Information Country

Are traffic tips important?…

Just think: someone told you that if you aren’t on Internet, you
don’t exist. So you started reading about how to create a web
page or you hired an expensive designer and finally, you are the
owner of Internet’s most awesome web page about your product.

That’s fine! But…

Who’s going to find your web page among other 3.000 million web
pages?

It doesn’t matter if you have a home made web page or a
professional expensive made web page. People won’t find you
unless you start attracting traffic to your web page.

Suppose for a moment that you have succeeded and you start
receiving 1000 hits per week in your web page, is that good
enough?

Well it depends… If you where receiving zero, 1000 looks
pretty good to start, but the key question is. Do you just
receive 1000 hits of ANY kind of people or 1000 TARGETED hits.

By Targeted Hits I mean people who’s looking for what you are
offering. And believe me the key to an easy home business is to
get TARGETED visitors.

There are many different ways to attract targeted visitor to
your web page:

Search Engines Directories Links from other web sites Off-line
media Word of mouth e-mail signatures Usenet Newsgroups
Unsolicited e-mail Banners Opt-in mailing lists Ezines Why did I
use different colors, just to point the difference between the:
Good Never use Not so good

Lets have a brief description of each one of them…

SEARCH ENGINES & DIRECTORIES

As you probably know 80% of the sales usually come from 20% of
the promoting effort, and with Search Engines this numbers
usually are 90% - 10 %.

So, to have a good traffic wave, you will use a lot of different
means of promotion, but 90 % of it will come from Search Engines
and Directories; so they are the back bone of the Internet
marketing, and here is where you have to apply your biggest
effort to do the things in the right way.

And the best part of it is that they are a free!

LINKS FROM OTHER WEB SITES

You can get links to your web page from two different sources:

*Search Engines: when your potential visitor asks for
information about one of your main keywords, the Search Engine
will show your web address link in their results. This will
result in a visitor to your web site IF you are listed in the
first 20 web addresses shown, people very rarely go after the
first 20 results

*Other sites: every good marketer is interested in providing
good content to their customers, because if they like the
content of their web pages, they’ll keep on returning for more
information. So other sites might point to your web page if they
consider that’s a good information to give to their customers

OFF-LINE MEDIA

There are many off line ways to generate traffic to your site:
*Printed media *TV *Direct mail *Telemarketing scripts
*Stationary *Flyers *Catalogs *Billboards *Blimps *News releases
to targeted media *Business cards. *Etc.

I told you above that the first and best way to attract targeted
visitors to your web page is through Search Engines and
Directories, well… the second best way to attract visitors to
your web site is to write an article for a magazine or newspaper
that reaches your targeted market.

And why is this so important? Because if an important magazine
or newspaper shows an article written by YOU, there is an
implied endorsement from them. Their customers believe in them,
and if they show YOUR article the customers feel they should
believe in YOU.

WORD OF MOUTH

Word of mouth will cost you nothing and that makes it a very
cost-effective way of attracting targeted customers. What could
be better than a real person’s testimony? But it isn’t easy to
get.

Why is people going to talk about you?

They will only talk about you and refer you if your offer them
extremely good content, and if you treat them as if they where
your only customer!

E-MAIL SIGNATURES

Very easy to create and free too!

This is a very powerful and legal way to attract targeted
customers because every time you write an e-mail to one of your
customers they see it.

And it becomes a strong way of promotion if you write to
newsgroups, mailing lists, or any other place where many people
will see it.

E-mail signatures are a combination of a business card and PS it
should be located at the end of all your e-mail, and are the
second most important part of any sales letter.

USENET NEWSGROUPS

We must distinguish between two kind of Newsgroups, Forums and
Mailing lists

*Loosely regulated groups: Where anyone can write about
anything. Yes you will be able to put your add here, but as
anyone can, they are flooded and scarcely anyone pays much
attention to the

*Serious groups: That will have strict self-enforced rules.
Write any commercial stuff to them and you’ll be flamed. Here
you have to build a relationship with the group, honestly
participate in their discussions and they won’t care if your
include your e-mail signature, but don’t try to fool them. They
will insult you or you’ll get banned or both.

