Some people are surprised to find out that closing is only the fourth step in the sales process. There are two things that are important in closing the sale. Firstly, you need to be really clear on what you are offering. People must fully understand what your products or services are about. Secondly you must make it easy for people to buy from you. Now the reason that the step on closing is so far down the line, is that everything that you have done leading up to point is actually going to help you with your close. What do I mean by this?

What helps you to close the Sale?

You may have heard me talk about getting customers to respond to your offer. It helps to create consistency. I am a big fan of Robert Cialdinis book on Influence. In it he mentions the powerful influence that consistency has on people’s buying behaviour. When they respond in a certain way it is natural for them to continue to act according to that initial response.

So getting people to put their hands up to show interest in your offer as a first step is actually going to help you close the sale down the line. Your initial contact and your subsequent follow up’s are all parts of an interaction helps you to build a relationship with your clients. Each time you speak to prospects or send them a message you are feeding them more and more information about your product or service. In time they will know exactly what you offer and why it will benefit them.  So when the time comes for you to ask for the sale, it becomes an easy decision for them. They have all the information, they know all about you and there are few objections left to overcome.

Another way you can make things easy for your customers is to be able to accept credit card payments. Set this up so that you have a merchant account linked to your website that can process transactions online. This means that you don’t have to be there for sales to take place. They can happen automatically. An essential part of building an information empire is automation, having systems in place that can send out newsletters and responses without you getting involved. Think about it, if you had to remember to send out a message to a different client each day of the week, would you really get around to it, and would you send out the right message? Automating this process not only makes your life easier, it actually improves your conversion rate.

Tools for Closing the Sale

•    Get customers to respond to your offer and express their interest. When they initiate interest it increases the chances of them buying from you.

•    Interact with customers and build a relationship with them. People are far more likely to buy from people whom they like and trust.

•    Automate your sales process. Put systems in place that makes it easier for you to follow up with prospects and close the sale.

•    Set up a merchant account so that you can accept online credit card payments. This makes the purchasing decision much easier.

Many people think that closing the sale is the difficult part of business. But as I have just illustrated when you have strategies and systems in place, closing actually becomes very easy. Make clear offers to your prospects, give them a good understanding of the benefits of buying from you, and make it easy for them to purchase. These simple things can help you close many sales.

Bernadette Doyle offers a free online small business marketing resource where you can learn how to WIN lucrative contracts and turn your small business into a Corporate Client magnet!

Access free marketing tips here:   http://attractcorporateclients.com/

Imagine that it’s a typical week for your website – the one that you have planned, designed, to which you have driven traffic, and through which you have made booking and registrations possible. Let’s assume that during a given week, 100 visitors cross into the realm of your site; 2 of them make the decision to purchase; however 98 of them leave without investing in your product.

What number captures your attention in the above example? Is it the 2 buyers? Will you wait for another 2 buyers next week? Will you count on luck, or “spray and pray” to deliver a sprinkling of voluntary customers next month, and next year?

Or, do you view the 98 departees as 98 new opportunities for sales?

In truth, your best profit potential lies in the 98 visitors who chose not to buy. If you plan well, after they leave, you will have 98 names and addresses that can lead to potential sales. All you need to do is have a plan for following them up. Just think – if you can get even 2 of those 98 to say “yes,” you have converted a larger percentage than you did with your sales page alone.

Here are some points to show why you should be following up:

• When you follow up with website visitors, you are targeting prospects who have already expressed an interest in your product. They clicked, which means, at the very least, that they are curious. For my regular readers, you know that this means you have gathered an audience of people with “raised hands.”

• Targeted follow-up correspondence answers questions that many of your visitors are not willing to ask (and many people have the same types of questions). Every time you answer a question, you take the opportunity to dispel an objection or a fear.

• Follow-up breeds interaction, which begs conversation. Think of your follow-up e-mails, postcards, and teleseminars as ice-breakers in a conversation that everyone wants to have, but no one knows how to broach.

• Marketing research doesn’t lie. It tells us that more follow-ups equal more conversions. Stay relevant in the minds of your prospects, and you’ll be the first person they turn to when a problem arises.

• Follow-up is a circular phenomenon. It gives you the information you need to devise better methods of follow-up. When questions are posed, and objections voiced, you are given valuable insight into the minds of prospective clients. With this information, you can plant more seeds and dispel more fears.

