Seven Ways to Encourage Sales in a Slow Economy

Do good deeds and inform prospective clients or customers of your philanthropic or other charitable commitments. Environmental groups, for example, will provide your company with referrals if they know you provide environmentally friendly services (e.g. your oil-change station recycles used oil) or products (your paper store sells chlorine-free products).

While there is no ways of knowing when economic trends will reverse themselves, there are steps business owners can take to get customers to spend. Here are seven suggestions to help you sell during slow times:

1. Package products and/or services to create added value: Almost any product or service can have a value added "accessory" or something that may not bring you much additional profit but will help sell your primary products or services. Consumers always like to feel they are getting something extra but especially when they are cutting back on spending. If they feel they are getting more for their money, they are likely to loosen the purse strings. If you can package a smaller product with a larger purchase, you can increase the perceived value of your major selling items.
2. Soften your return policies: This is not the time for customers to worry that if their purchase does not work out they are stuck. There is a small art gallery in Cross River, New York, that offers patrons the option to leave a deposit and try a painting out for a week in their home to see if it suits their taste before purchasing. A liberal return policy will make it easier for people to pull out the credit card. The point is, you need to assure customers that they are not stuck with products should they need to make returns.
3. Build lasting relationships: When times are bad, people are more likely to buy products from someone they know and trust. Building relationships with your regular customers through follow-ups, whether by e-mail or postcards, and greeting frequent customers on a first-name basis is more important than ever when business is slow. Your core customers are the ones that will help you sustain business until spending loosens up.
4. Emphasize needs and solutions over "luxury": For a storeowner selling staples such as food and reasonably priced clothing, this is easy to do. But there are a lot of products and services that people will put off buying if money is tight. However, if you can sell your product as something that can solve a problem or even save someone money, it will be easier for them to justify the purchase.
5. Personalize it: Whether you are customizing a car, configuring a computer to suit your customer's needs, or changing the doors on a kitchen cabinet, the more you can give people what they want, the more you can sell. Find a way of making the product fit the customer rather than providing one-size-fits-all solutions.
6. Provide low-cost gift-giving options: The economy notwithstanding, people like to give presents. Positioning some of your products and/or services as affordable gift options can provide an incentive for buyers to make purchases. Free shipping or low shipping costs can help you stay competitive.
7. Consider buyer incentive programs: There are numerous ways to encourage buyers to keep coming back to buy products. An auto mechanic can offer a punch card for oil changes: Buy five oil changes, get one free. The bookseller can offer a group discount to a book club that might need to buy eight copies of the same book. Small business owners agree that incentives such as discounts for referring a friend work very well in a slowing economy, as people are more than happy to help do a little marketing in exchange for saving money.
   

Ways to Find New Sales Prospects

Even loyal customers eventually use other suppliers, so you'll have to acquire new business in order to maintain the status quo - or to survive a difficult market.

• List the firms that compete with your customers. Each company on that list is a potential new customer.

• Solicit referrals. Offer discounts, freebies, or other incentives to customers who bring you new business.

• Try direct marketing. Direct marketing and mailing lists are a convenient way to identify and obtain lists of accurate, targeted sales leads for your business.

• Seek out symbiotic partnerships. Prospect sharing with similar industries can provide benefits to both parties.

• Look outside your niche. Think creatively about other markets that may want your product or service. Visit trade shows in crossover industries for ideas.

source: allbusiness.com

Important Thing, When We Go On Vacation

Most people very happy when the time to go vacation is coming, several reasons deliver us going to vacation. Some people plan their vacation by their self but the other plan by his mother or somebody was close to them. Some people going vacation to company their business partner or make their guess happy. Many reason was related when we going to vacation, but if we didn’t prepare the vacation seriously, then we didn’t get happiness at our vacation.

I have several tips preparing the vacation for the better result. First of all, we must decide our destination, mountain, beach or big city, which have several shopping area or combining the destinations. Different destination has different preparation including our cloth, food, money, etc. The destination must be planed and agreed by your company if you didn’t go alone. If you don’t have specific destination than most of you will disappoint for this vacation although not always like that. For a better result, you have to research the destination first before you go to that place. You can use Internet or your friend experience for beginning the research.

Second of all, we must have very good budgeting for the vacation, this budgeting need if we don’t want to get home earlier than our plan. Even we have lot of money, but we don’t want to be bankrupt because of the vacation, isn’t it? Stick with budget, is very important if we don’t want to go home earlier or do nothing because we have no more money. But some destination didn’t need money at all after we arrived to there, like if we plan to camp to the mountain. It’s not money that we need at there but our daily food that we must prepare. Please prepare that carefully.

Third of all, stick with your plan. Some plan didn’t work properly because of the condition at there, but mostly the good plan can anticipate that condition. For some reason, a little improvisation will need for the better result but too many improvisations will get different result vacation, it can be more happiness or sadness. In my experience, stick with the plan is the best and we could better result than we improve the plan.

Finally, the important thing is your company or friend if you don’t plan your vacation alone. Please don’t bring friend or company that isn’t same reason or purposes for vacation. Your vacation will be a disaster because of that. Here is the sample, if we want to go to the mountain and your friend is like walking around at the shopping area, that different purposes will make you more stresses.

That was all from me, I hope this will help you get the happiness with your vacation.

10 Success Key, Selling at Ebay

The time has never been better to take advantage of the ebay phenomenon and begin to build your own ebay business. The first step to success and what is considered an ebay selling secret is to begin selling part time.

It is easily a great way to make a bit of extra cash while helping you to learn the secrets of the trade. Once you begin learning the ebay selling secrets then you will be able to expand your ebay business.

