Have You Sold Yourself?

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You will always be your number one customer. It`s not the big account you service, nor is it the hot new prospect you just uncovered; it`s you. The reason is simple. If you`re not completely confident in what you`re selling, you will never come close to maximizing your sales potential.

The current sales environment makes the need to sell yourself even more important. If you think you`re the exception to this rule and you`re not completely confident in the products or services you offer, ask yourself this simple question: Have you ever offered a discounted price to either keep a customer or attract a new one? Few salespeople can honestly say they have never done this. If you have, it means that you were not 100% sold on your product or service.

As a consumer, when we don`t fully believe in what is being offered to us, we naturally expect a discount. We want something in return for not being completely confident about what we`re buying. Since the salesperson hasn`t communicated the level of confidence we need in order to buy the product at full price, we want some type of concession to make us feel better about the purchase.

To be completely sold on your product or service, not only do you need to use what you sell, but you also need to understand all of the benefits that your product or service provides. As a sales consultant who works with thousands of different professionals each year, I`m amazed at the number of salespeople who admit that they don`t even use what they sell. How can anyone be totally committed to a product or service if they don`t even use it? Furthermore, it`s not uncommon for me to see salespeople shortchanging themselves because they are unable to identify and explain the value of what they are selling. Although this sounds basic, many salespeople cannot name five benefits their customers receive from using their product or service. They can usually only list five features. Without understanding the full array of their product`s benefits, there`s little chance the customer will ever see them too.

A poor sales process is usually a good indicator of whether or not the salesperson is sold on the product or service they are offering. Nothing conveys a lack of confidence faster than a sales process that is not professional. Unfortunately, for many salespeople, a disorganized sales process is the norm and it only serves to destroy more sales and, ultimately, a huge amount of profit. Despite the customer`s desire to buy, an unorganized sales process creates an air of skepticism that often can only be countered by offering some type of discount to close the deal.

With the current state of the economy, it is imperative that sales professionals be both confident and competent to achieve maximum success. In any sales call, you best communicate these qualities by being completely sold on your product or service. If you are not, find ways to better educate yourself so that you can become your number one customer. Remember, "No customer is ever sold until the salesperson is sold."

Mark Hunter, "The Sales Hunter", is a sales expert who speaks to thousands each year on how to increase their sales profitability. For more information, to receive a free weekly email sales tip, or to read his Sales Motivation Blog, visit http://www.TheSalesHunter.com.

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Fantasizing or Marketing?

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Opportunity Seeker or Entrepreneur

Now why do I equate "opportunity seeker" with fantasizing and "marketing" with entrepreneur? It is simply this: opportunity seekers are, well, seekers. Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, are "undertakers". Now I realize the mortuary business has pretty much ruined that word, at least in the English speaking world. The word comes from the French language and means: one who undertakes (some task). Well that's it; opportunity seekers talk the talk, entrepreneurs walk the walk. They actually do something.

Now I understand that you say that you want wealth. But here is the question: should you be believed? Let me give you an illustration. Do you know people who talk about health but don't get any exercise, don't eat quality foods and don't watch their weight? Well, do you really believe them? See my point? Wealth and health have many talkers but not so many walkers.

Facts, Information, Truth

Now I hear some people say, "That's my problem. I am a seeker; but there is a good reason for it, you see, I don't KNOW what to do."

And that brings us back to health again. Of course health is a tricky subject; how much and what kind of exercise should I get? What are high quality foods? Of the one thousand or more weight management plans out there, which ones are truly useful? You see the problem here? Facts, information and truth are easily lost in the mire.

That's true of wealth creation as well. I understand that there are 150,000 new home based business started each week. And do you know what many of them are doing? They are making a list of 100 people they know to share their business with.

Now answer me this question: what traditional businesses do you know that make a list of their friends and family and actually think that they are going to build a 6 or 7 figure annual income this way? Can it work? Yes. Will it work? Rarely. The fact is most people simply don't know what to do. They want to be walkers, but they don't know where to walk. So they keep talking about it, seeking the perfect opportunity, bouncing from product to product, company to company and plan to plan.

