How to attract clients by speech

I have been writing about networking and link building a lot. This time I am writing a different kind of business article about how to attract a client by art of speech.

When you go to a business meeting, the first time you enter there you might feel a bit nervous. This might be a big opportunity to build a relationship and a secure future. You might be meeting business contacts everyday. and through telephone, you might be doing this every day, but can you do it better? What are the tricks to preparing for them, starting them and keeping them going?

Smile first
It is important how long you hold it. When you meet someone have a smile on your face and make sure the other person understands that it is for him or her. Do not let the smile disappear as soon as you start speaking with the person. Let it linger for a while and with the topic, leave the smile where it is.

Eye contact
Eye contact is very important. First thing is look in the eyes. There are two main options in eye contact.

Wandering eyes: If your eyes around the room when you are engaged in conversation, it will appear rude. It is appropriate only if you are being harassed by the other party and you want to disengage from the discussion.
Sticky eyes: This is where you maintain constant eye contact with the person and resist the urge to look away. If you do have to book away, then break the contact reluctantly and deliberately. This will give a sense of importance to the other party.

Stop fidgeting
When you are meeting someone for the first time, do not start rubbing and scratching. Keep your hands together and interlock your fingers so they don’t start to play with jewelry or anything else. The less you fidget the more confident you look and you generate more respect and authority.

Be well presented
You have to be decently dressed and well presented according to the place or person you are meeting. Do not wear things that will draw unnecessary attention to your self and scare off everyone in the room.

Likely questions to be asked

“Where are you from?” this is a very likely to be asked question. Prepare an answer. You can either state a one word response that accurately describe your locale and hope the conversation moves on, or you can add an interesting comment that might sustain the conversation. Always try to sustain conversation.

“What do I do?” we know that some one will ask this question, and we are also bound to ask the same question from the other person. Be prepared for this. Give your answer some thought. Do not overdo the description. Remember that you are not trying to make your job more than it is; we are trying to find something interesting about it.

“What do you do?” now it is your time to ask the question. This sometimes will cause a difficulty for the other person, especially if they feel their job is not interesting or if they are between jobs. You should always ask a question, “How do you spend most of your time?” This will take a lot of risk out of the answer and allow the other person more flexibility with their response.

Keeps the conversation going

People are always interested in themselves, so if you want to be good at conversation, you need to know how to get them talk about themselves.

When the other person is talking or answering another question, be on the alert for their words of interest. This is a great clue as to what they are really interested in. for example if you were to state, “We had awful weather over the weekend” and the other person replied “ Yes, it was so bad I had to cancel my regular bicycle ride”, you should now start asking questions about their bicycle ride. Always be listening for ‘word pick’.

If you are struggling in a conversation, repeat the last words that the other person has spoken. If someone says to you “Last weak end I went to see a game of cricket”, then you should say “Cricket?” then the words will come to your mind to say some thing about cricket. This way you can keep people engrossed in their own topics. But do not parrot everything.

The best method to maintain a conversation is the use of questions. It is important to ask the right questions. There are two types of questions.
Open questions, where there is a space for a sentence to begin.
Closed questions, where you end with a short yes, or no answer.
Use open questions to keep the conversation going. And use closed question to verify facts and major points.
You will often find situations that where it is up to you to continue the conversation and these are golden opportunities for you and your business. Try these and s

Improve your sales by link building-2

In my previous article I have written about getting SEO by Linking with other sites.
This is the second part of the article describing how you should use your links.

Look at media sites and start your campaign there.

Lot of people visit media sites looking for information – get coverage and link to your site. You will get good traffic to your site plus a percentage of that audience linking to your site because the media site did. This is what I say, (links attract links).

Now you have identified your market sector and a list of 100 link targets, Start with the high profile portals. Go to them and see if they have a ‘submit an article’ page. If they do make sure you use it. It is an easy and valuable way to get coverage and links to your site. Look for reporter bylines and look for contact details. Many sites will publish guidelines on how to submit a release. Remember you should write articles in the specific product range that you are planning to sell.

Issue an online press release.

