by: Peter Lawless

The secret of selling is the art of value visualization. A natural sales person will lead the buyer through a series of structured questions, whereby the buyer will actually “see” what the product will enable them to do. The Sales person then will encourage the prospect to put their own value on that capability.

In the early days of selling, sales people were taught to discuss their product’s features and emphasize those features that distinguished them from the competition. As the art of selling matured, sales people were then taught to emphasize the benefits of their products — in other words what their products did for their customers.

“Help your customers realize the Value that they will Gain from buying your product”

Today’s the buzz words are all about solution selling and consultative selling. Sales people are asked to look from the buyer’s perspective and match their needs accordingly. This is a huge step from the early days of feature pushing, but I firmly believe they need to go one step further.

The good news about this, for business owners who do not have formal sales training, is that this magic step is actually common sense. The secret to generating a prospect who will willingly become a buyer is to get them to define, in their own terminology, the value of having your product.

OK, so how do we do that? We go back to first principles, the reason why you started your company. You probably saw a gap in the market, felt you could create a product or service to plug that gap, did some market research, found there was a need – and hey presto, you created a company to make, market and sell that product.

So what was that need? What did people really want? If they got your product what did that enable them to do? Could they easily put a value on it?

If the answer is yes to the last question, you need to ensure that your product’s cost is less than the value they put on it. Why? Because then buying it for them is good value.

So the real secret to sales success is to help your customers realize the Value that they will Gain from buying your product.

And just when you thought that was enough – there’s more! The final two things you need to fix in your customer’s mind are;

When they need to have it

What the downside of not having it is

Once your sales person has managed to do all of that, you know what? They won’t be coming to you asking for discounts. The customer understands the Value they are getting, and besides, what good sales person is going to ask you to reduce their commission by giving away revenue they don’t have to.

Remember, encourage your prospects to see what they could really do if they were using your product, and then put a value on it.

Let me leave you with one question to ponder. Why does a Porsche 4X4 cost €130,000 more than a Hyundai 4X4 – does it cost that much more to make, is it that much better, and is it worth it? It is truly amazing the value some people put on image – but then that’s visual.

This article was written by Peter Lawless, founder of 3R Sales and Marketing – http://www.3r.ie. For previous articles like this, visit 3R’s Articles. Alternatively, subscribe to Success our free monthly Information Bulletin with sales and marketing articles.

by: Caroline Blatchford

The number of emails which we send and receive each day is increasing at a staggering pace. Despite this increase, many businesses are not using the full potential of emails to promote and sell their products and services.

Recently, I asked one of my team at http://LocalServiceGuide.com to find a restaurant which used emails effectively as a part of their sales and marketing. It was hard, really hard.

Eventually he found an excellent example. The Landmarc Restaurant Theatre in Bournemouth runs a large number of special events. If bookings for a particular evening are slow then Josh Simons, Events Manager, checks his database of email addresses to find customers who may be interested in the event and he drops them a line – by email. The response can be almost instantaneous. A number of events which could have lost money have been saved by this simple and cost-effective approach.

It is easy to see how this approach could be used by pubs with live bands, travel agents looking for last minute bookings, a restaurant with a two for one offer and training companies with places to fill on a course.

Only minor adjustments would be needed to apply the idea to the launch of a new product or service or, as an example, for a heating engineer to offer a special price to customers who have their boiler serviced in the summer.

Now the idea of promoting these sorts of activities is not new and many companies use phone calls, direct mail and advertising to let their customers know what is on offer. The beauty of using email is that it is comparatively quick, cheap and easy to target. The following tips will help you to get started.

• Start collecting email addresses. Ask every customer and potential customer to opt-in to receive your newsletter and mailings about new products and offers. Opt-in email lists are really valuable because the recipients have said that they would like to hear from you.

• Make sure that you comply with all of the regulations relating to storing data and the use of email addresses. Key requirements in the UK include an obligation to notify the Information Commissioner’s Office that you are a Data Controller (2006 cost £35 per year), to ensure that, where an individual has an e-mail account, you only send emails to them if they have opted in and every email you send gives the recipient the opportunity to opt-out of receiving further emails from you and each email includes your contact details. For more details go to http://www.ico.gov.uk. If you are outside of the UK, check on local regulations.

• If you are sending out lots of emails, you may want to use a company which specialises in bulk mailings. They can help you to manage your email campaigns.

• Apply usual marketing good practice to your email campaigns – know what you want to achieve, stress the benefits to the customer, monitor results etc.

• Don’t abandon all other forms of sales and promotions. Email marketing can be very effective but it should be used in conjunction with other promotional and sales techniques.

If you have not tried email marketing before, give it a go. Good luck!

