Mastering Sales Psychology

To be a successful entrepreneur, it is imperative that you understand and use sales psychology. Internet Marketing gurus have this ability honed to an art form. Sales psychology is an advantage whether you are in a conventional brick and mortar business or an online one. The great thing is that sales psychology is not difficult to learn. Essentially all you need to do is put yourself in the place of the prospective buyer.

One aspect of sales psychology is that people respond to specifics more than generalities. If you sell photocopy machines, saying a particular unit is a high-speed duplicating machine is not impactful. But if you say that your machine produces 10 sheets of A4-sized copies in 12 seconds with the ability to automatically collate documents into correct order, then it seems more impressive. In sales, rounding off figures dilutes its impact so state numbers without rounding off. Of course, the facts and figures must be believable.

This aspect of stating things in specific terms also applies to targeting your prospects. People must know whether your product or service is for them or not. Hence, the term 'Home Owners' is not as good as 'Gardening Enthusiasts'. And 'Gardening Enthusiasts' is not as specific as 'Tropical Plant Lovers'.

Another aspect of sales psychology is that people are interested in how they can benefit from your product or service more than what the product can do. In other words, benefits always win over features. For example, if you sell pianos, tell the prospect that giving his child a piano today will enable the child to have a career in music in future. This is far better than to use the old cliche, 'Give your child the gift of music' or to stress the features of the piano. It is important to mention features because people must know what they are buying but the trigger that makes them buy is always the benefit not the feature.

Sales psychology also takes advantage of human individuality. Everyone likes to feel special. So the smart entrepreneur would make his prospect feel exclusive. That is why Internet Marketers present a product in 'beta' version that is in pre-launch and tell their prospects they are the exclusive few who get to purchase it. But after sales for the beta version is successful, the product will be released to the general public, often at a higher price. So three elements, the timing (it is pre-launch), the version (beta) and the price (cheaper) combine powerfully to create the sense of exclusiveness.

In an increasingly competitive business environment, smart entrepreneurs utilize sales psychology triggers to get their prospects to buy from them. Therefore in whatever you sell, always use as many of these elements of sales psychology as possible.

How To Set Up Your Own Office Anywhere

Modern technology makes it simple to set up an office almost anywhere. Cell phones, email, laptops and updated office situations offer unlimited opportunities to start your own business. Whether you want a full-time enterprise or a part-time income, you need the right setup to be successful. Take advantage of advanced technology to have a convenient, functional office on your own terms.

Home Offices

Renovate your garage, family room or even a large closet into your own office space. Create a corner in the house just for your work. Have a designated area for files, your computer and other business essentials. Stay organized so you know where everything is and don't have to waste time looking for it. Scattering your work around the house makes it difficult to run a successful enterprise no matter how large or small.

Go Mobile

Sometimes occurrences at home make it impossible to focus on the business at hand. Have a laptop and cell phone ready so you can work at your favorite park, coffee shop or library. If peace and quiet are impossible to attain in one spot, take your work elsewhere for awhile. Often the change of scenery helps you regain focus so you can get back to business more effectively.

Virtual Offices

Virtual offices provide a designated business address, telephone number and fax number along with an answering service and receptionist. For a monthly fee, you can set up a virtual office in almost any major city in the world. Virtual offices also create a presence in a metropolitan area and give your business image a boost. If you need a professional space to meet with clients, most virtual offices have conference rooms available on short notice. Having a virtual office also makes it easier to work at home. You have someone else receiving packages, telephone calls, faxes and mail so you can work without interruption. A virtual office also maintains the privacy of your home address and phone number.

Managed Offices

Managed offices are run by a management company that rents out rooms and suites to various businesses. Everyone has a shared receptionist, answering service, security and common areas such as lobbies, restrooms and conference rooms. You can rent an impressive single office or suite in a local business area without a long term lease or buying office space. This gives businesses more freedom to expand, downsize and relocate.

