Small Business | Direct Sales Talk

Why Your Business Needs a Mailing List

Posted by Chris | Posted on 20-05-2012

Category : Direct Sales Marketing, Small Business Tips

Tags: direct sales marketing, marketing, selling tips, small business

Every business needs to have a mailing list of one kind or another. What is a mailing list? It is list is a list of people who signed up and opted in to receive your mailings, such as newsletters, ecourses, ebooks, and other emails. There are many benefits to having a huge mailing list. Let’s look at a few reasons why you will want to start building one today.

There is an old saying and many sales people know this one: “The money is in the follow up”, and that holds true for your list as well. Your mailing list provides you a way of staying in touch with people who have visited your website. Maybe they didn’t buy anything the first time they visited your site. However, if you stay in touch with them on a regular basis, they may turn into a loyal customer.

There are several types of mailing list formats to choose from and you may want to include each kind on your website. You can offer a general newsletter that people can subscribe to. This is a great way to keep people informed on the updates you have made to your site. You can include excerpts from any articles you recently added with links to the full text. If you offer podcasts, you can include information about upcoming calls, guests and information you will be featuring, etc.

You can also choose to have a tips list or ecourse. People love numbers and are eager to sign up for a tips list, such as “15 Ways to Get Organized Today” or “50 Ways to Work from Home”, etc. These tips can be small emails that are delivered daily or weekly to your mailing list. An ecourse is a great way to promote your information products a bit at a time so you are in front of your customers and potential customers often.

The best way to manage your new mailing list is through an autoresponder service. When you sign up for such a service, you can create a list and load email messages into it. When someone signs up for your list, they will automatically start to receive the messages you have already written. Each person will receive message 1, and the autoresponder will continue to send the messages in the order you selected.

While the main purpose of having a mailing list is to promote products, your visitors will be eager to sign up for them if you provide helpful information. Use your mailing list to allow you to cross promote your products and services and turn “fence sitters” into customers.

How to Get Over a Setback in Business

Posted by Chris | Posted on 05-05-2012

Category : Direct Sales Work at Home Business Tips, Small Business Tips

Tags: direct sales business, small business, work at home tips

Have you ever suffered a setback in your business? It happens every so often and sometimes it can be tough to get back on the proverbial horse. It can happen and you may have lost confidence in yourself and your abilities. However, the longer you wait to start working your business, the harder it will be to get going again. The following are some tips to help you overcome a setback and get your business back on track!

Stay Structured
A structured schedule is important in your small business. It can serve as both a reminder and motivator to help you move forward. As the old saying goes “plan your work and work your plan”.

Learn New Skills
Learning new skills can help motivate you. You may choose to take a class that will further develop skills you already have or learn something new entirely. There are many options for how to expand your skills and training. Look at formal classes at your local college, listen to conference calls and teleclasses, or simply buy a business-related book at the bookstore.

Hire a Business Coach
A business coach can help you evaluate your business, as well as your strengths and weaknesses. Every small business owner should have someone that can help you stretch. Coaches can help you formulate a plan to get back into action and provide motivation to help you succeed.

Outsource Tasks
If there is a particular task that you do not enjoy and you find it becoming a hindrance to your business, outsource the task to a professional. The task will be completed on a regular basis quickly and efficiently so you can move on to work you enjoy.

Check Your Work Environment
Mixing up your work environment can energize you and breathe new life into your business. For instance, if you tend to work exclusively online with clients, try finding some local ones to work with. This also will apply to where to you too. Do you work in an enclosed room or office? Change things up and grab a laptop for working at a coffee house or outside a few hours a day. It will bring a new perspective.

Try a Joint Venture
Look at teaming up with someone on a joint venture. This can bring some excitement and fun back into your business and it can also be a great way to get over a setback. You will be able to dive back into a project, but will have another person to share the work with. This can help alleviate any pressure you feel about your tasks. Having a partner to bounce ideas off and brainstorm with can add a fun element to your business.

Use Your Strengths and Skills
Think about what your strengths are and use those skills in your business. If you work on activities that you don’t feel you do particularly well, you may end up feeling challenged and unsuccessful. People tend to excel when doing tasks they are good at. It will make your work a lot more enjoyable when you work consistently on things that you do well.

