So how do you take advantage of this wonderful sales cycle? You must
change the focus of the sales experience on making a friend rather than
making a sale. When you focus on making a friend at all costs, you will
find ways to serve your customers beyond the scope of what you do in
your business.

This type of exceptional service is what will get your customers talking
positively about you after the fact. They will enthusiastically tell
everybody they know about you, your company and your excellent
service. These testimonials are the most effective form of advertising
you could ever have for your company. By making one friend, you will
create customer loyalty that will boost your sales as they continue to buy
from you and recommend you to others.

In order to be friends with your customers, you must take the time to
revaluate several key aspects of how you interact with them.

Do you value your customers?

Your customers do you a great service by contacting you. Think about it.
If a customer contacts you or stops into your place of business, they
have already paid you a wonderful compliment. They likely have heard
that you do good business or that you have the solution to their problem.

Return that compliment by respecting your customers and letting them
know that you are honored that they have given you the opportunity to
earn their business. Recognizing the important value of each customer
will establish the loyalty that will keep your friendships and sales
numbers growing.

Do you truly care about your customers?

The only way to become friends with your customers is by caring about
them as a friend would. You must listen to your customer’s concerns
and understand the meaning behind their words. Everything from your
tone to the product that you recommend for them should reflect your
sincere desire to make them happy and to solve the problem that they
brought to you.

Because this type of attention and service is so rare in business today,
you will create relationships with your customers that are just as rare.
This unique relationship will be the driving force behind their purchases.

Do you treat your customer as you would want to be treated?

Your customers come to you because they need help and they trust that
you will be able to supply them with the information they need. Do not
take advantage of that vulnerability and belittle their intelligence while
speaking with them. Avoid phrases that may sound condescending.
After all, knowing every intricate detail of your product is your job, not
theirs. Your mockery and disrespect will be evident to your customer,
and will be sure to end the possibility of their friendship and business.

Treating your customer like a friend also means letting go of many of the
techniques typical salespeople may use. Do not fall into the trap of
trying a manipulative sales trick on your customer. You do not like it
when it is done to you, so do not do it to your customer. If you are
focused on your customers needs, there will be no need for finding a
manipulative way to close the sale.

Employing manipulative sales processes and formulaic closing
techniques insults your customer’s intelligence and paints you in a
shadowy light. This is obviously not good when it comes to earning their
trust, their respect, and, most importantly, their business.

Making friends with your customers is an easy way to ensure a sales
experience where everybody wins. Your customers will feel confident
buying from a friendly and trustworthy business, and you will enjoy the
benefits of new friendships and continued sales.

Tom Richard is the author of Smart Sales People Don’t Advertise: 10
Ways To Outsmart Your Competition With Guerilla Marketing. You can
subscribe to Tom’s Weekly Ezine at http://www.tomrichard.com

Les Houches is one of those areas. It’s among the tallest ski firlds in in the alps, and owing to the elevation one can snowboard on it year-around. The top slopes stay snow capped all year and give year-around telemarking adventure. The resorts pistes are some of the nicest out there and it’s unsurprising that the ski resort is a snowboarding escapade.

La Mongie is the crowning adventure skiing ski resort. In the most southern populated point of the earth wintertimes are crips and snows are dense. The result is snow capped summits that reach all the way to the sea. There is not a better area to relish skiing. There are several good snowboarding mountains, one is never faraway from the snow. As you view to the south during skiing you are looking the whole way to the Med. It really is the best snowboard location.

As I speak with numerous people on a daily basis, I hear their frustration about their goals that they’ve set and the lack of progress that they have made. As I say, “A mountain is built one pebble at a time and climbed one step at a time.”

The first “5″ in the equation represents the 5 people that you call our friends, associates, etc. I suggest that you make a list of the 5 people that you associate with on a regular basis, and then take a good look at it to see if they either have goals similar to yours or are progressing towards the achievement of a goal similar to your 5-year vision. A major key to unlock the secret to your future is to be 110% conscious of the fact that you will ultimately become who you associate with. For example, if you have dreams of becoming healthy and wealthy and your associates are overweight smokers that complain about working one-minute overtime, then I can predict the odds of you being healthy and wealthy is slim to none. Millions of people never attain their dreams, because their “friends” serve as “cement shoes” as they walk towards their goals in life. As I set my goals, I surround myself with people who are on the same path in life that I am on. If you truly internalize this same mindset, then you can achieve your goals in life.

