Category Archives: sales

Press to Play Technology of Ease

Technology should be as easy as pushing the button. This is a great secret that I recently discovered. Being technology minded, I run about a 30 GB mp3 music system that gets distributed around the house. I suddenly found myself recently noticing how long it took…… from actually deciding that I wanted to hear some music or watch a film to that actually happening. The time is considerable, but by the time I have switched on the pc and it has loaded iTunes or windows media player at least 5 mins have passed by. Compared this to pre computer days when you put in a cassette and pressed play. Mp3 might be easier to store but are they easier to actually use? (never mind the sound quality)

This press to play magic goes further I know of people that I have brought expensive cars only to return them because when they turned the ignition nothing happened. I guess if you pay a lot of money and nothing happens you are not going to be very happy. Probably about the same feeling as when you push a button and nothing happens. But this same philosophy trickles down to every product on or off the internet. All we would like is to press to play.

If You Are Thinking Of Getting Into Blogging

I was out about this weekend and was asked on more than one occasion why I blog. I blog for a number reasons. Some personal and some professional.

On the professional side:

1. It demonstrates expertise knowledge and expertise in chosen skill year.

2. Increases Google page ranking and key words with relevant fresh content.

3. As a sales marketing tool, to build references through comments and the online community for consultancy work.

4. Generate income through paid advertising.

On the Personal side:

1. As a personal development log

2. to give help and give something back to people trying to understand and use this technology

3. For personal enjoyment of developing writing and pr skills

Chris Brogan is highly accomplished writer and blogger he had this advice to say about blogging in different media spheres.

  1. If your goal is to be an entertainment or news blog, be very clear that it’s that and not a “fun” blog. Consider splitting off your personal or fun blog.
  2. If your blog is to be your business, treat it like that. Get into stats. Get into building audience. Get into delivering something unique. Don’t straddle back and forth on this.
  3. If the goal is to be a great community resource, mix your blogging time with time spent reaching out to the community you propose to serve. If that’s an offline opportunity, like something local, be there. Be active. Be a connector.
  4. If you’re going to be a professional about your blog, carve out the time to do it right. Never, ever, ever post a “sorry I haven’t posted lately” blog post again. Ever.
  5. Up the ante on delivering original material. Get outside the echo chamber. Writing a me-too blog isn’t the way to build your blog to the levels you seek to attain.
  6. It’s okay to use a personal voice. In fact, there’s no point blogging if you’re going to write like a cold robot. But keep personal and useful in balance.
  7. If you are attempting to do real business via your blog, look for ways to convert readers into customers.
  8. If it’s just an ad revenue business, compete, and be honest about that. Compete with others in your space for audience, value, and better deals. My point in this regard is that going halfway into the water doesn’t make you less wet.
  9. If your blog is the premier source of information for nonprofits, for photographers, for whatever, then be sure you’re scouring news feeds and finding information outside the blogosphere to keep that relationship informed.
  10. Make a point of engaging your community often in the comments section, on their blogs, on the other social networks where you cross paths.
  11. chrisbrogan, 50 Ways to Take Your Blog to the Next Level, Sep 2008

 

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Closing Deals on The Internet

As a web entrepreneur I do believe there are limitations to closing deals over the internet. For example you can do the research get your back ground information, but closing the deal of any significant amount they going to want face to face contact. So you need to adjust your plan accordingly. Make your contacts where you can jump in the car and visit them.

I posted the above on the following Forum thread here

killer blog posts (How to)

Sit comfortably, take a deep breath and relax. What is a rather an ambiguous blog post title and is meant to be taken both ways. You can kill your blog by the posts you put on it or you can do the reverse. This blog post is about how to make your blog posts work for you in a given time allotment.        

A couple of days ago I thought seriously about making Whooah.biz a private blog. My blog is very much a sort of a development to try out new ideas that I will then use on www.WorkConneXions.com or for clients. Waking up on a Sunday morning I read some of the weeks past posts and noticed a few too many errors. There are number reasons for this. My brain works faster than my hands can type. I may suffer from a form of dyslexia. What every the reason the blog posts were not of a sufficient quality to be published. As I thought about this, and talked it over on twitter and with friends, I realised that I was not the only one and that you do not need a degree in journalism or English to make a contribution to blogsphere.

As Sherrilynne from www.Strivepr.com pointed out, nothing leaves the office without being proof read by someone else. My brother Sebastian who is starting work at local law firm www.dc.co.im said that he prints everything out as you just cannot see the mistakes on a computer screen. That is enough justification for all blog writers to contemplate how you are publishing something.  If it is for yourself then fine, but if you are going to share it with blogsphere, how are you going to know if you are achieving what you have set out to do?

