ‘hello’ or ‘thank you’. They are manufactured and/or hand-made by hundreds of companies big and small. Hallmark Cards and American Greetings are the largest producers of greeting cards in the U.S. Its the UK, where more cards per head are sent than any other nation. The UK continues as a world leader in this area, as well as leading the world in the region of greeting card design.
What laid the foundation for the greeting card industry and when and how did it all began ?
The custom of sending greeting cards can be traced back to the ancient Chinese, who exchanged messages of good will to celebrate the New Year, and to the early Egyptians, who conveyed their greetings on papyrus scrolls.
By the early 1400s, handmade paper greeting cards were being exchanged in Europe. The Germans are known to have printed New Year’s greetings from woodcuts as early as 1400, and handmade paper Valentines were being exchanged in various parts of Europe in the early to mid-1400s.
However, by the 1850s, the greeting card had been transformed from a relatively expensive, handmade and hand-delivered gift to a popular and affordable means of personal communication, due largely to advances in printing and mechanization.
This trend continued, fuelled by new trends like Christmas cards, the first of which appeared in published form in London in 1843 when Sir Henry Cole hired artist John Calcott Horsley to design a holiday card that he could send to his friends and acquaintances. Technical developments like color lithography in 1930 propelled the manufactured greeting card industry forward.
During the 1980s the trend began to turn, with consumers increasing looking for greeting cards that were differentiated from the standard offering. In the late 1990s the market was clearly beginning to separate in to three different segments:
1. handmade and premium cards
2. mass-manufactured cards
3. e-cards
So, this is all about how the greetings card industry begun and flourished. Though the current trend is to send greetings through e-cards, there is the need to sustain the traditional greetings card industry and maintaining the age-old tradition of sending greetings card via conventional means.
Google News - Just another article announcer?
In Google’s recent battle towards becoming an international news center, I’ve come to notice that the results delivered from Google News seems like nothing more than the articles we publish everyday. So I ask, doesn’t it seem like Google News resembles an article directory of some sorts?
* Google News World: http://news.google.com
* Google News Canada: http://news.google.ca
* Google News UK: http://news.google.co.uk
I only mention this because when submitting my internet marketing articles, I often wonder if they show up within Google News? 9 times out of 10, they do! In fact, they usually show up within 48 hours of being indexed from other top related websites.
How does Google News select it’s content?
Right now, it seems that “news centers” & “press release companies” related to your field online are profiting from these search results. When you think about it, wouldn’t a press release be a form of news anyways? Possibly…
If you take a good look at the websites who deliver the content within Google news, you will notice that only a select few are providing all of the results. Again, it’s possible that Google’s news algorithm is still in its infant stages and probably has a lot of uphill battles to conquer.
It may be in Google’s best interest to assemble a team of experts in different fields to accept articles/news submissions in order to keep the news source within the Google kingdom.
There is Only A Fraction of Results Showing:
While searching through the GN section, you will also notice a relatively small portion of actual search results coming up. Only a fraction of a percentage of results get listed within the GN search results compared to the same results within the regular search results found on Google’s main page.
Only the sections on the left deliver actual real-time news. These are: Top Stories World Business Sci/Tech Sports Entertainment Health. These links provide real-time results delivered from credible news sources online.
Google News Alerts - Ezine anyone?
When you think about it, you are giving Google your email address to get related articles to the search term delivered to your inbox, how does this differ from any other regular newsletter? Are we going to start seeing Google Adwords within the news alerts? Will they consider giving large corporations the opportunity to advertise within their email alerts as a one time mailing! I hope not.
More and more we are seeing less of the Google we once knew and have come to love (A search bar with some great results). Since Google’s IPO, the development team at GG are starting to launch applications online that are starting to resemble what we now know as the great Yahoo Portal.
Will there be any difference? Probably not.
One Great Point About Google News:
They have given you the ability to customize your page to show whatever news topics you want. Simply look at the right side for a button that says “Customize this page New!”. Once you click on this link a drop down box shows you all the main topics you have listed within your page. Simply click on the topic you wish to customize or remove. The best part of it all is that you can click on “Add a custom section” and simply search for the topic you wish to have listed on your page.
