By Ben Needles
As I’m sure you already know, networking is one of the best ways to develop your business. Often I hear sales people ask the same question with regards to effective networking, “How can I make the time I spend networking even more productive?” The answer is simple, but as with most things in life, it involves a little extra effort to reap the rewards. The following is a simple and effective way to improve your networking performance.
1. First, ask yourself, "Who am I looking to meet?" and then take a few moments to write down what you consider to be your best prospects and potential strategic partners. This way you will be one step ahead of the game in finding great leads when you’re out there in the crowd. For example, if you are a real estate agent, you would focus on people looking to sell property, buy property or who know people that need these services. In addition, you would target those individuals who know these potential prospects, like real estate attorneys, mortgage brokers and appraisers. When you look beyond what is right in front of you, there are often many untapped opportunities to connect with these strategic partners.
2. Next, rate the prospects that you meet into three categories. These are the A-B-Cs of networking. After receiving a card from someone at a networking event, take 10 seconds as you walk away to rate that individual as a potential prospect by writing an A, B or C on their business card. The As represent the cream of the crop - someone who really needs what you do or would make a great strategic partner for you. The Bs are those prospects with whom you should share a cup of coffee or at least speak to over the phone to see if there’s a connection. Lastly are those in the C category, or those people who probably aren’t going to make the most effective use of your time. This isn’t to say that connections can’t be made with Cs. Just make sure that if you agree to meet with a C, it’s someone that you immediately liked upon first meeting them.
3. The final step to successfully using the A-B-C process is to remember the single most important point about networking: FOLLOW UP! Your time might as well be flushed down the toilet if you don’t make the calls after the meeting. Call your As and Bs within 48 hours after the networking event while they are still fresh in your mind and suggest a sit down over a favorite beverage.
If you’ve ever met with someone who tried to hard sell you on their product or service, sat across from someone you weren’t sure why you were meeting with in the first place, or just wished you could sneak away after five minutes. Using this A-B-C process will make your networking experiences much more enjoyable and productive.
Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com
(my own article directory)
About the Author
With 16 years of sales and business development experience, Steve and his staff of coaches have worked in over 50 different industries, training companies to dramatically improve their sales. Currently, Mr. Fretzin is the President of 4 businesses in Deerfield, IL.
www.salesresultsinc.com
LIVING IN HAWAII.INFO
Monday, February 9, 2009
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Help Desks - Quality Customer Service
By Charles McDuffie
Help desks play a very important role for your business when it comes to customer satisfaction. Therefore, in order to ensure quality customer support service, it's very important for you to choose your option carefully. There can be different types of help desk solutions, such as web-based systems, phone based systems, technical support, etc. No matter which type or types of help desks you've chosen for your business, you want to make sure that your chosen system is capable enough to offer your customers an efficient solution to all their queries.
Developing A Good Relationship With Customers Through Help & Support
You can use the help and support system of your company to develop a good relationship with your customers. This is where you're recommended to keep the following things in mind while you're implementing help desks support into your organization.
1) The help and support system must be implemented in a way that should show that your company values its customers. The system must greet the customers whenever they lodge a ticket. Always remember that if customers start to believe that they're valued, they're likely to have a much longer relationship with your business.
2) If the help desks you've implemented are phone based, it's very important for you to make sure that the customer service representatives are cheerful and polite. It's always advisable to train them regarding how to receive calls, listen to the customers' queries, and offer the proper responses. Irrespective of how unhappy a customer is, the representatives need to maintain their cool.
3) The choice of words plays a very important role when it comes to interacting with customers on phone. For example, you must understand the difference between "I don't know anything about that" and "I know exactly how to assist you". There's a world of difference between the two statements. Of course, the latter is more effective, as it's more polite and exudes positivism.
4) Always keep in mind that customers want and expect your company to be honest with them. They want to deal with something and someone they can trust. Therefore, you must implement the help desks in a way so that it can deliver what it promises. If the help and support system is unable to do that, it'll eventually be doing your business a great disservice.
5) Whether the help and support system is based on phone, fax, or e-mail, make sure that it allows the customers to access you 24/7. And finally, the support system must also be capable of delivering quick responses. Overall, poor customer service can be disastrous for any business. Therefore, be very careful while you're implementing help desks.
Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com
(my own article directory)
Charles McDuffie is an author and entrepreneur for ASB Enterprises, a continuing education and business development company showing people how to build business success in mail order, network marketing and affiliate programs. Click here to learn about help desks.
