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10 Super Articles that Make Getting New Customers a Whole Lot Easier!

Filed Under Inside-Out Thinking, Perfect Virtual Manager, Successful Blog, The Big Idea | 5 Comments

Advice from 10 of the Best

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Last week, I wrote about

How to Get Customers to Sell Themselves (on You).

For today, I’ve gathered 10 super articles on attracting new clients or customers. I’ve read them all and added a summary to each link so that you can target the ones you’ll find most helpful. So here’s the list.

  1. Why Do People Really Buy? by Mike Sigers at Simplenomics A coaching session about how to understand your business’s sales story from one of the best sales and marketing guys on the Internet.
  2. #5.19: The “Steal From The Best” Issue by Andy Sernovitz for Damn, I Wish I Thought of That! Advice on how to learn from the research and development already done by the big guys.
  3. Features And Benefits And Sales, Oh My! By Diane Helbig for Ezine Articles “Stop talking. Stop thinking. And please, stop selling. Your prospect doesn’t want to listen to you ramble on about things they don’t care about. . . .
    Ask a few questions, listen, and then address only what you hear. Let’s explore this process.” [via The Top 10 Sales Articles ]
  4. Romance Your Customers By Making The Easy Sale First by Evan Carmichael An explanation of the most basic step of permission marketing.
  5. Put Passion into Your Sales by Niche Marketing by Brad Shorr for Word Sell Inc. How to sell more naturally by limiting your market.
  6. Don’t Overlook The Easy Sales from business know how Shows how to tap into the relationships you have to get help with your quest to find new customers who love what you do
  7. Easy Sales: The Trend for Small Business by Jack Yoest at Small Business Trends Here are the questions to ask so that you don’t find yourself investing too much time and too much of yourself in a deal you can’t close.
  8. The Art of Prospecting For Customers by Biz Info Library for SalesMotivation.net How to warm up cold calls.
  9. The Role of Leadership in Selling by Daniel Sitter How to show clients that your motive is provide a solution to their problem.
  10. How to Seize the Phone Even If You Fear Cold Calling by Tammy Stanley for Salesopedia The psychology of getting energized to make cold calls. “You would be hard pressed to find a sales professional who isn’t familiar with those trouble thoughts that talk him out of making calls now and convince him to wait for a better time to make sales calls or cold calls.” [via The Top 10 Sales Articles ]
  11. BONUS! Ten Timeless Persuasive Writing Techniques by Brian Clark for Copyblogger To use Brian’s own words, “Persuasion is generally an exercise in creating a win-win situation. You present a case that others find beneficial to agree with. You make them an offer they can’t refuse, but not in the manipulative Godfather sense.”

Selling, like any other new skill, takes practice to become natural. So don’t quit. A friend and her husband made a game of who would get rejected most.

People do say “yes.” If you follow the advice of the experts, folks will say “yes” even faster and more often.

What’s your reason for not telling “your audience” of potential customers about what you have to offer?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

Related
To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss’ Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

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To Write a Review Folks Find Useful — Don’t Stick to the Facts

Filed Under Inside-Out Thinking, Perfect Virtual Manager, Successful Blog, The Big Idea | 14 Comments

Reviewers Who Think

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Have ever read a review and still wondered whether you’d like the product? Do you know any reviewer who you rely on because he or she has the opposite opinions of you? Sometimes a reviewer who thinks differently than we do is more valuable than one who doesn’t say what he or she thinks at all.

I’ve been reading a passel of product reviews all weekend. Now I remember why I don’t read reviews. In an effort to be unbiased, reviewers seem to be too distant, too flat — they give the facts. The facts aren’t enough.

Don’t Stick to the Facts

When you blog the facts only, anyone could write basically the same review. The differences will be in the writing only. When you blog the facts only people tend to read to the minute detail to make sure your facts are exactly right . . . and that they’re all there. Too many facts can be either distracting or boring. Would the VW Beetle have been a hit based only on the facts? What about McDonalds? the iPod?

