Be an ACE in Sales

Bryan Flanagan, Sales Ambassador for Zig Ziglar, writes about how to sell like an A.C.E. He says that the formula -- ACE -- will help you maintain a positive ATTITUDE, build your CONFIDENCE, and show your ENTHUSIASM in all that you do. So what is A.C.E.?

• Attitude
• Confidence
• Enthusiasm

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10 Business Startup Tips You Should Ignore

Everyone has advice for you when you're starting a business, but it's not all good advice! Here are 10 start-up tips you're better off ignoring from Cathy Goodwin, PhD, who is an author, career consultant and speaker.

Amond Goodwin's advice:

• "Visualize success."
• "You will probably fail."
• "You will be fine; you just need more confidence."

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Cooling Down Angry Customers

Anybody who has been in business (or worked at the business) for more than a day has come face-to-face with an angry customer. Some will smile and politely tell you you're wrong, while others can blow dry you a new hair style with a flaming email.

Since angry customers tend to say bad things about you to other customers, it's a good idea to help them cool down, then do what you can to solve the problem.

First, be sincere. The customer is dead serious, and she wants you to be serious, too. Next, get ready to say, "I'm sorry." An attorney once told me that if people would just say, "I'm sorry," half of all lawsuits could be avoided. Finally, offer to help solve the problem.

This might mean making corrections or doing the service over again. It could mean providing a replacement for a product that doesn't work properly. It might even require you to give just a bit more than you promised (not a bad thing, since giving more than you promised usually leads to good word-of-mouth).

What you may not be able to do is give the person their money back. Often, a refund is possible if you can get the product returned in resellable condition, or if the product is very inexpensive. Services that require a lot of work and expense may have to be non-refundable. In those cases, say why you can't give a refund, but make it very clear that you are going to fix the problem. Often that's all an angry customer wants to hear.

Thanks to Dr. Nunley for letting us repost this article. Kevin Nunley has been the top writer of sales letters, web site copy, press releases, and ads since 1996. His talent and experience gets YOU results! Order his affordable writing and promotion deals at http://DrNunley.com.

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E-mail Optimization Tactics to Boost Revenue

Successful email marketing can sometimes entail tweaking a few key elements to create the best possible system. But with limited staff and campaign deadlines, marketers may struggle to find time for optimization.

Available thru January 31 from MarketingSherpa, see how a retailer managed several small tests and tweaks that -- despite the economy -- helped lift email revenues 72% in 2009. Tactics included:

• Subject line tests
• Segmentation
• Facebook integration

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Case Study: Integrated SMS, Social and Email Promo Capitalizes on Weather Event

From the fine folks at Marketing Sherpa comes a case study to show how a rapid-response, multichannel campaign can lessen the impact of bad weather on your business. (Please note: Sherpa's public articles are only available a limited time; this one is only open until Jan. 30.)

See how a hotel and casino marketer took news of a major snow storm and turned it into a ski package offer that kept customers booking rooms. And the info from Sherpa includes the SMS, email and social media messages they used to spread the word.

The case study walks you through a five-step process this hotel took to acheive a 1200% ROI and sell 28% more ski packages in December (the month with the storm) than the rest of 2009 combined.

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Market Your Business or Yourself with Free Seminars and Demonstrations

Offering free seminars or demonstrations can be a very profitable way to promote your service or product.

Advertising will help you get a large group of prospects to your seminar. Try advertising in the newspaper, on the radio, or on cable TV that you are holding a free seminar on a topic closely related to your service or product. Go for the free publicity if it's available. Make sure you tell the truth in your ads about what will be included in your seminar. It is important to attract honest prospects who are actually interested in what you are selling.

Think of your seminar as a lecture. People appreciate useful information, even more when it is free! Demonstrate your expertise or your product's efficiency for most of the time, perhaps 45 minutes, and then spend the rest selling. You usually don't need more than just a few minutes of sales pitch. People have already invested a lot of their time getting to the seminar and listening to your presentation. Most won't want to leave without buying something.

As you give your seminar, you are proving your expertise. You are considered an authority on the subject and gain credibility. Even if people do not purchase your product at that moment, they might buy from you later on.