Help desks play a very important role for your business when it comes to customer satisfaction. Therefore, in order to ensure quality customer support service, it's very important for you to choose your option carefully. There can be different types of help desk solutions, such as web-based systems, phone based systems, technical support, etc. No matter which type or types of help desks you've chosen for your business, you want to make sure that your chosen system is capable enough to offer your customers an efficient solution to all their queries.
Developing A Good Relationship With Customers Through Help & Support
You can use the help and support system of your company to develop a good relationship with your customers. This is where you're recommended to keep the following things in mind while you're implementing help desks support into your organization.
1) The help and support system must be implemented in a way that should show that your company values its customers. The system must greet the customers whenever they lodge a ticket. Always remember that if customers start to believe that they're valued, they're likely to have a much longer relationship with your business.
2) If the help desks you've implemented are phone based, it's very important for you to make sure that the customer service representatives are cheerful and polite. It's always advisable to train them regarding how to receive calls, listen to the customers' queries, and offer the proper responses. Irrespective of how unhappy a customer is, the representatives need to maintain their cool.
3) The choice of words plays a very important role when it comes to interacting with customers on phone. For example, you must understand the difference between "I don't know anything about that" and "I know exactly how to assist you". There's a world of difference between the two statements. Of course, the latter is more effective, as it's more polite and exudes positivism.
4) Always keep in mind that customers want and expect your company to be honest with them. They want to deal with something and someone they can trust. Therefore, you must implement the help desks in a way so that it can deliver what it promises. If the help and support system is unable to do that, it'll eventually be doing your business a great disservice.
5) Whether the help and support system is based on phone, fax, or e-mail, make sure that it allows the customers to access you 24/7. And finally, the support system must also be capable of delivering quick responses. Overall, poor customer service can be disastrous for any business. Therefore, be very careful while you're implementing help desks.
Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com
(my own article directory)
Charles McDuffie is an author and entrepreneur for ASB Enterprises, a continuing education and business development company showing people how to build business success in mail order, network marketing and affiliate programs. Click here to learn about help desks.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
How Are Your Prospects Finding You?
By Deborah Gallant
Remember the olden days when you needed to find a local service professional like a plumber or windshield repair; you would go into the kitchen drawer and pull out the good old Yellow Pages. Now the book gathers dust as consumers have moved almost all of their purchase research onto the Internet.
There are some categories of service businesses like attorneys, physicians, dentists, auto repair that used to spend the vast majority of their advertising budget on the local Yellow Pages directory. And sometimes you had to buy more than one geographic area to make sure all your customers could find you. Remember the trick that some plumbers used to use: AAAA Plumbing gets them the first listing? It used to work. Whatever strategy you used, you could not afford NOT to be in the book.
And maybe you should still be in the printed phone directory. There are still some throwback consumers who use the book to "let their fingers do the walking." However, more and more consumers are using the Internet as their primary research and information tool before they make a purchase decision.
Since the explosion of Internet usage (nearly 80% of the US population is online), consumers have taken to the web in droves when they have to research any high-consideration purchase like sophisticated electronics or choosing a therapist or attorney.
But now it isn't only the high-end and sophisticated purchases that get researched online.
You may think that because you get much of your business from referrals or from repeat customers, you do not need to worry about a website. However, even those clients—existing and prospective—will be looking you up online, even if all they need is your phone number.
If someone is buying a personal service from you, they want to know more. Your photo, your biography, where your office is located, what you are all about.
Are you being found? Does your business have a professional, effective site that gives the basic information people need to find? Because if they can not find you, they are going to your competitor.
When your prospect is online doing research, statistics show that in about three to four minutes a person might arrive at up to twenty different websites. Your website needs to make a great impression in 8 seconds. Focus all your efforts on giving the critical information they need quickly: What problem you solve, where you are located, your phone number. If people are motivated, they will dig deeper into your site for more information. And if they like what they see—just like in the old directory days, they will pick up the phone to call you to close the deal.
Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com
(my own article directory)
Deborah Gallant is the Business Coach Who Gets the Internet. Her firm, Web Power Tools, provides affordable website design & development tools for service professionals. Visit their website (http://www.webpowertools.com) for a free 30-day trial and a free copy of "Five Steps to Finally Getting Started with Internet Marketing".