• Follow-up contact is an invaluable vehicle for conveying the idea of urgency. If a conference is set to take place 6 months from now, people will put off registration. But, if you can communicate a special offer through follow-up correspondence, you will light the fire to sign up. Often, discount deadlines and space limitations work well.

To increase conversions and increase your sales, it’s absolutely necessary you follow-up with all your prospects – even the prospects that don’t buy from you. You cannot follow up too often – you just need to vary your medium to keep your prospect engaged.

Don’t hesitate to use the invaluable follow-up for attracting and retaining clients. Leading prospects to your door is never enough – you must give them the incentives to revisit, and to invest.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

If you’re ready to turn your business into a serious money-making venture, it’s time to think about hosting a Big Pay Day live event. Hosting a live event and turning it into a Big Pay Day is a perfect way to boost your revenue, increase your income and turn your business acumen into big dollars!

How do you monetize your event, and how do you create the opportunity to service your clients better and increase your earning capacity? Let me share a few of my secrets with you …

1. Launch a new product or service. You can also use your event to launch a new product or service for your existing business. If you’re creating a new product line or have new services to offer your clients, launching them at your event is the perfect time to introduce the products and generate buzz.

2. Launch a high-end coaching program. Your Big Pay Day Event is the perfect time to launch a high-end coaching program. You’re hosting an event because you are an expert in your niche. You could be sharing your expertise about your business field, or sharing the keys to your personal success. Use your event to share your expertise, and then launch a high-end coaching program to help attendees achieve their own success. It’s a great way to monetize your knowledge.

3. Turn your event into a product. Don’t forget that you can turn your event itself into a product. Take video of your event and launch a series of DVDs, or take the written materials from event and turn it into a book. Be creative, and think of ways in which you can share your event in the form of a new product.

4. Build your reputation in the industry. Building your reputation in the industry gives you two benefits: you can boost your existing business, and you gain the leverage you need to launch new products and services. While building your reputation in the industry might not yield direct revenue, it can lead to the acquisition of new clients, as well as creating additional business with existing clients.

Decide How to Monetize YOUR Event
When you’re considering hosting an event, think about how you will monetize it. You can use any one of these strategies, or a combination of strategies, to yield revenue far beyond the registration fees you’re charging people to attend your event. Start with one of these strategies and build on it, depending on what you have to offer and the resources you can leverage while you’re planning the event. Think about your business plan and your business goals. Ensure your strategies are consistent with helping you achieve your goals and your BIG PAY DAY!

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

If you looked at the price tag first,
retailers would pick up on that and simply offer a collection of price stickers inside the front door. You would choose what you could afford, and then the actual product would be a surprise – possibly an unpleasant one.

You don’t shop that way, and neither do the people that you have identified as your perfect clients.

Prospects want to know your prices, but unless your prices are preceded by the benefits that you’re offering, consumers will have nothing to gauge those prices against.

Follow these four steps to eliminate your fears in revealing your price. Gain the confidence you need to make the most out of your requests for cash:

1. Present what you’re offering. Answer the timeless questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? Keep it simple. If you make it too complicated, those raised hands might start to return to laps.

2. Summarize the benefits. Because you’re offering specific solutions to specific problems, this step should turn on light bulbs in your prospects’ minds. This is the step in which you convince them that you are their answer.

3. Introduce the price. By now, your listeners or readers are absorbed in what you’re offering. The benefits are foremost in their minds, as is the question of price. Reveal your pricing while the question is still in their minds; and before it reaches their lips. Perfect placement of price revelation makes it comfortable for you and acceptable to your audience.

4. Map out a direct route for the money. Make it crystal clear how easy it will be to sign up, jump on, or join in on your program. Prospects should leave your teleseminar, your sales page, or your conference without any questions about how to participate. Or, better yet, they should leave already having signed on. Make it possible for them to sign up immediately. Make it easy for them to do so.

When your appeal is placed correctly, while all of the most fantastic points of your product or service are fresh in the minds of your audience, you will not only feel more confident in asking for money, but your prospects will have more confidence in their spending.

After you identify your sea of raised hands (those people whose problems you can solve, and whose interests you have piqued), you’ll need to devise an effective method for telling them how much cash they will need to jump onboard.

The steps I’ve outlined here make up an excellent plan for starting to ask for money. As you proceed, you will learn to tweak your own presentation to meet the needs of the people in your particular niche. You will learn to identify the exact moment in time when they are most receptive to pricing, and when your presentation best complements that revelation.

