Posts Tagged ‘General Business’

As business leaders many of you are having to execute layoffs in these difficult economic times. It is the toughest thing we have to do as leaders. While we don’t like to let anyone go, it is tolerable when someone hasn’t performed after the expectations have been set and they have been given a chance to succeed. However, when you have to let people go due to a layoff who have worked hard, delivered results, dedicated themselves to your cause, believed in you, trusted you and followed you…it is very, very tough to let them go due to a layoff.

As long as you choose to be a leader in the corporate world, you may face dealing with these tough situations. There is nothing you can do about that, but what you can do something about is strengthening your Leadership Foundation by how you act during these tough and trying situations.

As Leaders, we work for years putting blocks into our Leadership Foundation. Every time we show integrity, develop someone, recognize someone or make tough, but fair decisions; we put a block in that foundation. It takes years to build that foundation and one bad action can knock over all those blocks.

That action can be how you handle a layoff. Not only will it impact the people you layoff, but it will impact the people who stay. If the people who stay, many who are friends with the people you laid off, think you didn’t handle the layoff well, then your Leadership Foundation will start to crumble.

➢ Do you handle the layoff with respect and dignity?

➢ Do you offer outplacement so they can be prepared to find jobs

quickly?

➢ Do you keep open lines of communication with everyone?

In these times of free falling sales and profits, it is hard to think about your Leadership Foundation with so much else going on. However, this is the most important time to think about it AND strengthen it. How you handle these situations will determine your long term success and your legacy as a leader.

Written by Tony Petrucci. Tony is the President and Founder of Career Movement Career Coaching and Executive Search. Career Movement and Career Movement Blog

The Career Movement/TheSalesCorner partnership offers The Sales Corner Sales Leaders an EXTREMELY AFFORDABLE way to offer quality outplacement at an unbelievable price of $75 per person.

They get:

1.    A webinar on how to conduct a job search
2.    Access to the Power Resume Online Training which teaches resume development
3.    Access to the Impactful Interviewing Online Training which teaches interviewing skills

You get:

1.    The ability to put a block in your leadership foundation
2.    The feeling of helping your team have an advantage in their transition
3.    To help while staying within your budget
Email customerservice@careermovement.com or call (877) 734-8210 to learn more or purchase the outplacement services and ensure you me

************************************************************

This Article is brought to you by: The Sales Corner Blog

************************************************************

Popularity: 4% [?]

Look around, who do you see?
Written By: Ced Reynolds

In a sea of professionals in the same industry many of them know each other. The ones in the same niche especially know who each other are. It’s time to look around and see who’s still in the game. Look around, who do you see? Are the same people who started in this race with you still with you? Are yesterday’s superstars still in the game?

In business it is the ones who have applied what they learned in lean times and great times who stick around. There are tons of want to be professionals who can “talk a good game.” I mean there are people who sit around and talk about the old days as though they participated. There are people who posture as though things are going good. There are people who put on fronts just to save face in front of their peers. We can be good at all of these things but being good in this arena won’t keep us in the game. I don’t know who said it but when it comes right down to the wire, those who work more on themselves than they work on anything else become the market leaders.

Read more of this General Business Article and becoming a leader in your area…

This Article is brought to you by: The Sales Corner

This sales article is from Salesgravy.com and is reprinted with proper permission.

Popularity: unranked [?]

==================================================
How To Create Powerful Offers That Drive Your
Sales Through the Roof

By Yanik Silver

==================================================

What does a mafia boss know about marketing?

Lots. Read on to find out…

Do you remember in the movie “The Godfather” when Don
Corleone says, “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t
refuse”?

And it’s this simple concept that’s the backbone of any
successful sales proposition you make. (However if I were
you, I’d probably leave out the threats of violence in your
sales piece.)

From now on, your job is to create such powerful offers
that anyone reading it would say to themselves, “My
goodness, I’d have to be a complete idiot not to take them
up on this deal!”

And creating a powerful offer like this is easier than you
think.