As a matter of fact, unless your product or service and the
Newsgroups topic have a perfect fit, it’s better not to use
them. You will have to read everyone’s postings everyday, and
contribute regularly to get a small response and a lot of spam.

UNSOLICITED E-MAIL

If you send un-targeted e-mail to anyone, and don’t provide your
name, reply e-mail address and a way to be removed, that’s named
spam

My advice is no to use it, not only for moral issues, but
because it doesn’t work, you will end loosing your ISP, your web
sites and hours of hard work.

A different thing is to write to targeted lists of people that
have specifically accepted to receive your e-mail. (Although
most of them accept your e-mail because they want to receive
some free gift offered to tempt them, and so are a low motivated
un-targeted market)

BANNERS

Lets be direct: how many times do YOU click over a banner?

A banner to be of any use has to be: *Very well designed to
produce high impact *It has to be animated to catch attention
*It has to load quickly *It should be at the top or the bottom
of the page to get best results *It better be the only one on
the site *They are too expensive for most of the companies

That you read about a banner exchange program that’s free. Don’t
dream about it. It’s never free, it will cost you A LOT of
money, because although someone MIGHT click over your banner
that’s shown in other site, when a targeted prospect that’s
browsing YOUR site, clicks over the exchange banner, you can say
good bye to your prospect. And that’s a lot of money!

OPT-IN MAILING LISTS

This is a good selling method! Because only targeted people will
opt-in to your mailing list, BUT although opt-ins allow you to
create a relationship with a targeted prospect that when they
start trusting you, in many cases will by from you, this is a
long term relationship, and here we are talking of TRAFFIC
developers.

This is NOT a good way to develop traffic, is a good way to
develop sales in the long term

EZINES

Same as with opt-ins, this is a long term sales source, not a
traffic developer.

If you are looking for a good traffic building tips ebook, you
can find it here: http://www.easy-home-business.com/how-to-
sell.html

Written by Dr. Roberto A. Bonomi

If you’re looking for a successful salesperson to hire, a salesperson who not only can sell but will sell, look for a salesperson with PRIDE.

PRIDE is an acronym for 5 characteristics that will help ensure that the salesperson you hire will get the job done for you and make the revenue results you desire a reality.
PRIDE stands for:

• Proven

• Respectful

• Innovative

• Decisive

• Enthusiastic

Proven refers to the candidate’s track record. Have they delivered results? More importantly, who else says so besides them? As you know, resumes can be fact, or they can be fiction. How can you tell the difference?

A person who has been successful producing results should be able to provide you with third party proof. Have the candidate bring in their sales awards. Have them show you the stack-ranked sales reports showing their name at or near the top of the field.

More importantly, what do their customers have to say about them? Can the candidate produce testimonial letters from their customers, indicating they were satisfied with the buying experience? Candidates should be able to furnish written recommendations proving that they were able to deliver tangible results.

Salespeople should approach being Respectful from two positions. First, they need to be respectful of others. Careful listeners, these salespeople would never be regarded as pushy because they take the time to hear their prospects out. They keep their egos in check, remembering that everyone can make a valuable contribution in their own way and that other team members deserve respect, too.

Second, your salespeople need to respect themselves. Expect them to have a quiet confidence in their own abilities, and a strong desire to use their time, talents, and skills to produce optimal results. They’ll respect their health, physical needs, and family commitments, and as a result be refreshed, well-balanced, and ready for work each day.

Self-respect allows salespeople to be assertive, ensuring that they won’t allow themselves to be used as a doormat by prospects who want to waste their time or abuse a relationship.

An Innovative salesperson is a problem-solver. They’re able to quickly assess a prospect’s situation, and then come up with an approach to help the prospect accomplish their objectives. Reactive salespeople need not apply. Proactive salespeople spontaneously look for ways to do the job better, to improve on past successes, to show better results even faster than before.

Innovative salespeople are easy to manage, because they don’t require instructions. They’re pretty much point and shoot; give them an objective to aim for, and they can creatively approach obstacles and move past them.

