Sodafone

Affiliate marketing is similar to an auction. Your website promotes merchandise and for your effort, every last sale gets you commission. There is less work required, fewer operating costs, it sells 24/7, and what’s even better, it’s relatively simple to learn. To start, you must decide just what area most suits your business style. To do this, you need to find out solutions to issues a particular group of customers are anticipating, and what solutions are on offer to help them. A good way of achieving this is searching for unique sets of narrow keywords; generally customers look for these less, yet they convert far more. These crucial keywords can be discovered by using Micro Niche Finder. Data collected by this computer program or analogous programs or services compiles a list of related words and phrases giving worthwhile information to obtain a great listing in the search engines and bring in a great deal of traffic.

Micro Niche Finder data will also recount how many searches each one gets, the number of competing sites, even competitor details. Last but not least, Micro Niche Finder data can help identify desirable domains, help you put together your web site, and draw your attention to suitable goods to sell.

Construction of a website is next on the list; but you will plainly have to do more than just that. It is crucial to fine-tune your web site for the search engines. This is where Seo Elite information comes in. This software automatically examines competitor’s sites and advises you what you must do to achieve good rankings in the search engine listings.

With applications like SEO Elite, info supplied by the computer software advises you on links, the best keywords, and information on how to submit articles. In a nutshell, the data created are the same kind of information that a specialist in search engine optimization may give.

Once you find your target market, have your product advertisements, and your site has been constructed, then all you need to do is easily enhance your search results. You’ll pick up steady payments and you will question why you didn’t try affiliate marketing earlier!

Focus on a Trade, Not a Discount

Smart buyers will always ask for a better price. Unfortunately,
too many sales people and business owners automatically think
that reducing their price is the most effective way to respond
to this request.

However, negotiating is not always about price. Although price
is a factor in virtually every sale it is not usually the
primary or motivating factor. Everything you say and do from the
first contact with a prospect affects the value of your product
or service in their mind. That’s why I believe it is important
to look at the negotiating process differently in order to
achieve better results.

First of all, invest time gathering information about your
prospective customer, his needs, situation, and buying motives.
The more information you have the more prepared you will be to
negotiate later in the sales process. Regardless of what you
sell, and to whom, information will help you negotiate more
effectively. Many of my clients tell me that their customers
care only about price, but upon further exploration, other
issues usually arise. Uncovering the key issues your customer is
facing is critical to your negotiating success.

The second most important step is to establish the value of your
product or service to your customer. Positioning is an important
factor and will affect the price your customer is willing to
pay. What pain does your product or service eliminate? How does
it solve a problem they are experiencing? How do your products
and service differ from your competitors? Most of my clients
sell premium products at a premium price. In exchange, their
customers receive better than average service, faster response
times, or higher quality products. What is your leverage and how
can you use it to increase the value of what you sell?

You have executed the above steps but price is still an issue
for your customer. What do you do now? Instead of conceding to
their request and giving them a discount, focus on creating a
trade. This means you should ask for something in exchange for
making a concession. What can you trade or ask for? Almost
anything!

A longer contract, a bigger order, more add-on items, an
introduction to another key decision-maker in the company,
access to their mailing list or client database, or payment
terms. You can negotiate for products and services that the
other person or company offers such as consulting, office
equipment, computers, furniture, business services, etc. I once
worked for an electronics company and my boss offered a
big-screen as payment for services to a potential vendor. I was
shocked when the vendor eagerly accepted because I always had
the impression that business people focused strictly on cash.

Here are a few ways you can effectively position this request.

“If I could do that price for you would you be willing to extend
the length of the contract for an additional three months?”

“If I could work that out would you be prepared to give me
advertising space?”

“The only way I could give you that is if you add one more line
of products.”

“Let’s put that aside for the time being. Would you be able to
give a similar amount of…in exchange for that concession?”

The key here is to think outside the box and explore other
options available to you.

I recall speaking to a prospective client about a training
workshop and was asked to make a concession that amounted to a
fifteen percent discount. I was not comfortable with this so I
asked my prospect if he would be willing to give me a comparable
amount of his product instead. He did not have the authority to
make such a decision but spoke to someone who did. My request
was eventually denied so my client conceded to my initial offer.

Another effective approach is to make the concession but take
something away from the initial offer. For example, you could
say, “I can do that. However, I will have to charge you for…” or
“I can do that. Do you want free delivery or after-hours service
taken out of the contract?”

Most people will expect you to keep all the conditions “as is”
but they will want the lower price. By demonstrating how much
the concession is worth you can reduce the effectiveness of
their request.

