1 Phone control:

When you work from home it is easy to fall into the trap of talking on the phone for much longer than needed. After all there is no-one watching over your shoulder and you think you have time on your side. Really this is poor time management. The answer – put a “value” on your own time. Develop a sense of urgency in your voice and keep an eye on the time so you are talking about “the business” but not chatting away “the time of day”. You will be more effective and come across as someone who respects their own time and their listeners.

2 Sound of Voice

Your tone of your voice is important. I have a natural high pitched voice which doesn’t portray the right image on the phone, so I used a tape deck to get my voice tone sound right to project the right impression. Keep practising till it sounds effective then ask someone you respect to check your voice level and tone. Imagine as you listen that you are the other person on the end of phone. Ask yourself “How do I sound?”

3 Speed of Voice

In New Zealand we tend to talk too fast and mumble, this may be fine with each-other face to face but if you are trying to listen to something important on the phone it can get exhausting and frustrating. Remember the people you are speaking to may have English as a second language or a hearing disability, so try to talk slowly and clearly to be understood.

4 Practise the pronunciation of names

If you want to start of with the right impression make sure you can pronounce the person’s name properly. This was one of my downfalls so I try if possible to ring a friend first who is good with names to get the pronunciation right.

5 Listen

Yes folks, communication is a 2 way thing! Listen to what the other person says then pause before answering, to give yourself time to consider just what did they really say.

6 Be Prepared

To come across as someone who is in charge work out what you are going to say before calling, first off a script. Yes I know it sounds like a preschool idea but believe me it really works! In insurance we called it “The 5 Ps” = prior preparation prevents poor performance.

Get these right and you not only feel confident before you pick up the phone you will sound confident.

Wendy Heyworth lives in Tauranga New Zealand
Wendy has had a successful business career and is now working in e-commerce. She is aware of the difficulties of working and running a business over the Internet.
She is now advising others how to be successful the first time in their new business.
Wendy has her website http://www.wendyheyworth.com

At the grocery store I frequent, the check-out personnel are apparently instructed to call customers by name when they read them on the credit or debit card receipts. Nice intention, bad execution. Maybe once out of 100 trips the person has gotten close to saying mine correctly. It’s actually quite comical how they struggle, then butcher it.

And it still floors me, the ignorance of many people when hearing a difficult or unusual name on phone calls. In talking to sales or service people on calls where I was the customer, after spelling my name, I’ve heard such idiotic comments as,

“Oh, that’s a weird one.”

“That’s a strange name.”

And some people just burst out laughing.

What do these dolts think? That I’m going to say, “Yeah, I know.”

I personally don’t stay up nights fretting over this. Mine IS an unusual name. (It’s pronounced Sob’-check.) I’m used to it. Hey, to top it off, my first name is Art. Think of how many times I heard “Art Fart” while growing up, or, “I bet Art is your favorite Sub-JECT (yuck yuck).”

People can be such morons.

But the name issue is a very tender area for some. And it says a lot about the person making the comment. I don’t mind if, after saying or spelling my name, a fellow Pole makes a commiserating comment like,

“I’ve got you beat. My name is Wojtkewkowski.”

Otherwise, it’s really out of place to make inappropriate comments.

If someone with an unusual name takes the lead, and pokes fun at it himself after spelling it, it’s certainly OK to react in some way. I make a point to spell my name, SO–BC-ZAK. Then I say, “I used to start out with ‘SOB–’ but too many people commented on how descriptive that was.”

That breaks the ice and elicits some laughter and small talk. The safe rule: absent of their self-deprecating comment, say…nothing.

I took a call from a guy, and he very slowly recited his name: “Buddy Bunne.” And he pronounced it BUN-EE. Like a little rabbit (but he didn’t say that). I admit, I bit my lip and paused–you could almost feel him bracing for the anticipated wiseguy response. “And your address, Buddy?”, I continued, not commenting on the name.

Pssst, here’s a secret. Those of us with unusual names already KNOW our name is different. Some of us good natured folks just blow off comments with humor. But others view their name as sensitively as they would if they had a third ear protruding from their head. You wouldn’t comment on that, so why take a chance of offending someone?

Here are a few tips for you:

1. Here’s a website where you can enter names and hear an audio with the pronunciation: http://www.pronouncenames.com/. You can also add pronunciations that you know to be correct, and perhaps variations of others.

2. Best yet, before reaching the prospect, ask someone at the prospect’s company how to pronounce the name. (And please, do NOT say, “What is the correct pronunciation of Bill’s name?” Like you are looking for the incorrect way to say it?)

3. Also ask others how the prospect prefers to be addressed. Robert, Bob, Mr. Smith, etc.

4. Do not rename them. Use their name the way it is written, and the way they say it when they greet you. For example, one of my customers, David, said that people will often call him Dave even after he answers the phone with “This is David.”

