Digg it UP - Business

Help! I'm Overwhelmed and I Can't Get Up!
It's been another 12 hour day. Your other half is upset that you missed dinner - again. Your kids can't remember what you look like. You're exhausted and after the 942nd time your mastermind group has told you to hire some help you are finally ready. But now what? How do you even begin trying to figure out what someone should do? Don't worry, it's not as hard as you think. Below are 4 steps with specific actions to take to ensure you get find the right person and get the most bang for your buck.#1 Create a job description The biggest mistake I see over and over again is business owners simply hiring someone and throwing them at the problem without any rhyme or reason. If you are not clear about what you want this person to do for you, how are they supposed to know? Your great new assistant anxiously wants to help out, but can't because you have no clue what to

s. (To learn more about DISC see the article 'How to Build Rapport in 7 Seconds' by Tim Stokes at www.ezinearticles.com)

3. Make your business appear unique. This again is a powerful tool as when you "appear" unique or different you stop losing sales to price shoppers. It's not hard to do, in fact when you use guarantees like those above it makes you very unique!

4. Learn body language. Body language is responsible for 55% of what you communicate before you open your mouth! Everyone has heard of it but how many people use it? Almost none! Go read a book on it and try it. Body language is a form of flattery and people buy from people they like or relate to.

5. Try different words you use to greet people face to face or on the phone. Retailers are notorious for saying things that elicit "no thanks just looking". That's because they set up that response by what they say. Try saying different phrases on greeting and see what happens. Its the same on the phone, if you finish off your greeting with "name speaking" you often get people who think you're a dummy and respond with,

4 Customer Service Mistakes Companies Should Avoid Making
1) Being placed on hold endlessly. Don't you just love it when you call a company and they place you on hold, leaving you to listen to their latest on-hold, recorded sales pitch, over and over again. Would you think it normal business practice for a retail store clerk to ask you to "wait a minute" while they disappeared into the back of the store for ten, fifteen, thirty minutes or longer? People do things over the phone that they would never do in person. It's bad business either way to leave a customer hanging without at least coming back to let the customer know how much longer they'll be holding.2) Getting rude with a customer. As the saying goes, even if the customer's wrong, the customer's always right. There's never any reason to get rude with a customer. If a customer gets rude with you, let them blow off steam and remember that their behavior is not an at

Ever heard of something called "conversion rate". You may have but are you measuring it all the time, or are you just guessing what it might be?

If you don't know what conversion rate means you're missing out on the most powerful strategy there is in the world to increase sales, without spending a cent. Plus, by increasing your conversion rate your net profits always go up!

So what is conversion rate?

Conversion rate is the difference between how many call, walk in or contact your business and then how many of them end up buying. For example, if you had 10 phone calls to your business and you took their name and phone over time you simply track how many of them actually spent money with you. So if you have 3 people buy from you your conversion rate would be 30% or 3 out of 10.

This simple measurement is life changing for business owners when they see the power of it. If you don't know your conversion rate and "guess" it’s about 50% I guarantee you're wrong! Almost everyone thinks their conversion rate it higher than it actually is. The reason being is that the people you talk to that say they'll come back and buy later or that sound like they are very interested in buying often don't. But you don't know that if you don't measure all inquiries because you assume they have bought.

When you measure your conversion rate be prepared for a shock. I've worked with retailers who thought it was 75% and found it was 38%. I've worked with service businesses that thought it was 50% and we found it to be 13%.

They get a bit depressed when they realise its only 13%, but I get excited! That's because it’s impossible to double 50% conversion rate, but with 13% you can triple it and still have room for improvement!

Did you know that increasing your conversion rate proportionally increases turnover and net profit? That means if you increase your conversion rate by 50% (e.g. from 24% to 36%) you have just increased your turnover by 50% as well! That's because you get 50% more paying customers than you have right now. And you can increase your conversion rate, turnover and profit without spending a cent on advertising or promotion.