Finally, another strategy is to always ask for something in
return for making a concession even if you don’t need it. I have
been surprised how many times I have gotten something extra
simply by asking. Plus, it often prevents the other person from
asking for an additional concession because they know you will
ask for something in return.

Remember, your ultimate goal is to give away as little as
possible in order to close the sale. Every time you discount
your product or service you discount yourself and eat away your
profits.

© Copyright 2004 Kelley Robertson

Most salespeople are wimps when they talk to prospects and customers, but not when they talk to other people. Why do they wimp out when they talk to prospects and customers? Why are they so afraid that talking straight to prospects will be deemed offensive?

A lot of our trainees protest what they think is the “harsh” language of High Probability Selling.

In a recent High Probability Selling training course, several participants protested the way we teach them to talk to their prospects and customers. “It seems to be abrupt, harsh, even rude,” said one student. “I understand the theory of being so direct but, talking that way isn’t really me,” he said.

Another student said, “I know it’s beneficial for both the prospect and the salesperson to be straight with prospects. But, I think most prospects would be offended by that way of talking.”

However, when salespeople talk that way to people who are NOT prospects, then they describe it as speaking “directly, forthrightly and honestly.”

Here’s what I told them. You have to give up on being the most courteous, most agreeable, and most accommodating salesperson on earth. That’s not who you really are and that is not the kind of person whom the vast majority of prospects and customers trust and respect. Acting that way is a transparently phony.

We know that the two most important buying decision factors are whether or not the prospect Trusts you and Respects you. You need to be authentic in order to be trusted, and you need to respect yourself before you will be respected. Most salespeople need to learn how to do that - effectively and gracefully - in order to become highly successful.

©Jacques Werth, High Probability® Selling - All rights reserved.

Jacques Werth, author of “High Probability Selling,” is an internationally respected Sales Trainer and Sales Consultant. HPS graduates are excelling as Top Producers in over 70 industries. Visit http://www.highprobsell.com to read more articles, preview the book, and learn more about High Probability Selling.

A large metropolitan newspaper has a 300 seat call center.

Every 90 days, on average, it turns over every one of those seats. Its annual telemarketer turnover rate is 400%, costing an estimated six million dollars. Twelve hundred new people have to be recruited, trained, and terminated to enable this behemoth to simply keep going.

Internally, a large infrastructure of trainers and call monitors must be maintained, simply to service the demand for telephone-ready personnel. It is not in the interest of these people to tame the telemarketing turnover problem. It is this very problem that gives them ongoing employment and job security.

In fact, it serves their purpose to be incompetent, because if recruits are never sufficiently trained, they’ll be more likely to come and go, feeding this lumbering labor machine again, and again. The remainder of the human resources staff also benefits from the incessant recruiting, interviewing, and related start-up tasks involved in bringing new people aboard, purging them, and replacing them.

There is a simple solution to the turnover problem: double the pay of the telemarketers.

That’s what six million dollars could do, overnight. People will not willingly leave a much better paying job.

Yet, this is the last thing that a company of this kind would consider.

Why?

(1) It wouldn’t look good on the balance sheets. It is easier to justify large recruiting expenses, which appear temporary, than to have a higher, apparently permanent payroll. For a similar reason, outsourcing appears to the bean counters to be cheaper, though in reality it can be pricier than maintaining employees on your own books.

(2) There is a fundamental bias against paying telemarketers more money. Because many of them are young, old, students, single parents, handicapped, they seem marginal, and so they’re underpaid, under-rewarded. If you think I’m wrong, compare the pay of outside versus inside salespeople, and then try to logically justify the striking differences.

(3) There is the generalization in place that turnover and telemarketing simply go together: you can’t have one without the other. Yet when you ask, as I did the other day, a manager how long the average rep stays aboard, he’ll say one month. In the next breath, he’ll tell you that his best producers have been with him two and three years, respectively. Why are they making it, while others aren’t? Obviously, some people can do the job well, and like it.

(4) There is fear in management ranks that a bidding war for personnel will break out if one company pays above-average wages. This thinking is spurious. The money is already being spent, again on the lumbering labor machine. Higher pay simply redirects it, while staunching losses.

There are other ways to attack the turnover problem, including significantly better, professional training, and professional management. No matter how you slice it, these improvements also require redirected financial resources.

Telemarketing turnover can be tamed, and it will be, when senior management opens its eyes and starts to seriously address the problem.

Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of http://www.Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone® and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC’s Annenberg School, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com