Caroline Blatchford is the founder of Local Service Guide which helps people in the UK to find the service which they need. To feature your business on our site go to http://www.LocalServiceGuide.com.

by: Renske Buursma

In order to be more successful with your pet business, get your mind and body geared up for success. Start by making positive attitude adjustments for success and better health, inside and out with these helpful tips…

* Concentrate on business first, and then dig in and learn more about how to run a business. Using help from library or other resources, develop basic business and marketing plans. And from now on, stop wondering how to run your business operations and KNOW. When you follow no plan or even a poor one, you do reach your goal: nothing. So plan for success and strive to get there instead!

* Learn more about the pet industry, what people buy online and off. Do a little research each month to see what the more popular selling pet products and services are and what campaigns are out in the mainstream. Bookmark pet sites and sign up for their ezines to see what’s new, what the news and announcement are and what you might be able to learn to help your own business grow. Keep up with the industry!

* Slacking off and being lazy don’t work in the business world long term. So stop trying to short change your visitors, leads, prospects, clients. Use some elbow grease and do what you need to do to each day to attract traffic, generate leads, follow up and close make your sales. Make a point to regularly plan sales and marketing campaigns – online and off – for getting human and search engine traffic, leads, prospects and sales. Have your website, content, autoresponders and everything else updated regularly and in place. Avoiding laziness helps make anyone more successful!

* Don’t hide out from the real world and stay at your computer all day. Get out and network at industry event, and network, reaching out – online and off – to connect with others. Learn from other pet business reps who have been where you are and already reached some level of success. Network with others who work at home for tips about what works best and what doesn’t when juggling work with family. Save your contacts’ information in a database like one in any email program (Microsoft Outlook) and add to your goals to follow up on a regular basis with people. Set goals: talk to at least four people every day via phone, email or some other means.

* Get and stay in shape. Success starts on the inside!

So get yourself and your business in sync with success. Successful work habits are directly proportional to successful results!

Renske Buursma, pet store owner with lots of helpful articles and a free newsletter about pet care at http://yourhealthypetsonline.com

by: Dick Wheeler

by: C.J. Hayden

“Every person who has ever started a business, I imagine, thought he had a good idea. It’s the smart person, and the rare person, who tries to find out the most important thing: do other people think it’s a good idea?”
— Bernard Kamoroff, author of “Small-Time Operator”

If you’ve ever wondered why more people don’t respond to your sales attempts and marketing messages, here’s the first place to look — are you selling something that people are willing to spend money on?

It can be hard enough to get your marketing message heard and work your way toward closing a sale when you’re offering a product or service that prospects already know will help them. But if you also have to educate prospective customers about why it’s worth their while to buy what you are selling in the first place, you are fighting an uphill battle.

A student in one of my classes proposed an idea to sell financial counseling services to college students. He reasoned that more and more young people were incurring massive amounts of debt and declaring bankruptcy. Obviously, the need in the marketplace was there, right? But when I asked him if students thought they needed financial counseling, his immediate answer was no. They had other concerns and ignored their finances, which was why he thought they needed him.

Right there is the catch. He thought they needed him; they didn’t think so. The vast majority of buyers — whether they are individual consumers or buying on behalf of a business — only purchase products and services that solve a problem they have already defined. If you are the one who has to tell them that they have a problem in the first place, you have a pretty tough sale ahead of you.

In fact, your customers not only have to know they have a problem, they have to be willing to spend money to solve it.

A client of mine was marketing her services to companies to help them build community partnerships. She knew that many corporate donors were choosing to sponsor one nonprofit instead of spreading their donations around. But finding the right fit for a sponsorship was hard. She tried to sell companies on her ability to locate appropriate nonprofits and help establish relations. But they weren’t buying. They knew they had a problem, but weren’t willing to pay to fix it.

So it’s not enough that people want what you offer, it has to be something they will spend money to get. And very importantly, they must also be able to justify that purchase to themselves and others. This is where you can provide exactly what your prospective clients need to make a buying decision.

Let’s take as an example a life coach who tells clients he can help them find more passion in life. The prospect tells a friend: “I’m thinking about hiring a life coach to help me discover more passion in my work.” The friend is skeptical, and says: “Sounds a little vague to me. If I were you, I’d spend my money on taking those art classes you keep talking about.” The client has been unable to justify the purchase and she is now having second thoughts.

But what if the same coach told the prospect he could help her find a new job? When the friend asks for details, the prospect, briefed by the coach, responds: “He says he can partner with me to help me seek out the opportunities that match what I’m really looking for, and stay motivated while I’m looking.” A much more likely response from the friend now is: “Sounds like it could be helpful. What’s the coach’s name?”

What the coach has done in the second case is sold to the client’s bottom line. He has offered a result that not only the client, but her friend, seem willing to spend money on. He has also given her the language to explain his solution and justify the purchase to both her friend and herself. In fact, the nature of the work he ends up doing with this client may be exactly the same as it would have been when he offered her “passion.” The difference is that the sale just got much easier.