Because they are innovative, they tend to look at the world through fresh eyes, and hence have a good sense of humor. A willingness to be playful and funny is a good clue that you’re talking with an innovator. Good news! Your buyers would prefer to do business with someone who can make them chuckle and lighten up their day.

A Decisive salesperson can make up their mind. They have effective analytical skills that allow them to rapidly size up a situation and decide how to best approach it. Decisiveness is truly important for a salesperson, for how can they expect the buyer to make a decision when they can’t make one themselves?

Decisiveness is often related to owning a clear set of key moral values. It’s easy for salespeople to consistently do the right thing when it’s clear to them what the right thing is. You want decisive salespeople who know when to walk away from a bad deal, and can separate good prospects from the time-wasters.

Enthusiastic salespeople have become a cliché for all the wrong reasons. Enthusiasm must be more than an induced rush spawned by a rah-rah motivational pep talk. If you want enthusiasm that lasts, you need to find salespeople who are eager to help your customers.

You want salespeople who are excited about what they do and how they do it, so their curiosity is stimulated and they are inspired to continually learn on their own. Enthusiasm comes from believing that you can make a difference, that you can improve someone’s lot when they do business with you.

Enthusiastic salespeople are motivated when they understand the strategy that will help them succeed, when they have access to all the tools they need to allow them to do their job and serve the customer, and when tactical training is available to allow them to skillfully serve the customer as well as the company. Enthusiastic salespeople have every right to believe they can win. And they do.

PRIDE is about feeling good about your job. It’s about believing in yourself and your ability to deliver. It’s about enjoying yourself, helping the customer, and making the most of your God-given talents and abilities. It’s about recognizing individual contributions and abilities while respecting the value of the team. When you hire salespeople with PRIDE, you, your salespeople, and your customers all win.

© 2002 Paul Johnson. All rights reserved.

Note: This article is available for reprint at no charge. We only ask that you include our copyright notice in your reprint, along with the About the Author (byline) information we provide at the end of the article.

Paul Johnson of Panache and Systems LLC consults and speaks on business strategy for systematically boosting sales performance using Shortcuts to Yes. Check out more salesforce development tips at http://panache-yes.com/tips.html. Call Paul direct in Atlanta, Georgia, USA at (770) 271-7719.

If you don’t have a credit policy, everyone will want to buy from you. This can result in unpaid and past due invoices on your books.

A new book explains how you can avoid and prevent this from happening to you and your business. “Become the Squeaky Wheel”, is a guide to create, set up or update your credit policy.

“There wasn’t an easy to follow guide you could use to create, maintain or update your existing credit policy while maintaining customer relations, so I created one.” Says Michelle Dunn, the author of the new book “Become the Squeaky Wheel”. “It’s proven very useful to business owners or entrepreneurs starting a business who have never dealt with credit issues before but that have or might have slow or non-paying customers.”

According to Dunn, creditors and business owners can tell if you are professional or on top of your game just by your policies. If you extend credit without getting a credit application filled out, customers know you aren’t serious and this could lead to payment issues down the road.

If you have a credit policy and have every new customer fill out a credit application, some will run away as fast as they can, and others will happily fill them out. One goal accomplished. That is where “Become the Squeaky Wheel” comes in; you can copy the policy examples in Dunn’s book or create your own. You can use parts or all of the suggestions in this book to create steady cash flow by streamlining your accounts receivable and credit departments.

Michelle Dunn has over 17 years experience in credit and debt collection. She is the founder of Never Dunn Publishing, LLC, is a writer, consultant and the Editorial Advisor for Eli Financial Debt Collection Compliance Alert Newsletter. Michelle started M.A.D. Collection Agency and ran is successfully for 7 years. She owns and runs Credit & Collections.com a free online community for credit and business professionals.

She has written 5 books in her Collecting Money Series. For more information on Michelle’s services or to order any of her books please email her at michelle@michelledunn.com or visit http://www.michelledunn.com & http://www.credit-and-collections.com