Archive for the ‘Strategies To Keep Good Customers’ Category

Are you thinking about starting a high-end coaching, consulting or mentoring program? If you’ve got years of accumulated knowledge, a top-level program can be a great way to share that information and help your clients achieve success. It may be time for you to stop running one-day programs and selling books and launch a top-level coaching program, instead. You can provide great results for your clients, and truly share your information in a significant way through these programs.

One-day workshops may be good for clients who have limited time or budget but want to make a difference in their business. In a one-day workshop, you can begin to create the foundation for a successful business owner to make a transition in the way he or she does business. However, a one-day workshop isn’t a magic medium for you to create an army of happy, successful businesspeople. You can only share so much information through a one-day workshop, and you’re essentially always starting clients out on the same basic level; they never progress past the techniques you can cover in a single day.

If you’ve accumulated a lot of knowledge about success in your medium, business or industry, you might consider selling e-books. E-books are typically a compilation of knowledge and techniques that people can use to work on their own and boost their business. E-books can provide a revenue stream, but they’re typically limited in scope.

An e-book cannot begin to convey all the accumulated knowledge and business acumen of years in an industry or field.  Like one-day workshops, an e-book can help build a basic foundation for client success, but many clients never progress past that basic level of knowledge and technique contained in the e-book. This makes e-books great for introductory materials, but ultimately too limited to help clients achieve overall success.

Top-Level Coaching Programs are Great for Client Success
Top-level coaching programs let you really share your accumulated wisdom and business expertise with your clients on a basis that can help them achieve success. Unlike e-books and one-day workshops, a top-level coaching program typically enables you to work with your clients one-on-one to help them develop the skills and techniques specific to their field. You can help your clients set goals and achieve them with your expertise; you’re not just leaving clients alone to blunder around and try to build on a basic foundation.

Top-level coaching programs provide clients with an ideal medium to move beyond the basics and truly grasp success. This is good both for you and your clients. If you’d like to help your clients achieve real results, it’s time to move beyond e-books and one-day workshops and consider launching a top-level coaching program.

Bernadette Doyle created Client Magnets Ltd to help self-employed people solve one of their biggest business problems: attract a steady stream of clients. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

The Best Way To Help Your Clients Succeed

Picture this image of two boys playing in a garden, trying to catch some birds.

One of the boys rushes around frantically with a net trying to catch the birds. Every time he gets close, the birds fly away. There’s lots of squawking, and feathers flying. The other boy stands quietly, holding out some birdseed.

One boy is trying very hard, and is probably exhausted, while the other hardly seems to be working at all.

Which one will get the results he’s looking for?

Instinctively you know it’s the boy with the birdseed who will be more effective, and a lot less sweaty.

When it comes to marketing and trying to attract clients, you want to act more like that second boy. Unfortunately, though, most people tend to act more like the first.

A lot of the things you might be doing, that are considered to be traditional marketing techniques, might actually be counterproductive. You could well be chasing people away.

Effective marketing techniques used on the wrong market will only provoke resistance, and build defensiveness. You could be running after people, figuratively speaking, with barrages of email, rounds of cold calls and direct mailings, and quite possibly be achieving the exact opposite of what you want.

For example, no matter how effective cold-calling may be for me or someone else, if you detest doing it, your negativity will prevent it from being effective for you.

Even if you are using marketing techniques that are proven to attract clients, if you do them with the negative energy of chasing – if you give off the sense that you are giving simply in order to get – you will end up like the boy who is chasing the birds. Tired and without any bird in the hand.

You want to break down the barriers between you and your prospective clients, not create more of them.

Make sure that the things you are doing marketing-wise, both online and offline, will attract clients to your business. Doing what everyone says is the right thing, but doing it with the wrong energy, won’t produce results.  Do the things that feel right to you. That will bring the positive energy into your marketing, and your clients will feel it.

You’ll know when you’re being a client magnet because it will feel easy. It should feel enjoyable, and you will have an abundance of clients.

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

The Key To Effortless Client Attraction

news210110cWhen it comes to marketing, every single thing that you do to generate leads should have a purpose. Without a purpose, you can end up with an advertising blitz campaign that saturates the market but doesn’t have any real direction.

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

Secrets of Power Marketing

Operating your own business requires an intensity and creative energy someone employed in a regular job can’t comprehend. Because that’s true, you may have reached a point when you need to start hiring people to help get things done. Here’s a strategy for hiring the right people for the tasks that get in the way of growing your business.

You may have been handling the details of your personal and professional lives on your own for so long that you don’t recognize when it’s time to start outsourcing. Let me give you an example of how outsourcing one routine task could free you to focus on building your business.