Outsourcing

As businesses expand, they often seek virtual offices and managed offices for the access to receptionists and clerical staff. Another option for small enterprises is outsourcing. Use a freelancer to handle writing, research and public relations as you work on other aspects of your business. Hire a virtual assistant to manage appointments, telephone calls and client data. Get help to make your business more profitable and productive.

Start your own business, gain credibility and build profits by customizing your offices to suit your unique needs. Whether you want to quit your day job or supplement your current income, you can create your own perfect office anywhere and anytime.

Decision-Making for Good Leadership

Decision-Making is of prime importance for good leadership. Generally it is thought that a good leader makes all the decisions and they have to be the best.

In this modern age, it is impossible for one person to make all the decisions and for all the decisions to be the best. There are too many unseen variables and too many people involved in implementation for a leader to make all the decisions and for them to be the best ones.

However, understanding the types of decisions and the people involved in making them can help the leader to manage the complexity of decision making. The factor that makes decision-making easier and the types of decisions are given below.

Decisions are Data-Based

A good leader makes decisions based on data, which is analyzed for patterns of information. The information is then used to make decisions that are well thought out.

While it is true that you cannot know everything, doing an analysis of available data about a predicament will, nevertheless, lessen the risk of failure.

While all decisions need to be data-based, there are at least four different types of decisions:

1. Paradigm Decisions

Paradigm decisions are those which provide guidelines for decision-making for all people in an organization or team. Decisions such as: Having a smoke-free organization, having a non-discrimination policy, etc. are paradigm decisions. They help team members and leaders to make the right decisions when they are faced with a dilemma.

Such decisions need to be made with the involvement of everyone affected. The consensus process is a very useful methodology to make such decisions.

2. Policy Decisions

Policy decisions are necessary to provide resources and official permission for the operations of an organization.

For instance, if the Performance Appraisal Process needs to be reviewed, then a couple of policy decisions need to be made. A decision needs to be made to set-up a committee which will analyze the existing process. The different teams in an organization need to volunteer a representative to become members of the committee.

The management team needs to allocate money and time for this team to function and come up with an insightful report.

All decisions that are made to ease the functioning of the teams are policy decisions.

Policy decisions are made in a participatory mode with the involvement of everybody who will be involved in the execution of the task.

3. Procedural or Functional Decisions

Procedural decisions are made by a few people who will be carrying out the plans/policies/goals of the organization or who will be impacted by the decision. These are decisions that will help implement a process.

For instance, outlining the procedure of recruitment and selection in an organization is a process of detailing the actions that a team will take when they follow this procedure. It will also detail the actions to be taken if there are exceptions.

4. Structured Decisions

Structured decisions are made by individuals who are directly executing the plans of the organization. These decisions are informed by the data available to the employee, the procedures/structures that have already been put in place, and the knowledge of the policies and paradigms of the organization. The decision-maker could be the CEO or the security guard at the gate.

Understanding the kinds of decisions – and the people who need to be involved in making them – provides the leader with the confidence to make decisions; sometimes alone and sometimes with others.

This will also give the leader confidence in the decisions of his team members, as they are made with an understanding of the values and procedures of the organization.

Know Your Audience Before You Speak

You can make a significant impact in public speaking if you put in a little effort to know your audience before making the speech. This does not have to be a mammoth task if you know the kind of questions to which you need to get answers.

1. What Are The Needs And Wants Of The Audience?

The topic of your speech is about what the audience needs to know. However, not everyone is excited about hearing what they need to know. It helps if you can figure out what they want to know.

To know your audience will require you to know how they perceive that the need will be of value to them. Just giving them the content will not be sufficient. It is important that you are able to show them what is in it for them to make an impact.

Just providing them the knowledge or content is only the first part but igniting enthusiasm about what you are talking about will be what will make the difference.

2. What Does The Audience Already Know?

It is so easy to bore your audience if you tell them what they already know.

Taking a little effort in finding out as much as you can about the audience you will address is actually your first step to helping succeed in making your speech. If they are new to this topic, then you will need to cover the basics. If not, then you may want to summarize the basics, before you continue with the rest.

