Posts Tagged ‘brick and mortar business’

How Can I Promote My Own Business Online?

So you’ve finally decided to take the first steps toward exposing your small business to the vast ocean of prospects called the Internet; or maybe you’ve had a website for a few years that was built by your neighbor’s cousin’s daughter’s boyfriend. The fact is that if you’ve been in business for more than a year and you’re serious about your future and the future of your business then you need to continue reading because this post was written with YOU specifically in mind.

There’s really no good reason for any brick and mortar business to NOT have a web presence. Even if you’re a one man operation and the entire business revolves around your particular expertise or specialty, you owe it to yourself and your clients/customers to put forth the best possible image that you can for your business. Here are a few more reasons why a website is essential to business growth:

1. 1. A website can make your company look larger than it really is. Positioning is crucial to success.
   2. A website exposes your products or services to a wider audience than local advertising possibly could. Branding is crucial.
   3. A website gives you the ability to stay in constant contact with your clients/customers through auto-responders.
   4. A website that has been properly optimized will have you appear as the authority in your niche or field of expertise.
   5. A website gives your clients/customers a venue to make suggestions or offer feedback for you to improve your business while they can remain anonymous.
   6. More interactivity equals more satisfied customers which in turn equals more profit for you and your business.

Once you’ve decided to move ahead with creating a web presence for your small business there are a few things to consider before attempting to D-I-Y (do it yourself) or even hiring someone to do it for you. Make sure that you have some things crystal clear in your mind before you begin the process and you will save yourself time and frustration later on.
Things that you absolutely should have in place before moving forward:

1. 1. A mission statement. (If you didn’t do this when you first opened your business, do it now)
   2. A vision statement.
   3. A clear picture of exactly who your audience is.
   4. Short term and long term ATTAINABLE goals.
   5. A positive mental attitude.

If you’ve taken the time and forethought to really get these thoughts and processes ingrained into your psyche you’re well on your way to successfully taking your business to the next level and beyond.

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Selling More in A Recession

Before starting out any new business strategies in a down turned economy, it’s always beneficial to bolster your position with preexisting clients and customers. Many times there is enough business to be found amongst your existing client base for you to then finance a “new idea” or strategy that you’ve wanted to implement.  Use these strategies to shore up your financial foundation and then go looking for “new” business.

Whether your primary business is offline or online the same principles apply. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling e-books or toothpaste, applied with the right amount of preparation and presentation, these ideas can make the difference between finishing your quarter in the red or in the black.

Try these tips:

• Begin calling your “inactive” customers.
  • Determine why they’ve gone inactive.
  • Ask for the opportunity to “make it good“.
  • “Would taking care of this immediately change your attitude toward us?”
  • Fix it immediately or task someone who will follow through to completion. (Whether it brings the client back immediately or not)
• Call 20 of your “active” customers/clients and ask them make an additional (wisely chosen) purchase.
  • Make them an OTO (one time offer).
  • Offer an upgrade.
  • Offer a “value added service“, something that improves your existing relationship with them.
• Call other businesses that offers complementary products or services to yours and ask for a trade of referrals. Don’t stop with one.
  • Offer to make it an ongoing relationship that’s mutually beneficial.
  • Over deliver! Offer more referrals than you receive. It will serve you well.

Since these principles apply to either an online or a brick and mortar business, they’re perfect strategies for the Offline Consultant to keep in mind when talking to or even prospecting for small business owners. These are the types of high value free advice that will in turn have those shop owners ready and willing  to do business with you.

In fact, the more giving you’re able to be, the more you’ll have people actually asking YOU to do business with them. It will quickly establish you as an authority  and as the person that everyone will want to be affiliated with.

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Why Build A Local Business Directory

There are many compelling reasons to create a local business directory whether you are an Online-Offline Internet Marketing Consultant to your local community, an Internet Marketer looking to break out into untouched territory, or someone who recognizes the potential of servicing local businesses to expand their reach, exposure and brand outside of the traditional forms of advertising.

Building local business directories is quite simple if you follow the more generic utility sites that basically list links to businesses under specific categories much like an A-Z reference page.

Local business directories work in a similar fashion to local phone directories such as the Yellow Pages ™ so when an internet surfer enters a keyword for a product or service they are searching for such as Auto Mechanic Perth Subiaco, the likelihood of your listings for a local business on the first page of Google ™ for that specific keyword is rather high.