Let’s say your favorite dry cleaning firm is an hour round trip from your office. What could you be doing in that hour that creates more business, instead? When you multiply the time away from business tasks times your standard business fees, you begin to understand why delegating that kind of routine task can improve your bottom line.

Maybe your routine tasks are business related—answering phones, shuffling through email or making travel arrangements. Whatever it is that’s keeping you from actually focusing on finding new customers or creating products, it may be time to let someone else do it.

Your greatest need may be as simple as being able to rest once in awhile.  You maybe trapped in the cycle of working long hours, late into the night and every weekend. Wouldn’t it be more productive to work with a team and have them take over tasks that don’t require your personal attention, and actually balance work and rest?

Finding the right team to take over things that keep you distracted from work can make a huge difference. Decide what kind of help would do the most good right now. Do you need a personal assistant to handle dry cleaning pickup and delivery or a virtual assistant to schedule your newsletter?

For each business owner, it’s something different. But at some point, it isn’t optional if you want your business to grow. Insisting on doing everything yourself is a sure-fire way to keep your business small.

Finding skilled team members to lighten your load can surprise you in another way. You’re going to find there are things you simply aren’t suited for; for instance, you might slog through ironing your own clothes but why focus all that effort on something that can be outsourced to someone who does it well?

So consider where your team would do the most good. Decide what can be outsourced and then find people with the right skills, whether virtual or local. Remember, it doesn’t matter if the team member who posts articles to your website is in Australia or anywhere else in the world, so long as they do a great job and free you to do the things you need to do.

You want to outsource tasks to free up time, to grow your business or simply to get enough rest.  Start thinking about hiring a team to support you in your business. What kinds of things would make your life simpler, allow you to focus on your business or find some balance?

Once that’s clear in your mind, you’ll know who to look for and what kind of skills they need.  Then you’ll be on your way to building a great team. And that team will make all the difference in your life, your business and your peace of mind.

Is it Time to Hire a Team?

Getting your target audience interested in your product or event, and interested in the price you want them to pay, requires a few basic steps. You must establish yourself as an expert. You must build confidence with your audience. You must convince your audience that your solution is the answer to their problems. Building empathy with your target audience is a fast way to accomplish all of these things …

What is Empathy?
For the purposes of creating marketing materials, developing empathy is the act of building a rapport with your audience. Show them that you understand their problem. Convince them that you, too, have the same problem, questions or needs that they have. Create a group for your audience, and then insert yourself into this group. By developing empathy with your audience, you’re making yourself ‘one of them.’ This is an extremely valuable step in creating a successful marketing campaign.

Build Trust Through Empathy
In many cases, your target audience may be embarrassed about their problem, or they may feel like they’re alone in needing a special solution to manage their issue. By establishing empathy with your audience, you show them that they’re not alone. You, too, have benefited from a special tool or event to handle the same problem they have. By building empathy with your target audience, you immediately go from becoming an untouchable expert to someone who has experienced the same problems and issues as your audience; someone much more accessible and less intimidating.

As someone who speaks the language of the target group, you build trust; they’re more likely to believe your pitch if they feel you’ve been through the same things they encounter. All of these things go a long way toward establishing yourself as a trusted source, which makes people much more inclined to buy your product or attend your event.

Solve Problems Through Empathy
One of the most effective ways to market a product or event is to establish that it solves a problem that your target audience experiences. If you can build empathy with your audience, and then establish that your product or event solves their problems, you’ve instantly crossed a boundary toward getting them to take action. An audience is much more likely to believe that the solution offered to them is legitimate if they believe the creator of the product has used it to solve the same problems they have.

For example, if someone who has always been thin tries to sell a weight-loss product to an overweight demographic, the overweight demographic may be disinclined to trust the thin creator. However, if someone who has successfully lost weight tries to sell a weight-loss product, he or she gains instant credibility by having successfully solved the problem that the target demographic experiences.

Build Empathy for Successful Marketing

Bottom line: build empathy with your target audience to create a successful marketing campaign. Become one of the crowd. Show them that you understand their problems, and that you can help them. If you’re able to establish empathy with your audience, you’re much more likely to sell your product or event to them.

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

A Fast Way To Get Your Prospects To Buy

What’s the absolute best time to ask for teleseminar registration and payment from your prospects?

And how many hoops should they have to jump through to complete that process?

On your teleseminar registration page, you’ll call prospects to action by illustrating how your teleseminar can save them money, make money for them, save them time, or spare them grief.  While that illustration (the picture of their new, richer or more relaxed, life) is fresh and crisp in their minds, ask them to register.  Right then.  Don’t hesitate.  If you give them the space in which to click away, they may never come back.

