Friday, August 31, 2007

Sales Tip - How Not To Sell Rule 101 - Sell Before Establishing a Relationship

Sales tips abound. There are 100s of books, one thousands of websites devoted to improving gross gross gross gross gross sales and who cognizes of many seminars to sales preparation social classes being conducted every work twenty-four hours across America.

Yet, I am always amazed when those who either make sales preparation or have got been through sales preparation continually go against the first measure in most sales processes. Let me explain.

Today, I attended two concern networking events. At both of these events, a little concern proprietor tried to sell me his merchandises or services without establishing a relationship. Imagine shaking hands, exchanging name calling and then hearing a gross gross sales pitch!

In the morning time concern networking event, the little concern proprietor represented a national franchise that I cognize have a fairly comprehensive sales process. This gross gross sales preparation understands and focuses on human relationship edifice as the first step.

During the afternoon concern networking event, the little concern proprietor was a professional concern adviser who did leadership, client service and sales training. In both cases, the gross gross sales pitch happened within proceedings of talking to each other.

I happen such as behaviour quite interesting given that so many little concerns are failing at the charge per unit of one a minute in this country, With this sort of sales behavior, I am surprised the little concern failure charge per unit is not two a minute.

Have you ever violated this How Not to Sell Rule 101? Just thinking how many modern times you have got met person new and within a couple of minutes, you started to begin merchandising your merchandises and services before you truly had established a relationship?

I name this agony from the 3Ps gross sales virus. Salespeople including little concern proprietors rotter product, terms and proposal usually in that order.

Yes, the human race is a busy place, but that concern is not the ground to go against the gross sales process. Yes, human relationships necessitate clip to develop, to mature, to attain the degree of trust necessary for a sale to take place. However, when you are so busy puking product, terms and proposal, you will lose many of those gross gross sales opportunities.

To increase sales, do a committedness to listen more, talking less and truly develop a human relationship of common trust. And then watch your gross sales soar.

Labels: , , , , , ,

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

10 Ways to Instantly Boost Your Conversion Rate

Increasing a website's sales is just a matter of getting more traffic and/or improving the sales process. Testing allows you to tweak your sales copy by trying new things and seeing what works best.

Unfortunately, testing takes time and you probably don't want to spend that time testing things that don't work. So here are some proven test results of mine that should give you the most bang for your buck (time).

One thing you should always keep in mind is that what works for one market or sales letter may not work for another, so it's important to test every change you make to your sales page.

Here are some results, (the ones I can remember) that have boosted my conversion rate…

1. Use a dark blue background on your website. The color code is #003399 I think. I've tested this many times and every time it has beaten a white or light grey background.

2. Make your headline Black not Red. Red has always lost against Black in my tests.

4. Make your sales page's Table Width between 65 and 70 percent. Thin text is easier to read than wide text.

5. Use a little "Satisfaction 100% Guaranteed" picture in your guarantee. Did I mention you should put your guarantee in a table with a different background color from the rest of the website to make it stand out?

6. Test different PS's because they are one of the most read parts of a sales letter. Try using it to reinforce a deadline, justify the price, or reiterate your guarantee.

7. Add a picture of your product to your sales letter. My tests have shown this to increase conversion rates in most cases.

8. Try adding some audio at the beginning of your sales letter. Something as simple as paraphrasing the first few paragraphs of your sales letter can and has boosted conversions by over 200%.

9. Try adding Video near the top of your sales letter. This is still new territory but early results look very promising.

10. Prices ending with 7 tend to out sell others. This isn't true in all cases and can be tough to figure out, but as a general rule $29.97 will often outsell $29.95.

OK, there ya go… Ten things you can test right now that will almost certainly increase your conversion rate.

Don't forget to test them though (individually), because nothing is an absolute in this business. There may be general rules but there are always exceptions.

Labels: , , , , , ,