Remember the olden days when you needed to find a local service professional like a plumber or windshield repair; you would go into the kitchen drawer and pull out the good old Yellow Pages. Now the book gathers dust as consumers have moved almost all of their purchase research onto the Internet.
There are some categories of service businesses like attorneys, physicians, dentists, auto repair that used to spend the vast majority of their advertising budget on the local Yellow Pages directory. And sometimes you had to buy more than one geographic area to make sure all your customers could find you. Remember the trick that some plumbers used to use: AAAA Plumbing gets them the first listing? It used to work. Whatever strategy you used, you could not afford NOT to be in the book.
And maybe you should still be in the printed phone directory. There are still some throwback consumers who use the book to "let their fingers do the walking." However, more and more consumers are using the Internet as their primary research and information tool before they make a purchase decision.
Since the explosion of Internet usage (nearly 80% of the US population is online), consumers have taken to the web in droves when they have to research any high-consideration purchase like sophisticated electronics or choosing a therapist or attorney.
But now it isn't only the high-end and sophisticated purchases that get researched online.
You may think that because you get much of your business from referrals or from repeat customers, you do not need to worry about a website. However, even those clients—existing and prospective—will be looking you up online, even if all they need is your phone number.
If someone is buying a personal service from you, they want to know more. Your photo, your biography, where your office is located, what you are all about.
Are you being found? Does your business have a professional, effective site that gives the basic information people need to find? Because if they can not find you, they are going to your competitor.
When your prospect is online doing research, statistics show that in about three to four minutes a person might arrive at up to twenty different websites. Your website needs to make a great impression in 8 seconds. Focus all your efforts on giving the critical information they need quickly: What problem you solve, where you are located, your phone number. If people are motivated, they will dig deeper into your site for more information. And if they like what they see—just like in the old directory days, they will pick up the phone to call you to close the deal.
Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com
(my own article directory)
Deborah Gallant is the Business Coach Who Gets the Internet. Her firm, Web Power Tools, provides affordable website design & development tools for service professionals. Visit their website (http://www.webpowertools.com) for a free 30-day trial and a free copy of "Five Steps to Finally Getting Started with Internet Marketing".
Monday, February 2, 2009
Promote Your Business With Quality
By Ben Needles
Every businessperson learns quickly that customers are valuable. Repeat customers are the most valuable of all. Yet the vast majority of businesspeople do not take the simple steps that attract new customers and keep existing ones. Hence, most new businesses fail, and older ones go through hard times.
Quality is the single most important determining factor of success on a long-term basis. This statement is true across the boards, in every industry and trade. Musical groups are usually short-lived, unless they are very, very good musically. New restaurants pop up every week, and disappear within months. Which companies disappear first in an economic downturn? The ones with the least solid customer bases.
What is commonly overlooked, and often not known at all, is that what attracts customers is not just quality of product. What attracts customers is the overall quality of the business, which includes quality of product, but oh, so much more as well.
Hundreds of business books focus on how to improve specific areas of a company: customer relations, advertising, personnel management, inventory control, and hundreds of other aspects of businesses. They keep missing the common denominator: the principles of quality. The principles of quality apply to each and every area of business. Implement these principles across all the functions of a business, and that business will succeed (assuming it actually has a real and valuable product).
The first major principle of quality is that quality is an attitude. This is surprisingly hard to get across to many people. Yet the business owner or manager will never get it across to his staff if he doesn’t have it himself. Fortunately, an attitude is completely under a person’s own control, so one can adopt a quality attitude at any time. Unfortunately, a quality attitude flies in the face of what society generally agrees upon and teaches, which is, and must be, whatever is the average.
So yes, the steps are simple, like climbing the steps up a mountainside. The problem is, there are trolls above you on the mountain throwing stones at you, telling you It doesn’t have to be that good and You’re expecting too much and No one expects perfection. All of which are true statements, and all of which you have to totally and utterly ignore in order to make things better.
Customers come back because they are pleased, and in this society, sometimes just because they are not displeased. They got what they wanted, and a little more, or they got what they expected, and a little more. They felt comfortable. They understood or were helped to understand what they needed to know. They saw nothing that lowered their opinion of your business: no stupid mistakes, no dirt, no unpleasant people.
Not only do the customers come back, but they tell their friends.
Make quality the first and highest priority in your business, even above profits, and the profits will come soon enough. Learn about quality, think about it, incorporate it into every aspect of the business from bookkeeping to addressing envelopes to buying raw materials to sweeping the front walk. Most important, get everyone in your company to do the same thing.