And in response to the second question posed above, “None.”  Your prospects’ lives are complicated enough.  Give them one more phone call to make, e-mail to send, or hoop to jump through, and they will be more than willing to abandon the quantification of cost, time, or emotion that they just made in their own minds.  In a nutshell, if your payment process is complicated, your teleseminar, no matter how enticing it was only seconds earlier, will no longer be worth the effort.

Here are a few tips to incorporate when setting up your easy payment process on your teleseminar registration page:

• Use an ecommerce solution like 1ShoppingCart to set up your registration page’s shopping cart.  It’s secure, easy to implement, easy for your customers to use, and will keep your clients’ payment efforts to a minimum by processing credit card payments quickly and simply.  You won’t have to wait for your 1ShoppingCart registration to start accepting payments.  Set up a trial, and you’ll be ready to accept payments almost immediately.

• Link your shopping cart to a payment managing tool like PayPal, and your customers will have seamless access to a universal, fee-free, and secure channel through which to send their registration fees.  You won’t need a merchant account, and can begin to channel money to your teleseminar’s registration without delay.

• Your payment process must be fully automated. If action by you is required for any function, it’s not fully automated.  You want the money to roll in, whether you’re running errands, sleeping, or on vacation.  Additionally, you wouldn’t want to ask your clients to wait around for you to complete a payment.

• The payment process must be super simple.
No phone calls, return phones call, e-mails, or return e-mails should be necessary for processing payments.  Make yourself available by phone and e-mail, of course, in case a question should arise, but convinced prospects should be able to complete their registration and payment in one sweeping motion.

• Give your prospects plenty of immediate opportunity
to sign on for your teleseminar.  Any delay could allow doubt to creep in and annihilate your call to action.  People are most motivated immediately after they’ve uttered their first internal, “Yes.”

By fully automating your teleseminar registration and payment process, you not only simplify the process for your clients, but you simplify the process for yourself.  When you associate every chunk of income with an additional amount of work for you (phone calls, e-mails, red tape), you might eventually come to dread the orders that you once hoped for.

It’s okay for the money to roll in without your awareness; in fact, that’s the goal.  Plan well.  Your prospects will appreciate the ease of payment, and you will appreciate the ease of receiving that same payment.

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

Include An Easy Payment Process to Fill Your Teleseminar

You’ve made a sale.  The customer’s credit card has been approved, you’ve booked their seat or ordered their product, and you’ve added your new customer’s email address to your newsletter list.  You’re already tallying your net profit in your mental bank register, and you’re resting comfortably in the pleasure of another sale well-done.

Not so fast…

If there is any time lapse between the closing of the sale and the delivery of the customer’s product or service, at some stage you will need to address the “buyer’s remorse” phenomenon.

If your customer falls under the weight of buyer’s remorse, he or she might have feelings of guilt associated with a high price tag, credit extension, or disapproval by others.  The client might begin to fall off of their “purchase high” and start to consider their new, reduced spending power; or they might wonder if they should have done more research or waited for a better, newer version of your product or service.

Your job is simple:  you must keep buyer’s remorse from ever showing its face…by using a Stick Strategy.

A Stick Strategy is simple.  It involves offering a gift that fulfills your customer’s need for instant gratification, and then staying in touch with them to reinforce the benefits of their decision, until they receive the product or service that they purchased.  In other words, remind them regularly that they’ve made a good decision.

Example of a High-Cancellation-Risk Sale:

A motivational speaker offers two types of events:  a 1-day workshop and a 2-day weekend seminar.  She starts marketing and taking reservations for the 1-day workshop only 6 or 8 weeks in advance.  But for the weekend event, she starts accepting bookings up to 4 months ahead of time.

Her customers who book 4 months prior to the 2-day event are much more susceptible to the effects of buyer’s remorse.  A lot can happen in 4 months – people move, their family situations can shift, their employment might change – and that might prompt them to eliminate her seminar from their new schedule.

It’s especially important that this business owner stays in contact with her weekend seminar customers during those critical 4 months – to make sure that those clients remain interested and on-board, without regrets.

Follow these simple steps to keep your waiting customers on-board:

Immediately following your customer’s booking, make a good-will gesture (e.g.  a digital report, an insider preview of your service, a free sample, coupons to use in the meantime, or anything that will reinforce their spending decision as a good one).

