Try Before You Buy Offer

Using the social aspect of sales:

Sometimes the social aspect of a TRY before you BUY offer can be used to help people make the right decision, making the sales process faster and less stressful.

Quite often your potential customers have already decided to purchase your products/services and your try before you buy offer simply helps them to make a decision.

Don’t let your potential customers make the mistake of taking their business elsewhere, sometimes people want to buy your product/service but they need to remove the risk of buying from you.

Use a ‘Try before you Buy’ Offer,

Find a way to offer your potential customer an opportunity to try your products, let them test it or see if it works, don’t be fooled into thinking your product/service is to valuable to let potential customers try it for free.

Test it out!! it will pay dividends.

BMW or Mercedes will quite happily let you test drive one of their cars, WHY because they know that it works, many customers buy cars from one these two companies this is the same principle as a try before you buy offer.

Here’s what to do NOW:

Firstly: find a way to get potential New Customers to try your product and feel the value it will offer to them, make sure this trial is FREE.

Secondly: ask these potential New customers what they thought about your product or service after using it.

If they tell you they love it, ask them what is it, that they loved

The answer to this question should be the foundation of your sales pitch, remember questions hold the answers let your potential customers sell your product for you. Believe me when I say they will sell your product or service to themselves.

This would be a good time for you to say, I’m really glad you found our product or service useful, then you can use an assumptive close to sell your product/service.

If you ask this question in the right manner and say nothing your potential customer will be motivated into taking some action, this won’t work every time but it will massively increase the number of sales that you make, try it and see.

It makes little or no sense what so ever, that any business even small businesses would not have a try before you buy offer.

Another approach is to let your potential customers take all the risk, putting their faith in you and your product/service ask yourself what you would do in this buying situation?

If you wouldn’t buy your product neither will they.

Thought this might be interesting!!!

In these days of really hard work, uncertainty and crisis (probably more fear and panic than real problems), it’s good to remember the following words from

Albert Einstein:

Let’s not pretend that things will change if we keep doing the same things. A crisis can be a real blessing to any person, to any nation. For all crises bring progress.

Creativity is born from anguish, just like the day is born form the dark night. It’s in crisis that inventive is born, as well as discoveries, and big strategies. Who overcomes crisis, overcomes himself, without getting overcome. Who blames his failure to a crisis neglects his own talent, and is more respectful to problems than to solutions. Incompetence is the true crisis.

The greatest inconvenience of people and nations is the laziness with which they attempt to find the solutions to their problems. There’s no challenge without a crisis. Without challenges, life becomes a routine, a slow agony. There’s no merit without crisis. It’s in the crisis where we can show the very best in us. Without a crisis, any wind becomes a tender touch. To speak about a crisis is to promote it. Not to speak about it is to exalt conformism. Let us work hard instead.

Let us stop, once and for all, the menacing crisis that represents the tragedy of not being willing to overcome it.

I had this sent to me from Carsten pro- Plan interactivo S.L, wwwpro-plan.eu and thought you might find this interesting.

Generating Business Part Two:

The Next 10 Questions You Should Ask Yourself:

Today I want to share with you the next 10 great ways to highlight some instant ways for you to generate more enquiries, boost your profit and grow your business.

The following 10 questions will help you to understand where your business is succeeding and where it isn’t so that you can take the necessary action to produce rapid results. Effort will be required on your part if you wish to take advantage of those extra profits you could be missing out on.

Did you know it takes 99% of effort to launch a rocket but only 10% to keep it flying?

1 How much time each year do your sales team spend learning leading edge sales skills?

2 You should have an excellent lead generation in place, Do you have this in place ?

3 Do you have an ongoing communication with qualified leads consisting of letters and emails and phone calls?

4 Do your customers ever send you testimonials and do you use them?

5 Do you have an effective referrals system in your work place?

6 There are lots of ways of obtaining referrals, can you name three?

7 You should offer something of value to your website visitors in exchange for their contact details; do you make this offer to them?