Let me share with you one of the most compelling offers
I’ve seen. It took a dying hotel on the wrong side of the
Vegas ‘strip’, where you had to watch your wallet at every
turn, and transformed it into a super moneymaker.

This is from a very successful ad that used to run for Bob
Stupak’s Vegas World hotel. Listen to this deal and see if
you wouldn’t act on this even if you were just an
occasional gambler:

“Act now, to receive a virtually free Las Vegas vacation.
For $198 per person or $396 per couple I will:

1) Put you up in a luxurious mini suite in an exciting Las
Vegas hotel right on the famous strip.

2) I will give you free tickets to a show with name
entertainers.

3) I will put a chilled bottle of champagne in your room
for free.

4) I’ll let you drink as much as want for free, whether
you’re at the gaming tables, playing slots or in one of the
lounges.

5) I’ll hand you $1,000 of my money to gamble with for
free.

6) I’ll let you keep all your winnings.

7) I’ll guarantee you’ll win a color TV, VCR or a faux
diamond ring.

Obviously I’m not going to give this incredible deal to
everybody in the whole world. There can only be (small
number) of these vacation packages available. First come,
first served.”

If that’s not an irresistible offer, I don’t know what is.
The closer you can get to something like this, the more
customers you’ll have falling all over themselves to give
you their money.

Does this give you a few ideas?

========================
Using The Bonus Pile On
========================

Vegas World’s offer uses a concept I call “Bonus Pile On”.
And the way it works is to keep piling on bonus after bonus
until finally you have to say “no mas” and whip out your
charge card.

It was the same thing with the famous Ginsu knife
commercials a few years back. They used this technique
perfectly to sell millions of dollars of cutlery. The
announcer would say “And if you act now you’ll also
get…” and then about 15 different knives and kitchen
gadgets would pop up on the screen.

It made you think about how much value you were getting for
such a little price. That’s the power of the “bonus pile
on”.

So what’s the best way to start using this in your
business? Well, one of the best ways I know is using paper
and ink. You can give away a series of valuable reports
with any purchase. What’s more, you could even make this
information available as a download from your website so
you’d have zero distribution cost.

Or you could make deals with other businesses where they’d
let you give away a product or service from them to your
customers. If you really use your imagination here you’ll
come up with lots of ways to create a “bonus pile on”.

===============================
Make Prospects Take Action Now!
===============================

There’s no doubt about it – deep down, everyone of us is a
lazy procrastinator. That’s why you need some kind of
deadline or scarcity factor to make prospects take action
now. If your prospects believe an offer is going to be
around forever, there’s no reason to take action.

That’s the reason deadlines work so well. In one of my
businesses, I’ll stamp a red deadline on the order form for
the last day prospects get over $2,000.00 in free bonuses.
And believe me, it’s not unusual to get people ordering
right on the very last day of the deadline just because of
this stamp.

=======================
100% No-Risk Guarantee
=======================

Finally, the last component of a powerful offer is to make
your deal as risk-free as possible. Nobody wants to make a
mistake and be stuck with something that doesn’t deliver as
promised. That’s why you should make every effort to lift
the risk from the prospect and place it squarely on your
shoulders. Make a bold guarantee and make it for as long as
possible. If you have a quality product, you shouldn’t
worry because most often return rates will drop the longer
you extend guarantees for.

Another strategy to try is offering a 30-day “hold-your-
check or charge slip” trial. That means people will send
you checks postdated 30 days out or you won’t charge their
credit cards for 30 days. Joe Karbo used this to sell tens
of thousands of copies of his book “The Lazy Man’s Ways to
Riches”.

Now you have all the keys to creating your own irresistible
offer and watching your sales soar. Just keep adding value
and more bonuses until you come up with an offer than makes
your prospect feel guilty for not ordering.

(c) Surefire Marketing, Inc.
================================
Yanik Silver is recognized as the leading expert on
creating automatic, moneymaking websites…and he still
doesn’t know how to put up a website.