Keep a list of people who have signed up for one particular service, and use that list to send industry tips, answers to commonly asked questions, or special bonus offers throughout their wait – and be sure to reference the date of the upcoming service in every piece of correspondence.  This will keep their interest piqued, their energy levels high, and will shoo away that bothersome remorse bug.

You can also send a friendly note part-way through their wait. A simple “Hello, can’t wait to meet you at the conference,” or, “Here’s the seating chart and your nametag.” can boost their obligation to the commitment that they’ve made.

Keep customers-in-waiting involved. Maybe you’re thinking about making an addition to your service – send a note asking for their opinion on the change.  Or, ask them for feedback on the booking process.  In short, make them feel that their opinions are important.

Maybe you have felt buyer’s remorse yourself.  If you have, think about how much better you might have felt if you’d gotten a free gift right away, or if someone had contacted you to ask for your input.  Would you have been more willing to “Stick?”

Make your customers stick with you…all it takes is a healthy dose of communication and a little dollop of good-will glue.

Bernadette Doyle created Client Magnets Ltd to help self-employed people solve one of their biggest business problems: attract a steady stream of clients. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Cure Buyers Remorse With a Stick Strategy

If you have a great idea or product to share, how do you get it in front of the rest of the world? How do you make sure that the knowledge and expertise you have to offer is discovered by the people who need it?

While you could present your service to individual people in individual settings, booking endless appointments and traveling from one location to another, that strategy is very time-consuming and certain to diminish the quality of your life.

You may charge and earn very good money for presenting your services this way, but there are only so many hours in a day. You will only earn the amount of money you can make in those hours and you likely won’t have a lot of quality time for yourself. In addition to this, you are limiting the number of people you can serve and help.  All this gives you very good reason to productize your services.

What I mean by that is for you to take the knowledge and expertise that you personally deliver to clients and convert it into a product or programme that can deliver the results for you.

By creating products and programmes, you will do the work once, and then get paid over and over and over again.

For example, if you offer a workshop that draws a large attendance and earns high revenues, don’t stop there. Turn that single event into a product that continues to earn money. Record the workshop and sell DVDs on your website. You will compound your initial earnings exponentially, just by creating a single product.

Take yourself out of the delivery process, in the physical sense. But leave all of the information and expertise and character traits that make your offering unique.

Do this effectively so that your product is truly reflective of your services, but be efficient as well. Don’t get overly caught up in trying to create the perfect product.

Product creation is not about product perfection. It’s about getting your product on the market. You can always tweak and revise it as you go along, which will give you an upgraded product to add to your offerings later on.

Here’s a philosophy to live by. An okay product that is out there serving your clients while making you money is better than the best product that is still in development. That latter one won’t put any money in your bank account.

The best product idea ever is still just an idea. It isn’t going to earn you any revenue. You don’t need to spend months getting your product ready to go on the market. Get your product up and running – quickly.

Spare yourself the time slaving over yet another round of editing documents or perfecting of audio files. Focus on the profits that are waiting for you by getting your product out there now.

Put your time and creative energy into developing your products and programmes.  Make sure they are representative of the qualities that make you so special. Then get them onto the market as quickly as possible to start generating revenue.

Developing products and programmes will not only increase the number of clients you are able to help, and increase your income, but also give you more free time to enjoy a quality lifestyle.

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, then sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Do The Work Once and Get Paid Over and Over Again!

Imagine that you own a designer clothing store.  You operate the register, taking money from customers and bagging up their items.  While you’re managing the flow of incoming money, you notice that the majority of visitors spend a significant amount of time thumbing through racks and trying on outfits – only to walk out of your boutique empty-handed.

If you could stop those people in the parking lot and ask them why they didn’t buy, without scaring them away from your establishment forever, would you do it?  If you found out that your product was perceived as low quality, you’d look at your designers more closer, you’d check the quality of your garments, right?  Or if you learned that the styles you offer aren’t current enough, you would reevaluate your stock, wouldn’t you?

There are two points of truth to be drawn from this example.  First, the majority of your sales pages visitors will click away without buying…that’s statistical.  And second, you may never know exactly how to solicit more sales unless you ask for feedback from non-buyers.

The prospect majority (the ones who haven’t purchased) are a valuable trove of information for the improvement of your conversion rate.  When you can use what they tell you to compile a list of common objections, you can then use that information to revamp your website, your FAQ page, or any other aspect of your business.

You might know how to ask for feedback from paying customers, but how about those who have merely previewed your product?  Here are some pointers for getting plenty of constructive feedback from non-buyers:

• Maintain a low-key tone. The language that you use in your feedback request should be one of curiosity…an unassuming appeal.  Make it clear that you only want to know why they chose not to buy.