So how do you measure it? First of all you need 2 to 3 bits of information on every person who contacts your business. Things like their name, phone number and what their inquiry was about.

This then gives you information to refer back; to see how many people actually ended up buying that contacted your business. With your business it may take days before you can tally inquiries to customers. For some service businesses you may need to wait a month from the inquiry date to purchase due to the time it takes people to make a decision.

You'll notice your conversion rate will be different for each of your staff. Why is that? Good question. But when you realise the difference you can do something about it, but until you have measured it how can you do anything about it?

So now, onto the magic question, How To Improve Your Conversion Rate!

There are at least 80 ways! Want to know the best ones? Here they are...

1. Learn DISC profiles. DISC profiling has to be the most unknown method of understanding people there is, yet in business it’s the most powerful tool you can learn and use. DISC is an insight into 4 major differences in people's behaviour. When you learn DISC profiles you understand some people want to be friends with the person they buy from, while others find friendly sales people annoying and don't buy from them. Some people (about 50%) make all sales decisions very quickly, usually on the spot. While 50% of people always want to think about it, usually over a day or two. DISC is something I teach to all my clients and all who learn it from me increase their sales (turnover and profit) by 20%-300% in weeks!

2. Offer guarantees in writing. Everyone has some level of apprehension about parting with money, so a guarantee helps to overcome that apprehension and helps people to make confident decisions. What can you guarantee in writing that you have not be offering now? What about not to leave a mess if you're in a service business? What about being completely happy with your purchase of you will gladly allow refunds? Retailers often don't want to refund so they scare away dozens of potential customers for the sake of a very few possibly wanting refunds. (To learn more about DISC see the article 'How to Build Rapport in 7 Seconds' by Tim Stokes at www.ezinearticles.com)

Grow Your Business Online With This Proven Content Marketing Strategy
OverviewThe Internet is a network of interconnected nodes of information (content.) The more densely interconnected the information becomes (the density factor) the more useful and valuable it is.Data + Interpretation = "Meaningful" InformationI won't repeat myself unduly; however content - or information - is what people seek online.In all fairness what people are really seeking is an answer to some question, and they usually pose their search in terms that they think in.Keyword phrase demand and supply is at the cornerstone of content provision and armed with an understanding of the search terms, and the modalities of the user's presentation (how a person perceives the world), you can begin to provide answers to their questions in the form of articles, white papers, blog postings, forum inserts and so on.Writ

e you talk to that say they'll come back and buy later or that sound like they are very interested in buying often don't. But you don't know that if you don't measure all inquiries because you assume they have bought.

So how do you measure it? First of all you need 2 to 3 bits of information on every person who contacts your business. Things like their name, phone number and what their inquiry was about.

So now, onto the magic question, How To Improve Your Conversion Rate!

There are at least 80 ways! Want to know the best ones? Here they are...

How To Incorporate In The Us
This article takes you through the different milestones of the incorporation process. You will learn what is the information required to start the process, what are the terms you need to familiarize yourself with, which entity type to choose, where to incorporate, how to open your corporate bank account and how to plan your taxes.Incorporation stateThe best advice may be to form a corporation in the state where you plan to conduct business. It will be far less complicated and more cost-effective in the long run. Listed below are some of the reasons why Delaware attracts both large and small businesses:Delaware maintains a separate court system for business, called the "Court of Chancery." If legal matters arise involving a trial in Delaware, there is an established record of business decisions. No minimum capital is required to organize the corporati

measure it? First of all you need 2 to 3 bits of information on every person who contacts your business. Things like their name, phone number and what their inquiry was about.

So now, onto the magic question, How To Improve Your Conversion Rate!

There are at least 80 ways! Want to know the best ones? Here they are...