When considering how to properly sandwich your asking for money in your presentation, consider your own shopping habits. You see the product. You consider how it could benefit your life. You look at the price tag. You proceed to the check-out. You leave the store with the satisfaction of knowing that you fashioned your own shopping experience.

Give your prospects that luxury. Take the time to learn about what price placement gets the most lucrative results for your business. You’ll soon discover that timing is everything – especially when it equates to money on your pocket.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

When you’re offering a high-end product, some of you prospects may have a mental barrier to your price point based on their income, their cash-on-hand, or a variety of other factors that are beyond your control or your ability to predict. In many cases, this mental barrier can be overcome if you use monthly payments to justify your price. For example, if you’re offering a $1,000 workshop, someone looking at your materials might think $1,000 is more money than they have at the moment, or more money than they can afford to pay for a workshop.

On the other hand, if you offer them four easy payments of $250, that mental barrier of seeing the $1,000 number goes way down. It’s the same paying $1,000, but people don’t tend to think of it as $1,000 – they think of it as $250. This simple technique can go a long way toward overcoming the initial mental barrier about a price, and reducing your barrier of entry for potential clients, thus increasing your conversion rate.

In addition to using payment plans to overcome the mental barrier that prospects might have to buying your product, you can also use payment plans to increase registrations at your next event.   Use your payment plan options to encourage early registration. For example, if your event costs $600, you could give people the option of paying four easy payments of $150, or three payments of $200 or two payments of $300 getting closer to the event. While this all ultimately adds up to $600, many people, when given the option of paying $150 or $300, will choose to pay $150. This means you can get people registered earlier, as well as getting income from your registrations earlier, which can help you pay many of your event fees and costs before the event itself.

Recently one of my clients posted a query on my Mastermind Forum about payment plans.   They were concerned that a lot of people may register but fail to make all the payments. In my experience, very few people register, make one or two payments and then drop out. It’s very rare for this to happen.    Most people who register and make a payment,  stick with the plan and pay it all, or contact you to work out any difficulties. Using a payment plan isn’t administratively a lot more difficult than taking one payment up-front.

When you’re pricing your product or event, consider offering your prospects a payment plan. A payment plan can go a long way toward overcoming the mental barrier against your price, and can help you increase your conversion rate and get more people registered for your event!

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. She publishes a free, weekly newsletter for trainers, speakers, coaches, consultants, complementary therapists and solo professionals. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

And where does something without direction end up going? Nowhere.

We call this “spray-and-pray” marketing – advertising your business anywhere and everywhere, hoping that people will notice you, praying your hard work pays off.

You’ll do a ton of things because you think you need to be doing them. You’ll get on Facebook. You’ll start to Twitter. You might host a teleseminar or write some articles. Don’t get me wrong. These can all be very good leads for your business, but if you don’t know why you’re doing them, they are just busy, random activities. Unless they are consciously linked to your end point, they will simply exhaust you and your physical resources, like your energy and time. Some of them will exhaust your money as well because they cost money to apply.

Be more intentional with your marketing techniques to avoid becoming frustrated by the amount of time you’re spending on lead generation. Instead, your time will be well spent because your marketing is on purpose. What you really want is to be engaging with your clients in your specialty, and that is where intentional marketing will lead you.

But, if do you reach a point of being overwhelmed or disillusioned, where you’re putting out a lot of energy but aren’t getting the returns, don’t be discouraged.

Do not give up. That would be a tremendous waste of your talent.

Part of my own purpose is to support and encourage you to pursue your own path. I know it’s easy to get discouraged if things haven’t been working out the way you’d imagined. Don’t blame yourself, and don’t assume that what you are offering has no value because you haven’t been able to get people to buy it. That would be a critical mistake.

What you are offering to clients absolutely does have value. You may just be missing one or two of pieces on how to promote it. It’s time to tweak your approach and get focused. A tweak or two could be all you need to make your approach more intentional, to turn things around and help you start attracting the clients you want.

You will probably find that you don’t need a major overhaul in your business, and that some of the approaches you are using do work quite well. It’s not about giving up on what you’re doing, throwing it all out, and saying that it was all a terrible waste of time. It’s not about throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

It’s about evaluating where you are and looking closely at where you want to be.

There are almost certainly pieces of what you’re doing that are working. But, that spray-and-pray part of marketing is just not smart marketing. And if you have been doing that, at least you’ve been taking action. If you look on the positive side, you’ve been doing something. It may not have been the most effective thing, but you are working, trying and doing the best you can.