Art Sobczak helps sales pros use the phone to prospect, service and sell more effectively, while eliminating morale-killing “rejection. To get FREE weekly emailed TelE-Sales Tips visit: http://www.BusinessByPhone.com

Advanced Article Marketing – What Does it Involve?

Advanced article marketing should include the following 3 vital steps  for every article marketer:

1. Writing Intriguing Articles.

This habit is very important for more profits when it comes to using article marketing for promotion of your websites. Your article should not be only informational, but also intriguing and interesting for every reader. The more useful and practical your articles, the higher conversion rate of your resource box.

2. Submitting Articles Online On A Daily Basis.

This is the second step of advanced article marketing. I’ve noticed that many article marketers don’t submit their articles to top article directories on a regular basis. Therefore first develop a habit of publishing online 5-10 articles per day. It is especially important for natural indexing on Google and getting quality backlinks on a daily basis.

3.     Write A Promising Resource Box.

As an experienced article marketer, I think the soul of your article is the following parts:

-       Title

-       Attractive Summary

-       Resource Box

Remember your main aim is to make readers click on the links in your resource box at the bottom of your article. So try to make deep impression on your reader with resource box. The more clicks you get, the more traffic and the more profit you attain.

Now start applying these good article marketing tips just today!

Top 3 Article Marketing Tips to Consider While Creating Your Article Marketing Plan:Â

1. Write Articles On A Regular Basis, Better At Least 5 Days A Week.

So for this purpose, you should determine how many articles you are going to write every day or every week. You should note it in your plan in advance.

2. Proper Keyword Research for Full Week.

You should have a full list of keywords for a week not to lose your time for searching for new key-terms every day. So this is the second part of your article marketing plan. I would say this part plays a very important role in your article marketing success. I myself create a list of keywords even for 2 or more weeks in advance. In this way, I’m able to work more productively.Â

3. Create Titles In Advance.

Write down article titles for each day in advance in order to save time.  This way you will be more organized and productive.Â

Conclusion:

These 3 Article Marketing Tips should be certainly applied while creating your article marketing plan. Make your weekly program and follow it every day. Soon you will see daily affiliate product sales.Â

So, how do you go about choosing the right affiliate marketing program? Well, there are a number of considerations when looking at different programs.

Besides the product itself and the company you’ll be representing (make sure you do your homework here), one of the primary considerations will be the type of performance base your program rewards you by.

Programs will pay per click for ads that you place for products and or services; pay per lead, in which cast a prospect simply fills out a short information form; and still others pay a percentage per sale.

It will be up to you to look at how your efforts will be rewarded and to also check into how other affiliates rate each program. Some programs require that you have a website in place with a minimum amount of daily web traffic to promote their product and others not so much.

When making your decisions, keep in mind that it’s easier to get a click than it is to get someone to fill out a form; which is in turn easier than helping someone make a purchase. Depending on your audience and how well a program can be expected to perform, make your selections accordingly.

Another very important consideration is the level of support and training you receive from the program you select. From the perspective of using these programs to increase you knowledge of online marketing, I’d rate this point at the top of my list for choosing a program to join.

Finding a program that offers you the tools and support to learn and do well should be a number one priority in your selection process.

I’d say that’s pretty powerful stuff eh…?

What many people seem to have trouble grasping is the fact that success it self, be it with business, sports or even academics, has the very same formula. Basically, if you know what it takes to be successful at one thing, you can often apply the very same approach in a different context and duplicate that same kind of success for yourself over and over again.

Network Marketing Tips #1:

This first tip for success is also one of the most difficult to master. Time management may sound like a simple thing, but that’s far from the truth of things.

Ask yourself,” how do I spend my average day?” How many hours do you spend working, sleeping, eating, traveling between places, etc.? There are only so many hours in a day. If you work 8 hours, and get 8 hours of sleep, you only have 8 more left to do everything else.

The point I hope to make here is that your time is extremely valuable. The average American watches 4 or more hours of television a day. That 4 hours a day, equals a 28 hours a week that could be spent building your success.

Network Marketing Tips #2:

This second tip is nearly as important as the first. Being able to properly budget your finances is a must for any successful business owner. Being aware of how you spend your valuable resources, like your time and your money, will allow you to decide how to use them to your best advantage.

Also when planning to advertise and promote your business or service, preparing a set budget will help motivate you to promote your business as wisely and effectively as possible.

Network Marketing Tips #3:

This third tip is one that keeps on giving. Be sure to a lot both time and finances toward continuing education with your chosen industry niche. Think of this as an investment that will undoubtedly give you a serious return provided you stick to it.

