Evaluating Your Customer

It is one thing to make a sales presentation, but it is another thing to make a sales presentation without first evaluating your customer. For all you know, you could be selling your customer something that they already have, or something they don’t want, don’t need, or can’t afford.

This is why it is so very important to take your customer in, sit them down, make them feel comfortable, and get to know them and what their needs are. Once you have done this, you can then sell them a product based on what their needs are and not what you think they are.

On a personal note . . .

I learned the importance of evaluating your customer the hard way. A few years ago, I was a branch manager working in a bank branch. One particular customer of the bank approached me in my office about opening a savings account for her daughter.

Once I explained to her the process of opening a savings account, I proceeded to tell her all about a current promotion we were having on our home equity loans. She sat there and listened very politely and patiently as I very proudly went down the list of all the benefits, features, and tax breaks that come with a home equity loan.

Once I had finished my rehearsed presentation, she said to me;

That all sounds very nice, and it is something that I will consider in the near to distant future. She than went on to tell me that she and her husband rented the house they lived in.

So there you have it, I tried to sell a home equity loan to someone without a house.

Needless to say, my face turned a deeper shade of scarlet, and I felt like an idiot.

But hey, I learned from my mistake. Had I asked some simple probing questions before I went straight for the sale, I would have saved myself a lot of embarrassment.

You will be amazed at what you can find out from people just by asking them a few simple questions about themselves. Remember, people love to talk about themselves. Their jobs, their pets, their kids, just about everything.

I once had a friend who owned a shoe store, and his inventory was made up mostly of sneakers. One day a man walked into his store to buy a pair of sneakers. As my friend assisted him with his decision, he struck up a friendly conversation with him. As it turned out, this customer ran a basketball camp during the summer and he loved to talk about it. A few minutes into the conversation, my friend and his customer had come to an agreement. All of the boys and girls that attended the customers basketball camp would receive a 10% discount on their sneakers if they purchased them at my friend’s store.

So, as you can see, my friend increased his sales that summer simply by striking up a conversation with his random customer and asking a few questions.

Imagine going to your doctors office with an ailment and having him prescribe you a medication without asking what your symptoms were. Would you take the medication?

The same principal applies.

It really isn’t rocket science, it’s just friendly conversation, get to know your customer and watch one sale turn into many.

Why service only one of your customers needs when you can service them all.

Branding Your Ebiz - Creating A Name Your Customers Trust

If you want customers to spend money with you online, you have to make them feel confident they’re dealing with a legitimate business. They’re giving you their personal information, as well as their credit card number. If your website sends a clear message you run your business from home, they may not feel comfortable entrusting you with that kind of info. That’s why it’s important to create a brand your customers recognize and trust. What’s a Brand? A brand is what differentiates you from every other eBiz out there: • A brand is a set of expectations you create in your customers’ minds in regards to your business. It comprises everything from the quality of your website to your customer service to your actual merchandise. More than just a name and logo, it’s your buyer’s entire experience with your company. • A brand is a reputation. A good brand adds value to your product—buyers expect a certain quality based on the brand name. If they recognize your brand and have a good association with it, they’re likely to choose it over other similar products, even if it costs a little more. Your Branding Should Be Consistent Explains Eileen Parzek, of http://SohoItGoes.com, “Consistently use a brand design throughout all your different marketing material… It gives a sense you’re bigger than you really are.” You need to figure out what your marketing message is and carry that message through all your promotional materials. If you have business cards, press kits, and print materials, they should reflect the design of your website from the fonts and color palette to the logo and tagline. Your format should also persist through all of your web pages—the layout, the tone of your copy, even your navigation. Having a unified, professional-looking web store can go a long way towards building a customer’s confidence in you. A well-designed site gives your business credibility—customers associate the quality of your site with the quality of service and merchandise they expect from you. Your Branding Should Be Continuous Your brand should evolve to reflect the changing needs of your target market—branding’s an ongoing process. It begins, ideally, in your business’ startup phase and continues through the life cycle of your business. Says Parzek, “[Branding] is not something you ever stop doing. You have to be conscious of it at all times.”