He is the author, co-author or creator of several best-
selling online marketing books and tools, including his
newest resource for online copywriting -
http://www.UltimateCopywritingWorkshop.com/?53661
================================

*****************************************************

This article has been brought to you by: The Sales Corner

*****************************************************

Popularity: unranked [?]

===================================

Are You Carrying Buckets?

By Yanik Silver
www.SurefireMarketing.com

===================================

I let my personal trainer, Jeff, borrow a copy of “Rich
Dad Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki. A few weeks later during
our workout session he blurts out, “You know what — I’m
carrying buckets!”

“Huh?” I replied.

Jeff reminded me in the “Rich Dad” book Kiyosaki gives the
example of someone carrying buckets to supply a town with
a water and another person building a water pipe line to
carry the water. It took longer for the pipeline to be
built but once it was done – the money would continue to
come in with or without him.

What are you doing?

Sadly most people are carrying buckets. They are getting
paid based on the hours they work. Even if you are a
highly paid surgeon or attorney your income is still
limited by the hours you can work. Everybody has been
taught to think the harder you work the more money you
make. What if that’s completely wrong? What if it’s the
smarter the work, the more money you make?

Personally, I prefer to work once and get paid over and
over and over again. And there are lots of ways you can
create recurring revenue for yourself. It could be via
royalties from an invention, a song, or a book. It could
be from network marketing. It could be from real estate.
It could be dividends from investments. Or it could be
from a multitude of other ways aside from the typical
9-to-5 grind.

The majority of my income day-in and day-out is a direct
result of work I did 1, 2, 3…even 6+ years ago or more. For
instance, if you create an information product to sell
(like a report, ebook, software, video, etc) you only have
to do the work once of creating it and once to write the
sales letter.

Then if you set up some automatic promotion avenues like
an affiliate program or autoresponder messages – you can
continue to get paid for that product indefinitely. One of
biggest income streams is a product I created 5 years ago
and still makes me a nice six-figure income each year.

Frankly, I couldn’t turn off my recurring revenue streams
right now if I tried. That’s because much of what I’ve
created has fed on itself. One product refers people to
another. Our affiliate network (over 35,000) refer people
to our sites. Some of our sites cross-promote our other
sites, etc. etc.

When you keep working on activities that have recurring
value you’ll create a momentum that’s tough to stop. But
the truth is — it IS hard work in the beginning. It’s
like a rocket taking off in which it burns most of its
fuel on lift off.

You need to put in the hours and effort upfront and then
you can ease off the throttle. But if you don’t put in the
extra effort upfront you’ll never achieve lift off and get
that momentum you need.

The more you think about doing the work once and being
paid multiple times the more creative your mind will
become. Ask yourself the right questions and you’ll get
the right answers.

In fact, even this article, if I’m lucky, will become a
recurring income producing activity. I wrote this material
once and the publicity from it will hopefully get a few
people to my websites and into my marketing funnel.

Now of course, I’m not saying that every activity I do
each day is highly leveraged because I still do some “dumb
stuff” like checking email or filling out tax forms. But
I’m working on outsourcing as much as I can and focusing
just on income producing activities (just like you
should).

(c) Surefire Marketing, Inc.

==========================================================
Yanik Silver is recognized as the leading expert on
creating automatic, moneymaking websites…and he still
doesn’t know how to put up a website.

He is the author, co-author or creator of several best-
selling online marketing books and tools, including his
newest resource for “not carrying buckets” -

http://www.InstantInternetProfits.com/?53661

==========================================================

Popularity: unranked [?]

=========================

How to Sell High Priced Products
Online and Offline

By Yanik Silver
www.SurefireMarketing.com

========================

During my presentation at my recent Underground Online
Marketing Seminar (www.UndergroundOnlineSeminar.com) -
I talked about my own “Underground” secrets. One of the
things I covered was how to sell super high-end products.

Personally, I’ve sold everything from $17 ebooks to
$14,500.00 “Apprentice Programs” and lots in-between. My
most recent high-end product is a $7,995/month program for
cosmetic surgeons.