There are possibly dozens of helpful hints to be lain at your feet in hopes that the right combination will guarantee success for you and your business. However, if you can properly manage your time and you finances as well as maintain the focus to continually increase your business knowledge you will all but have such a guarantee already in hand.

Successfully mastering just these three network marketing tips will require focus, discipline, and dedication. These are characteristics a great majority of successful individuals share. Work hard to develop them within yourself and success is sure to follow.

Don’t recycle traditional direct mail copy. Even if it was successful.

Understand that the Internet is a completely new medium. The copy that pulled high response rates in the world of direct postal marketing doesn’t get read on the Net. Especially not as email.

Here are the rules to effective email copywriting:

The subject is the headline: Write a succinct subject ‘headline’ – 3 to 5 words. Your subject determines whether your email gets read – or not. Tricky headlines (not related to your message) don’t work. Internet users are smart and they know exactly what they want. They resent being tricked. It’s a tough way to start a relationship.

Make it personal: What exactly is spam? It’s any email message that the recipient deems uninteresting or irrelevant — regardless of who sent it.

People on the Internet want personal notes. Write for an audience of one. Use common conversation, and avoid formal speech. Think of email as a way to service clients, enhance relationships, or tease them into interacting with you.

Remember you don’t have to be making a sale every time you talk to them. Positioning yourself as an expert can keep you at the top of mind for future purchases or better yet, for referrals.

Do feel free to make your e-mail fun and irreverent, if this is appropriate for the customer and the moment.

Don’t be overly casual and risk being disrespectful to your audience with the wrong tone.

Give them an incentive to act: By containing a hook, the e-mail makes it easy for a customer to understand the point of the email. The customer is more likely to respond if the choice is clear: act or don’t act to get the specified benefit. Customers are less likely to act, understand, or otherwise have a good experience, if they have to spend time figuring out the point of the email.

Do refine the hook to express the idea or message clearly and simply.

Don’t rely on jargon or indirect wording to express the hook.

Include a call to action: Tell people what you want them to do. Don’t leave them wondering what to do next. Point them to your ‘most desired action’. Otherwise they may just surf around and forget what they’re trying to accomplish. Then they bail.

If you are providing information, be sure to let them know they can email or call you if they want further information. Leave the conversation open ended and easy to reply to.

Get to the point: Keep it short and simple. Don’t drone on and on for several paragraphs … or pages. People on the Internet want information quickly and clearly. Paragraphs should be no more than 4 – 6 lines. Keep total length under 300 words.

Just as the hook provides focus for the email, so should the rest of the email refer to the hook for focus. For example, an email telling customers that there is a sale on a particular product line on an e-commerce site should do just that — tell customers about the sale.

This same email should not be considered an opportunity to inform customers of every promotion, feature, or tidbit of corporate news. Customers tend to scan emails, and if several propositions are presented, even the hook will go unnoticed.

Do stick to a single subject in the email.

Don’t try to incorporate as many elements as possible.

Do use dashes or bullets to express lists of ideas or section headings.

Don’t require users to read long continuous blocks of text.State the most important things first: Customers will start reading an email from the beginning and read the introduction to see if it’s worth spending more of their time. Readers tend to pay less and less attention to what is written as they scan more quickly through the rest of the email.

To make sure customers read the most relevant information, put the most important information (the hook) at the top, followed by the most important supporting information. Each successive paragraph will receive less and less of the reader’s attention and should contain less and less important information. As soon as the hook is well enough supported, end the email.

Do provide the customer the most important information at the beginning of the email.

Don’t “save up” the key information for the middle or end of the email.

An email must have a good reason for being sent; otherwise it’s better to not send it. The hook of an email is the single thought or message conveyed by that email and should be stated in the first sentence or two.

Use your website: Drive people to your website. Don’t try to close the sale in the email. You want people to have (and ask) more questions. Questions require interaction, and interaction promotes relationships.

Build relationships: Few (if any) customers worth having are interested in a ‘one night stand’. Have a long-term relationship objective in mind. Listen to your customers. Treat them like you’d like to be treated (so long as you’re not a masochist…).

Follow through: Do what you say. Put your hands and feet where your mouth is. Deliver on your offer, because it’s an ever-increasingly small world.

Always offer an option to unsubscribe: Email should only be sent when customers have requested information or if there is something noteworthy to tell them. Even with this level of permission there will still be people who will want to unsubscribe from the email list or newsletter.

Always offer the option to unsubscribe. As an emerging convention, customers can now typically expect to see unsubscribe instruction as the last item at the bottom of the email, following the signature and P.S.

Spell Check: You are positioning yourself as an expert – do not be tempted to send out the email quick. Run spell check! Have someone else read it to see if your message is grammatically correct before you hit the send button!

~ Roxane Leigh offers professional and effective options for online marketing ~

www.theriverofcash.com
604-676-7188

Roxane Leigh is a Marketing VP and Home Business Owner who shares the secrets to making money online.