It will take a lot of time and effort to learn the ebay selling secrets that work and are not just theory. Finding out the proper ebay selling techniques can become quite difficult as the top ebay sellers very rarely give up their secrets for cheap.

There are no ebay selling techniques that's main aim is a get rich quick scheme. To become as successful ebay seller it will a lot of dedication and work.

One ebay selling secret is to find items from around your home and begin selling them. This will help you to get adjust to selling on ebay and will help you in your future business efforts.

To get you started here are 10 of the top ebay selling secrets that you should know and can implement straight away

1. Research!

This is one of the most overlooked parts. When you carry out research it will enable you to find out what items are in demand. One of the simplest ways to do this is by running a search for your item and seeing how many related items show up for that keyword.

You can then check the sellers feedback to see how many times he has sold such an item.

2. Keywords and descriptions are critical!

It is an important eBay selling secret to use appropriate keywords to describe your product. Be specific in your descriptions. Your descriptions are critical to avoid any future problems or potential returns by buyers.

3. Make sure that your item is listed in the correct category!

There are a number of categories for the items to be put up for sale on eBay. The whole purpose of this is to have an organized tracking system of the products that are for sale. Some may say it is an eBay selling secret to put your item in exactly the right category where it belongs.

4. When listing an item make sure there is a photo!

The eBay selling secret of using photos of the products during auctions with photos guarantee more sales than those that don't have photos.

When you have a photo of the actual item, more buyers will pay a lot more interest. This secret will also help in building a higher trust level between you and the buyer.

5. Make the Buying process Easy! Sign up for PayPal!

Signing up for PayPal is another way that will help you to gain more buyers for your item. If you want to make your auction as easy as possible for the buyer, then PayPal it is.

6. List your items during "Hot Time" buying Periods!

Make sure that the time your auctions ends is during the peak buying times on ebay

Here is a quick reference for you:

Eastern Time Zone, list your auction between 9pm-11pm
Central Time Zone list between 8-10pm
Mountain Time Zone between 7-9pm
Pacific Time Zone list between 6-8pm.

By knowing these Hot Time buying periods, your products will likely get great exposure.You'll see the glowing sales you'll gain after the auctions.

7. Make an "About Me" Page or better yet!

Having an "About Me" page in eBay is an selling secret which let potential buyers get to know you. Getting a free web page from many companies is also a way to promote yourself

8. Positive Feedback is Important

Having positive feedback is very important . eBay buyers looks at your feedback ratings before looking up your listings. To get positive feedback, make sure to keep a good customer service and customer relations.

9. Never put any ad that would scare your potential buyers away!

Always stay away from placing reserve prices and the buy it now function when you are selling one item. One of the key ways to make more money when selling on ebay is try and cause a bidding war.

If you get a few buyers who being trying to out bid each other you will notice a massive spike in your profit margin.

It is always good to take advantage of natural human reactions. If a buyer has his heart set on buying your item he will more than likely pay over the odds for it.

It doesn't matter if he could probably purchase the same item elsewhere for cheaper.

10. Decrease Postage and Shipping Costs!

Make sure that you never under or overestimate the shipping costs of your item. It is very important that you research and prepare for the what the cost will be to ship your item.

These ten ebay selling secrets should help you learn more about ways to sell on ebay and hopefully in the future will be the building blocks to your selling success on ebay.

Source: www.streetdirectory.com

Marketing VS Selling

New Marketers are sometimes confused about the differences between marketing and selling. In point of fact marketing is simply the act of "bringing the product to market". Selling on the other hand is the final steps one takes to "close a sale" convert a prospective buyer into a customer, or "making a conversion".

At it's core marketing is essentially nothing more than research. That is to say it's about identifying groups potential buyers and then finding the best way of bringing the product to their attention, generally through some form of advertising.

Once potential customers have been identified, marketers will try to reach them by developing what is called the "Marketing Message". The more closely this message resonates with the wants needs or desires of prospective customers the better the odds of making a conversion, aka, closing sales.

Marketing on-line has some distinctive advantages to off line marketing methods. On marketers can conduct market research using search engines or keys word searches using specialized programs as well as various other methods.

In minutes the online marketer can accumulate highly accurate real time data on what people are looking at, or looking for on-line. The value of this powerful research capability can not be understated.

On-line or off, marketing and sales seem sometime to overlap in the development of what is commonly known as the "pitch". The pitch of course is how the marketing message is delivered. It's where the marketing "rubber" meets the road so to speak.

If the marketing has been done properly then the marketing message will be clearly delivered in ad copy, sales copy or by what ever means it is brought before the prospective customer.

Selling is more closely associated with a process called overcoming objections. It is a much more intimate one to one technique where a buyer "assists" a prospective customer in making a "buying decision".

Part of the marketing process is to actually uncover potential objections which might prevent a prospect from being converted to a customer. Selling is in fact where all that marketing research is applied at the point of sale.

While many would say that marketing is only a numbers game, it is really is an art as well. Successful marketers often seem to have an instinct for how to reach prospective customers that goes beyond simply number crunching. They simply seem to know what makes people tick, or perhaps more to the point, what makes them buy.

With Internet Marketing in particular there is a tremendous focus on the numbers. How many thousands, or even million potential customers will see an ad or get an email. It's easy to get the feeling that if only you have a big enough audience, sales will automatically follow.

Unfortunately many novice markets have fallen into the trap of thinking that bigger numbers make for greater success. It's no wonder then that so many fail to achieve any success at all.

Part of a good marketing plan of course is all about getting the marketing message in front of as many people as possible, not just any people of course, but the right people at the right time.

If marketing is done well it simply disappears behind the neat graphics and sparkling ad copy. The marketing message come shining through and to stimulate, motivate or excite exactly the right people.

When marketing is done well products virtually sell themselves.

by: Charles Hopkins