Now you know that you need to be more deliberate, more purposeful. And you now know it’s time for you to address your business and your marketing with intent.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

“Early Bird” Pros and Cons
Many people utilize an “early bird” strategy to get people to pre-register for events early. With the “early bird” marketing technique, you give people a discount for pre-registering far in advance of the event. Having the cash early offsets the discount, somewhat, and you can also price events slightly high so that the discount is the price you really hope to achieve, and so it looks even more attractive to prospects.

Unfortunately, the “early bird” marketing strategy has one major downside: once the deadline passes, people have no particular incentive to register. The deadline creates a false sense of urgency, and once that deadline is gone, the urgency is passed. You can use the early bird strategy effectively with other marketing techniques, but don’t count on it to carry your pre-registration efforts.

Plan a SERIES of Deadlines Leading up to the Event
One useful strategy for successfully marketing an event is to plan a series of deadlines leading up to an event. You might have price increases, or you might provide ‘bonuses’ or ‘extras’ for people who register before a certain date. For example, participants who register before a certain date might also get bonus materials, such as a handout, manual or guide.

Alternately, you could give people who register before a certain date an opportunity to participate in a one-on-one session with a lecturer or industry professional at the event, or other value-added session. By having a series of deadlines, you can continue to create urgency to register without simply extending your pre-registration deadline.

Provide Payment Plan Options
Another effective strategy for boosting pre-registration is to provide payment plan options. Break it down to payments that sound simple and relatively low, instead of demanding the entire registration amount up front. For example, if you’re planning a training course for four months away, you can offer pre-registration for $400, or four easy payments of $100 each.

Set deadlines for each payment to ensure your registrants don’t simply wait until the last minute to pay. The downside with this option is that it may require more administration from you, in that you’ll have to track each payment and may have to track multiple payments for each registrant. However, if this boosts your overall registration, you may decide that the extra administration is worthwhile.

Be Creative and Flexible with Pre-Registration
Above all, be creative and flexible with the pre-registration process. Utilize multiple techniques to boost your pre-registration numbers as much as possible, both to get an accurate idea of the number of attendees at your event, and to help finance your event deposits. With the right pre-registration techniques, you can plan a fantastic and successful event!

Want to learn more about how to make money with your own events? Visit our Event Money Machine Blog. You’ll learn about an amazing Telesummit being held later this month. Tickets to this event are FREE – so join our priority notification list to be the first to know when they become available.

I’m here with another secret to arriving at that place you want to be.  It’s a real, honest-to-goodness strategy for getting interested parties to give up the money you want.  The plan is simple: you must ask for money.

When you learn to ask, you will receive what you’re asking for.  The shift in thinking occurs when you shed the fear of asking for money, and abandon the belief that if you simply make your product visible, people will come to you with open wallets and blank checks.  As nice as that would be, it will never be true.

You can do all of the right things:  the marketing, the web 2.0, the teleseminars, the presentations, the guest appearances; but just as important as all of this is asking for permission to share your product or service, in exchange for a monetary fee.  No one is going to volunteer.  You must recruit from a pool of people whose problems you can solve.

Confidence in asking for money comes more easily for some than others.  But, much like anything else, when you practice asking for money, your requests will start becoming easier to execute.  Every time that you receive what you ask for, your confidence will build, and your fear and misgivings will diminish.

Consider these points when asking for money:

• Place your request well. Disclose your pricing right after you plug the biggest and brightest benefits of what you’re selling.  You will feel excited about your product and secure in asking for money.  Your prospects will pick up on that enthusiasm, and will want to take part in it.

• Don’t dice words. State your price in a straightforward manner.  Keep it simple.

• Don’t make excuses. If you believe that your price is fair, so will consumers.  Believe in your price, and its value will shine.

• Be confident. You know that your clients get every penny’s worth from you.  When that assurance comes through in your words, your confidence will be contagious – prospects will mirror that confidence and more willingly part with their money.

• No pricing prologue necessary. Don’t give a big introduction explaining how you came up with your pricing.  Just put it out there and allow the benefits of what you’re offering to back up the price.

Asking for money can seem difficult as first.  But with my help, I feel confident that only the first time will be the most difficult.  As the money starts to flow, it will seem easier, and you will begin to grasp the concept of asking and receiving.

Often, confronting those things which you fear the most will deliver the most lucrative results (in this case, lucrative in the monetary sense).  Know that your product solves problems, make it evident to your audience, and when you present them with the price that you so richly deserve, you will be answering a question that they were already asking: “How much, and where do I sign?”