8 You should know how to write a press release as this will grab the attention of the person reading it; do you know how to do this?

9 You should personalise all emails newsletters and letters, is this something you are doing?

10 You should send regular email communications to your customers and prospective customers do you do this?

If you have answered NO to any of the above, implement the changes today and begin to earn those missing profits that your company needs.

WATCH OUT FOR THE NEXT TEN GREAT WAY TO BOOST YOUR PROFIT AND GROW YOUR BUSINESS.

Dave Edwards www.harlequinsalesandmarketing.com
How To Get NEW Customers On A Tight Budget – And Get People To Do Business With YOU Rather Than Your Competitors!

Generating Business Part One:

Ask Yourself These 10 Questions:

Today I am going to share with you 10 great ways to highlight some instant ways for you to generate more enquiries, boost your profit and grow your business.

The following 10 questions will help you to understand where your business is succeeding and where it isn’t so that you can take the necessary action to produce rapid results.

These questions are what you should ask yourself, give them plenty of time and thought and you will be surprised at the results you can achieve. This would be a good time for me to point out that should you answer NO to any of these questions, these are areas of your business where you are losing out on those all important PROFITS.

All is not lost, don’t bury your head in the sand or crawl under a stone this exercise should motivate you into taking action with your marketing.

1 You should be able to name three things that set you apart from your competition (Can you?)

2 You should demonstrate the benefits your products will have for your customers in all your promotional literature (do you?)

3 You should use telemarketing to attract new potential customers (do you?)

4 You should use Direct Mail to attract new potential customers (do you?)

5 You should have a good relationship with a media so that you can acquire some good PR to build name awareness (do you have this relationship?)

6 You should use Direct Response adverts that will make your potential customers jump to action (do you use this type of advert?)

7 You should not advertise in the media just because your competitors advertise there, you should try something different (do you?)

8 You should always converse with your customers in ways they can understand (do you?)

9 You should test search engine advertising (have you?)

10 You should test Internet Advertising (Have you?)

If you have answered NO to any of the above, implement the changes today and begin to earn those missing profits that your company needs.

WATCH OUT FOR THE NEXT TEN GREAT WAY TO BOOST YOUR PROFIT AND GROW YOUR BUSINESS.

Dave Edwards www.harlequinsalesandmarketing.com
How To Get NEW Customers On A Tight Budget – And Get People To Do Business With YOU Rather Than Your Competitors!

Key Ingredients to Marketing Success

Six Ways to Marketing Success:

It’s FREE and you can do this RIGHT NOW, take a step back and look at your business from outside the box, this way you will see how you can Market your Business in a totally different way, ‘‘in a way your competitors aren’t doing it”.

Most businesses market their products in the same way as their competitors, they are all searching for exactly the same customers. did you know that at any given time between 3% and 7% of people are looking for your products or services.

Let me explain:

If you open your local newspaper (the one you advertise in) yours and your competitors adverts will look the same, sure you all have your company details on your advert which differentiates you a little but on the whole your customers are going to choose you and three of your competitors for their quotation. What you are doing is Marketing in a Vacuum. Have you ever tried advertising for the 93% to 97% of people that have not even thought about your product yet.

Marketing outside the vacuum will remove the competition and make your customers take decisive action. Most businesses are lemmings when it comes to advertising its all follow the leader, like something in their heads saying they have to market in the same way that everyone else in their profession markets. So all the electricians advertise in the local paper, all the hairdressers advertise in the yellow pages and all the double glazing companies use telemarketing and so on.

95% of businesses only market their products in one or two ways, it might be the local newspaper, or perhaps its Direct Mail. Do you know how much potential business you might be missing only using a couple of ways to Market your Business? Imagine what might happen to your business if you used Five or Six ways to promote your product or services, I know your thinking what about the cost (it’s already costing me a fortune on advertising) but i’m talking about ”How To Get NEW Customers On A Tight Budget – And Get People To Do Business With YOU Rather Than Your Competitors”

What will happen, if you use more cost effective ways to market your business is that you will achieve what everyone continually tells me is ‘impossible, ”You’ll increase your profits by 50% or 100%”.