Media site is almost one to one approach where personal contact is essential. You can have one-to-many approaches by issuing an online press release. This way you submit your release to a newswire and they distribute your news to thousands of journalists and editors on their database. This is a very effective method. sourcewire.com is one such media site.

Include your signature as a link to your site.

This is a very powerful method of getting traffic to your site if you can write a really good article. People will be interested in the person who wrote this article. Curiosity will make them click the link and come to your site. Signature should include your name and description including your company name.

Using non media sites

Huge percentage of your links is covered by media sites. These methods are for the left over target links. Non media sites will only link to you if you have been mentioned by an editorial site they respect. Many of these sites may give you one way links, while others will ask for a link back. It makes sense to agree if you are asking the top sites, because links from them is very important to you. Include them in your content, write a short article about them, even recommend them if you have something useful to offer your visitors.

Monitor and evaluate.

Monitoring and evaluating is not simply a matter of counting how many links you manage to get. What is really worth measuring is the benefit those links bring to your business.

At least you should measure:
How much increased traffic comes from links?
Which link brings most traffic?
How much your search engine rank (search engine traffic)
How much your sales increase as a result.

Try this method and analyze your results. Then try other sites that you categorized as less priority. And you can check submitting articles on freelancing sites that is less important. You might get a click here or there that is worth a try.

Offer a free e-book.

Write an e-book on specific product ranges, usefulness and anything that can be related to the product. Include your links on them. Include not only your links but links to other sites as well. You can offer this e-book free to your readers on condition that they use the book only on free distribution and no change in links. Especially ask your other site owners which you have included links in your book, weather they would like to distribute the book as well. They will agree if there are link to them as well. This is also a very effective method. But you really must write the book on specific product range and focusing on specific target audience who will be willing to download the e-book and read reviews on products before they buy. This method is particularly easy to approach other site owners because they too will benefit from your book.

Useful Resources:
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Promoting Software Development Company

Are You a Good Blogger?

Improve your sales by link building

Link building is another effective way of promoting your website. Before starting your link building strategy, there is a lot of background work to be done and there are several methods you can use in this strategy. Always adapting multiple strategies to market your product will give you the best results.

Write articles with good content using key words

Write an article with good content that will attract a reader. And your article should contain key words relating to your product. If you use a keyword directory for this, it will have a better effect. But if you are a very skillful marketer you do not need a keyword directory. If you are marketing Accounting software, do not use the keyword software. It is too broad to give you a good effect in search engines. Instead you must use Accounting Software. Search websites that has good content and lot of links to them. Google ranks websites according to link popularity.

Even if a website does have a lot of links, be careful. It should be related to your specific area e.g. Computer Software and more specifically Accounting Software, Office Software.: if you search communities and websites that have good content and links, ask them for a link to your article. If they think it interesting and will benefit their readers, they will link to you.

Link your article

Link your article to relevant sites with lot of links. There are times that these sites are also searching for links and if they like your content, they will back link to you. This method takes time to reap fruit. The reality is that many people are disappointed with the small amount of traffic that their efforts produce.

Assess your linking strategy

Step back a bit and re-assess your linking strategy. Are you really giving enough thought to your strategy? First of all you have to understand that link building is not about CEO, boosting your Google Page rank or publishing a link directory and it is not about swapping links with as many other websites as possible.

What should be done for a maximum return?

Link building is about establishing your competitive position in the online marketplace that already exists, around your industry sector. Your potential customers usually research through search engines. They scan directories, articles, engage in discussion groups, will read product reviews and evaluate competitors. The sites your online customers hang around should be your place. These are the target sites for your link building strategy.

If you are in the software market, you should go to software portals. If it is accounting software you want to promote, then you should go further inside the niche to Accounting software.

Do not go to every niche. Look for about three or six significant niches. From those, target your amount of sites. Let’s say your target is 100 sites, concentrate your effort on these 100 sites. Not more.

There is no better method than developing good content in your site. Every word you write should be aimed at your product, skillfully directing your customer to read your content. This is skilful marketing. Longer the customer remains in your site, the more possibility of a sale.