The Perfect Product

Let's stop here a minute. Tell me, what is the best hamburger you've ever eaten? In my case, it's a What-A-Burger. Years ago I moved to Corpus Christi, Texas. I wanted a hamburger and a friend of mine said, "Let's get a What-A-Burger." I never heard of it. It was incredible. I live in South Carolina now; it's wonderful in South Carolina except for one thing—they don't have What-A-Burgers here. My mouth is watering just writing about them.

How did you answer that question, what is the best hamburger you ever ate? Of all the options possible, I'm going to guess it was not a MacDonald's. I'm not saying they are bad; they're not—but the best? Well, I don't think so.

But here is an interesting fact; MacDonald's is the largest hamburger restaurant in the world. Why? If it is not because they make the best hamburger in the world, then what is the reason?

The reason is simple; they have the best hamburger marketing plan in the world. There is a lesson here. Product is important but marketing is critical. My point? Represent a good company and product; it is very important you do so. But the best product in the world will go nowhere without a first class marketing plan.

A Better Idea

Chasing the perfect product is not the answer. What is the real answer? It is the creative use of the Internet to drive an endless supply of leads to you, leads that are specifically interested in multi-level marketing.

But you don't know how to do that! You've checked the Internet; there are hundreds of "plans" there on how to start a business—which product, which plan?

Don't worry about the perfect product, instead, above all, focus on the marketing plan. And just what is the best marketing plan for a MLM business. It is a plan that uses the power of the Internet to drive an unlimited supply of interested people to you, each one of them seeking information on how to achieve wealth.

Article Location: lhttp://www.how-to-do-network-marketing.com/Fantasizing-or-Marketing.html Web Page: http://www.how-to-do-network-marketing.com/ Contact Info: ralph.bass@businessmasterplan.com

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5 Tips to Develop Great Outsourcing Relationships

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Firms that provide outsourcing services to small businesses can gain a lot by developing great professional relationships with small business owners (or contact person). The reason for the service provider is simply to help build and maintain trust and credibility. Some tips on developing great outsourcing relationships are:

1. Be Honest
Everyone naturally starts off on a neutral footing. Honesty on the part of the service provider is however of utmost importance to ensure that the firm/team can be trusted with important information and assignments.

2. Be willing to go the extra mile
Small business owners are people with big ideas but comparatively small budget. However, that fact should in no way mean that their business is any less important. Be willing to go the extra mile by providing a bit more than expected. (That of course doesn`t mean pitching in extra hours for unpaid work:-) ).

3. Be able to grow with the client
A number of small business owners start of by outsourcing a single project/task. They are new to the concept of outsourcing and are just testing the waters. However, assuming that the first couple of tasks have gone well they will be looking to outsource bigger tasks to help them relieve their own burden. Moreover, it is absolutely reasonable to assume that over a period of time their businesses will grow and they will need more services. Don`t be caught off guard when that happens.

4. Specialize
Its great to be a one stop shop for all the services that your clients need. However, its rarely the case that you can be great in everything that can be done on this planet. Learn where your abilities truly lie and focus on those. Continue to learn and refine skills but remember that people want to pay for the best skill for a particular cost. Its better to be someone who can design great webpages for $x rather than someone who can design average webpages but also sing a nice song for the same amount!

5. Keep communication open
Always ensure that you are communicating frequently with your clients. If you are not available then provide adequate notice for that. If they have not responded to an email that you sent earlier then send in a polite reminder. Its never a bad idea to drop hints that you have capability to pick up more assignments or if you get to learn new skills.

SpeedItOnline.com provides online support to small businesses around the globe to help them manage their work and reduce their costs. If you have any questions regarding this article or services offered then please contact us.

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Mother of Three Finds Freedom, Flexibility and Success in Less Than One Year as a Home Stager

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Had Laura Kakoschke gone into the field of home staging with the goal of getting a guaranteed job at $31.45 per hour, it's safe to say things would have worked out much differently for her.