Reward Yourself
Don’t lose your momentum when you have a setback. It is easy to sit back and blame yourself, but don’t beat yourself up. It is a learning experience. Look what you did that was not effective and improve it. You do not have to be an overnight success, but once you get to success levels in your business, make sure to reward yourself for a job well done!

Marketing Your Company Using Professional Product Reviewers

Posted by Chris | Posted on 15-03-2012

Category : Direct Sales Marketing, Small Business Tips, Social Media for Direct Sales

Tags: business builders, business growth, business tips, direct sales marketing, small business, small business tips

Building your business in a struggling market can seem like a daunting job, especially with hundreds of other direct sales reps and companies vying for the attention. With an online business, there is a great method that you can find useful to get your name out to the crowds easily and relatively quickly. It is called Product Reviews.

There are hundreds of product review blogs in the online world that are willing to review an item that is sent to them. In turn, they will post about your product and your business which will bring you valuable backlinks and promotion. One such blog that will handle direct sales products is Two Classy Chics.

There are a few things that you need to check for before randomly contacting a review blogger. You want to look for a professional product reviewer, not someone that does it casually. Here is what to look for:

1) Check out their site and read the reviews they post. Make sure they are detailed and give proper links to the sponsor. The review should be more than a paragraph or a few sentences and should have at least 2-3 backlinks.

2) Check and see how many reviews they have written. Look for their followers and make sure they have written a lot of reviews before yours and they have a lot of followers.

3) Check to see if the reviews they have written are in similar product lines like your product. If you are looking at a mom blog that deals in organic diapers mainly, your beauty or kitchen items might not get the right attention.

4) Ask what the turn around is. Ask them if they will promote your review at all and if so, how. Ask them if they ever remove reviews or links… they should not.

5) See if they also host giveaways. Giveaways of additional product will give you a lot of traffic to your site and can create a lot of interest if it is run properly. You can use it to gain new followers to your social media sites which means you can then market directly to them.

Using product reviews and giveaways can really work to help kick off your marketing effort. It can bring your new followers to your social media accounts and create some excitement.

If you have a product you would like to market, check out my review and giveaway blog at Two Classy Chics to see how I can help your business.

The Secret to Selling More

Posted by Chris | Posted on 22-01-2011

Category : Article Marketing, Direct Sales Articles, Direct Sales Work at Home Business Tips, Ghostwriting for Blogs

Tags: direct sales, increasing sales, small business, work at home tips

I have a secret. The secret to selling more product and making more money. I don’t know if you are ready for it yet, though. Its a pretty big secret! What do you think? Are you up for it? Well, I am going to be nice and not hold back and longer.

For those of you crying the blues about making money in your direct sales business or MLM business or other home based small business, here is the scoop. The big scoop.

ASK for the SALE

I Know! What a riot!! Just think how I felt when I realized that…..

Ok, no more kidding around.

Seriously, people. If you have the tools at your finger tips to sell more product, why aren’t you doing it? If you have the tools and the product to sell, what is stopping you? The longer you whine and complain about not having sales, the less effective your whining is. Because people for hundreds and thousands of years have been selling product to feed their family, house their family and make a dang good living.

You have made a decision about the types of product that you want to sell the day you paid the money to join the business; the day you created the product line; the day you published the ebook or report, so what is stopping you? Are you afraid to ASK someone to buy from you?

I know it is easy to giveaway products and services and hope that lucky person will come back and actually buy from you. But that cannot happen forever. You have to get off your bootay and get out there. Get out into your community. Get out into other streams of people on the internet. By hanging with the same old crowd, you are going to get the same old results.

Come up with creative ways to market your products and ask for the sale. It sounds so simple and it really is. Ignore the negative nellies in your life and just do it. You just need to do it!

Just think how nice it will be to have money in your pocket and product moving. You know that having this product at your finger tips means that you can have money any time. Just go sell something. You love your product. That is why you wanted to sell it. And Guess what? Other people love your product as well. You just need to find them and they will appreciate you. Don’t let any negative thoughts get in your way. Get rid of the excuses and just go for it.

Okay….. off my soap box now.