Lets have a look at some cost effective marketing methods you can use to dramatically boost your business:

Here’s my list, of the top six most cost effective marketing methods you can use to boost your business profits, Pick a couple of them and MAKE A DECISION to add them to your marketing mix in the next few weeks ahead:

Direct Mail
Internet Marketing
Email Marketing
Strategic Alliances
Referral Systems
PR

Step outside the box, use, test and measure your chosen methods.

Remember most other businesses are not willing to do this, it’s all too much effort and they’re more interested in moaning and blaming today’s economic climate because their businesses are suffering. THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX and get your success story on the road.

Dave Edwards www.harlequinsalesandmarketing.com
How To Get NEW Customers On A Tight Budget – And Get People To Do Business With YOU Rather Than Your Competitors!

U.K. Advertising “Make It Pay”

Advertising seems to be every one’s favourite way of wasting money:

So let’s take a look at how you can get Better Results from your advertising budget.

In my experience there are better and more cost effective ways of marketing than advertising. This said, most businesses I know depend heavily on advertising and therefore give little thought to finding more cost effective ways to market their business. Advertising is the most expensive of all marketing options so business owners should look at getting their advertising right before spending their marketing budget. If  however you are advertising already, or plan to in the future, here are my thoughts on what works and what doesn’t.

Don’t Advertise if it Isn’t Working.

If this sounds silly or obvious you would be amazed at how many businesses advertise because that’s what they have always done or even worse because the competition does it, most don’t even know if their advertising works or if it doesn’t.

Measure the results of all your advertising its really important. Many businesses just allocate a certain amount of money to an advertising budget, they spend this budget every year…and only have a vague idea if the adverts are working or if there not, this is absolutely barmy. If your advertising works then use it on a larger scale if it doesn’t work STOP it immediately and use the money on one of dozens of other marketing strategies that can bring you a better return on your investment.

Use Direct Response Advertising, other forms of advertising are institutional (or brand) advertising and are designed to build brand awareness, If you’re a small or medium sized business, brand advertising is almost certainly a waste of your advertising budget.

For small or medium size businesses your advertising needs to produce a profitable response, so stick to Direct Response Advertising and watch your profits grow
RATE CARDS:
Now there’s a laugh! I often chuckle to myself when newspaper sales executives talk about rate cards, most rate cards are far too high always negotiate a better rate is my advice. 20 to 30% less for your advertising isn’t unreasonable and can make your advertising campaign profitable rather than unprofitable and I bet your sales executive is soon back looking for more business.

Just as with direct mail the HEADLINE should be given lots of thought it will if written properly increase response greatly, don’t be tempted to use your company name as the headline think of something that will grab your customers attention, remember also that the copy of your advert needs to communicate with the person reading it.

Here are some other advertising tips:
If possible place your advert on an early right hand page. This has been tested again and again. When you read a newspaper or magazine your eyes are drawn to the right hand page as you flick through, so statistically more people will see your ad if it’s on the right hand page, use Bold or Underline text in your advert especially on any offers

like I said in my experience many businesses are wasting money on ineffective advertising compared to other cost effective means like (Direct Mail, Telephone Marketing, Direct Sales, Email, Internet, Referrals, Strategic Alliances etc) But done properly advertising can be highly profitable and a good mix with other marketing forms.

Hope you found this interesting if you did pass it on or leave your comments:

Feel free to forward this information on to anyone who will find it useful. If they want to receive my emails, they need to go to harlequinsalesandmarketing.com/newsletter.

Make Money With Direct Mail

Direct Mail

Let’s remove any doubts; direct mail is a profitable source of income for any business when done properly, but not done properly it will waste your time and money.

For those that say Direct Mail doesn’t work then let me tell you you’re not doing it right.
Clever businesses will take the time to write direct mail properly, after all you would give this time if you were sat with a customer wouldn’t you? I have said many times Direct Mail is like having your best salesman in print if done properly. To remove the confusion.