The second “5″ in the equation is to take a personal inventory of the last 5 books that you have read or cd’s that you have listened to. Just for fun, the next time one of your friends complains about something…ask them what were the last 5 books that they have read or cd’s they have listened to. You will get one of two answers: I do not remember or I do not have the time to read. Your last 5 books that you read will determine where your focus or direction is in life. The average person reads 1 book a year after high school, which is the #1 reason why 95% of people are “dead broke at age 65″.

Even the greatest computer in the world needs to be programmed in order to perform its functions. We are all designed for greatness, but we need to be conscious of our associations and what we are reading or listening to on a daily basis will decide the level of greatness that we all reach. Decide today to focus on your 5 year goal and realize that your 5 friends and the 5 books/cd’s that you listen to will determine if you hit your Why or not. Success is simple, but not easy because it takes the ability to grow, stretch, search and learn to enjoy everyday as you progress towards your 5-year goal.

5 + 5 = 5, give it a try and let me know if it works for you. I can actually predict your results…5 + 5 = Your Dream

As I say,

You must be absolutely clear about your goal and be
relentless in your pursuit of Your “WHY!”

As I say,

You must be absolutely clear about your goal and be relentless
in your pursuit of Your “WHY!”

Changing Lives!

John Di Lemme
http://www.FindYourWhy.com
Free Weekly Ezine

Artists books allow artists to combine aspects of their
artmaking with text in novel and exciting ways. The edition
number for artists books produced in South Africa is usually
fairly small (100 copies or less). This makes artists books
relatively rare and collectable. The “can do” approach of
South Africans has extended to the production of artists’
books and has resulted in some unconventional
approaches to the concept. Graduates from the Wits
Technikon have done some very exciting pieces, which have
included handmade paper, sculptural elements, plastic
bags, fabric, embroidery and wire work. Artists books
produced by The Artists’ Press have received international
acclaim and can be found in some of the worlds leading
libraries.

Any artists book produced in South Africa has to have a
copy, or a number of copies donated to the State Library
Collection. This ensures that South Africa as a country has
an archive of artists books produced in the country. It also
acts as a resource for people who are interested in artists
books but who cannot afford them.

One of the best and biggest international artists book
collections that of a Johannesburg Art patron, Jack
Ginsburg, who is also the founder and Director of the
Ampersand Foundation. This is a collection of contemporary
Artists Books and includes all the ones that have been
produced at The Artist Press.

There are a few specialised artists books dealers in South
Africa who deal locally and internationally. Clarkes
Bookshop in Cape Town sells all kinds of collectable books
and can be relied on for artists books. Johannesburg based
Thoralds Books caters for the serious collector and have
clients across the globe. They focus on work with an
Africana emphasis. The Art on Paper Gallery also sells
Artists Books and actively supports the idea of “democratic
multiples” which refers to artists books that are produced in
a format and at a price that is easily assessable to the
person in the street.

To look at what artists books are available from the Artists’
Press please go to www.artprintsa.com

Tamar Mason, artist and writer focusing on limited edition
investment prints in Southern Africa

If you have, then you know how frustrating it can feel

You may even spike above this ceiling periodically. But, like water seeking its own level, your revenue results seek a sub-par level.

I once walked into a situation much like this. I assumed the position of Vice President in a relatively young company. I was immediately tasked with making the changes needed to solve the revenue problem.

The company, after nearly 2 years of business-to-business selling of their service, had met only 40% of their revenue expectations.

Finance told me they were “behind” projections and needed to catch up. And the executive team wanted to know how long it would take. And the CEO said we didn’t have much time.

In this case, corporate had created a unique and valuable position in the marketplace. They had a sustainable competitive advantage. The service application worked, the product was needed and their offering was dramatically different from its competitors. Their Strategic Positioning was in place and healthy.

So why the invisible ceiling?

Sales leadership had failed to understand their meaningful business metrics. This was the primary reason, as it is in most cases. They had not isolated the essential competencies and components. Therefore, their people couldn’t self-compete to reach and maintain revenue goals.

They failed to develop practices and processes that allow an individual to identify, train to and measure their own competencies and performance metrics.