Direct Mail for Fast Food Restaurants
Fast Food Restaurants know that they need to be on very busy corners in order to get the impulse eater to come in and buy a Sandwich, Hamburger, Chicken, Pizza, Taco or whatever. The spend lots of money on landscaping, lighting, signage, drive thrus and branding to insure traffic. Consider the amount of money a Fast Food Restaurant spends in promotion some time.However, often they fail to realize that many locals do not bother to come in to eat. Why? Well, they have not invited them or provided the locals nearby the right incentive that’s all. A robust yet inexpensive marketing and advertising program might do the trick. Let me explain; you see, direct-mail and direct-mail marketing for fast food restaurants works.By sending out direct-mail marketing coupon packages to all of the households within a 10-mile radius of a fast food restaurant will ensure good

. DISC is an insight into 4 major differences in people's behaviour. When you learn DISC profiles you understand some people want to be friends with the person they buy from, while others find friendly sales people annoying and don't buy from them. Some people (about 50%) make all sales decisions very quickly, usually on the spot. While 50% of people always want to think about it, usually over a day or two. DISC is something I teach to all my clients and all who learn it from me increase their sales (turnover and profit) by 20%-300% in weeks!

Radio Advertising: A Long History Of Excellence
For years people have tuned into radio talk shows, radio morning shows as well as all those broadcasters and their funky styles. If you are like many, you flip on the radio as well. From a marketing standpoint, though, do you realize the value of radio advertising? While many say that your marketing dollars should be split into various categories, you will find that this is an excellence place to start. What does radio advertising have to offer you?Consider first the amount of people that are on the radio at any given moment. In the morning, as people get dressed for work or school, the radio is on. When they get into their cars to head to work, the radio is on. The radio is playing in the office, on the way home again and maybe they tune it on before bed as well. It is the first thing that people wake up to. Radio advertising is powerful medium.You

s. (To learn more about DISC see the article 'How to Build Rapport in 7 Seconds' by Tim Stokes at www.ezinearticles.com)

Are you starting to get the picture there are dozens of ways you to improve what you're doing now with your conversion rate? First you have to measure it, before you can improve it. Collate it over a day, then a week then a month. When you do you will have a powerful Key Performance Indicator.

Working with business owner’s conversion rates I have had dozens and dozens of fantastic profit improvements in weeks and months. My record is a blind manufacturing company that had a conversion rate of 3.5% and then 6 months later we took it to 75% and that was with a 35% increase in prices along the way! What percentage increase it that in profit? I don't know, but it’s massive!

I did the same with a retailer. They had a conversion rate of 68% and using a sales system I wrote with them they hit 100% conversion rate the week we started using it. It never dropped under 82% again.

If you don't increase your conversion rate your marketing will rarely make you a good profit return, or enough to pay for itself with profit from the sales from the promotion. When you double conversion rates you double your turnover and advertising responses, so you can run your ads half as much saving you profit as well.

I'll leave you with this thought... You can't improve something if you haven't measured it. Measuring is the secret to all of your success in business.

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Our 'socially accepted' working life in the Western World presently stands at around 50 years. We generally have the ability to seek work at a little before the age of 15 and are expected to graciously retire at around 65 years. So tell me, how much of your '50 year allocation' have you spent building your own business so far? How many years have you spent building someone else's? And most importantly, what are actually willing to do with the time you have left?

2006 was a good year for the economy and the public relations business in general. Companies of all sizes reported steady revenue growth and respectable profit margins. From our executive search perspective, we have seen more foreign companies and PR firms commit to a New York presence than ever before. And yes, just about everyone who sought a PR job had found one in 2006. This trend seems to be continuing through the start of 2007.

Today, retailers face a tremendous amount of competition, more than ever before. The Internet has allowed millions of new startup retailers to launch with minimal resources. Some of these new Internet retailers do not even warehouse their own products, they simply drop ship other retailers products, making it much easier for them to keep their resources low and use their revenue made from sales to put back into marketing of their websites.

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Digg it UP - How to Increase Sales and Profits Without Spending a Cent!

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