Direct mail is anything you send to existing or potential customers.

Let’s dispel some of the myths about Direct Mail. The favourite is

‘Direct Mail doesn’t work.’

This is usually derived by the fact that when you get direct mail at home it ends up in the bin, (which means it must be a waste of money right?) the truth is that about 80% to 90% of people do throw direct mailing in the bin, however have you considered what would happen to your business if you could get customers to read your Direct Mail?

The reason that Domino Pizzas, Viking Direct and many other big companies continually fill up your post box with direct mail is because it works. How much do you think these companies spend testing and fine tuning their direct mailings, probably thousands and thousands why because it works, better still they know what works and what doesn’t. All this said I wouldn’t want to mislead you not all direct mail works and this is why, Small to Medium size businesses don’t spend enough time thinking about the message they are trying to get into their customers minds neither do they give enough thought about what they are trying to achieve, if they gave the time and consideration to think about this then direct mail would make their profits soar.

Another myth is that the response rate of Direct Mail is a very low percentage, compared to number of mailings you send and that you need to send a thousand letters to get a single response, this is nonsense and a dangerous way to budget for your direct mail, there are all sorts of factors that will make a difference to your response rate, your product, the price and so on what really matters is not the response you get but the profit you make, which is why testing what you send is paramount. Don’t use a Direct Mail campaign without testing it on a small scale first. Why?

The beauty of Direct Mail is that it is statistically very predictable.

Your Direct Mail will fall into two categories, existing customers and potential new customers.
If you have a date base of existing customers you are sitting on a fortune, start by mailing these, think of something you can offer these customers, send them a letter and measure the response. If it works, mail them again next month and measure the results and if it works keep doing it, when you perfect this try it out on new potential customers and again measure the response each time.

REMEMBER

Test your Direct Mail campaigns for new customers on a small scale before rolling them out.

Always send a letter with any literature you send as it will increase the response rate you get

Your mail should focus on the benefits of your product or service; your customers want to read what your product will do for them not you.

Spend your time wisely

Make sure you spend the time you need getting the headline right its 90% of what people read and has to make them interested to read the rest of your letter, you repeat a successful mailing a few weeks later and expect a response rate around 50% of the original mailing you sent, and following up your letter with a phone call will also increase the response you get.
Don’t make costly mistakes on your future Direct Mail, remember write for the reader not for the writer, and take the time to think what your writing in your letter.

Taking care of what we’ve already worked for.

The success of any business is the source of wealth it gets from Existing or new customers.

Don’t neglect your source of wealth. Don’t neglect your customers.

One of the best profit areas for any business is its existing customer base, how often do you communicate with your existing customers and do you realise how important they are?

Nearly every business owner I know, concentrate their efforts on looking for new customers and forget how much it cost them in the first place to acquire their biggest asset (their existing customer data base) once you have sold to them they should not become a number, remember they are still a customer.

Most businesses are sitting on a fortune,

it’s not hidden, just forgotten.

You can get access to this fortune by answering these questions.

Do you have something to offer your existing customers that would make them want to contact you?

Is there something that you are not offering existing customers that you could be offering them?

When was the last time you sent your customers a letter, an email or contacted them by telephone?

This might be interesting, what would happen if you made twice as much contact with your existing customers this year as you made last year, just be sure if you do communicate with them with whatever you decide to offer, make sure that you monitor the response you get.

I have helped many businesses to generate thousands without spending on anything more than a first class stamp, a little bit of time and an A4 piece of paper this is not unusual, sometimes all you need is to step outside the box and look back in to see where your next customer will come from.

Here are some useful things to consider when you’re looking for your next best customer.

What results could you get by using direct mail?

Do you spend time every day thinking of an offer you could make to your existing customers?

Do you always thank your customers for their business?

Do you always measure the response you get?

There are tons of marketing ideas on how to get new customers, but remember you are sitting on a fortune if you already have an existing customer data base.