• Be honest. Be frank with your prospects.  In your request for feedback (most often done via e-mail), let them know that you’re new to the business, or that you’re working on redesigning your website, or that you’re throwing around the idea of editing your product list.  Let them know that their opinions will be priceless in your effort to make the experience more pleasurable for future customers.

• In your written request, remind recipients of your website address. That way, they can revisit and refresh their memories, in case they have forgotten your business’ specifics.

• Offer a no-strings incentive in exchange for feedback. Never use a feedback request as an attempt to make a sale.  Instead, offer a one-time gift (like a free report) that requires no obligation.

• Do not interrogate prospects. Never use the feedback that you receive as ammunition to get them to buy at a later time.  When you receive feedback, simply say “thank you” and use it to make improvements.  Do not personally pursue the prospect.  Curiosity may drive them back to your site (to see if their feedback was utilized), but if you hunt them down, you will drive them away.

• Send feedback requests as soon as possible (within a week of the prospect’s first visit).  A person’s motivation is highest right after they’ve visited your site for the first time.  If you allow time for that motivation to fade, you will be less likely to receive feedback (and less likely to feed the fire of interest in your product).

You’ll probably be astounded at the amount and quality of feedback that you’ll receive.  People all have opinions – but will rarely voice them unless they’re invited to do so.  Many times, they’re so glad to have the opportunity to be heard, that they will be honest and blunt – perfect for your goal of gathering business-changing information.

Asking for feedback can seem a bit strange, even intimidating, at first, but once you receive your first dose of eye-opening criticism, you’ll be glad that you took the time to question the departing majority.  And you’ll learn to see objections for what they really are – opportunities for improvement and optimism for future conversions.

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, then sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Turn Objection into Opportunity – Ask for Non-Buyer Feedback

Remember the telephone conversation?  In this, the cyber age, the telephone conversation has become, for most, an antiquated form of communication.  However, that doesn’t mean that it holds no value.  To the contrary, its value is so great that often the ring of the telephone could be mistaken for the cha-ching of a cash register.

If someone takes the time to call you on the phone, they’re at least somewhat interested in what you’re selling; they want you to convince them that their positive opinions about your product are correct; and they want you to dispel their fears.

People call on the phone for one of two reasons.  Either they want you to convince them to buy, or they want to cross-examine you to satisfy their own curiosities.

Either way, when you answer the call, it’s up to you to take gentle control with questions that will work to convert:

• If someone calls and indicates that they are somewhat interested in your product, try to refrain from spewing a rehearsed list of features and benefits.  They can find the facts on your website, or in your brochure.  They are calling because they want to be nudged in the direction of purchasing (whether they know it yet or not).

• The person asking questions is generally the party who holds the most control.  If your caller starts with a question, politely indicate that you will gladly answer that question if they will allow you to check some things with them first.  This is called a “staller” or a “framer.”  This puts the “ball in your court” and you can ask them the questions that will direct the conversation in a conversion direction.  You will rarely experience success if you spend the phone call answering questions that are being continuously fired at you.

• Ask, “What was it that attracted you to the program?”  Listen carefully and make note of these early “likes.”  Answers to this question will reinforce the caller’s belief in your product, and will give you valuable feedback for future marketing efforts.  Be sure to reference these points again later, reinforcing that your caller’s instincts as correct.

• Ask the caller what kept them from booking directly from the internet.  The answer will give you the opportunity to dispel fears and calm misgivings about your product.  You can also use this information to adjust your marketing approach for the future.

• Begin questioning about what the prospect found appealing, then move to questioning about misgivings, and end with reinforcing the positive.

• Remember to only convince prospects that your product is a perfect fit for their problem if it truly is.  Selling under false pretenses is not only sleazy, but it won’t work to build, or forward, your good reputation.  It doesn’t matter how great your product can be for the right person, the wrong person will never give it 5 stars, a thumbs-up, or a good review.

• Make a list of questions that you would commonly use during telephone conversations.  This will eliminate stumbling, awkward silences, and nervousness when dealing with callers.

As we move further into the information age, fewer and fewer sales are booked over the telephone.  Nevertheless, when a phone call does ring in, it’s better news than ever.  People are only picking up the phone as a last resort for being convinced.

When handled correctly, telephone calls can significantly impact your conversion rates…for the better.  People ask for information, and give information, because they want to hear that they’re right about their likes, and that they have nothing to fear from their misgivings.

Open up that phone line.  Take control of the questioning.  Gently convince, dispel, and reinforce.  Use the call to turn that prospect into what they’re secretly hoping to be – a client.

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

Close More Sales Over The Phone