The more concrete you can be about the results clients can expect, the more likely they are to buy. And the closer your offer is to a result that is already in their budget, the easier your sale becomes. When selling to organizations, these factors become even more critical. Every purchase has to be justified to a boss or a board, and if it’s not in the budget, your sale may have to wait for next year.

One of my clients was marketing herself as a facilitator. In her sales pitch to corporate clients, she talked about her experience and produced glowing testimonials. But all her hard work produced only a few contracts. Then she began marketing her facilitation in the form of team-building retreats. All of a sudden, organizations that had no need for “facilitation” were eager for “team-building,” and in some cases already had that need defined in their training budget.

The key to selling to your client’s bottom line is knowing what that is. Ask the people in your target market not just what their problems and goals are, but where they have spent money in the past. A client who has worked with a massage therapist is a likely prospect for chiropractic. A company that has hired graphic designers is probably a good target for communications consulting. Get to know your market’s spending habits and you will know better how to sell to them.

In every communication, talk about the specific results you deliver and the amount of value you provide. When you can assign an economic benefit to making a purchase, you increase the likelihood of a sale. This is why finding a new job sells better than finding passion, and helping a company make teams more productive attracts more buyers than helping them run a meeting. If clients believe you can either help them make money or save it, working with you can pay for itself.

When you are selling a product or service with no definable value — for example, you can help to improve a person’s quality of life or a company’s work environment — be aware that you may have a tougher sale than when your offer can be translated into currency. Look for how you can describe your value in the most tangible terms possible, and be prepared to spend some time educating your customers before they will become willing to buy.

Selling to the bottom line may require no changes at all to what you do, just a change to how you talk about it. “Nice-to-have” products and services may generate interest, but “got-to-have” ones generate sales.

C.J. Hayden is the author of Get Clients Now! Thousands of business owners and salespeople have used her simple sales and marketing system to double or triple their income. Get a free copy of “Five Secrets to Finding All the Clients You’ll Ever Need” at http://www.getclientsnow.com.

by: Chad Reimer

Charter Arms revolvers have been around since the 1960s, when Doug McClenehan and his best friend Doug Ecker decided to make a better revolver. McClenehan had a great deal of firearms experience from working for companies like Ruger Arms, Colt Arms, and High Standard, which allowed him to create some of the most affordable, high-quality firearms. Charter also had a brief stint producing Armalite AR7 rifles and pistols, which helped to maintain the cost of growth and further develop the Eugene Stoner design into pistols and standard rifles. The Charter Arms guns began as duty revolvers for law enforcement agents and concealed carry holders; now Charter Arms revolvers can be found in almost any gun shop around the country.

Charter Arms revolvers come in a wide range of calibers and configurations, making them ideal for all types of shooting, from plinking to duty guns, and everything in between. The last forty years have been a series of twists and turns for Charter firearms; you never knew what the company would do next. That all changed in 2005, when MKS Supply was contracted to maintain their sales and marketing, allowing Charter Arms to stick to what they do best: making guns.

Giving up on marketing helped take Charter Arms to the next level, rather than being stuck with interaction between customers, dealers, and other time-consuming parts of the firearms manufacturing process. This helped to make sheer volume Charter Arms’ main focus. This decision has proven to be the break Charter Arms needed, bringing them to the top ten handgun producers in the USA and getting their products back in the public eye.

Charter revolvers are now available in a wide range of models, including pink revolvers. A large number of firearms manufacturers have begun the new trend of producing firearms specifically for the female market, which Charter Arms has always done with the controllable recoil of their revolvers. The lightweight design is also compact enough to fit inside a woman’s purse, offering their users piece of mind. Another great feature is the Charter Arms South Paw, which is made specifically for left handed shooters.

Aside from the full-sized revolver, the Charter Dixie derringers have become a must-have for concealed carry enthusiasts, providing a simple, affordable revolver that can be stored anywhere. Charter Arms also has been credited with the design of the full hammer block safety system, which has been on all Charter revolvers since the 1960s. Another key feature of the Charter Arms revolvers is the three point locking system, which is exclusive to Charter firearms and cannot be found on even the most expensive revolvers.

The Charter Arms revolver is built like a tank and priced very competitively, leaving all other American manufactured revolvers in the dust. Many have still never heard of Charter’s outstanding revolvers. I know there are a wide range of competitors out there, but an American revolver that is less than four hundred dollars is certainly a rarity. In my experience, I would recommend the Charter Arms handguns for anybody looking for a solidly-designed, affordable revolver.

Chad Reimer is a firearms specialist for the largest firearms dealer in the USA. http://www.charter-arms.com

by: Kathleen Gage