Featured

Getting Stuff Done… or not…

This video on procrastination sounds so very familiar…

Enjoy!

Guest Post: Top 10 Tips for Building Trust and Getting Business

Your prospects won’t buy from you unless they trust you.

Read that again, because fully understanding that deceptively simple sentence is crucial to the bottom line of your business. If you can’t establish trust, you can’t make sales. Period.

So, how do you start building trust? Like this:

1. Offer great customer service. Whether you have a prospect contacting you for the first time with a pre-sale question or you have an existing customer needing help, you need to provide prompt, professional service.

2. Start a blog. A blog gives you an opportunity to interact with your prospects and customers. It also gives you an opportunity to show value to your prospective customers. When they see what kind of help you give away for free, they’ll be excited to become a paying customer.

Tip: Don’t yet have a blog? Go to WordPress.org and download the free files.

3. Interact with prospects on social media sites. Yet another way to build relationships (and trust) is by using social media sites, especially Facebook.com and Twitter.com. There you can interact one-on-one, as well as provide good information.

4. Use your prospect’s name. Using someone’s name helps build rapport. Online you can collect your prospect’s first name when he joins your newsletter list. Offline, be sure to ask for his name so that you can use it during your sales talk.

Tip: Don’t overuse someone’s name, as that can backfire and make them feel uncomfortable. Using it once or twice during an initial meeting should be enough.

5. Follow up with your prospects. The vast majority of people who come to your website or store are unlikely to ever return – that’s why you need to get their contact information so that you can follow up with them.

Usually this involves offering your prospects something valuable in exchange for their contact information.

Example: You can offer a free report on your website. Or if you have a bricks and mortar store, you can offer prospects a chance to win something in a contest. Just be sure in all cases that your prospects know you will be following up with them.

6. Show your value now. Don’t make the mistake of promising a lot of value in the future… but only once someone pays you money. Instead, show your value now using newsletters, a blog, social media and good customer service.

7. Be accessible. This one is of particular importance to those who have an online business. The bottom line is not to hide from your prospects. This means offering multiple ways for your prospects and customers to reach you. The more accessible you are, the easier it is for people to trust you.

8. Get personal. If your prospect or client mentions a special event (like an upcoming wedding or birth of a child), write this information down so that you can refer to it again. Then the next time you see this person (either in person or even online, like on Facebook), you can ask the person about the event. He’ll be impressed that you remembered – and your relationship will grow!

9. Give your prospects what they want. Here’s the key: Help your prospects even if it doesn’t directly benefit you.

Example: Recommend a product that doesn’t garner you a commission (maybe the product is even free). When the prospect sees that you really care about him and his problem, his trust in you will grow – and before you know it, he’ll be a loyal customer!

10. Be professional. Finally, maintain a professional appearance, whether through your own grooming, your brick and mortar store, your marketing materials or your website. First impressions count. And continued professionalism helps build trust.

Conclusion

You just learned 10 proven ways to build trust and generate more sales for your business.

To find out still more ways to grow your business, visit iBusinessOwner to discover the iBusiness Owner’s Manuals. Then ask yourself: How many of these strategies are you currently overlooking? And how much more money would you make if you employed them, starting today?

Introducing Mentor Online Magazine

I want to introduce you to my friend Tamara Patzer.

Drawing from her years of experience in successfully creating multiple streams of income working online, she established MOM – Mentor Online Magazine. I invite you to click here to sign up for a subscription to her new online magazine. Just watch the video below to see if you feel that Tami might have useful information for you. I believe she does.

MOM’s founder: An adventure from the JOB to Online Entrepreneur

First, I’d like to introduce myself to you. I am a 53-year-old college educated mother who spent the majority of my life as a single mother of three children. I often consider myself a late bloomer, but that is only partly true. I graduated from high school a year early and went to college, but made a life choice that slowed my path to success by about 15 years. I got married at age 19, had a baby at 20 and was divorced at 22. By age 22, I was a high school graduate with a year of college, a 2-year-old and low self-esteem.