Bernadette has attracted a loyal following who rave about her down to earth yet inspiring approach. If you liked today’s article, you’ll love Bernadette’s marketing and success training products and programmes to help you develop a business that suits YOUR preferred lifestyle.

Identify Your Target Audience
When you begin planning any marketing campaign, you must identify your target audience. Many people find when they begin this process that they don’t have a clear idea of who their target audience is, in which case they must begin to identify a target audience. If you don’t know your audience, your event may not be as well-attended as it could be, or you may find that there’s not a high demand for the product.

If you don’t have a target audience, make one. You may need to tweak your product or event to appeal to this audience, but you’ll always have more success with a targeted marketing campaign than a campaign that isn’t addressed to anyone. If you don’t have a target audience, your product or event may need more refining, which gives you a good opportunity to define your scope or re-evaluate your product to make it more effective.

Target Your Message to Your Audience
Once you’ve identified an audience, target your marketing message to your audience. Dan Kennedy calls this “message to market match.” Answer your audience’s questions, and develop a call to action that speaks directly to your target audience. You can use a general marketing campaign, but a general campaign won’t give you the same success as a targeted campaign. It’s perfectly acceptable to use the same techniques in multiple campaigns; particularly techniques that have brought you success; but tailor those techniques to each marketing campaign that you run.

Consider Creating Multiple Marketing Materials
If you find that you have multiple target audiences, consider creating multiple marketing materials to more effectively reach those audiences. For example, if you’re conducting a dating event that may appeal to both men and women, you might want to create targeted marketing materials for both groups; one for the men, and one for the women. If you’re creating a business event for people in different industries, you might want to create a set of marketing materials for each industry.

By targeting your specific market, you can ensure you create a clear, compelling message. If you use a general marketing message, you may find that your message becomes diluted, or lacks the clear call to action you can create in targeted marketing materials.

Remember that developing a clear call to action is your key to great success with a product or event. You can create a highly successful event! You have the tools at your disposal, so all you have to do is create a targeted marketing campaign to reach the right audience, and you can realize success beyond your wildest dreams!

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

If there is any potential to present your business offering in the form of a product that your clients can physically see and touch, you need to take some time to explore this option.

By physical, I mean something that is in a box, something that you can physically send to a client’s home or office. Physical products can be anything from books to audio recordings to DVD video. Your physical product might very well be in multiple formats, where you offer a combination of audio, video, and written material.

It may require considerable time and effort on your part, but creating a physical product can make a huge difference in your business revenue. Here are six strong reasons for you to seriously consider creating your physical product:

•    One of the major benefits of producing a physical product, or any product for that matter, is the fact that you do the work once. But, that one product can sell over and over and over again. While you’re sleeping, enjoying dinner, shopping or vacationing, your product can continue to make money for you.

•    You can charge more for physical products. It’s less expensive to download an ebook or mp3 recording than it is to purchase a hardcopy, printed book or a CD. By their nature, digital products have a ceiling. Clients are not going to pay £500 or £1,000 for a digital product. But, people absolutely do pay that much for physical products. The client’s perception of the value of the product is changed when it’s physical. They’ve got something to have and to hold.

•    A physical product also increases your brand awareness. Because your product is in some way, shape or form, concrete and tangible, clients will have some ties to it. They have to handle it.

•    In a sense, your physical product is serving as built-in follow-up for you. Your best prospects are always those people who have actually bought from you already. They’re the people who are most likely to buy from you again. Your product, out on their desk, will constantly remind them of you when they look at it. Being reminded of you through your physical product is a good way to continue your relationship with your clients.

•    Physical products increase the user’s consumption. It’s easy to download a digital product from the internet, which I am a big proponent of. But often, clients will read the information when they get it, store it somewhere on their computer and never go back to it again. You don’t want people just buying your products, you want people using your products and having success with them. It makes sense to physically create and send products. Even if it’s just a CD sitting on the corner of their desk or on their bookshelf or in their car, it’s sitting there as a reminder. “You bought me, use me.”

•    A physical product increases your exposure. Someone may see it on your client’s desk and inquire about it, or it will be fresh in your client’s mind to share their discovery with others. Word-of-mouth sharing is your best and least expensive way of advertising.

It’s well worth your time to assess your business, and take into account all of the criteria to see if physical products make sense for your market. Physical products can be complex to create, but there’s nothing complicated about their payoff.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com