As a Marketing and Advertising Professional who has been working in Internet related businesses for 12 years, she considers helping people achieve their goals both personal and professional the best part of her job. Her goal is to continue providing people with the knowledge and tools to enhance their businesses and lives, and to help them tap into The River of Cash!

www.TheRiverOfCash.com or 604-676-7188

The first thing to do is to make sure that you understand all of the duties of the job that you will be hiring for. This is what any good interviewee does, so for that reason, if for no other, any good interviewer should do the same. This way, you’ll be able to ask the right questions when it comes to evaluating whether applicants will be able to perform the responsibilities of the position. Looking good on paper is one thing, but having the skills and experience to actually perform a job well is another.

Remember, the best salespeople usually have no problem finding work, so as an interviewer, it is also your job to present your company in a positive light and to form the right impression in the mind of the interviewee. Remember, you want to convince the applicant to take the job if it is offered to them. You are serving as the first impression that prospective applicants will have of your company.

It goes without saying that one of the most important attributes of any great sales person is their people skills. Be sure to ask the applicant to describe their leadership abilities and experience, and how they have dealt with difficult situations involving clients, prospective clients, and co-workers. Of course, people tend to showcase their best people skills when they are being interviewed, which is why it is a good idea to go beyond your gut reaction and focus on the applicant’s skill set and responses to the questions that you ask them.

Follow these tips and you will be well on your way towards more effective sales force management and towards finding the right sales person for the job. Remember, the more you interview, the more experience you will gain and the better an interviewer you will become. Treat every interview as an opportunity to hone and perfect your skills as an interviewer and you will find that finding qualified applicants will become a much easier process.

Visit our site for more information about sales force management and sale management software solutions.

1. Enhance the reach of your business blog
The more popular your company’s blog becomes, the higher its standing will be in search engine results, and thus the more exposure your brand name will get to potential customers. Twitter provides a great way of increasing your blog’s reach. Use twitter feed to give your followers immediate access to your main blog page.

2. Engage your audience in conversation
Engaging members of your target audience in conversation is one the key pillars of a good marketing campaign. It’s not enough just to shout your slogan at them. You have to see what they have to say so that you can deliver your message in more effective and unique ways. To see what other people are saying and to respond to their tweets, use TweetGrid and TweetDeck. Look for relevant topics and add your two cents to the conversation.

3. Valuable, concise tweets
The 140-character limit that’s at the center of Twitter’s success forces you to really think carefully about your tweets. The trick to gaining a good following is to put out immediately valuable messages that are concise and compelling. This is what will get you new followers and retweets.

4. Keep up on your market’s trends
One of the key elements of good marketing is to know what’s going on in your industry. Twitter Search and Monitter makes it easy to look up important industry topics and see what the market is currently leaning towards.

5. Build interest groups
By creating compelling interests groups you can initiate discussion about specific industry topics that are relevant to your marketing campaign. Building interest groups on Twitter is easy and is a great way to generate followers and buzz.

For more internet marketing information and SEM services please visit, http://www.bestrank.com, a Portland SEO agency

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http://www.bestrank.com/services/local-seo/portland-seo

Ryan Frank is a 23 year writer and blogger living in San Diego, CA.

Whether you are holding a routine meeting or a special meeting to discuss an important issue, it is important to take the time to prepare an agenda. Merely inviting people to talk about an issue with no direction or focus is a recipe for disaster. Even for the shortest meeting, an agenda will help the participants to focus and be more productive. An agenda will also let participants know what to expect, what will be covered in the meeting and what won’t be.

Keep your meetings as short as possible. Most people can’t devote their full attention to a meeting lasting longer than thirty minutes. If you need to go longer, include a break or two and consider breaking up the large meeting into two separate meetings. Your meeting participants will appreciate the break, and having breaks or splitting the meeting into two meetings will give your sales team time to organize their thoughts and become more effective contributors.

You should also think before automatically inviting all of your sales staff to each and every meeting. If not everyone has something to contribute, leave them out of the meeting and send them an email with notes on the meeting afterwards. Sales people have busy schedules, and they will probably appreciate being left out of a meeting that doesn’t really involve them in the first place.

An agenda will help bring focus to the meeting, but even the most well-planned agenda can fall by the wayside if you allow your sales people to focus on tangents and non-meeting related issues. Of course, stopping all conversation the minute that it starts will only create resentment, but it is perfectly okay to take control of the meeting, offer your opinion on the topic, and then politely suggest that the meeting should move forward.

Sales meetings are a great way to discuss issues, put forth new ideas, and keep your sales team running smoothly. Make sure that your sales meetings stay productive and on task and you will be well on your way to more effective sales force management.

For more tips, news, and information about sales management and sales management software visit our site.