After a cold winter in my hometown in Oregon, I took my daughter on a cross-country Greyhound bus trip with less than $50 to in my pocket to join my parents who had moved to the west coast of Florida. There, I found a minimum wage job and worked hard. I liked Florida, but within two years my mother died and my father went back to Oregon. I was alone. No support system. No real friends. After supporting my daughter on my own, I met the father of my two sons and spend a turbulent few years balancing a bad relationship with a teenager and two babies born 17 months apart.

By the time I was in my early 30s, I knew I had to go back to school if I was ever going to make more than $7 an hour. I went to Eckerd College’s Program for Experience Learners and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing and Business in 1997. I started working as a newspaper editor and during that time, I also earned a master’s degree in Mass Communications and Instructional Technology. So began my  job juggling to earn more to make ends meet. I was a newspaper editor and college professor. At times I worked full-time as an editor, and drove hundreds of miles each week to teach at three different university campuses. One year I drove 65,000 miles. I was tired.

Did I say I was tired? I was exhausted. I started asking myself why? Why am I working so hard? What am I working for? Is it supposed to be this difficult? I needed my mother, but she was gone. I needed a mentor, wise advisor and friend. Over the years, there have been many women and men who stepped up and provided me with support, encouragement and guidance to help me move forward. In future issues, I will share more of my adventures and insights about these remarkable mentors who have helped me and will also help you, too. Recently with the advent of social media, my life has improved because I have a support system I can tap into any time, day or night. It is with this in mind that MentorOnlineMagazine.com was born.

Wouldn’t it be great, if you had MOM giving you some sage advice, a shoulder to lean on and some step-by-step guidance about how to improve your life, how to move from employee to entrepreneur, from exhausted to joyful?

Know this, MOM is here for you!

Sincerely,

Tamara A. Patzer

Founder and Publisher, MentorOnlineMagazine.com

MOM

About MOM

Free Subscription

MentorOnlineMagazine.com MOM is that wise friend, mentor and advisor every woman wants in her life. Each week, on Monday and Thursday, MOM is delivered to your email inbox via free subscription.

You can expect Mentor Monday’s MOM to provide motivation, step-by-step action plans, and multi-income stream opportunities, techniques and ideas.

Triple-T Thursday’s MOM brings you trends, tips, and tools to put into action to help you achieve a more balance, wealthy and healthy life.

Not only will I bring you the best advice I can offer, but I have gathered some of the best minds in the world to share their insights with you. MOM is a collection of essays written and videos produced by a panel of expert contributors offering a global community of support for women around the world.

It is my hope that as publisher of MOM to bring you information, opportunities and high quality advice that you can put into action immediately.

For more information, feel free to contact Tamara Patzer at info@MentorOnlineMagazine.com

Is Ebay a Giant Garage Sale or ?

Intuition about Ebay don't always work. Are you thinking correctly about eBay? Do you trust your intuition? Let's do a small test. Take a piece of paper (imagine it to be a large piece of newspaper) and fold it in half 50 times about how tall would the folded paper be? I'll give you the answer in a moment, but unless you've seen this example before you will probably be very surprised by the answer. It's a test of your intuition - and proof that you can be VERY wrong when trying to imagine how BIG something is based on a few simple facts. Now, let's talk about eBay...

Read more...

One of My Favorite PLR Sources

When searching for PLR content to use, I found there were a lot of different types of sites available. Some offered monthly memberships and others offered just one time purchases. So be sure to look around before you decide where to buy.

You want to make sure that you get your PLR from someone with a strong reputation in the market. Gabor Olah is one of those. Check out IMReportCard.com (this link takes you directly to the review) to see what the public has to say about him. You’ll find that 14 people (maybe more now) have evaluated his PLRWholesaler site and the average over all rating is an A-. That’s one of the very top.

I’m a member of PLRWholesaler and I highly recommend it. Not only do they have an unbelievable amount of content, but it’s completely FREE. Read more…

Food For Thought – The Missing School Desks

The following is a true story that is well worth repeating.
Click here for the Snopes report on this story.