Demanding quality from others does not work all by itself. Sadly, many people equate improving quality with wasting time. They can even feel foolish or apologetic about trying to do something better than is normally expected. So the effective approach is not to demand quality, but to expect it. Start raising the standard of what is expected. First with yourself, and then with others.
You will run into opposition. Muttering and grumbling will occur. But your best staff will embrace every step you take to make things better.
Finally, one more step is critical. You have to find out what your customers think of your business. You can ask them; you can provide a very easy link on your website for complaints and praise and suggestions; you can run a contest on The five things you like most and least about this company; however you do it, you must do it. Without this knowledge, you will often be shooting in the dark in your efforts to improve. With it, you can soar straight to bulls-eye after bulls-eye.
Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com
(my own article directory)
About the Author
Don Dewsnap has spent years studying quality and its principles and applications. Now he has put his knowledge into a readable, useable book: Anyone Can Improve His or Her Life: The Principles of Quality. Read about this book at http://www.principles-of-quality.com.
shortwave radio review
Every businessperson learns quickly that customers are valuable. Repeat customers are the most valuable of all. Yet the vast majority of businesspeople do not take the simple steps that attract new customers and keep existing ones. Hence, most new businesses fail, and older ones go through hard times.
Quality is the single most important determining factor of success on a long-term basis. This statement is true across the boards, in every industry and trade. Musical groups are usually short-lived, unless they are very, very good musically. New restaurants pop up every week, and disappear within months. Which companies disappear first in an economic downturn? The ones with the least solid customer bases.
What is commonly overlooked, and often not known at all, is that what attracts customers is not just quality of product. What attracts customers is the overall quality of the business, which includes quality of product, but oh, so much more as well.
Hundreds of business books focus on how to improve specific areas of a company: customer relations, advertising, personnel management, inventory control, and hundreds of other aspects of businesses. They keep missing the common denominator: the principles of quality. The principles of quality apply to each and every area of business. Implement these principles across all the functions of a business, and that business will succeed (assuming it actually has a real and valuable product).
The first major principle of quality is that quality is an attitude. This is surprisingly hard to get across to many people. Yet the business owner or manager will never get it across to his staff if he doesn’t have it himself. Fortunately, an attitude is completely under a person’s own control, so one can adopt a quality attitude at any time. Unfortunately, a quality attitude flies in the face of what society generally agrees upon and teaches, which is, and must be, whatever is the average.
So yes, the steps are simple, like climbing the steps up a mountainside. The problem is, there are trolls above you on the mountain throwing stones at you, telling you It doesn’t have to be that good and You’re expecting too much and No one expects perfection. All of which are true statements, and all of which you have to totally and utterly ignore in order to make things better.
Customers come back because they are pleased, and in this society, sometimes just because they are not displeased. They got what they wanted, and a little more, or they got what they expected, and a little more. They felt comfortable. They understood or were helped to understand what they needed to know. They saw nothing that lowered their opinion of your business: no stupid mistakes, no dirt, no unpleasant people.
Not only do the customers come back, but they tell their friends.
Make quality the first and highest priority in your business, even above profits, and the profits will come soon enough. Learn about quality, think about it, incorporate it into every aspect of the business from bookkeeping to addressing envelopes to buying raw materials to sweeping the front walk. Most important, get everyone in your company to do the same thing.
Demanding quality from others does not work all by itself. Sadly, many people equate improving quality with wasting time. They can even feel foolish or apologetic about trying to do something better than is normally expected. So the effective approach is not to demand quality, but to expect it. Start raising the standard of what is expected. First with yourself, and then with others.
You will run into opposition. Muttering and grumbling will occur. But your best staff will embrace every step you take to make things better.
Finally, one more step is critical. You have to find out what your customers think of your business. You can ask them; you can provide a very easy link on your website for complaints and praise and suggestions; you can run a contest on The five things you like most and least about this company; however you do it, you must do it. Without this knowledge, you will often be shooting in the dark in your efforts to improve. With it, you can soar straight to bulls-eye after bulls-eye.
Article Source: http://www.articlehighlight.com
(my own article directory)
About the Author
Don Dewsnap has spent years studying quality and its principles and applications. Now he has put his knowledge into a readable, useable book: Anyone Can Improve His or Her Life: The Principles of Quality. Read about this book at http://www.principles-of-quality.com.
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