Have you noticed how people resist change? Change involves risks. We never know when we make a change if we’re going to be better off or worse off. So what can a heart centered salesperson or marketer do to encourage prospects to change to his or her products and services? The answer is to find ways to reduce the risk. One of those ways is to use social networking to develop relationships. This social networking tip describes how to comment on other sites.
With the emphasis today on attraction marketing, you need a way to draw people to your blog and website. Show people how much you know by engaging in conversations on forums, group discussions and commenting on other people’s articles or blog posts. Then, it’s totally acceptable to put a link to an article that you have on your blog or on your website when it actually contributes additional information and insight to the topic being discussed. [...]
The other day as I was preparing for my meeting with a client, I was looking at the testimonials on their website and realized for the first time, the irony of giving testimonials. I used to think that asking for testimonials was one-sided. In other words, if I asked you for testimonial of the work I’ve done, then you didn’t really get anything out of it other than the satisfaction of showing your appreciation for work well done. I didn’t realize that the giver of the testimonial actually benefits too.
The first benefit you get from giving me a testimonial is that you get free publicity wherever I use it. Provided I attract a lot of readers to my blog or do a lot of mailings, you stand to gain a lot of recognition. Interestingly, while working with clients on ways to fine tune their marketing and sales activities today, I realized a second, more significant benefit about giving testimonials: when you give a testimonial, you have an opportunity to indirectly state what you believe. The mere fact you are giving a testimonial points back at the values you hold as important. [...]
Although the first impression is critical when it comes to websites, there’s more to an effective website than meets the eye. For marketing purposes, what you don’t see can have a major impact on the ability of your site to be found by people who want the products and services you provide. It would be like locating your business on a busy highway then erecting a wall between your company and the road so nobody could see it as you drove by.
So what can you do to help your website be found? This critique will focus on Internet marketing. Typically, good graphic designers lack the marketing background to maximize the effectiveness of your site for you. This article focuses on the things you can do in the design of your website to become more attractive to the Internet search engines. [...]
Do you remember the last time you met someone and took an instant like or dislike to them? Have you ever bought a book because your first impression was so strongly positive? Regardless of what decisions you’ve made based on first impressions, we all do it. In sales and marketing, it’s long been known that we make our first impression on a prospect in the first 20 seconds. If it’s not positive, we may never get to make a second impression.
First impressions are more critical in Internet marketing than they are in business because people can click off your site and onto another almost instantly. In fact, research shows that you have 1/20th of a second to make that first impression. Nobody makes a decision that fast on the content. The first impression your website makes depends all on the appearance, which includes pictures, white space, and graphics. I personally find examples help me understand concepts better so I’m going to analyze Slater’s 50/50’s website to show how this works. With his website, Scott Slater continues to demonstrate a good understanding of marketing. For my purposes, it’s instructive that he misses a few more subtle points, which I’ll mention as we go along. Overall, Slater’s 50/50’s is a good example of what a small business can do to promote itself. [...]
If you really care about building relationships with your customers and prospects, then you will frequently find yourself doing research to confirm your facts. Because trust is a fragile thing, I often look information up to double check things. I want my clients and potential clients to be able to count on me. Trust is core to heart-centered, soft sell sales and marketing.
Recently, my favorite reference site put out a request for support. Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s founder, is asking for our help. You probably already use Wikipedia. If not, I can’t encourage you strongly enough to support this nonprofit organization that seeks to become the largest encyclopedia in human history. Wikipedia is already the “fifth most-read site in the world.” “More than 340 million people use Wikipedia every month – almost a third of the Internet-connected [...]
American English has lots of interesting expressions and clichés. I like them because they tend to convey concepts or morals, as in “the moral of the story” is, like in melodramas. Good writers try to avoid them because they become so overused they lose their punch. Nevertheless, the moral of “You can’t teach old dogs new tricks” seems to be that as people age, they get so stuck in their ways that they refuse to learn.
However valid that once was, in Internet marketing the leaders I like to follow are within five to ten years of my age. In some cases, like Judith & Jim, I know how old they are because they’ve told us. I turned 62 in June, by the way. I don’t recall how old Cathy Perkins, the WordPress Wizard, is; but I know from things she’s said she’s done that she’s around my age, maybe a little younger. Alex Mandossian, from what I know of him, fits in this group as do Jeff Herring, the Article Guy, and Tom Justin. One of the women in Soft Sell Marketers Association has told us she’s 74 and just getting a handle on Internet marketing. The important factors are, therefore, not chronological age, i.e. how many birthdays you’ve had, but rather how curious you are and how strong your motivation to learn is. [...]
I’m a big believer in walking the talk. Yesterday, however, I asked my client how I did. What he told me was eye opening, and my ego would have preferred to not have gotten the answer. Despite the soft sell sales training I do in which I stress using questions to understand before selling, I almost allowed my passion blind me to what my client wanted.
Actually, we’d had a great session. We were talking about sales and marketing activities he can take to grow their business in these tough times in one of the hardest hit industries in America: apparel. I was teaching him about the soft sell sales approach to selling: get to know the customer’s concerns and interests, her issues.
We also chatted about how difficult it is to get to the buyers these days. And that’s where my own passion overrode my listening skills. [...]
You’d think as an experienced soft sell salesperson and consultant, that I now longer have to deal with the fear of calling on someone. But then, I’ve read even highly successful public speakers still get jittery nerves or apprehension before giving a talk. In my case, I was going on a consulting call yesterday with a client in Glendale, California.
I was going in feeling somewhat cocky because I had done my homework on their website. I was prepared to take their marketing efforts up a notch or two until they showed me the screen of the new website. As I made further suggestions I learned most of what I said, they’d already known and were changing. What do I do now? I applied advice I heard years ago to ask Spirit, “What do I have to learn? What do I have to teach?” I’ve learned to apply this to any interaction. I stopped trying to teach first. I asked questions and listened to the other people in the meeting.
In my experience yesterday, I overcame the fear about conducting a consulting session when I put attention on them. I relaxed then and enjoyed the meeting. This is way to make your fear of making sales calls disappear too or at least of making it manageable. Prospects and clients have a reason for investing their time with you: they want help with their problems or desires, wants and needs. Focus on them and on what can you do to help make their lives a little better or more successful — you’ll be to busy to notice that you were afraid or [...]
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Social Networking Tip – How to Comment on Other Sites
Have you noticed how people resist change? Change involves risks. We never know when we make a change if we’re going to be better off or worse off. So what can a heart centered salesperson or marketer do to encourage prospects to change to his or her products and services? The answer is to find ways to reduce the risk. One of those ways is to use social networking to develop relationships. This social networking tip describes how to comment on other sites.
With the emphasis today on attraction marketing, you need a way to draw people to your blog and website. Show people how much you know by engaging in conversations on forums, group discussions and commenting on other people’s articles or blog posts. Then, it’s totally acceptable to put a link to an article that you have on your blog or on your website when it actually contributes additional information and insight to the topic being discussed. [...]