All in all you can create an entire custom news page (author articles) that relate to your industry.
Getting Word of Mouth Started: New Book PR Method
Authors and business people often go to extremes to publicize their book or product launch. Sometimes, the most successful method can appear in front of them. Take for example, book publicity. It is the one of the toughest cases to crack. Each year, at least 50,000 authors are published in the United States. Tens of thousands of authors publish electronic books. Most fail to get noticed. Very few achieve any of their goals as authors to build up readership.
Heres a way to get the word out and polish off your book before it hits the stores: sampling. Major corporations utilize focus groups, pollsters and other marketing experts to build up their brand name. This is similar to planting seeds to get a garden or orchard to grow. The more seeds you plant, the better your chances to grow vegetables or apple trees. As an author, you can use sampling or seeding, to build up awareness of your book. During the publishing process, we discovered a clever way to attract readers, and at the same time, we can upgrade our book.
Having been through the publishing process for many decades, we experimented with what every author secretly fears: a peer review. But, we did it with a twist. Instead of waiting until the book is published to read the reviews, we posted the book on our website to accept all criticism in advance. We called this a Public and Peer Review of our book, entitled Investing in the Great Uranium Bull Market: A Practical Investors Guide to Uranium Stocks.
Before posting the first eight chapters of the electronic version of this book, we notified subscribers, several days earlier, that the book would be available on June 18th at 11:59 P.M for Open Review. In the email notification, we included a reminder to tell a friend about the books pre-publication.
By the time this book was ready to be electronically published, our large number of subscribers had jumped by nearly 10 percent! In less than one week, we had gained more new subscribers than we had in the previous few months. Our Alexa rating, for the week had also jumped ahead of nearly 1 million other websites. The one-week draw from the email notification had also increased the 3-month average by 267 percent!
This marketing opportunity provided us with greater readership. It might now offer us a broader range of opinions, helping us improve the book. Hopefully, there will be those annoying copy editor types, who will help point out grammar, spelling and punctuation errors. Previous tests, similar to this, have also drawn experts from the industry we have written about. This adds more texture to our research, and ultimately creates a better product for our readers.
Stay tuned for our next publicity surprise, after we review the success of our public and peer review. The key is to plan out a series of teasers to keep drawing visitors to your website and intelligently persuade them that your book is something they absolutely have to read.
Games are a Reflection of Behavior as Told by John
Games are a Reflection of Behavior as Told by John Satta
You are standing on a small stage yelling, What’s the name of the game?!
Win as much as you can!!! comes roaring back.
Who’s responsible for your score?!
I am!!
The audience is composed of ninety men, all prisoners in a federal maximum security prison.
One more thing - you’re a woman.
For three years, Alicia volunteered every Thursday at FCI (Federal Correctional Institute) in Bastrop, Texas-
I used my skills as a corporate trainer to help these men learn to shift their perspective on themselves and the world.
Along the way the prisoners taught me as much, perhaps more, than I taught them.
In my training business, I use games as a way to break down barriers and shift perceptions. What I came to realize is that your behavior in a game is an exaggerated reflection of your behavior in real life.
Games are an opening to behave true to our natures, to react immediately rather than with a careful response. Depending on the other players, we may monitor our behavior less in a game than in the real world, but we aren’t acting differently. In a game there are no emotional holds barred.
In a game, we are allowed to be more right brained than logical. After all, It’s only a game.
Saying something is only a game tends to trivialize its importance. Precisely because we view it as trivial, and of no importance, we can give ourselves permission to let our true natures out.
When we floated this idea before a number of colleagues, several of them told us stories of self-discovery. One woman, a very sweet and kind person in real life, was known as the enforcer when she played hockey in school. Another shared that, when she plays a game against total strangers she becomes brutal and highly competitive.
So if our true nature comes out in a game, what can we do with that information?
Can we transform situations so that we can be true to our nature? Can we make a game out of real world situations to allow our true nature to flourish? The obvious example is to view business as a game to be won. This implies competition and a winner take all attitude.
Yet Covey and others have told us about creating win-win situations. Is there such a thing as a win-win game - a game where everyone wins, where no one loses? Can you devise a game where you can put your competitive streak toward a larger goal? Can the proverbial pie be made larger? As someone said to me, to transform from me winning to we winning.