Here’s a lesson that should be taught in all schools in America, including colleges.

Back in September 2005, on the first day of school, Martha Cothren, a social studies school teacher at  Robinson High School in Arkansas, did something    not to be   forgotten. On the first day of school, with the permission of the school superintendent, the principal and the building supervisor, she removed all of the desks out of her classroom.

When the first period kids entered the room they discovered that there were no desks.

“Ms.. Cothren, where are our desks?”

She replied, “You can’t have a desk until you tell me how you earned the right to sit at a desk.” Read more…

Steps To Success

Success is a day-by-day, moment-by-moment issue. It is like the flecks of paint laid down carefully and repeatedly on canvas to gradually create a work of art. Without the application of the flecks, no art results. For those in business lack of daily application means no product, no service, no means of income. Without them the idea remains inside the mind of the creator instead of being made available for all who desire to use or enjoy it.

All success hinges on obedience to a chosen path. But how do we choose what to create, what ideals to be obedient to? That is a decision you must make for yourself. You must decide what will be the guiding force in your life.

If the guiding force you choose is yourself, you automatically limit your opportunities. Why? Read more…

Following the Path Of Your Dreams, Despite the Obstacles Along the Way

A Guest Post from my friend Sandra Gardner…

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. -Henry David Thoreau

Yesterday, I crawled out of bed at 4am so that I could drive 3 hours to attend a retreat for women entrepreneurs. “Inspiring Women’s Success,” it was called, and it was put on by a women’s networking group in Central New York called Women TIES. The reason I attended was mainly to begin my career as a networker – something that, as a lifelong introvert and shy person, I have resisted with all my being. So, in order to trick my ego into letting up on the sabotage, I told myself I was coming there to learn – about being a successful entrepreneur, and to learn about people. When it got really overwhelming, I even tried the trick of assuming the role of someone else – in this case, I assumed the role of a journalist who was coming to watch and learn how people networked. To learn how effortlessly they exchanged business cards and made small talk.

Two days before this event, I had a sort-of crisis day. I had talked to my mentor the day before and we discussed that I needed to make the decision – on a daily basis – to commit to what it took to be successful. See, making the connections and seeing the patterns in my life that hold me back – that part is comfortable for me. The uncomfortable part is taking action – even small steps, on a daily basis.

Read more…

Mind Map Your Way to Internet Marketing Success

When starting into a new enterprise it is unlikely that we’ll have a concrete picture of everything involved to get things up and running. This is nowhere more true than entering into the world of Internet Marketing. We are quite used to thinking in terms of brick and mortar stores that we walk into for shopping, the printed ads and the weekly specials. All things that we can touch with our hands and read with our eyes.

But when we move into the virtual world, hard things disappear. Instead we are working in concepts and fluid designs. We can’t direct our customers to our store with maps and direct them within our stores with aisles. They don’t get to actually pick up an item we are selling and literally feel it for value. Instead, we must guide with virtual sign posts (menus and hyperlinks) and assure value by testimonials.

Where location, location, location is the retail mantra in the physical world, the concept of location evaporates in the virtual world. Drive-by traffic, one of the keystones of a physical business becomes traffic generation – trying to find ways to put your website in front of the eyes of the virtual browsers to entice them to come in.

How do we grasp all of these differences in how business is done in the virtual world? Can we just make a gigantic plan and start filling in the blanks hoping it all works out in the end? Read more…

Just What is PLR Anyway?

Simply put, PLR is a right that you obtain, usually by paying for it, to use a piece of content and sell it for 100% of the profit.

PLR stands for “Private Label Rights.” Many online marketers consider PLR to be their ultimate secret weapon in creating content fast and at minimum cost.

PLR comes with rights (permissions) to use the product yourself freely and sell it for 100% of the profit. Most people think of PLR as eBooks, but these same rights can be granted for any product, but they are mostly digital products, such as eBooks, reports, articles, software, audio and video. They may come with sales letters, e-Covers, matching website headers… basically everything you need to set up a website and sell the product yourself.

When you buy a piece of content with PLR generally you can… Read more…