In other words, they attempted to shortcut the “Blocking and Tackling” process to routinely meet revenue goals.

When you hit a revenue “ceiling,” you have to go into diagnostic mode.

Ask the critical questions:

Which one of your Key Performance Indicators is causing you to fall short?

There may be several, but only one is the main culprit. As an example, the company I mentioned was fundamentally fine in turning first appointments into proposals. And they were maintaining an “average” closing ratio. Their sales cycle was within acceptable benchmarks.

Both competencies had room for improvement, but they were not the “smoking gun” at the scene of the crime. So what was the one culprit in this case?

What if I told you they were only generating 2 new appointments per week per sales rep?

Their average revenue per sale at this level of activity, when related to other competency and performance numbers, produces a 40% return.

Anyone can understand that something has to change operationally to grow the revenue. And what one item jumps off the page? In this case, as in many others, activity is the path of least resistance. They just needed to be taught how to generate routine opportunities in the least amount of time.

Everyone settles to his or her own level of “result”.

That may be OK, but only if your comfort zone is consistently at or above the company’s expectations. And when it’s not, “Houston, we have a problem.”

These kinds of problems cause a shortfall of revenue and unnecessary employee turnover, both of which carry “hard-dollar” consequences. I attribute it to having a “comfort zone” that is not all that comfortable.

So, there you are. You’re having a hard time figuring out where it hurts. So you take an aspirin and hope it goes away.

Seek to understand how to break through this undefined ceiling. View your job as a business, your business, and evaluate it. Use the kind of diagnostic lens entrepreneurial business people use to scrutinize their enterprises.

Now, you can develop your own systems and processes, if you want. But maybe you’d rather not try to re-invent the wheel.

In which case, invest in mine.

Either way, the first step in busting through an invisible revenue ceiling is to identify and measure your essential core competencies. Then, develop powerful training systems to improve those competencies.

And you’ll outperform your “comfort zone,” your peers and your competitors.

Jeff Hardesty is President of JDH Group, Inc. and the Developer of the X2 Sales System®, a blended training system that teaches sales professionals the competency of setting C-level business appointments.
Jeff has been featured in numerous National publications such as Business First, Dartnell’s SELL!NG , Chief Learning Officer and Training Magazine with reference to Blended Learning Systems and improving sales teams Key Performance Indicators.

He travels the country conducting live X2 ‘Boot Camps’ and Train-the-trainer sessions helping sales organizations get more reps to Quota in less time, shorten new-hire ‘Ramp-to-Quota’ and eliminate Turnover costs due to low sales activity.
Jeff can be reached at jeff@convertmoresales.com.
To view a complimentary suite of sales training ROI calculators and determine your sales team’s Key Performance Indicators in line with your sales objectives visit http://convertmoresales.com/roi_calculators.php.

When shopping around for a lead company, you want to ask yourself six easy questions about the leads you are going to invest in.

WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, HOW, and WHY.

Who is the person trying to obtain the mortgage? Are they serious about their purchase, or are they looking to buy six to eight months down the road once their lease is up, and they save some money?

Look for lead companies that weed out these types of leads, and will send you only potential customers looking to purchase within thirty to forty-five days.

What exactly is it that they are looking for? Are they looking to purchase, refinance, obtain a construction loan, or purchase land?

Make sure the lead companies have parameters on their applications to make sure the potential customer can be specific about what they want.

For instance, if a customer wants to refinance their home to purchase a new roof, because their existing roof has caved in, chances are, the appraisal won’t come in. We all have compassion, but this is not a good situation for a loan officer spending their hard earned money.

Where are the leads coming from? If a lead company is buying their leads from other companies, then these leads are considered old or recycled. They will however be very cheap, but remember, quantity is not always as good as quality.

When is your customer looking to purchase? If they are looking to purchase thirty to forty-five days from now, great! If not, then you might be waiting a long time for your ROI.

How many other loan officers have contacted your customer? Most lead companies sell their leads up to four times if they are being sold non exclusively. Make sure you find out the amount of times your lead company sells their leads to loan officers, and if they recycle them to other lead companies.

Why is this person applying for a loan? When you receive a lead from a lead company, there should always be a comment section where the potential customer can state the purpose for the loan and ultimately describe their needs. This way you can do a little research to discuss the programs you can offer that would be suited to their needs.