I really love high priced products and you’ll see why in a
moment…

First off, if you want to make $1M this year – then you’d
have to sell 20000 copies of my ‘doohickey’ at $50. Or it
could be 2000 copies at $500. Or better still 200 copies at
$5000.

It’s a lot easier dealing with 200 customers than 20,000.
Think of all the customer service and infrastructure, etc.
Plus, as a general rule – the buyers of a high-priced
product or service are better buyers are easier to deal
with than someone who bought a $9.95 ebook and drives you
crazy.

The other thing is these customers pay more attention and
revere the information or product/service more. I’ve
attended $500 seminars and I’ve attended $10,000.00
seminars. Which one do you think I was paying more
attention to? So having higher priced products is actually
better for your customers because they are more committed.
Think about the last time you gave free advice to someone -
what happen? That’s right. Nothing. But if you had made
them pay you for consulting – they would have taken it to
heart.

But there’s still more on the economics side…

With a higher priced product that means you have more money
to advertise. If I’m going against someone selling a $19
ebook and I’m selling a $199 home study course in the same
market – who can spend more?

No contest, right?

My competitor can only go up to $19 (unless they’ve got a
back-end product) but I can actually spend up to $199. But
what else does that let me do? I can come into a
marketplace and suck up a big part of the resellers because
I can give more commissions. Hey, that’s the name of the
game for many affiliates. I can give them $100 to promote
my product instead of the measly $10 my competitor might
give them.

And of course speaking of economics there’s more money in
it for you. If you’ve got a high priced product there
should be a very high margin built in. If not, raise the
price. I’m serious most people are undercharging for what
they provide. My rule of thumb and one of my values I look
at it every morning in my planners says “I am rich by
enriching others 10x – 100x what they pay me in return”.

That’s a big deal for me. If you pay me $1000 for a product
- I want to make sure it delivers $10,000 in value for my
customers. I suggest you consider something similar. If
your product isn’t good enough for you to raise your price
on it – make it better!

Here are just some of the high-end products you could sell
in the information marketing world (I’ve successfully sold
all of these and taught many of my students how to do the
same):

* Live events like workshops and seminars

* “Big” boxes of manuals, CDs, DVDs, CDroms, etc

* High end facilitated group masterminds

* eClasses

* “Done it for them” services

* Coaching

* Reprint rights and licenses and many more…

And don’t think high-priced products can only sell if you
are selling ‘how to make money’ related products. I have
students and friends doing very well selling high priced
products to the fitness marketplace, the dating markets,
small niche obsessive-compulsive markets, self-help, career
marketplaces and many more.

Now a lot of people think selling high priced products are
a lot tougher than low-priced products. Not true. You
usually spend about the same effort trying to sell a high-
priced product as a lower priced product.

Now when selling a high-priced product most people make the
mistake of just trying to “1-step” it. That means sending
people off to a webpage or sending them a sales letter and
then nothing more. Only a small percentage will buy this
way. I prefer lead generating where I get people to “raise
their hands” and say “yeah I’m interested”. This way I can
now afford to spend more to chase those prospects. And it’s
not enough to just email them follow-ups. I prefer to have
a whole arsenal at my fingertips if needed like direct
mail, voice broadcast, telephone calls, postcards, etc.

If over-delivering on value – hold your breath and add an
extra zero to your price. You’ll thank me for it!

(c) Surefire Marketing, Inc.

==========================================================
Yanik Silver is recognized as the leading expert on
creating automatic, moneymaking websites…and he still
doesn’t know how to put up a website.

He is the author, co-author or creator of several best-
selling online marketing books and tools, including this
updated course for selling high-end products onine:
http://www.InstantInternetProfits.com/?53661
==========================================================

Popularity: unranked [?]

I was watching some of the highlights from the recent US Open which Tiger Woods basically won on one leg. You could see how much pain he was in at times and yet you also saw an amazing determination and focus.

How does this apply to sales? Well, it comes from the most fundamental rule of golf:

Play It As It Lays

More here…

Popularity: unranked [?]