Your site’s content should be well written and need to be accessible to search engines. That means being aware of the words that people will use looking for your products and including those words into your titles and descriptions, headings and subheadings, and definitely in your linking texts. Try this and see the results.

There is another article waiting to be published on this subject. I will publish it soon. Till then enjoy your links.

You can get more information by reading 21 tactics to increase blog traffic by Randfish.

Safeguard your company’s network

Take control of your businesses identity management and don’t let the identity of your users remain a mystery.

Today with the increasing demand for work being done on time, lot of companies have a network system, which can be accessed from anywhere. Most CIOs have head aches being called on to prove that they know what their users are up to simply due to lack of control procedure to manage identities. If safety measures are not taken at appropriate levels, sensitive information can go out and may cause even bankruptcy. That is why identity management (IDM) is an essential part of risk prevention in your business.

Your business might want to give certain access to your employees, contractors and customers at any where at any time. Yet even with the trusted employees can break regulatory compliance rules if the correct approvals aren’t sought. It is really important that your network must be well secured.

Your Accounting system or Account’s information should only be accessed by people in the Accounting department and not by the sales department or contractors. Even within your accounting department if there are several people working in one department, each person must have a secure ID and no other person should be able to access that information.

For example I know a company who did not manage their secure server system. There Design department had real problems with people accessing other peoples work and changing them, and even putting their names on other peoples designs. Imagine what this might cause in the production department, and material wastage that might occur when people try to access others information and nobody is going to be responsible for a mistake. This can lead to employee dissatisfaction and feel less responsible and later if this leaks out, the company may loose their clients.

Setting up a proper IDM can benefit your business in reducing your costs and boosting your productivity. First understand the employees and their work area in your business. Next step is to secure management information found in the various sources. Both these steps require you to build and enforce standard policy models within your business.

Automate the process of accessing information by letting each person to self register to access data. This reduces your cost of password setting and recovering fees. Then you can breath easily, your information flow is well designed. Each end describes the process smoothly. You can face the auditors with ease and why not even take a holiday.

Become a Retailer, Sell First and Pay Later

Have you seen this type of advertisements on the web? It Sounds too good to be true. I have found that it is common for this type of advertisements to include the following entries.

No Inventory
No Warehousing
Can operate from home
Most Profitable business on e-bay
You will be provided a professionally designed website with marketing campaigns.
Training provided

Any one trying to find a small business idea can jump to this kind of advert. They will tell you that these businesses are really cheap, No big investment needed, no shop rentals and good profit. They even provide you with a free website and a shopping cart. Everything is done for you. Yes, the advertisement is true, but this does not make you feel responsible, that is what I think. Before jumping to anything, do research on it. Talk with other people and get to know their experiences. First of all get to know this dropShipping business.

What is DropShipping?

DropShipping is becoming very popular in e-bay. It sounds very easy and people always do look for easy business ideas. You are being lazy if you try this business idea for the sound of being easy. People can sell their products online with their websites without having to carry any inventory, doing packing or shipping. What you have to do is to simply place ads and pictures copied from the supplier on your website and collect money from the buyer. Then you pay the supplier money and purchase the item and give the shipping directions to the supplier. Supplier then pack and ship the product for you in your company name or Supplier’s name as agreed between the two parties. This is an ideal home based business.

How to find a good Supplier

To run an efficient business you have to keep in contact with several suppliers. Suppliers are people who buy from wholesalers (manufacturers). Wholesalers usually do not sell products in one item each basis. They have a minimum order quantity and you have to buy in bulk. If you are not a brick and mortar business you can end up having heaps of rotting items in your backyard that is why there are Suppliers. They buy in bulk from the wholesaler, and store them in their warehouses, while you sell their items. Again, how can you trust a Supplier?

There are lots of suppliers springing up from nowhere on e-bay. You have to be very careful in selecting them. Some are not really suppliers; they are middlemen functioning as suppliers. If you register with them, your mark up price will be twice the normal price and you hardly will be able to do a sale. Lot of customers do some research before buying, and if you are not up to that price mark, you are opted out. Considering the money you spend for advertising and listing items, it is not worth a bit. You will be standing where you were before.