It is important to do as much research as you can about mortgage lead companies before you start investing your hard earned money.

Visit their web sites, and check out their return policy. Call and speak with a representative, and ask if they will allow for a free trial.

When you are ready to commit to making an investment, do it with a lead company you are comfortable with that has a reasonable minimum deposit to start with.

The more research you do, the better return on investment you will receive.

Good luck with your leads!

Jay Conners is a former loan officer with more than fifteen years of experience in the mortgage business. You can learn more about the mortgage lead industry and how he became involved in it by visiting his site at http://www.jconners.com a mortgage resource center. He also owns http://www.callprospect.com a mortgage lead company.

A whole world of marketing exists around us trying to do that every minute of the day. Do you even notice it anymore or, like your prospects, have you subconsciously set up a system of “radar defenses” against the daily bombardment of marketing messages?

Take a minute and count up the advertising methods which fight for your attention (and money) every day. Just the basic list includes:

Yellow page ads

Newspaper and magazine ads

Postcards, catalogs, and direct mail circulars in your “snail mail” box

Radio pitches interrupting the flow of your favorite songs

TV ads - about 20 minutes worth per hour now

Hundreds of storefronts, “mega” malls, and strip malls

Highway billboards by the thousands

Circulars hung on your doorknob

Illegal signs on stop signs and telephone poles

Legitimate email messages

Spam email or UCE (unsolicited commercial email)

Just these 11 sources can overwhelm your brain with marketing messages. Like trapped rats, people develop defenses against this never-ending onslaught. They throw up a wall or a “radar defense” that goes into action the minute they smell a “pitch” or a sales job. Don’t blame them. We all do it!

So how can you get around this psychological wall against the constant sales and marketing messages? Well, the answer does NOT lie in hitting people with more frequent and obnoxious advertising or sly, sneaky tactics. You might get them to trust you for a minute, but it will backfire in the long run.

You must do two things instead:

1. First, you must establish credibility for yourself and your business as an expert.

2. Second, you must reduce their fears about doing business with you.

Doing these two things will get you past their defenses and allow you the opportunity to persuade them to buy your product.

So how do you accomplish these two “simple” things? What will win someone’s attention, raise your credibility, and lower their fear factor all at the same time? The one-word answer really applies to most everyone.

Trust!

If a seller can get behind your defenses with information which makes you trust them, then that credibility will carry over into a sale much of the time.

How can you get this credibility?

Well, take this next fact as online marketing “gospel,” for many people have proven its effectiveness.

Fact: Publishing and promoting with free articles gives you one of the most powerful opportunities available to tip the buyer’s credibility scale in your favor.

How can we prove this works? Quite easily actually. Take a break from reading this and go check out a newspaper or magazine for a minute.

Which do you trust more, the ads or the articles? Most people will choose the articles hands down. Why? Because the articles don’t try to “sell” you anything. Instead, they hand out useful information for educational or other practical purposes.

Most of us grew up in a culture which says we can believe and “trust” what appears in the standard “news” or “information” format. In other words, if it appears in print, then we can believe and trust the author.

So go ahead! Use this lifetime of conditioning to your advantage in selling your products and services!

Very few things will create an atmosphere of trust and confidence in people as reading one of your articles on a subject that greatly interests them. It shows you know your business. It also demonstrates you will do more than just try to sell them something.

Publishing articles literally lets you fly under their advertising “radar defenses.”

So remember these points when deciding whether or not to use articles to promote your business:

1. Few things create as much trust and confidence in the minds of potential customers as reading an article you wrote on a subject which specifically and intensely interests them.

2. Articles establish credibility quickly because, right or wrong, we’ve all been trained to trust the “news.”

3. An article, or series of articles, will differentiate you from the competition, who bombard people with nothing but sales messages.

4. Providing content-rich, non-sales-oriented articles will also help build and solidify your relationship with existing customers so they give you repeat business.

—-

Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co- author of an amazing new ebook, “Turn Words Into Traffic,” that will teach you how to use free articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate link! Click Here ==> http://hop.clickbank.net/?iknowhow/ezarticles

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The following tools are for monitoring your search results in the three major search engines. It isn’t an all-inclusive list, but rather a highlight of some of the tools you can use. (I’ll point you to one of the master lists when we get into more general tools in part three.)