If you want to write a product review that folks find useful, don’t stick to the facts.

  • Facts don’t tell me if I will love my future mate.
  • Facts don’t tell the story of history.
  • Facts are only a part of the whole picture.

Write your experience too.

The Two Key Reasons to Write Your Experience

Here are the 2 key reasons why you should write a review with both the facts AND your experience.

  1. When you add your experience, readers get to see you. They know you used the product. It’s your voice and your credibility.

  2. When readers hear talk about using the product, they can picture themselves. It doesn’t matter whether they agree with how you found it, If you explain what made you think as you do — they’ll decide for themselves.

Any customer needs more than facts to decide whether to buy any product. Sure the facts are important, but looking only at the facts doesn’t tell what it’s like to use it.

When you add your experience, people are more likely to remember both the product and you. A great review can save a reader a great deal of time and money.

Don’t be shy. Tell me what you think.

– ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar. Call her now!

Related
To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss’ Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

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Change the World: What if We Chose a Different Color?

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog, The Big Idea | 10 Comments

Don’t Decide in Anger

Change the World!

Awhile back I wrote about stories I would make up about the grains of the mahogany in the headboard of my childhood bed.

The wavy lines were roads to villages where people had feelings that came in colors — anger went from red to orange.

And in the villages, they couldn’t see when in my mind I’d change the universe. On joyful days, I’d see the wood in shades of purple. On quiet days, it would be blues to greens. Rarely there would be yellows. On angry, lonely days I’d see it go from red to orange.

Red to orange. How I remember that feeling.

Anger is a lonely place.

In the response, a friend, brad4d, spoke of wisdom and anger…

“Wisdom entereth not into a malicious mind” ~ Rabelais ~ means to me, anger erases wisdom.

How skewed my thinking becomes when I feel angry. I lose sight. I lose perspective. I forget other people. I lose the wisdom and love of a lifetime. I lose the person I want to be.

Most times, I’m far from anger. Those days I’m a decent human being.

I know we couldn’t do it forever — I know we couldn’t all do it simultaneously.

But . . .

What if just once a whole bunch chose a different color? What if instead of the red of anger we chose the gold of compassion? How wise might the world start to be?

We can change the world, just like that.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

______________
If you’re ready to change the world, send me your thoughts in a guest post. Feel free to take the gorgeous Change the World image up there that Sandy designed back to your blog. Or help yourself to this one.

Change the World!.

Email me about what you’re doing or what we might do. Let’s change the world one bit at a time together. Together it can’t take forever.

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4.6: Simple Sales 101 — How to Get Customers to Sell Themselves

Filed Under Inside-Out Thinking, Perfect Virtual Manager, Successful Blog, The Big Idea | 5 Comments

Customers Get to Pick

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It’s a rule of childhood. Every kid seems to know it. I get to pick my favorite. You don’t. Some folks, as grownups, forget that simple truth. — they make us feel like we should let them pick for us.

That’s called the hard sell.

Ever been told, ‘You HAVE TO see this new product. You WILL LOVE our new service!” ?

What’s your response, right now, reading that? Mine is “You don’t know that! In fact, now I’m predisposed to like it just a little less.”

We’re hype adverse. Put that together with these natural human responses.

  • No one likes to be told what to think.
  • No one likes to lose the right to pick their favorite.
  • No one likes someone else to decide what they need.

We know other folks don’t get to pick — so when they talk as if they do, we back off. If you’ve met a sales rep who brings out these responses in you, it’s no wonder if you are having mixed feelings about taking on a sales role for what you do.

How to Get Customers to Sell Themselves

The question then is: How do we communicate an offer — a product or service — that we’re thrilled about and we’ve done all of the work to know folks will like it too, if only they’ll try it out?

Here’s what to do. You can do this in text or in person. (In text, point 2 looks a lot like an FAQ.)