This Staging Diva Graduate and founder of Hunter Lake Home Staging and Design says of this, her second chance career, "I made more money in the first 10 months in my own staging business than I used to make in a whole year working for the government as a Contract Manager. And now I work half the hours that I used to!"

What Laura understood when she got into this field and some aspiring home stagers don't, is that a promised job for $31.45 an hour is actually a complete devaluation of her talents. Laura did her research before signing up for a training program and learned that home stagers can actually earn between $250 and $700 for just a two-hour consultation. She realized what she needed were the skills to promote her services and market her own business so she could be in control of her own employment.

It certainly worked out for her. In her first 10 months as a home stager, Laura landed so many of her own projects that she ended up staging 12 vacant properties. When you consider that staging a vacant home can earn a stager anywhere from $3,000 to $10,000 profit per house (even if they don`t use their own inventory), having 12 of these in less than a full first year of a new business is significant.

The largest of Laura`s projects was a $2.5 million vacant estate home which she furnished from top to bottom. "This was an intense experience," says Laura, "but an awesome opportunity to put my home staging training into practice."

One of her recent projects saw Laura staging a house that had been sitting on the market for four months. Before Hunter Lake Home Staging and Design came in, the real estate agent was skeptical about staging. Her thinking completely changed after Laura finished staging the property. With new furniture and accessories, the house sold in only four days. "The change in the decor was like night and day," says Laura, "and we didn't even have to paint or replace brass fixtures."

This mother of three children loves the freedom that comes along with being her own boss. "I can work my own hours, set my schedule, be at home to teach (home school) in the mornings and work my staging business in the afternoons," reports Laura. "My three boys get a first-hand look at running a business. I hope that the courage I found to follow my dream will inspire them to follow theirs, and to know that anything is possible."

Like many Staging Diva students, Laura approached her home staging career with the attitude that she wanted to finally use her natural talents to earn a living without having to spend 4 years in an interior design program.

"I'm 39 and if it weren't for the opportunities available to a stager, I would have had to return for several years of post-secondary training and then work long hours for low pay for a design firm to fulfill my dream of decorating. This would never have happened," says this mom with a degree in literature. "Staging Diva Training gave me the business tools and confidence to follow my lifelong passion for design."

Entrepreneur and Home Staging expert Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®, knows how to make money as a home stager and has taught over 1000 others to do the same. Discover her secrets to business success in the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program.

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Business Communications Revolution – Video Conference Technology

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Video communication has always promised a diverse array of powerful, tangible, immediate business benefits – empowering face-to-face interaction with anyone, anywhere, anytime – instantly.

Fast, measurable cost savings, enhanced productivity and operational efficiencies, greater staff rapport, work life balance and job satisfaction. Even a reduced carbon footprint. Make no mistake. When it comes to video, the eyes well and truly have it.

There was a problem though. The technology was often immature, complex, and expensive. It also tended to be largely proprietary and rather greedy for bandwidth, and it came with a reputation for unreliability.

Accordingly, while the world's biggest, richest, most risk-resilient companies were able to embrace video with open arms, the rest of us had to keep getting on our trains, planes, and telephones. There was no choice.

Since then, visual communication technology has evolved of course – reliability and quality are no longer an issue. Even then however, even as more and more businesses have come to see the value and the benefits and value of using video, it has remained beyond the reach of most because of budgetary, technical, security and or IT resource constraints.

Video Conferencing has evolved into a viable solution for businesses as recent developments in Video technology have resolved all of these issues.

New Video communication tools can be installed with no impact on your IT infrastructure, high levels of security and no drains on your corporate bandwidth. With high definition video available with small levels of expenditure needed to setup and use, the ability to communicate without the hassle of travel has become available to any business.

Video provides a greener, quicker and more reliable method of communication for businesses worldwide.

The future of business is video conferencing.