Using Your Google Site Information Page

I’ve covered this in an earlier article, but just in case you missed it, we’ll go over it again briefly here. (If you need more help following along, you can listen to one of my recent podcasts for a convenient audio walkthrough.)

Open up your browser and go to Google’s home page. Type in info:yoursitenameandsuffix. So if your site was ExactSeek.com you’d type info:exactseek.com. You can also use site:yoursitenameandsuffix to find out which pages have been indexed by Google’s search engine spider.

This search will tell you pages that Google considers similar to yours. It will also show sites that it considered linked to you, and show sites that carry your full url, hyperlinked or not. It’s not 100% accurate as far as telling you all the sites that are linked back to yours, but what you can learn from this is which backlinks matter.

From here you can also see the last day Google spidered your home page.

To see this in action, click on the first group of information links, “Show Google’s cache of yoursitename.com” If you look next to the word “cached” one the first line, the date is expressed also.

Sometimes it seems that the cached time for yoursitename.com and www.yoursitename.com are different, so be sure and check both.

Finding Information About Your Site In Yahoo

http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/tips/tips-08.html

This document will tell you how to find out what sites are linking to you, give you the results for how many pages of your site are in Yahoo, and more. Once you get to the results page, you’ll be able to view your cached pages, etc.

Discovering Your Site’s Status on MSN

http://search.msn.com/docs/siteowner.aspx

As the page in the help section states, you can use site:www.yoursitehere.com to find out if a document at your site has been indexed. The results page will also give you the date of last caching.

Google Rankings

http://www.googlerankings.com

You’ll need a free Google API key for this one, and the site has the direct link telling you where to get one. You’ll have to enter this key in order to query the site for information on Google.

With Google Rankings, you’ll be able to see where you rank within the top 40-1000 results in Google for a given keyword. I recently noticed that it also displays results for MSN and Yahoo, with links to each search engine.

They also have some other tools that will track your keywords over time, as well as one they call the “Ultimate SEO Tool” that will measure your site’s keyword density.

Google Backlinks Checker

http://lilengine.com/tools/backlinks-tool.php

LilEngine.com’s Backlink Checker will measure the number of links you have pointing back to your site against competing sites. Handy if you just want a quick comparison of how many links you have versus others, though how much getting more links back will help varies, depending on other factors.

Yahoo Search Rankings

http://www.yahoosearchrankings.com/

From the same folks who brought you Google Rankings, using Yahoo Search Rankings, you’ll be able to see where you rank within the top 1000 results in Yahoo for a given keyword. If you just want to see your Yahoo rankings, it’s quite helpful.

You can find more Yahoo tools that use the Yahoo Web API at their developer’s site : http://developer.yahoo.net/wiki/index.cgi?ApplicationList..

In the next part of the article, we’ll take a closer look at other tools that give you more specific information about the links pointing back to your site, keyword research, and more.

Tinu is a website promotion specialist who can teach you many do-it-yourself ways to bring more traffic to your site in addition to DIY SEO. Subscribe to her ezine at http://www.freetraffictip.com/thebook/ for more details.

As a result, you regularly end up having a phone which is either too high priced or a mobile phone which is not suited for your cell phone text profile. Therefore we mention here about the 2 very most fundamental things that mobile phone customers should regularly investigate when making phone purchases. This will help you land a cell phone that at the very least meets the standard criteria mobile phone customers are looking for.

The total mobile phone UK market is booming on the basis of spectacular features like camcorders that keep getting added every week. But, a really large majority of customers purchase phones based on their appearance, brand image and outstanding marketing only to regret later on when folk find that their fantastic mobile phone lacks a remarkably standard feature like sending emails or ringtones. Various marvellous pricey mobile phones sell on the basis of hype, brand and aesthetics at price tags that are unjustified given the lack of high end features. For example the latest Apple Iphone 3G does not let individuals forward messages to all. Unfortunately, Apple Iphones target audience, eighteen to thirty five, gets to regret the absence of this feature only after spending months worth of pocket money on it. And so make sure that your marvellous new mobile phone has all the features like cameras you require before buying it. Since mobile businesses will never tell mobile customers about the outstanding features like mp3 players that their mobile phones lack, reading up online phone write ups is the greatest way to do it.