The surfer is then led to a page categorized by the nature of the business and once the links of choice are clicked by the searcher they are redirected to the local business via their website where the surfer can hopefully attain the relevant information they seek.

What the business does with the prospect once the visitor has landed on their website is not the responsibility of the local directory it has succeeded in performing its obligation.

This is a very basic and simple method to servicing your local business and community but still highly effective without the need for cold calling or hiring a sales force. An effective sales funnel, network system and multiple first page listings in the search engine for low hanging keywords will ensure local exposure that targets local shoppers.

It is these same local shoppers that local businesses will pay you a premium to have redirected to their online URL or to their offline brick and mortar address.

There are many advanced ideas to turn your local business directory in a full blown sales funnel that better services your local community and provides you with a regular monthly – yearly income while building a commodity that can be sold as an ongoing business for a handsome profit showing a very reasonable continuity income if so desired.

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Growing Your Offline Consulting Business By Expanding Your Sales Force

Many people in the internet marketing world are waking up to the significantly under-served opportunities available in the real world – selling online marketing services to offline brick and mortar businesses. Talk about turning bricks into gold! For those who have been engaged in this arena for some time however, many eventually find the growth of their offline consulting business limited by the constraints on their own personal time.

The obvious solution to this problem of course is to hire a salesperson. Unfortunately, while the solution may be obvious, the time spent, risks, and costs of actually hiring the right salesperson for your offline consulting business are not so obvious. Today we are going to take a look at three different options for expanding your sales force, what their advantages and disadvantages are, and which circumstances are best suited for each option.

The three options that we shall discuss for expanding your sales force are as follows:

1. Using commission only sales agents
2. Outsourcing your sales activity
3. Recruiting sales people

A commission only sales agent, or salesperson, is an independent contractor (not an employees) who usually represents or promotes more than one business/product. The big advantage to using a commission only sales agent is the low cost and low monetary risk, since you do not pay this salesperson any money at all until they actually close a sale for you. They only get paid when you make money, so there is no upfront cash outlay for your business. There is also no base salary or employment taxes to pay, nor benefits to provide, nor employment paperwork to file.

The downside though is that you can only influence these sales people, but you cannot control what they do. If they decide to focus their efforts on other products or businesses and make your services less of a priority, then there isn’t much you can do about it, so you may not want to rely solely on this kind of an arrangement for your sales force, but use it in connjuction with either or both of the other options below. Additionally, using a commission only sales agent most often works better for selling products rather than services, so you may need to spend some extra time training this kind of salesperson and familiarizing them with your offline consulting services.

Our second option of outsourcing your sales activity can really be done in one of two ways. You can choose to either outsource only certain functions (like cold-calling, telephone follow up, or managing a direct mailing campaign), or outsource the entire sales process. These may be good options for you if you need something done quickly, and the partial outsourcing option in particular may be ideal for complementing the efforts of your sales force.
However, with partial outsourcing, you still don’t have the whole job covered, so you may still need to hire a salesperson.

If you choose to outsource every part of the sales process, it will free up quite a bit of your management time. However, it is extremely difficult to do this on a commission-only basis (especially if you have a very long sales cycle). You will most likely need to agree to a shared-risk payment structure that includes both a day rate plus a commission payment.  This means you have to pay for their work even if they never close a single sale!
Another significant disadvantage to outsourcing your entire sales process is that you lose the opportunity to build relationships with your customers, making this a poor long-term choice.

For maximum control of the sales process, the best option is undoubtedly to recruit your own sales people (i.e. hire your own employees). In this situation, you get to dictate where your sales people focus their efforts, and even how they should do their job.
The big problem with this of course is the risk, time and effort required, and the relatively high cost.

In this case, you do need to offer some base salary, pay employment taxes, consider providing employee benefits, and file all of the necessary employment paperwork – and all of this only after going through the whole recruiting process! And even then, you may find that you’ve hired someone who simply cannot deliver the increased sales to pay for their employment.

Most certainly there is no sure-fire solution to finding exactly the right salesperson for your offline consulting business. But if you’re currently a maxed-out, stressed-out, one-man sales force, then you should not let the potential pitfalls of hiring a salesperson stop you from doing just that. Simply think things through beforehand and make sure you’re choosing the right option for your particular situation. Keep realistic expectations of what can be accomplished when, and remember, if it does not work out, you can always make a change.