Technology Explained

What are you really selling

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:06 GMT

You cannot write an effective sales letter or advertisement
until you answer one question.

Once you’ve answered this question, your letter will almost
write itself.This question is: “What am I really selling?”

Am I selling cosmetics? Or am I selling the hope of the
reader becoming irresistible to men?

Am I selling clothes? Or am I selling a transformed life
that will lead to romance and success?

Am a selling a car? Or am I selling excitement, comfort,
and an image for the driver?

Am I selling refrigerators? Or am I selling fewer trips to
the grocery store because of all the added space, plus
dramatically
improving the appearance of the kitchen because of the fine
cherry wood paneling?

Am I selling vacations? Or am I selling an experience that
the reader and her children will remember for the rest of
their lives?

Am I selling gym memberships with treadmills and weights?
Or am I selling a new body that will make people more
attractive to the opposite sex and give them a longer,
healthier life?

Am I selling a seminar? Or am I selling a way to give those
who enroll an advantage over their peers and competitors
that will last a lifetime?

Am I selling admission to Harvard? Or membership in an
exclusive club that will lead to a more profitable career
and open the doors of opportunity throughout life?

Am I selling a subscription to an interesting magazine? Or
access to information the reader can’t do without and can’t
get anywhere else?

Is Starbucks selling coffee? Or is Starbucks selling an
experience, a place to hang out, and even a social life?

Are florists selling roses? Or the easiest way for a guy to
get back on the good side of his wife or girlfriend?

Is the phone company selling communications equipment? Or a
way to stay connected to friends and loved ones?

Is Viagra selling a fix for erectile dysfunction? Or a more
exciting, more enjoyable love life?

Understanding exactly what it is you are really selling
will improve the results of your marketing exponentially.

Create a successful marketing campaign

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:54 GMT

Your marketing campaign will be successful if it has these
four essential elements:

1. You must offer a product or service that people want.
This may seem obvious, and is just another way of saying,
“You’ll have a very difficult time selling ice to Eskimos
or down parkasto people who live in Ecuador.”

It’s amazing how many business people keep pounding their
heads against the wall trying to persuade people to want
theirwonderful product.Those businesses are not around
long.The greatest marketing plan and salesmen in the world won’t
succeed in selling products people don’t want. This is why
your product development people must also be marketers.

So often I’ve seen brilliant software architects scream,
howl, jump up and down, and treat the client like he’s an
idiot when the client doesn’t like the software.
“This software is great! This software is brilliant!” screams the software architect. “Why can’t they see that?”

The problem is the client doesn’t like the software,
doesn’t need it, doesn’t want it, and wasn’t looking for
it. And there is nothing a marketer can do to change that
fact.

Much better to find out what the customers want first,
and then develop the product tailored precisely
and exactly to what they want.
This is called “market research.”

The product or service you are selling is critical to your
marketing.The #1 rule of successful marketing is: If you
offer people what they want, you eliminate the need
for salesmanship.

2. You must have an attention-getting, compelling
message that distinguishes you from your competitors.
People are bombarded all day long with messages—TV ads,
radio ads,junk mail ads, and Internet ads. You must have a
message that stands out. You must have a message that gets the attention of those who would want your product . . . if they knew about it.

3. You must have a way to find those who want what you
are offering.If you have no way to systematically and
precisely find those who would want your product or service
if they knew about it, your business will have a very tough time surviving. You must match your message to those who will be interested in hearing your message. You must have a “Message to Market Match.”
This is just another way of saying you need a list of qualified prospects or leads, or you need a way of compiling such a list. There
are two ways you can find qualified prospects. You can rent
lists of people who have bought similar products to the one
you are selling.

The mailing list business is an enormous industry. So
that’s one source of names. The other way is to compile
your own one-of-a-kind list. There are many ways to do this, which I will get into later. The point here is that acquiring or compiling a list
of qualified prospects or leads is essential to your marketing.

4. You must have a cost-effective delivery system for
your message. Delivery tools at your disposal for getting
your message out include: direct mail, email, radio ads, TV
ads, newspaper and magazine ads, ads on the Internet, the
telephone, the Yellow Pages, classified ads, seminars, webinars,
teleconferences, books, special reports, newsletters, business cards, bulletin
boards, signs, and even the door-to-door sales calls (which we want to avoid). And there are countless variations within these categories.