Article reprinted from Kevin Nunley, who has been the top writer of sales letters, web site copy, press releases, and ads since 1996. His talent and experience gets YOU results! Order his affordable writing and promotion deals at http://DrNunley.com.
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Creating Urgency in E-mail Subject Lines

So you've got a great deal going on or a new product launch. How do you get your e-mail list to open your e-mail newsletter? You've got to create a "sense of urgency" so they will want to open your e-mail ahead of any others.

According to AWeber communications, a provider of e-mail marketing services, "while creating creating a sense of urgency with your subject line is a great way to light a fire under your subscribers, it’s crucial to step back and evaluate when too much urgency is off-putting.

"If you offered 10% last week, and you’re offering 20% off now, who’s to say you won’t increase the discount next week?

"If you rely too heavily on urgency techniques, you could end up with disbelieving subscribers. Offering too many discounts could sabotage your chances of inspiring real urgency."

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8 Steps to Attracting Clients

There's a logical sequence to building a business, whether it's online or offline writes Bernadette Doyle. There are certain things that must be done in order to see your business grow. By committing to follow these eight steps, you can attract more clients and have the kind of income you want.

According to Doyle, the eight steps are:

• Step One: Get Clear On Who You’re Targeting
• Step Two: Understand What They Really Want Emotionally and Logically
• Step Three: Package What You’re Offering Toward Desired End Results
• Step Four: Create an Irresistible Offer
• Step Five: Go Find Your Target Audience
• Step Six: Practice Great Follow-up
• Step Seven: Close the Sale
• Step Eight: Make Additional Offers

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Generating PR and Publicity for Your Business

Joan Stewart, aka the Publicity Hound, had a good post on her blog recently with ideas on how to generate PR and publicity for your business.

According to Stewart, if you’re looking for publicity from bloggers or traditional media but can’t think of an idea to pitch to them, try one of the following questions to generate ideas or blog posts:

• How do you help people solve problems, save time or save money?
• What topics are good fodder for a tip sheet? (9 tips for….)
• What business mistakes have you made that you learned from?
• How can you piggyback onto celebrity news?

Stewart offer 15 more suggestions on her blog post. Read the entire article and start generating more press for yourself and your business.

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The Power of Video Marketing

Here's an interesting article from the Trump Blog by Koz Khosravani on video marketing.

According to the author, "video marketing is the new king on the block among popular marketing channels -- not without good reason. Marketing videos ... are power packed with product information, visual description, and sometimes instruction on how to use the product. They come in the form of customer reviews, video landing pages, or streaming videos on websites."

Why this can be a powerful medium to draw interested buyers into your market base is the subject of this article.

Khosravani writes that you can make the foray into video marketing by making a video for some of the following purposes.

• SEO video landing pages
• YouTube, social video sharing sites, Yahoo! video
• Viral videos
• Streaming videos

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10 Smart Leadership Questions for 2010

The new year (2010) is here, and according to Gayle Lantz, a leadership expert and author of "Take the Bull by the Horns: The Busy Leader's Action Guide to Growing Your Business...and Yourself," in the earliest days of the economic recovery, it's time to take the bull by the horns.

Lantz says smart leaders will bypass the predictable New Year's resolutions and, instead, start 2010 with 10 essential questions. Among them writes Lantz:

• What is my biggest fear, and how will I face it?
• How can I make swift yet smart decisions?
• What new business relationships will I pursue?
• What is one "problem" I can turn into an opportunity?

Read the complete article for all 10 questions and details about each one.

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Five Quick Ways to Rev up Your Site's Searchability

1) Content is king, so are keywords. Find the keywords that people are searching on for your market and then create content around those words.

2) Don't abuse keywords. Have you ever seen those sites that seem to use keywords over and over again (i.e. keyword stuffing)? That's an abuse of keywords and while it might temporarily inflate your search engine ranking, it won't last. Once Google figures out what you're doing (and trust me they will) your site ranking will drop drastically. It's not pretty.

3) Google runs the world. Well, not really but they certainly do run the Internet. If you're going to optimize your site for ranking, make sure that it shows up high on Google; in the end it's the main search engine we default to and the one that matters to your consumer. Studies show that an average website gets 61% of its traffic from search engines, 41% of that from Google alone.