What’s the name of the game? Win as much as you can!
Who’s responsible for your score? I am!
The game Alicia played with the inmates was called the handshake game. She had them pair up by size, height and weight and explained the rules. We’ll play the game for 45 seconds. You get one point when your hand taps his hip; he gets one point when his hand taps your hip.
The vast majority of the pairs had a combined score of 0 points. A few pairs scored in the 10 - 20 point range.
But one pair scored 260 points.
The high scorers had realized that the name of the game and scoring responsibility did not define a win-lose (or zero-sum) game. That is, one person did not win at the expense of the other.
Of course, the entire thing was a set-up. Alicia paired them up by size, height and weight to set the expectation that it was an evenly matched contest. She got them chanting to get their excitement up.
And she neglected to tell them that the pair was a team and the team members’ scores would be combined.
Deliberately I didn’t tell them they were supposed to cooperate with their partner. I also never told them who the competitors were.
We all know that a formal team must cooperate to win. The revelation here was that by cooperating they could maximize their individual scores.
What’s the name of the game? Win as much as you can!
Who’s responsible for your score? I am!
The rules say nothing about preventing the other person from getting a high score. The pair who got it quickly settled into a rhythm of one for you and one for me. And they could have kept that up for as long as the game ran. Meanwhile, the other teams were struggling and would have exhausted themselves long before the winners did. And, when the few teams who did spot the pair who got it there were charges of cheating leveled at them. We saw what they were doing but thought they were cheating or didn’t understand the rules.
The cooperation - competition confusion is nicely summed up in the concept called the prisoners’ dilemma. Two people are arrested for a crime and there is enough evidence to put them both in jail for 1 year.
The police keep them isolated from each other and offer each the same deal: If one of you talks and the other does not, the snitch goes free and the other one gets 3 years. If you both talk, you both get 2 years.
The partners can work together (by staying silent) and both get only a year in jail. By both defecting from the partnership to work with the police they will both get 2 years.
A single defector will go free while the one who cooperated gets 3 years.
The dilemma is formed by pitting trust against greed. The temptation of greed combined with a habit of competition blinds us to a different perspective.
But don’t think that only prisoners are subject to this. When Alicia has had groups of corporate executives play this game, they fall into the same behavior pattern as the prisoners. In fact, in some corporate sessions nobody gets it.
There seems to be a dichotomy between competing and winning. The idea of cooperating to win seems odd. In fact, we see other players complain that the ones who get it are cheating!
What you do depends on your view of the game. If the game is seen as a one-time event, why not be brutal - there will be no consequences. But if this event is one in a series, then cooperation is clearly the better long-term strategy, if only because there will be a chance for the other to get even.
In studies of prisoners’ dilemma style games (played for points and not reduced jail time) the players eventually settle into a strategy dubbed tit for tat. Their actions are saying, If you cooperate last time, I’ll cooperate next time. If you defected last time, I’ll defect next time.
Using the word defect helps us see the shift - the opposite of cooperating (working on the same side) is defecting to the other side.
The desire to compete and the desire to win are not the same.
Game terminology (strategies, tactics, moves, etc.) is often applied to serious parts of life. Because the word game has a connotation of triviality, we sometimes bristle at its use to describe the things that mean the most to us.
What if we kept in mind that ‘it’s all a game’ - would we behave differently?
Philosopher James P. Carse writes in the first chapter of Finite and Infinite Games, There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, and infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.
The book’s subtitle is A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility. His premise is that a game is about the relationship between the player.
In the book he characterizes two types of players. Finite players play within the rules, infinite players play with the rules. Finite players play to end the game (with their victory), infinite players play to continue the game (by whatever means they see fit). Finite players play to win, infinite players play to keep playing.
The players who get it are playing with the rules looking to transform a finite game into an infinite one.
If this article has intrigued you we encourage you to look at the various games that you are playing and with whom. Who are your teammates and what kind of game are you playing? With increased awareness of our behavior, and the behavior of others, we are able to create a win as much as WE can mentality.
Copyright 2004 Alicia Smith Consulting & Training. All Rights Reserved.