10 Time-tested, Battle-Hardend Blog Traffic Techniques

1. Blog Regularly - many of the top blogs post 10-20 times per day.

2. Create Authority Articles - instead of blogging frequently, post less often but focus on creating Authority Posts -- lengthier articles that are really well put together which will attract attention from other bloggers & users of social bookmarking sites like Digg, reddit, etc.

3. Comment on Other Blogs - do not keyword spam in these, but rather use your own name and add value to the conversation.

4. Link Out Frequently to Industry Leaders - show some linklove to other bloggers in your niche. In turn, they might eventually link back if you have a quality post on a topic they have not covered yet.

5. Participate in Blog Carnivals - these are a way for bloggers within a niche to get together and periodically highlight posts from one another's blogs. You can find an index of these at BlogCarnival.com.

6. Do Guest Posts - not just for A-List bloggers, but B-List and beyond. Be sure to work up some good material first, so as to make a good first impression.

7. Article Marketing - chances are, you're reading this via a site that syndicated this article using an article marketing script of some sort. Join a site like ArticleMarketer.com and syndicate your articles to thousands of participating sites. If distributed via the web, these sites are required to link back to you via a byline (see below).

8. Social Digging/Mixxing - join sites like Digg, Mixx, Bumpzee, etc. and encourage your users and/or friends to submit your stories.

9. Social Bookmarking - join del.icio.us, Furl, Wink, Backflip, etc and submit your popular articles to these sites to seed them into the community.

10. Use Great Headlines - okay, which sounds better "Some Ways to Get Readers", or "10 Time-tested, Battle-Hardend Blog Traffic Techniques". Many readers are particularly fond of "Top X" lists, or "How To ..." posts.

5 Benefits Of Using Feeds - How Feeds Can Help Your Ebiz

What’s a Feed?

Feeds are a way of sharing content. When you make material from your website available for publishing on other sites, you provide them with a feed. Basically, it’s a code that lets them post your articles and blogs. There are different kinds of code—XML, RSS, Atom, etc.—but essentially they’re all just different ways of accessing a feed.

According to internet expert Sydney Johnston, “The great thing about a feed is everybody wins.” The article writer gains exposure, the reader learns about something of interest to them, and the online seller gets an endless source of pertinent content.

What Can a Feed Do for My Online Business?

Feeds are useful in a number of different ways:

• They Eliminate Spam-filters. They’re 100% opt-in, so readers can subscribe and unsubscribe at will. Feeds are delivered directly to your subscribers, so you don’t contend with filters knocking you out of their inboxes.

• They Provide Free Content. One of the best ways to differentiate your site is to supply readers with interesting material—educate them on topics relating to the product you’re selling. If you sell preschool toys, chances are you don’t want to study child development and write numerous articles on the subject—so find someone else who’s already done that and make their feed available to your customers. The constantly updating, applicable subject matter gives your visitors a reason to keep coming back.

• They Can Improve Your Search Engine Rankings. In the past, search engines were unable to read feeds, but software is now available to translate them into live links the engines can see (check out http://CyberWS.com). Search engines love fresh, dynamic content, so feeds are ideal. They provide relevant information that updates automatically. Not only do your customers get the facts they’re looking for, but the search engines like your site and give it better position.

• For Affiliate Marketers, They’re an Alternative to Banners. You not only give your customer valuable knowledge, but if they click through and purchase something, you get credit. And unlike with banners, you don’t look like you’re putting up junk ads or spam.

• They Can Increase Your Traffic. Anything you write, you should make available as a feed. When other sites pick it up, it’s free advertising for you—all their traffic is able to click through the feed to your site. So you gain new potential customers you wouldn’t have otherwise.

Feeds on any subject are easy to find. There’s a whole collection of search engines just for feeds, like http://Plazoo.com and http://Feedster.com. Says Johnston, “The future of the internet for entrepreneurs is feeds. If people don’t master them, they’re going to get left behind, period.”