Many of the most successful businesses in the world start with a simple idea. If you’re an entepreneur, it’s important to look at the world around you for ideas and inspiration. There’s always room for innovation in any business, and sometimes a novel approach is closer than you think.

Popularity: unranked [?]

In this age of crass consumerism, we often find ourselves swimming through our own clutter and wondering, “Do I really need all this stuff!?” This is about the time to start considering the finer points of a Garage Sale!

You may be wondering, who is going to buy this old “Welcome Back Kotter” lunchbox or you thimbles of the world collection… YOU’D BE SURPRISED! Organized correctly, a garage sale can potentially bring you in some pretty good bucks!

STEP #1 – TAKE INVENTORY – GATHER AND OBTAIN ITEMS AND KNOW THEIR VALUE!

Go through every room in your home and gather items you no longer want or need. Even if you don’t see value in the items, someone else very well might, so don’t throw things away! You need lots of items to attract buyers! Be sure to take a bit of time and research your items online to find out their values. Antique collectible pottery, comic books, toys, etc. are often mistakenly sold at garage sales for far below their true value only to become an experienced treasure hunter’s retirement fund or make a featured appearance on the Antiques Roadshow!

If after all your sifting and sorting you still don’t have much stuff to sell, consider visiting other yard and garage sales and scoop up their “desperation sales” and do a little treasure hunting of your own. Sometimes, you will find items for literally pennies which you can then re-sell at your garage sale at a decent markup. Books are a good example. Many people will sell old books for 5 or 10 cents. You can snatch these up and sell paperbacks at 50 cents and hardbacks for a dollar! And keep your eyes peeled for the incredible collector finds. A few months ago, I found a high-end, very decorated large sombrero in excellent shape for a dollar! These usually go for much, much more! High-end audio equipment and musical instruments are also items people tend to unload unusually cheap, normally out of just not knowing the value of what they have and a desire to get rid of that bulky, big black box (a vintage Marshall guitar amplifier) taking up space in the spare room. If you have some expertise in a certain area of merchandise, use it to your advantage to find super deals which you can turn into big dollars at your garage sale!

STEP #2 – ADVERTISING

Spend a few dollars and take out a decent classified ad in your local newspaper including a list of top-attraction, big-ticket items you have for sale along with the other types of items you have. You stand to get many more people interested with a long list than you do with just – “Garage Sale” and an address. Also be sure to make large, colorful, eye-catching, very readable signs to place around your neighborhood to help direct people to your sale! Also, if you have a particular skill or business of your own, even if it is completely unrelated to garage sales, make sure to have plenty of business cards onhand as you will be meeting and conversing with many different types of people from your community that you otherwise would not have an opportunity to communicate with. Garage sales can be yet another great networking opportunity! You never know what sort of side-business you may strike on sale day!

STEP #3 – SMART PRICING MAKES YOU MONEY!

It’s ok to price your items a bit higher than you think you may be able to sell them for as many shoppers peruse the sales and live for haggling. You can always come down in price as you deal verbally, but going higher than the price you have marked is almost never an option, so price high enough to leave yourself some dealing room. A good rule of thumb for a garage sale is that if an item is in good condition, price it about half of what it would sell for new. If it is a collectible, be sure to label and price it as such. Also, make sure to have each item clearly labeled (and don’t put sticky labels in sensitive places of a collectible item or its packaging!). If people have to ask you the price and size of every item you have, they will eventually stop bothering and find a more pleasant environment to shop in. Just think about how annoying it is to shop at a place with no prices posted. I have personally walked out of many stores for just this very reason.

AND LASTLY – GUARD THE CASHBOX AT ALL TIMES!

NEVER leave the cashbox unattended. Periodically throughout the day you may also wish to take some of the larger bills accumulated and stash them inside your home for safety’s sake – especially if you are operating the sale alone!

Please visit my flagship website at http://www.letsgetahead.com for more great articles like this one!

Popularity: unranked [?]

Popularity: unranked [?]