Never Ending Thoughts…

I have recently read an article written by John Cameron, an expert in business coaching. He is very passionate of what he does and his expertise in the domain of sales and commerce in general is seen now as highly important. In his article, “Dealing with objections”, John Cameron speaks about all the barriers that a sales person faces when trying to contact a potential customer and sell a product or a service. This article has inspired me to post about this subject too and try to find the best methods that might work in the most common situations.

The fact that it is really hard to come up with a universal sales statement when contacting a potential customer is a fact. Nevertheless, it is essential not to come up with a universal sales statement! Why? Well, each customer must be treated in a different manner, because each of them has different interests, education, opinions and has been raised in a different cultural environment or background. A smart sales person must be capable to come up with an appropriate strategy each time a customer is contacted. Still, the sales person must act and react friendly. There might be potential clients that might use “I’m not interested” phrases. Well, this happens in a fairly amount of cases.

The question that is being raised is the following: What to do when a potential customer is not interested in your products or services that you sell? Well, the best manner is to find and present the advantages that the client has at the moment of purchasing. You need to explain the customer what are the advantages of the product or service and how the client can benefit from them. Furthermore, a good sales person reminds of both pros and cons, putting emphasize on the pros of course.

A good sales person must captivate the potential client in the first 10 to 30 seconds of the discussions. Sometimes, it is really hard to do this, but don’t feel discouraged. There is always the chance to improve your technique. Recognize that each client must be approached in a different manner and that might be a step forward. No one has been born as a great sales person. Everyone has learned how to discuss and approach potential clients in both the real world and the online environment. Hope that this article has been interesting for you and helped you in your business.

You can read John Cameron’s article at: http://www.evancarmichael.com/Sales/1971/Dealing-With-Objections.html

The idea for this article has its roots in Ellisa Brennerman’s article entitled “Small Business Operations Managers Deliver Huge Value”, which explains how operational managers can improve the way the company does businesses. This all makes sense for the reader, but Ellisa targets operational managers in small businesses and firms, not in huger, multinational corporations. Most of the small businesses that are started represent the creation of entrepreneurs. An entrepreneur is the person who does almost all the things in the company in the first few weeks or months till the brand is created and the company has employees that are doing the entire job. The entrepreneur does the calls, talks with clients and suppliers and tries to find a good way to make profit from the business activity.

However, Ellisa is right. Operational managers have their roles and must be employed by small businesses if they want to expand their businesses and be more organized. This idea is really good and it can boost the productivity and sales of the company. So, although “Operations Manager” sounds like a position held in a corporation, it is good to employ these kinds of people in small businesses as well. The firm that has a person in charge with the company’s operations will benefit a lot from the experience and move forward and try to expand the businesses.

We hope that you liked this article posted on our blog. Please read our other articles as well.
Also, feel free to comment and tell us what do you think: Is it OK for small firms and companies to employ Operations Managers?

You can read Ellisa Brennerman’s article at: http://www.evancarmichael.com/Small-Business-Consulting/4298/Small-Business-Operations-Managers-Deliver-Huge-Value.html

OK, you must be thinking this guy has gone nuts. When everyone is talking about how important it is for any company to spend money on Internet Marketing, he’s telling that there are down sides to that? If you will read on further, you will agree with me, and trust me it won’t take more than two minutes. Yes, two straight minutes.

Currently Internet Marketing is mainly done via either online banner Ad campaigns, or email marketing. And it’s not that it doesn’t work. In fact it works great! Better than any other advertising medium; especially if your product or service is Internet related. And that is one of the biggest downsides of Internet Marketing. So it’s cost effective and works great; So how’s it a downside? You will know if you have run a successful campaign. Having been easily available and much more quickly modifiable, Internet Marketing can sometimes attract more visitors and bring in more customers than you can handle. That would directly impact your service quality and in the end bad customer experience is going to bite you back with negative ratings which are far more harder to fix than any other thing.

So now we know the risk and downside of Internet Marketing. And how do I make sure not to risk my business into this situation? It’s much easy and straight forward. All you do is make some ground rules and follow them. For example, a) Before spending money on Internet Marketing, carefully analyze your market and your product and figure out what kind of customers you’ll be able to serve. And then b) use extremely targeted Internet Marketing methods to reach out to only those potential customers. This will not only help you spend less Internet Marketing Dollars, it will also help you get the customers that you will be able to easily serve and build a good trust within your market.

The analogy of Fire goes very well with Internet Marketing – It’s good as long as it doesn’t spread out of control.

Happy Internet Marketing Folks!