Stephen Smith is freelance consultant of video conferencing services. While working on this he has gathered knowledge on video conferencing using of video conferencing facility. Visit : http://www.mvision.co.uk for more information and services.

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Starting Your Business On A Shoe String Budget

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In today's world a huge part of business success is actually down to presenting a face that presents trust and confidence to both the market and the consumer world. The devil truly is within the details, and it boils down to corporate branding, how members of the company present their selves, their EDM's, corporate brochures, ad campaigns and press releases. It is a multi billion dollar industry in some parts of the world to build the correct perception of a company. This applies even to those who are just starting out. Being cost effective is one thing but compromising on quality is quite another. Starting out a business from the cradle of your home is a good thing, but stagnating there and using your home address as your primary office mailing address could be the wrong step that will lead to a whole host of problems later on. The importance of a registered office address lies in its ability to define the company that is using it and gives the persona of professionalism that every business need.

A mailing address that originates from a home address already instils a lack of confidence in the end user. It is like a very well furbished website, detailing all the businesses and backed up by an incredible client base – only to be tarnished by a contact list that reads from some universal mail provider. There is an inherent drop in levels of trust in the company straight away and confidence is removed from the equation. These are two things that are extremely important in a purchasing decision, especially when you are not there to personally seal the deal yourself. This is about the same when it comes to the registered office address, every business needs to present an image of professionalism. You might have a killer product, you might have great presentation skills – but all these can be outdone by a shoddy mailing address that happens to be in every flyer, brochure and book that you give out. The bottom line is branding and a key component in a successful brand are the intangibles – trust, believability, confidence, history. Once you lose that confidence , then your brand recognition among your clients and soon among the rest of the consumer populations will go down the drain and you will slowly see those profit margin figures follow it dutifully. Think about hiring the services of a virtual office provider and some of them have packages which are cheap and offer basic services like a registered office address and simple mail collection, which is the first step in building reputation.

There you have it, an integral reason why anyone with the need to succeed in a business should own a registered office address. The cost is low and the benefits far outweigh the tiny investment that you have to put in to start you on the road to financial freedom and business success. This is the importance of a registered office address; it can make or break your business.

Cut your business rental costs and use a virtual-office instead. Sign up today at this singapore virtual office or compare virtual office space plans.

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Find Ways to Personalize Your Marketing

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Every business I know attempts to connect with their customers in some way, no matter how big or small that company is. Consider the nation wide companies with branches in a variety of different locations. Let's say specifically a restaurant where they have a variety of different things on the walls to add character.

I can say with absolute certainty that each of those restaurants are going to find something about the specific location they're in to put up on their walls. This works well with sports teams for local high schools or colleges, or even just teams in that particular town. If you go into a different branch of the same restaurant in a different town you'll see various things on the wall reflecting the area the restaurant is in.

They're doing whatever they can to say to their customers that they know what people like there, and they're going to try their best to connect with those things as well.

No matter what type of marketing you're doing you need to try doing the same, and the smaller your business is the easier it will be to accomplish this. That's the strength of a local company that larger corporations just can't match. Sure, the larger companies are going to try to connect with people in each city, but they won't know the city as well, and they won't be as strongly connected to the community.

A good way to introduce your company when opening up a small business is with something like custom greeting cards where you can talk to people on a more personal level. Don't just send out a generic form of advertising or anything like but, but make sure that your greeting card reflects your business and the area that your business is in.

That way you can tell people right from the beginning that you're one of them and you know what their lives are like. Use those custom greeting cards to mention who you are and why you opened your business to begin with. Tell them about yourself so they'll see how you relate to them, and why you're connected with the community.

This is a chance that you won't be able to get again. You want your first impression to be as powerful as possible, and you want to introduce yourself in such a way that they immediately view you as close to them, and that doing business with you will be helping the community as well.

Some things just can't be bought with money, and nothing can compare with genuinely being close to the community. You want to develop a strong bond of trust, so let people know who you are, and find the best way possible to let them know about you and your business.