You will need to choose the delivery tool that’s
appropriate for your business model, product, and budget. A
hammer is a great tool if you want to drive a nail into a
piece of wood, but a very bad tool if you need to saw the wood in half.

dbdprints
Business Marketing Solutions
877-400-9321

True definition of marketing.

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:51 GMT

Let&os;s first understand the true definition of marketing.

Marketing is not sales. Sales are an element of marketing.
But if your marketing is done right, you should never need
to make another sales call. You&os;ll just be taking in orders
and shipping product. Or you&os;ll just be accepting the jobs
you want to do. No more scrambling for work.

No more wondering how the bills for next month will be paid.
Marketing is not really selling at all. Marketing is the
process of putting bait in the water to attract leads, and
then putting your leads into a sifting and sorting system
that will allow you to identify your most likely customers.

You then keep putting yourself and your product in front of
your most qualified leads until they want to buy. You give
your leads great information in the form of newsletters and
emails that will keep them interested-not heavy-handed
sales pitches, but valuable free information that they look
forward to receiving. This, in summary, is how you
transform yourself from being an annoying pest into a
welcome guest in your prospect&os;s home.

That&os;s marketing, not sales.
Yes, sales are the end result of all your marketing.
Certainly you can&os;t make a penny until a sale is made. The
sale is everything in business. The sale is the one and
only goal of all Business. But you are no longer a salesman.
You are amarketer. And there&os;s a world of difference.
Good marketers are rich.

Salesmen are almost all
Poor and struggling, like Willie Loman in Arthur Miller&os;s
Death of a Salesman. Not happy story. You don&os;t want to be
Willie Loman. You want to be Bill Gates, Ross Perot, or
Donald Trump. These men are marketers. These men don&os;t make
sales calls. And neither should you.

Even if you are in a sales position-say, selling cars or
selling houses-never think of yourself as a salesman.
The great salesmen are really marketers. They aren&os;t
pounding the pavement and making cold calls.
Marketing is working smart.

Selling is working stupid. Be a marketer, not a salesman.
Study marketing. Live and breathe marketing. And your life
will be so much more pleasant and lucrative. Marketing is
your strategy. Marketing is your road map. Marketing is
your system. Marketing is all that goes into laying the
groundwork and establishing the preconditions that end in a
sale.

And if the marketing is done right, you don&os;t really need a
sales force. What you need are customer service people and
order takers. What you need is a mechanism, a system, to
handle all the business that pours in, seemingly magically,
seemingly on its own, almost out of thin air.

Except it&os;s not magic, on its own, or out of thin air. The
customers and clients that will line up at your door and
swamp your business are the result of careful planning and
execution of your overall marketing strategy.
Stay tuned for email 2
See you tomorrow

Dbdprints
877-400-9321

Marketing must come first

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:44 GMT

The true mission of all business

Most companies have a marketing division, a product
development division, and a customer service division. Most
companies think of these as three separate and distinct
functions.

Very often the product development people never talk to the
marketing people and the marketing people never talk to the
product development people. Meanwhile, the customer service
people have almost non stature in the company and are
thought of mainly as clerks.

There are also administrative people who do things like
accounting and make sure the elevators work and that
everyone has a computer and a desk.

The administrative people often have little idea of what
the company even does, much less any sense of the marketing
strategy.

What catastrophic mistakes these are.
Marketing should never be a “division” or a
“Department” within a company. Instead, the entire company
Should be about Marketing.

Everyone in the company should be involved in
Marketing. A receptionist is not a low-wage worker; he or
She is one of your vital marketers.

Your receptionist and those who answer the phones are the
voice of your company to your customers and clients. Your
accounting people are not bean counters, but should be
integrally involved in making your marketing more efficient
and productive. Everyone in every company should understand
that their paychecks come from one and only one source:
customers.

Without customers, without sales, there are no paychecks.
Everyone in every company should be thinking all the time
about how to create happy experiences for customers.
Everyone in the company should be first and foremost a
marketer.