Finding the Right Equipment Supplier Paramount to Success in the
Finding the Right Equipment Supplier Paramount to Success in the Restaurant Industry
Most companies with any degree of overhead know that finding the right supplier of products necessary to run their business is of the utmost importance. For most businesses, it can mean a substantial savings and reduce the headaches often associated with searching for a reliable equipment dealer. For restaurants, however, finding the right equipment supplier can mean the difference between success and failure in the industry.
Restaurant owners, perhaps more than any other business owners, rely on their equipment to ensure that they will be open for business each and every day. Because most kitchens are limited in space, there is usually only room for one piece of each major type of equipment. If an ice machine or oven goes down, it can cause problems that will affect the entire operation. Restaurant equipment is made to endure the ravages of everyday use, but will eventually break down often enough that it will need to be replaced. While replacing a piece of equipment in and of itself seems simple enough, like most things in the restaurant business, it isn’t. Restaurant owners often rely on their equipment dealer to determine whether a new piece of equipment will meet the growing needs of the establishment. They may also rely on the equipment dealers product knowledge to determine what will and won’t work in their particular setup. With most large scale restaurant equipment costing thousands of dollars, considerations of this nature are rarely left to chance.
A good equipment supplier not only carries a wide selection of products for the restaurant industry, but can also provide information on how those products can be used to streamline kitchen areas for maximum efficiency. Restaurant owners have long known that while anyone can sell equipment, only the best equipment dealers are able to sell the right equipment that will help restaurateurs by adequately addressing their individual needs. Finding a resource for information along with a competent and reliable supplier of equipment is never an easy thing to do. Most restaurant owners who establish a good working relationship with a credible equipment supplier will maintain that relationship throughout the life of the business.
E-Commerce Business Proceed With Caution
There is an epidemic in the United States. An epidemic that is so overlooked, if gone unchecked any longer, could cripple the economic strata of the U.S. An epidemic that could be responsible for the genocide of millions of businesses. Curious what it is? I am referring to the gross mismanagement of e-commerce businesses. Okay, perhaps the phrases cripple the economic strata and genocide of millions of businesses was stretching a bit too far, however, it is a fact that the bulk of e-commerce businesses are not built on an infrastructure that embodies stability. I am referring to a lack of customer service support in the umbrella of businesses designating themselves e-commerce or virtual businesses.
It is true that the lure of starting the e-commerce business is powerful. An endeavor as such usually requires little or no capital investment, a credit card processing account, and rudimentary knowledge of HTML coding. These three elements compose the basic formula for starting an e-commerce business. There is a marked difference in the formula for starting a business and the formula for maintaining a business. To expound on the latter, what truly makes a business thrive is proper customer relationship management and immediate telephone / live voice account support. This is the key component that is missing from most on-line or virtual businesses.
Take, for instance, the internet based company Netflix. If you are unfamiliar with the company, they are a relatively young e-commerce business specializing in mail order DVD rental. The minds behind the ingenious idea that is the basis of Netflix failed to create telephone support for their product. There is no doubt this decision was a calculated one as they most likely weighed the cost of maintaining an in-house call center vs. integrating purely e-mail based support. Without looking at the numbers side of the argument, imagine the frustrated consumer having problems with their order and having to rely on a 24 hour lagged e-mail response system to rectify their account issues. Based on this plausible conjecture, I believe lack of live operator support will be the ruin of the Netflix organization and the downfall of all e-commerce businesses that follow the same train of thought. What these businesses do not realize is that it is possible and extremely cost effective to outsource your call center needs to an established advanced call center facility. This solution has a two fold benefit. It serves to establish a solid foundation of customer relationship management and opens businesses up to benefit from word of mouth advertising.
I believe even a small internet business can greatly benefit from utilizing a call center to manage their customer service or sales calls. The initial investment is usually zero (excluding research time to find the appropriate facility) and most call centers charge on a per call basis (meaning you only get charged for the calls they actually receive). If looking at business from the customers perspective as opposed to looking at it from an initial profit standpoint, it behooves all e-commerce businesses to initially setup a live call center to manage all of their calls. If the infrastructure is not initially setup correctly, your business may fail before it has even begun.