Before you start dealing with suppliers, do a thorough search. Compare prices. If you can get assistance with your government small business programs, consult people who are experts. Contact the suppliers and get to know them. A true supplier will not force you. Others are bound to force you. Go to forums and check. That is another method of getting to know suppliers. Fact is no matter how you do your research you might get a chance of being caught with a false supplier.

There are some websites who offer you free directory of suppliers. They will tell you “Your background research has been already done for you. You will be provided with a Website with every tool necessary for your business. Marketing sources are provided. Why not try now!”
This cannot be, because it takes lot of time and effort to find a real supplier, so how can they provide you with hundreds of suppliers. These are all middlemen. They provide you suppliers and when you sell an item the price is much higher, because these middle men earn a huge amount from your sale while you are struggling to sell a product and the person who supplies you with a dropshipper directory is earning a huge profit from your sale.

You can do your own research, and start by your own. First get help from your government small business development corporation. Before choosing a supplier, contact them and get to know the amount of stock available and their inventory order point. Inventory order point means, that usually a wholesaler keeps track of their inventory. If the seller usually keeps 1000 items in their inventory, they will order another stock of 1000 items when they reach the stock limit of 500 items. It is wise not to use a supplier who has less than 100 items available because these people can be new starters who are not keeping good inventory.

When listing items in your website, always list about 1/4th or 1/8th of the recorded inventory, 1/8th is more safer because your are not the only fish, there are others too in this huge ocean what you call e-bay. Limiting your display stock is also important that if your wholesaler tells you about certain amount of stock but they might not have that much stock available with them, you will be in trouble. You have to be careful also when listing items. Your customers might be looking for a certain amount of items and if you do not have that much they will underestimate you.

This is why even they say that you do not have to keep inventory, you should keep records and payments up to date. And while solving customer conflicts your records will come in handy. As I have stated in my article on managing a good supply chain, every point of the chain should keep good records and efficient management. All work done for you are not going to help you if you do not keep your records.

See my article on managing quality supply chains.

Are you a good blogger?

Bloging is a very cheap way to market your business. Bloging can be more effective than e-mail. You can select several advertising methods to market your business. Bloging, I consider as an unconventional marketing method just like word of mouth and local advertisement boards, yet it can be a very useful revenue generator if you do it the right way.

Write a good article about your business or your marketing venture. But do not go directly to your topic. Make it a good informative article. Use key words and link them to your product. If you use the same key word again and again, the article will not sound a good informative one. Readers are not stupid to understand that you do not intend to give a real good article, but you simply want to market your product.

Think about your target audience and then plan your article. What this means is, unless you have some news that would upstage an Australian win in World Cup Soccer or the discovery of a fail safe slimming formula, you are going to fight for every printed word.

Even an excellent story may miss the boat if it’s not presented the right way, for example, if it’s too long, sounds like an extended advertisement, there’s no contact number or e-mail for follow up or the real news is buried in the second last paragraph.

Here are some tips to give your story the best possible chance of catching a busy reader’s eye.

1. Make sure you really have something to say. Readers are not interested in your everyday activities, or seeing you pat yourself on the back. You’ll be ignored even when you have a genuine story.
   
2. Target your story, read newspapers and articles and this will give you some idea of how to write a targeted article.
   
3. Have a headline that is both informative and eye catching.
   
4. Write your article in one-sentence paragraphs, with one thought or point to each paragraph.
   
5. Arrange the paragraphs in descending order of importance. The first few should give your busy readers an idea of whether it’s worth reading on.
   
6. Be careful how you use your company’s name. Keep it out of the first paragraph and don’t use it too often or your article will sound like advertorial. You need to convey that your story is of public interest, not just in your interest.
   
7. If you are not a good writer, higher a freelancer to do it for you.

Submit your blog to traffic sites to generate traffic to your story. My bloglog is a highly recommended site I like best. Registering in Technorati and other traffic sites will give you a good reader community. Always research each site and select the best site that interests you.
Try this formula and see the results, it’s worth a try.