The chairman of the company should think of almost nothing
else but marketing. The product development people should
think of marketing first when they develop their products.
What good is it to develop a great product or provide a
great service that no one wants?

All products must be developed with the market for the
product at the forefront. “Do our prospects and customers
want this thing we’re making?” is the question the product
development people must always ask.

Meanwhile, the finance people, the accountants, and the
lawyers should not ask, “How can we make our lives easier?”
Instead they should ask, “How can we make it easier for
people to do business with us? Do we really need to require
our customers to fill out all these forms when they buy? Do
we really need to require our customers to sign long
agreements that no one reads? Do we really need these awful
disclaimers in tiny print on our order forms?”

The janitor is not a janitor. A janitor is a key marketing
person whose job is to make sure the place looks neat and
clean—like a company people will want to do business with.
No matter what business you are in, your company should be
a marketing company first—because marketing by definition
means “creating happy customers and clients.”

Dbdprints
Business Marketing Solutions

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 22:11 GMT

Remote PC Support- Small business owners tired of Microsoft and their upgrades? Need more computing power but corporate finances little low? Looking for a better way to track clients and leads at low cost? Need to have you PC maintained to keep you office running smoothly. If you answered yes to any of these questions we can help, call now conversations are still free at dbdcloudconsulting.com

How To build a website in 5 minutes

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:44 GMT

You know you need a website for yourself or your organization. Now the only question is how you are going to go about doing it without breaking the bank. But at the same time, you don&os;t want it to look cheap either, it needs to look professional and be easy to change when changes are needed.

Having a web site today has become a necessity for individuals and organizations alike. Your online presence matters much in the global world we live in, especially if you want to be heard, to make a difference, then having your website is essential.

Making your own website is even more important if you want to do business online, or want to promote your products or services online. An effective website can do wonders in the marketing domain and get you the sales you desperately need. What’s more is that a mere website can change you from having a local presence to having a global one.

So what do you do if you want to have a website? The first thoughts that come to mind are thoughts that will send jitters down your spine. Instantly when you think of making a professional, classy website, with a website design that is catchy, you think of hiring professional web designers, making them understand how you want your website to be, paying them hundreds (or thousands) of dollars to make the website and then paying them more, and possibly having to wait days or weeks, for every change you want in the future. That is sure to make you weary and your pocketbook thin. In the old days (a few years ago) that used to be about the only choice you had unless you wanted to grind it out on your own trying to learn HTML coding from scratch. Yuck!
Now with CSS programming, it&os;s even more difficult to do on your own.

Fast forward to today: Now even a rank newbie can have their own professional website in just a few minutes. There are now some great options to make your very own website yourself with hardly any knowledge of programming or HTML or any of those complicated things. You can make your own website design, choose from a range of website templates and fill out the content the way you want, and, if you get the right website builder, you can make changes any time you want, whenever you want without it costing you anything extra. Making your own website has now become an affordable, do-it-yourself and easy thing to do, if, and I say if, you choose the right one.
But beware: choose the wrong web builder, and it could be a nightmare.
What you are looking for is an affordable, workable, professional looking website building tool preferably with a reasonable monthly fee of no more than $50 (to start) and preferably no contract. If you see them ask for a long-term contract, you should step back and reconsider.
About:
Other options to look for in a web page builder is a user-friendly interface that will take you right through the website designing and website publishing process from start to finish. You want to be able to choose from a range of website templates, and you want to be able to change the writing and pictures on your website anytime you desire, even at 2am in the morning, for no extra cost. With the right website builder, there is no need to buy or master expensive and difficult to learn graphics programs. Less effort, less time, less money and better results can be had with the proper website building program.

Try our web builder tool now free

CrossLoop Badge

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 23:14 GMT

CrossLoop Badge

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 22:41 GMT

VPN for small business productivity

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:03 GMT

As workforces get more and more decentralized and telecommuting becomes more widespread, businesses of all sizes have come to depend on virtual private networks, or VPNs. A VPN is a secure, private network that runs on a public network (usually the Internet). VPN&os;s to your network, just as if they were at their desks in your office. If you or your employees are routinely away from your office and need access to your company&os;s network, a VPN is an inexpensive way to increase productivity — without sacrificing security.

