I was over at Small Business Ideas Forum where I moderate, and someone brought up cold calling on the telephone. Now cold calling is something I loved, as I did a LOT of it way back in my sales and advertising early days. I have also helped clients with their cold calling setup, so this was right up my street  

One thing that sales people and sales trainers often fail to get across is exactly what the job of the sales person is. They say it is to sell products, (which is true), but they do not sum it up properly.

You see your job as a sales person, be it teleselling, face to face selling, or selling online is the same, selling is selling no matter what medium you sell in. Your job is to ensure the person you are talking to has the information they need to make a decision. Note I said a decision not a purchase? No matter how good your product or sales methods, some people will either not be able to, or not want to buy your product.

To sell you must listen more than you speak, but you need to get the information to the client, to get that information to the client you need to know what THEY need to know. You do this in the time honoured way that any parent will know. You ask questions! Kids by the way are the best salespeople you will ever meet, they master the skill of open and closed questions with ease. How many of us have gone through this

Please can I have an xxx?
NO!
Why not?

note the use of open and closed questions there! 

I will explain the difference between an open and closed question, and explain how as a top salesman I used it shamefully to speak to pretty women without fear of rejection. (when like me you have a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp, you need all the help you can get in order to not be rejected). (Read on …)

You toil over a hot keyboard fry your brain to get the words ‘just right’ and announce your writings to the world. Only to find that within a short period of time someone has stolen your hard work! What can you do about it?

Firstly I have to say that the instant you create anything, YOU own copyright to that material. Technically you own intellectual property rights on it. These are legally enforceable rights that YOU as the owner can enforce.

(Read on …)

Ok I have been away from blogging for a few weeks, too busy with work and with other stuff But here is the thing. Why are people still asking ‘are frames any good for seo’? or ‘how can I optimise my frames site’? WHY BOTHER!

Once upon a time in a land far far away there was WYSIWYG software, and this stuff would build framed sites for you. The search engines couldn’t understand it, users hated it, no one could deep link to it, and users could not book mark anything but the first page. But all that has changed now hasn’t it! Hasn’t it?

 Well true spiders can spider frames sites better but still can not handle the URL’s properly, the rest has stayed the same. Technology has moved on now, and you can achieve the same effect with php etc includes or as library items in dream weaver, or as templates within Dream weaver. Front page also has these facilities.

There really is no need to use frames any more, so don’t!

A question over at Small Business Brief made me think how good it would be to share the information I have gleaned on how to cut your advertising spend.

I think it was John Wanamaker that said “Half of my advertising is wasted, I just don’t know which half”, well the technology of the web allows you to find out which half, or, in other words, it can multiply the ROI no end, as wasted money is wasted!

How many people that run adverts containg a link to their website, simply add www.yourdomain.com without any thought of ad tracking whatsoever, without any thought of page targeting whatsoever? If you do this, then your throwing away a golden opportunity to track the effectiveness of your advertising choice, and your adverts individually.

One of the best things you can do is evaluate your advertising returns properly, and one of the easiest ways to do this is to ask the visitor where they came from.

When the telephone rings, you speak to your customers, and, at the end of the conversation, one of the last things you should do is ask them ‘where did you get our number’? If they say ‘yellow pages, local newspaper etc, ask them why they chose to call you’ you do this because many people will pick up yellow pages to look for your number after having been referred to you by a friend, asking the ‘why’ question will give you the actual source rather than the vehicle for finding your number. If your not doing this THEN DO IT!

But how can we transfer this online?  for sure we get referrer logs, but they will simply show up as direct referrer IE, they typed your URL directly into the browser with no search engine or link page involved .THIS is where the real power of online offline comes to the fore. Simply give each of your adverts a unique URL, and your direct referrers from your logs will tell you how many people have visited as a result of seeing that advert, or having been referred to it by word of mouth (WOM). It really doesn’t matter how they got there, be it first generation or WOM, the initial response will be as a result of THAT ad in THAT publication.

I would definitely recommend sub-domains for this, as people will start typing from the beginning of the URL, and as such will add the sub-domain, and not leave off the sub folder details, as they will sometimes with sub-folders. We use a combination of add tracking and publication tracking sub domains (all excluded with robots.txt to prevent the possibility of their getting confused with doorway pages), and it works a treat!

By doing this we have been able to weed out the poorly performing publications, and increase the spend in those which work best, while finding new publications and refining ads. Sub-domains are perfect for this. 

Yellow Pages is a perfect example. Many people have multiple adverts in YP, take for example a wedding car hire and limousine service. (this is a true life example of one of my clients). They advertised in

wedding services
Chauffeur driven car hire
Limousine Services
Specialist travel Services
Airport Transfer

They did not know which of these adverts were working, and at almost £1000 a piece per year it was crucial they found out. by using sub-domains of
weddingS.ourdomain.com 
Chaeuffeur.ourdmain
limo.ourdomain.com etc.
we were rapidly able to identify that two of these adverts were bringing in ABSOLUTELY no business whatsoever. enter a saving of £2000 per year to spend on other things. At the same time we identified that one of them was performing very well, so we increased spend on that one, and totally worked on the advert.

I can not tell you how important it is that you grasp the fact the world wide wen, is NOT an advertising tool, it is a marketing tool. Use it as a marketing tool and you will increase your business. Look at entry and exit pages at least weekly, identify where people are leaving your site and find out why1 identify potential problems with that page, correct them, and get them back into your site. 

I had a client who made bespoke bridal gowns (posh names for wedding frocks ) I was able to tell her which of here designs were the most and least popular. She was amazed and asked me how I could possibly know that! I pointed out to here that it was simple, as the click throughs from the images of those gowns told us that. We changed the images, removing the underperforming ones and replacing them with softer styles, and business went up.

Log stats reading is a boring as hell, but it is the key to success on the web.