4) This stuff takes time. Nothing happens overnight, especially online (unless you're a dancing pancake video that gets sent out to a billion people in a 4 hour time span). Ranking and searchability takes times. If you have a book launching in the next 3-6 months, start this work now. You'll be glad you did.

5) Update your site. While updating your site in principle might seem like an easy thing, it can be one of the biggest obstacles for a site owner. Why? Because often our website people are overseas and once that 12 year old from Lithuania goes back to school it's anyone's guess how to find him. So here's a tip: get a blog -- a blog (if updated frequently) will ping the search engines and let them know you have fresh content on your site. Oh, and seriously, fire the 12 year old and hire someone locally. You'll be glad you did.

Reprinted from "The Book Marketing Expert newsletter," a free ezine offering book promotion and publicity tips and techniques. http://www.amarketingexpert

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Three New Rules for Getting Business Financing

If you were looking for money for your business last year, you probably didn't find many banks willing to give you a loan. This year things aren't much different, but Joseph Lizio says that if you know the rules the banks are playing by, your chances of getting financing will be much better.

"2009 was wrought with disaster for Main Street businesses; from the financial crisis making access to capital nearly non-existence to the recession that significantly curbed consumer spending – both of which detrimentally hurt the cash flow of nearly every business (small and large) on this planet.

"But, as we look back on a very unfavorable year for business financing, there are some lessons that can be learned as we move forward."

Joseph Lizio is the founder of www.businessmoneytoday.com/ -- a site designed to help business owners find and obtain capital to grow their businesses.

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Time Saving Tips for Bloggers

If you haven't started blogging yet because you think it's too time-consuming, or if you're aleady blogging but wish it didn't take so long, Joan Morris the Publicity Hound says that you're in luck.

On her blog, Morris provides three tips to get you started blogging.

1. Talk your blog post.
2. Use guest bloggers.
3. Recruit team members to blog.

Do you have any tips? If so, comment below.
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The 5 Most Important E-mails to Send to Your Customers

According to an article on Business Know How, if you're not e-mailing your customers, you're missing out on one of the least expensive, highest return methods for increasing sales and building customer loyalty.

"E-mail is taking center stage in today’s small business marketing plans as advertising budgets are squeezed and doing more with less is becoming the norm."

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Six Quick Tips for Twitter Success

1. A bio is a must. A recent Harvard Business Review study showed that 82% of unsuccessful Twitter accounts have little or no bio information.

2. You should provide more than 3 links per 20 tweets and you should update more than once a day.

3. If you don't provide links in your tweets, you should plan to post more often (studies suggest as much as six times a day). You should have no more than 15 updates a day.

4. Twitter names are becoming like URL's were in the early years of the Internet. Make sure and grab all your branding and your name.

5. Don't use underscores_ when you're creating a user name. Not only does it look amateurish but a number of spammers have hacked into Twitter that way. You don't want to look like a spammer.

6. Always engage and reply to the @reply responses on Twitter. Why? Well first off it's important to engage your followers, but second, those @replies help with your Twitter ranking.
 
Reprinted from "The Book Marketing Expert newsletter," a free ezine offering book promotion and publicity tips and techniques. http://www.amarketingexpert.com/

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Tips From Unstoppable Women Entrepreneurs

Dream out loud!

That's one of the tips from four odds-beating business owners on what it takes to become your own boss – and not just survive but prosper.

“I’d tell my story to anybody who would listen,” said Gina Berta in an article on the Fox Small Business Center. "A certified trainer and group fitness instructor since 1983, Berta had always managed other people’s gyms. Twenty some years later she decided it was time to open her own place: not a gym, really, but a small, hands-on personal training studio, some classes and private training by appointment only. And, of course, great service. She luckily had a former very-satisfied client with money who was willing to invest, and on January 27, 2006, her dream came to life."

Read the entire article... it'll definitely get your entrepreneurial juices fired up.

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Five Secrets to Getting Organized

One of the biggest challenges in organizing a mess is figuring out where to start. Maria Gracia says that "without a game plan, you're likely to become overwhelmed and then nothing gets done." She recommends you use these five secrets to help get the organizing started.

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