Relevant Articles

It's a website, silly.

Are you a good manager?

If you are a business owner or manager with people working under you, how would you handle crisis. You have to know and understand your employees. A good manager always recognizes hard working employees. Remember to drop an encouraging word to them. You never know the positive effect it will have on your employee. Positive management practice is always worth than the negative management practices.

There is bound to be disagreement between employees. Some are really trouble makers. Some are happy with their job and bend in any direction suitable to them. There are lots of different people to handle. During some management training courses, they really teach managers to meditate because meditation helps to be positive minded, non judgmental, analytical and not to be angry (anger management).

If somebody is causing trouble in the workplace, just do not judge that person at that instant. Try to understand the root of the problem and then decide the best solution. Identifying problems at their very start is a real skillful management tactic. It is lot better to understand the problem and solve it at the beginning stage than before going too far.

A skillful manager never takes either praise or criticism to hart. Look at things without attaching your self to praise or criticism. Always observe your employees behavior and try to understand them. If somebody needs a word of praise, just give it to him. A good manager is always able to give a positive feedback of an employee who is really good at work even if the person is able to do the work better than you. If you go to compare your ability with another person’s ability, you cannot become a successful manager, because you never will give a chance to a person who has more skill than you. Some people are like that even if they are the owners of the business. The result is them loosing a valuable employee.

In times of a problem, or if you think you need to give advice to an employee, never use aggressive methods. First try to find out his problem, advice the employee in a very nice manner while praising him for some work he has done. Always look at your employees in a positive manner without attaching yourself to any of them. Attaching means both positive and negative attachments. This way you will be able to look at your employees as an outsider. An outsider is bound to see things clearly.

Encourage refreshing activities like having a special day for enjoying. Send your employees to refresher courses. Your employees will like you more. And they are bound to work harder. Every kind word you speak will have a positive impact on employees and will positively affect the company and also every negative or bad word spoken will have a negative effect on the company.

Want to advertise your business? Free classifieds

E-Mail Marketing goes down.

E-Mail prices have dropped down in a significant way recently. Most companies had to decrease their prices due to rapid increase of e-mail marketing services and the very low response they got from the targeted groups.

Marketers are increasingly willing to try non traditional advertising methods such as local news papers, announcement boards and word of mouth. Surveys have proved that consumers regularly gave advice on products, and word of mouth has proven to be real cheep. If your product is quality and you offer something extra with it, word of mouth will work for you.

Majority of customers who bought online preferred to check the seller’s review while very few sellers made reviews available to customers. Lot of sellers did not offer customer reviews in fear of the harm that could cause by a negative review. Despite the negative reviews that some products received, most consumers were inclined to purchase many of these items because the item suited very specific needs or because the item received positive feed back from other experts.

Most consumers preferred to see both positive and negative reviews. Forecasts say that more that 80% of the reviews were positive and the few negative reviews were generally helpful for the consumers. This indicates that consumers appreciated hearing both pros and cons while shopping. If you are doing good business you do not need to be afraid of negative reviews. Customer reviews might help you improve your way of business and also your customers will keep coming back to you.

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Save your business in troubled waters

Today’s business environment is much more competitive than past business environments, no will it be easier in future either, with lot of new business coming in to operation. More competition, shrinking profit margins, increases in fixed and operating costs are just a few of the issues people face every day. To survive in the troubled waters, you have to be up to date and well organized.

Successful business people know why they are in business. They have one or two areas of specialty and they stick to what they are good at. They do not try to become everything to everybody. Research has proved that specialists tent to do better than generalists. Concentrate only on one or two specific areas of business. First ask these questions from yourself. Have I created a niche market? Am I the best in my trading area? Do I stick to what I am doing? Or do I stray away on other directions when revenue is small?

Increasing monthly bills and slow going months will tempt you to go in new directions where you do not have experience, but you might not be able to understand that your revenue is spreading thin and can cause you to loose focus in the specific area you are good at. The result will be the quality of work not being good and customer dissatisfaction. You need your customer loyalty to keep up the business going during hard times. If you stray away you will keep picking up more and more work than focusing on your customer needs.