The name "virtual private network" gives you a clue about how VPNs actually work. VPN software programs "carve out" a section of the Web, and allow only authorized users to access it. This virtual network runs on top of an existing network and is private. Hence the name.

Users who provide the correct login information are granted access to the VPN gateway at the office. Once they&os;re connected though the gateway, they can access the network just as if they were at their desks — reading and sending e-mail, opening and storing files, or working on specific local applications.

To create a secure link between a mobile user and the network, you need a VPN client and a VPN gateway. The VPN client is a software application that&os;s installed on the mobile computer of the remote user, and the gateway is a program or computer on the network end that lets in authorized users and keeps out unauthorized ones.

To provide additional security, the client encrypts data before it sends it out, and the gateway decodes it once it arrives. This communication between client and gateway is known as tunneling.

Even a one-person company can reap the benefits of VPN technology. Both Windows Server and Windows XP have built-in VPN capability, so if your LAN runs on Windows Server, it&os;s just a matter of enabling and configuring the VPN features. That&os;s easier said than done, but you don&os;t have to be a computer science major to do it, either.

Of course, there are many non-Microsoft alternatives, too — many designed for the home PC user. Many firewall applications also come with VPN capability, as a VPN gateway is very similar to a firewall. Both let trusted traffic in and keep intruders out.

Get Free Computer Consulting and Quotes

6 Tips To Gain New Clients

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:54 GMT

6 Tips To Gain New Clients

If you are having difficulty adding new clients to your client list, you need to remember that closing sales is not as difficult as you might be thinking. Here are 6 tips to gain new clients and watch your agency grow and prosper. You&os;ll be a closing sales and generating revenue in no time.

1. You Can&os;t Be Pushy

If you are pushy with your clients, you&os;ll loose them. In fact, that doesn&os;t just apply to insurance sales. Anytime you are selling if you are pushing your client around and annoying them they won&os;t be purchasing anything from you. You&os;ve had that annoying salesperson when you&os;re out shopping. Don&os;t be that person.

If you are kind and you are considerate, it will make a significant difference in the number of insurance policies you are actually able to sell. Your client needs to feel like you are their to aid them in improving their life, and help them to secure their health and well-being for years to come.

2. Honesty Is Key

Don&os;t beat around the bush, and don&os;t stretch the truth. Right from the beginning it&os;s important to be honest about what it is, you are offering the client including its pros and cons. You need to be honest about what the product can do for their life. When you do this, you&os;ll come across, as caring, respectful, and honest and your client will appreciate this, increasing the likelihood that you will get the sale.

You want to watch for verbal cues that your client shows to determine how interested they are in the services you are offering. Your client is going to ask you questions about the service you are offering. They might ask if it will be easy to add a family member or they might even criticize previous policies they used to have or maybe even still hold. They might tell you that they are glad you offer such a service or that it had never been offered to them before. Read the verbal cues and act accordingly.

3. Be An Expert

Nothing will send your potential client running faster than if you don&os;t know what services you offer, if you must constantly look things up, or if you simply don&os;t appear authoritative. When you appear as an expert, and when you know your services inside out, the client feels they can trust you and you come across as really having their best interests at heart.

4. Ask Questions To Answer Questions

This is an excellent marketing strategy that actually increases the close rate significantly, because the client is forced to choose your service without ever realizing it. You simply answer a question by asking a question. If the client asks if it is easy to add my family member to their policy, you would answer, "Would you like to add your children now?"

5. Give Your Client Options

An insurance agent that&os;s effective always tailors the insurance plan to what the client wants. It can change at any moment during a conversation, which is where the clues are taken from. When you suggest insurance policies that are based on the clients needs and wants they know you care about improving the quality of their lives.

Clients Need Time To Think

You should always give your client time to think. You can subtly push them in a direction but you never want overload them or come across as pushy. Your potential client is going to need time to think and digest what you have told them.

There you have it - 6 tips to gain new clients quickly and effectively. Use these tips and you&os;ll see a significant increase in your close rate. You should also consider purchasing qualified insurance leads from a company like InsuranceLeadz.com where you&os;ll get leads that are already verified as legitimate leads. It&os;s what can give you the edge over the competition, so why not start gaining new clients today?