Below is step plan that endeavours to insure success in this field:

1.      To write you need to concentrate. To concentrate you need to be relaxed. However you do that is up to you. Whether it is a breath of fresh air or taking a deep breath. Make sure you do it.

2.      There are lots of blog post out there that talk about the writing of a blog post, how you should repeat the theme in the last  paragraph etc. Fundamentally a blog post can be anything that you want as long as it achieves your goals. My approach is too give it a start, a middle and an end and to make sure that it has a meaning and relevance. There is no easy way to do this but the more you do it the easier and better it becomes like anything else. How will we insure that it achieves your goals? By reading below.

3.      Check your blog post, checking it may sound simple but if there is one thing in life that you can not do enough of it is checking. Here are some of my suggestions, you may want to apply one or two of these in any given situation.

A.     Save the blog post in different form than you have written it. So if you have written it in Word than save it as text file and proof read it.

B.     The great thing with computers is that you can increase the size of the text. Why make it hard to read, increase it.

C.     Studies have shown that MS Sans Serif in grey on a white background is the easiest font for the brain to read. Of course one shoe does not fit all so you may have to experiment a bit.

D.     Ask a colleague or a friend to proof read it. This often helps with total comprehension of the piece.

E.      Take a break and check it much later when the brain has forgotten what you have written and you can see it with fresh eye

F.      Print it out, there is nothing like sitting somewhere else and checking it on a different media form

G.     Employ the services of document proofing company. Like this one http://www.betteredit.com/

That’s about all that I can think of for now. With these controls in place either you will succeed or you will find out that you and your friends are not very good at english.

 

 

7 Selling Skills Using The Word Payment

A customer is standing by the vacuum cleaner display. The Sales assistant approaches the customer and ask “are you looking for a upright or cylinder?”

Brooklyn

Which letter best describes the selling skills?

Product knowledge know what you are selling.

Acknowledge customer- make eye contact

You now establish the customers need & wants

Match the products to the needs & wants

Ensure the customer is satisfied.

Now close the sale

Take the money!

I was inspired by this when I visited the local electricity shop. It is kiss inspired (keep it simple stupid).

Outlook as your CRM Tool

For many years I have used Outlook to manage my email and contacts. In fact it has been one of the main reasons why have I have not gone to Google mail. Outlook has some very nice features and tools that one can adjust to use for client management. In the address book it allows you to store a whole wealth of information. Set reminders, follow ups, tasks, names, companies, just about everything you can think of you might want to do as it is comes with the office package.

So when I cam across prophet software I thought it was very good idea. Building already on a strong platform they have managed to add and organise to some great tools. This is quoted from their website

Prophet will help you

  • Streamline team communications
  • Increase productivity and customer satisfaction
  • Keep opportunities from falling through the cracks
  • Increase sales lead conversion

Unique Advantages of Prophet

  • Built into Outlook -it’s completely Integrated with Outlook and Exchange
  • Rated Easiest to Use Software in its class
  • Easy Sales Automation provides “set and forget” automated follow-up and trickle campaigns”

Taken from a recent press release Prophet explain further:

Unlike traditional CRM or sales management software, Prophet is built into Outlook, eliminating the need to manage multiple contact databases or toggle between separate applications. Built on the .NET 2.0 platform, Prophet works entirely inside Outlook and easily integrates with other critical business capabilities. As a result, Prophet turns Outlook data into the building blocks of an effective sales management solution.

An Easy & Simple Outlook CRM Software program. Try Prophet here .

How Bouncy Your Blog Is. Will Tell You How Good Your Design Is?

First welcome to my new blog design.

What do I mean when I say bouncy, well pretty much as it sounds. Bounce rate is a term used in website traffic analyses. It happens when a visitors leaves your website after just landing on one webpage. How is that possible? I hear you ask. On that beautifully design website of yours. With all that information and well written blog posts. Well it’s easy. For the large part it comes down to design presuming that your blog posts are readable and interesting. (this is the test)

There is no agreed definition for what attributes a bounce some say it in the first 10 or 15 seconds that a user leaves your site other say it is failing to click on another page. My bounce rate I have to admit was too high. This is probably due to monetisation on the old site. I genuinely believe that monetisation offers extra services to users. Unfortunately it was probably too much so I will now have to seek a balance.

According to Avinash Kaushik:

“It is really hard to get a bounce rate under 20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (above) is worrying

Now there is goal to go for! what are your bounce rates like?