Customer loyalty is very important in today’s competitive environment. Some people think that customers are concerned of only getting the lowest price. The most likely thing to happen if you use this method is you might loose your profit margins. Price is not the factor that is important always. Maintaining good relations with your customers is the most important thing to do.

Keep an up to date data base of your clients. Keep regular contacts with them. Know your customer’s names. Give them reason to continue business with you. Get to know what your customers want and expect. These are the basics of keeping good customer relations.

Developed customer loyalty results in high profit margins and reduced advertising costs. Thinking about this once in a while will not do. This should be maintained regularly every day and every sale or transaction you do. To provide high quality service, get personally involved. Put yourself in the customer’s position and think what great customer service will mean to you. Plan your good customer service.

You have to improve your sales skills constantly. Refer books and articles. Train your employees how to deal with customers. Never use aggressive and hard selling tactics. If you use these methods, no one will want to be bombarded with spasms and forcing. Develop your skills on understanding your customer. This does not need psychology training classes. You can learn it yourself. Some people have great understanding of customer needs, they make quick sales. This comes with constantly dealing with customers, having a passion for sales and also being able to focus on other people.

Running a small business is not easy. With time, the business grows, and more responsibilities come your way. You have to plan and prepare for this. Give people reason to buy, such as quality products and services and also maintaining friendly relations with your customers. Employ and train right people. Get involved in your community. Word of mouth is a very cheep way of marketing your product or service locally, and also internationally.

These facts will help you remain competitive now and in future. Straying away is not the solution. Plan a good investment before starting your business and insure your business. This will take a huge burden off your shoulders. Even if there are slow times, you can focus on one area and think on how to improve it than searching other directions.

Alternative Online Trading Methods-CCNow

Some merchants do not wish to undergo the trouble of marketing and promotions. If you are one of them, there are services suitable for you. These services will retail the products for you while managing your account transactions.

If you wish to proceed in this direction, you have to do some research on these systems and choose a one that suits your needs. I will take CCNow as an example to give you a rough idea how it works. Remember you have to select a method most suitable and trustable for you. Do some research before selecting any method.

These companies will give you an HTML code to paste in your website. The HTML code provides a connection for online shoppers to select products to purchase, and add them to a virtual shopping cart provided by that company. Online shopper enters billing and shipping information to complete the sale. The retailer company CCNow, acts as your retailer by selling the merchandise to the consumer while simultaneously buying the merchandise from you. Their retail margin includes shopping cart system administration, online payment processing, Reporting, merchandising tools, customer service functions, and fraud and risk management. Every thing is already done for you.

After the shopper’s order has been processed, CCNow sends you a pending order notification email. Your business ships the item directly to the online shopper. You should mark the order as shipped in your CCNow account to complete the process.

Usually, CCNow sends one email message to the shopper after an order has been placed. Another email will be sent to the shopper once you mark the order as shipped. To maintain good communication with the online shopper, you can send an email to the shopper with the additional shipping details and a reminder that the charges will be billed by CCNow. For product Inventory tracking, CCNow will provide a basic inventory tracking system by product ID.

Your shoppers can use a variety of credit cards and PayPal with Companies like CCNow.
They charge you a rate for Retail margin, One-time new account set up fee, monthly fee and a Payment fee (per payment). These fees can vary.

CCNow will charge you a retail margin of 4.99% of gross sales plus $0.50per transaction and one time account set up fee $9.95. Monthly fee of $9.95 will be charged from you only if your gross sales are less than $100.00, otherwise this fee will not be charged. Payment fee will be charged for international Wire transfer or mailed check. This is usually $15.00for a wire transfer and $5.00 for a check.

One thing you must remember is each of these companies has their rules and regulations. With CCNow, you cannot place orders on behalf of customers, nor allow anyone to place orders on a customer’s behalf. Customers must place orders themselves through the CCNow Site. Beyond this there are other terms and conditions you must check before registering with any company.