Visit this site for more information on custom greeting cards

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Create a brochure that attracts attention to your product

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It`s simple, if you want buyers to notice your brochure, start by making it look great. We all know that content is king, but people aren`t attracted to text initially, they`re pulled in with a visually dynamic image first. Good looking images tap into peoples inner guides - the ones that are saying "if it looks good, it is good."

If you`re not convinced that image is important, consider why smart, successful marketers spend millions to create their image. Television ads use attractive models to demonstrate products, car dealers freshen the paint of used cars to make them more marketable, and we all wear our "nice" clothes when we want to impress new acquaintances. Why would the advertisers and car dealers go through the added expense if it doesn`t work? They wouldn`t. And you wouldn`t buy the new clothes if they didn`t make you feel and look better.

Often, your brochure is the only thing that a prospective customer has to evaluate your product or service. You want brochure recipients to believe that your product or service is worth the price you ask - that your buisiness is professional and it can be trusted. Good, solid graphic design does the work for you when you can`t be in front of the prospects yourself. Good graphic design is your best salesperson.

When you`re about to begin the development of your brochure, hire a talented designer. All designers are not created equal. Be selective about your brochure designer - review their portfolio, check their references, talk to them about your thoughts and probe them for their ideas.

A good designer will get a reaction, turn heads and generate interest in your product or service. After the design has captured the audience`s attention, then follow up with quality content. When combined, quality design and quality content will make a positive impact on your business` product or service.

Dan O'Donnell is Creative Director and Owner of Direct Axis, a 4-member design/communications agency Direct Axis' primary focus is the design and writing of print and web media. Direct Axis creates brochures, catalogs, direct mail, web sites and Flash presentations. Direct Axis specializes in nonprofits, manufacturers and higher education. http://www.direct-axis.net Brochure Samples: http://www.direct-axis.net/capabil.html

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Starting A Business With A Virtual Office

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The initial creativity of your business idea should be maintained throughout and there should be nothing that should interrupt this momentum that could lead you to your dream house in some quiet Indonesian island and retiring young. While this is an ideal, I believe that the core of the business should be - well just business but the problem with start-up companies is that they have so many administrative and set up issues that they often come across a huge wall of red tape – even before they can get their idea up and running and making them money. Why should valuable time be wasted on setting up an office, applying for the various permits, budgeting, hiring office assistants and managers, cost evaluation, rental, space allocation – anyone who has ever tried to set up a business should know about the list of bogging activities that can happen. Profits and the success of any business should not be easy, but its should not be anchored down by the nitty gritty of business setups anymore, not in this day and age of virtual real estates and the gaining popularity of the virtual office worker.

The industry has responded with services that help new and start-up companies gain the extra added advantage with a virtual office. What a virtual office gives you is all the benefits of a physical office but its setup only takes a few days. Some of these companies offer virtual boardroom services, your very own personal assistant who will take your calls and sort through your faxes. Even a prime virtual office address will be provided for your clients to mail you. Anything and everything is granted at a fraction of the cost of setting up a real, physical office. There is no setup on your part and there is no hassle. The 'rent' that you pay is simply a fee that upkeeps all the digital systems and pays for things like the shared receptionist and fax/mailing services. Even the most expensive virtual office providers charge an amount that is a fraction to the costs you will incur if you decide to rent or buy an offline real estate space to conduct your operations. The world is changing, and working at home doesn't mean one is lazy – but one is being prudent, working in an environment that is tactile, comfortable and increases your productivity level.

The only thing you must understand that there is a higher level of discipline to ensure that operations within the business are run smoothly. The virtual distance means that responsibilities can be overlooked and there must be constant communication to ensure that there is as little hiccups as possible when it comes to the daily ins and outs of the business. Create rules and regulations that everyone can agree to – and most of all meet up once in a while. Sometimes there is nothing like a physical handshake and a warm smile of your business partner as you discuss the latest success over a hot cup of coffee.

Cut your business rental costs and use a virtual-office instead. Sign up today at this singapore virtual office or compare virtual office space plans.

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