  1. Offer a taste — a movie trailer. Make it a little one — spoon sized like at Baskin-Robbins 31 Flavors. It might be one example of what you do, a case study, a blog post that you keep for sending to clients, a free weekly seminar, a phone call with you. Whatever you choose. Keep it concise and tightly focused on only one idea. It’s only one scene from your movie — overcome a tendency we have to give the plot away. (Often having the taste as an option makes people feel secure enough to buy without it.)
  2. Make everything about THEM. Ask questions and listen. Hardly say anythng. Be a verifier. Repeat back what you heard, “I heard you say you’re looking for . . .” Ask questions in that way until you’ve helped them draw a complete picture of your product or service. “I also hear you want . . . and a . . . If I put that together I get a . . . with the features of . . . . Does that sound like the ideal that you wish someone would offer someday?”
  3. Listen to see how his or her needs line them up with your offer. When you see that, you’ll have the confidence to say so. “We actually do that! Would you like me to tell you about it?” (Don’t worry if the needs and your offer don’t line up, just say so and don’t try to make things work.)
  4. Talk to the customer/client unemotionally about what you have to offer. You’ll know that you’re going somewhere when the person you’re talking to starts selling you on why it’s a good match. That’s when it’s time to start listening again.

Letting the customer pick is the same as when we were kids. We know what we need and why. We’ll even justify for you why it works for us, in essence selling ourselves on why we should buy.

What do you need to give this a try?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
If you’d like Liz to work with you on these three easy steps, you’ll find her number on the
Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar. Call her now!

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To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss’ Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

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4.5: 25 Things that People — Our Key Customers — Really Want

Filed Under Inside-Out Thinking, Perfect Virtual Manager, Successful Blog, The Big Idea | 18 Comments

Everyone Has Customers

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I’ve been thinking a lot about customers lately. We all have them. Some are traditional sorts. They come to our businesses and pay us for products or services. Some are a little less conventional — they come in a customer role for things that don’t cost. Blog readers, first graders, park users are customers like those. Other customers don’t seem like customers at all, but really they are . . . mothers, fathers, sons, daughters all rely on our services like customers.

So it seems that knowing what customers want is more than a good idea. With that many customers everywhere we look, knowing what keeps them on a happy note would seem more like survival. Don’t you think?

25 Things that People — Our Key Customers — Really Want

Whether we have a business or we are just in the business of living, it’s good to know what will help us deliver a smile on the faces of the folks we care most about.

This list works for every kind of customer I’ve been able to think up. (Don’t go getting kinky on me.)

  1. People want help solving a problem.
  2. People want folks to notice them.
  3. People want to be heard when they offer their thoughts.
  4. People want to feel smart.
  5. People want to be a part of things.
  6. People want to be generous and for you to be generous too.
  7. People want give and be good things and want you to give and be good things too.
  8. People want to not worry . . . about time, money, health, injury, or other danger.
  9. People want to know that you’ll be the same person or better than the last time they saw you.
  10. People want to be entertained.
  11. People want to be informed.
  12. People want to learn.
  13. People want to know you don’t say bad things about them.
  14. People want to know they aren’t a number or a metric.
  15. People want good cake not just icing on a bad one.
  16. People do want the truth. They just don’t want it delivered with a sledgehammer.
  17. People want to believe in something without someone picking on them for it.
  18. People don’t want innovation. They want things that make life more livable.
  19. People want things and experiences that make their fill their time more meaningfully.
  20. People want to be understood.
  21. People want their questions answered even when the answer is “I don’t know.”
  22. People want the right to make mistakes without losing every time they do.
  23. People want to make their own choices.
  24. People want to know that you value their differences.
  25. People want to know that you know they are people.

People aren’t hard to understand. We all were born one of them. The trick is to keep in mind that folks around us — even folks we don’t know –are people too. They have their own thoughts and desires in the same way we have ours. We can meet with them where we agree — 25 points up there give us plenty to start with.

In our lives and in our businesses, people are our only customers for our actions and behaviors. If we make it about THEM, everyone will be just a little bit nicer. Lose track of that and they’ll remind us.

What things do the people in your life want? Are you a product of your environment? Could you be a better one?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Related
To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss’ Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

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