It is also a good idea to inform the audience of the level of prerequisite knowledge required on the subject matter. There have been speakers who have been known to do a preparatory session for people who are new to the subject before actually doing the presentation proper. People, who already know basic content, are appreciative of this as they do not have to sit through information that they already know.

The intent of knowing your audiences' knowledge level is not about impressing people with how much more you know than your audience. Rather, it is about imparting information and knowledge in such a way that will trigger something in the audience for them to make a decision and/or to take action.

3. What Does The Audience Understand?

Knowing a subject and understanding it are two completely different things. This whole idea of knowing but not understanding enough to get value out of what you hear is costing lots of people time and money.

People attend seminars and quite often they tell themselves that this is stuff that they know. Question is do they understand it sufficiently to take action. Even if they decide to take the first action, do they understand the underlying impact of how much work and actions are actually needed to complete what they are starting.

Again, the level of knowledge of the audience will have an impact on how detailed you may need to go to ensure that you can bring them to a level of understanding. Or, at least to inform the audience of the level of details that is covered in the session.

4. What Does The Audience Fear?

When you know your audience enough to know about what they fear, you can be in a very effective position.

Fear can be of two kinds. One is when the person fears something and the other is when the person does not fear.

Lots of people know and understand things but are afraid to take action. For these people, if what you say and how you say helps them to overcome their fear and give them confidence, then you know that you have done a good job. The audience will go away feeling good as they are in a much better position to take action.

This might be the case with people who want to start on internet marketing but are afraid to take the initial steps only because they have never done it before. Instead of just rushing over it, breaking it down in simple steps might make it simple enough for people to overcome their initial fears.

How about the audience that does not fear? In this case, there may be a need to share areas and extent of risk.

A good example of this would be anti-virus protection on personal computers not only for office but also at home. Speaking of the details of what is anti-virus protection and how it can be prevented is definitely good knowledge. Additionally, getting the audience emotionally involved in the kind of risk and loss that they will get into, will improve the extent of involvement in listening to you.

To know your audience does take a little bit of effort, but this is well worth it as you will have a much better impact and audience response. The next time you have a speech to make, get to know your audience and find out for yourself the difference that you can make both to your audience as well as for yourself.

Business Undercover: Finding the Holes in Your Business

OK, so you have been working your business for a while but yet you seem to continue having issues with your business planning. Have you considered that you might have holes in your business plan?

What are holes? Glad you asked. Holes are those things that may cause you to lose money unaware or along potential business clients to slip through your fingers.

Some examples of holes are as follows:

Income funnel not present: an income funnel allows you to build your mailing list while also allowing you to upsell your products to your mailing list.

Missing outsourcing opportunities: outsourcing opportunities allow you to hire others to handle tasks that would be more financially reasonable for someone else to complete.

Not holding teleseminars: when you hold a teleseminar, you can also record it so that you can sell the audio or transcript as a product via your website.

No financial plan: in order to understand where you business is going financially; a plan must be in place. The plan will help you by showing when you should make changes in your business too reflect growth.

Lack of a crisis management plan: having a crisis management plan in place will help you be ready to handle tragedy when it happens. Examples of tragedies are computer failure, fire destroying office equipment, or flood damage to office.

The above list is just a short list of holes that you might find in your business. Regardless of what type of holes that you find in your business, you need to take action to fix them.

One final area that would be considered a hole is not have a business mentor. A business mentor is some who provides sound advice and direction to you as you manage your business. Some of the characteristics of a good business mentor are:

~ Ability to give you constructive feedback

~ Successful in own business

~ Experienced at mentoring business owners

~ Able to be real and truthful to you

~ You are open to receiving their feedback

~ You respect their opinion

These are just a few of things that you should consider when looking for a business mentor. Just keep in mind that a good business mentor will fit well into your business plan. If the mentor does not fit, you need to give more thought to whether you want to keep them or get a new one.

So be an undercover agent and work to find the holes that may be holding back your business.