Categories
Online Business

How to Convert More Website Traffic into More Customers & Sales by Inviting Prospects to Take Action

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Article Contributed By Adam Hommey
As an internet marketer and a webmaster for internet marketers, I get frustrated when I visit a website and end up flipping through pages of content that doesn’t lead to anything. Most people’s website content doesn’t tell me what the next steps are. And, they don’t tell me what actions I should take. So how can they expect to convert their website traffic into more customers and sales?
Every page on your website – regardless of its purpose or content – needs to guide your visitor to the next step.
Obviously, your sales page leads visitors to click to the secure shopping cart order form so they can buy from you.
Your special report download page guides visitors to enter their name and e-mail address and hit “Submit” so they can be added to your mailing list.
But what about your “About Us” page (which contains your bio), your “Media” page (which lists all the major outlets in which you’ve been featured), and your “Contact Us” page?
Here Are 3 Easy “Calls to Action” to Convert More Website Traffic into Sales on the About Us, Media and Contact Us Pages
1. On the “About Us” page, after your bio, add a powerful client testimonial praising your expertise and your measurable and specific impact on the client’s bottom line. Then add the line “Ready for these kinds of results in your organization? Click here to get started now!” (This links to the contact page).
This call to action, in fact, can be used for any page that does not have an obvious “next step.” Just make sure the testimonial ties in to the page content. If the page is a list of your keynote speaking topics, have the testimonial be about how your keynote set an awesome tone for the entire conference, not about how helpful your sales department is to your customers.
2. Your “Media” page should not just be a collage of logos. It should contain short videos of your TV appearances, audio clips of your radio interviews or featured-expert interviews on teleseminars. It should also include links to the articles where you were quoted or links to your articles that got published on the top websites. Let the world see what a sought-after, in-demand expert you really are.
With that being said, a simple, but effective call to action would be, “Sarah B. Marketer looks forward to being the featured expert on your next program. To schedule her appearance right now click here.” (This links to the Contact page.)
3. The Contact page, by definition, is a call to action. It needs to take your visitor by the hand and lead them through the next step.
It should not just be a page that displays your mailing address, phone number, and main corporate e-mail. Rather, it should lead with a paragraph that congratulates the reader for their decision to take action. Then, it should explain the process for getting in touch with you. It should also describe what someone should expect once they contact you.
Next, guide them through a simple web form that asks specific questions. This way you can do your homework and present prospects with a specific response and action plan. Make sure to keep this form as brief as possible, and only ask questions that directly inform how you and your visitor would do business together in the near future.
Having a web form, rather than just a link to your e-mail address, guides your visitor to take a specific action. This raises their level of commitment to you and increases your chances that they will buy from you.
Bottom line: Make sure that every page on your website provides a roadmap for your visitor with a specific call to action. This is the only way your prospects will reach the destination that you prepared for them. And, it’s the only way you will increase your website sales conversions.
About the Author
The Website Surgeon, Adam Hommey, increases website sales conversions for entrepreneurs, small business owners and Internet marketers just like you who want to make more sales now. To see where you’re actually losing money on your website, get a live website review at http://www.livewebsitereviews.com

Categories
Sales & Marketing

How to Get More Referrals, More Prospects & More New Clients During a Recession

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Article contributed by Joanne Black
It’s hard enough to get more prospects and new clients during a booming economy when people have money to spend. When the global economy takes a nosedive and freefalls fast, it’s 100 times harder to get prospect to talk to us.
So, how can you get more referrals and more NEW clients in a lagging economy?
It’s straightforward: The answer to getting more referrals and more new clients during any economic situation is to ask.
How many of your clients have you asked for referrals? When I ask this question to salespeople, the usual answer is “not many” or “hardly any.”
For example, I was working with the president of a consulting firm. I asked him how many clients he had—counting all the people he worked with, not just the number of companies. He told me 295. Then I asked him: with how many of the 295 did he have excellent relationships.
His answer: 60.
I then asked him how many of the 60 he had asked for referrals.
Silence.
Sixty of his best, most valued clients were just sitting there. These clients were an underleveraged source of referrals that could be bringing in more clients.
If you’re not inviting your current clients to be part of your sales team, you’re leaving money on the table – every single day. If you ask them, they’ll be happy to refer you. But, you have to ask.
If you’re a good salesperson, you probably have at least 100 people on your prime contact list. These are people you could phone, and they would return your call. If only 20 percent referred you, you’d have 20 new prospects to satisfy. Once you satisfy them and once you actively cultivated relationships with them, they can become part of your “sales team.”
Can you see where this could lead, and how much business that could generate?
Real Proof Why You Should Ask Your Clients for More Referrals
In a survey of its best clients, a major brokerage firm asked: Would you be willing to refer your stockbroker?
The survey results: A whopping 84 percent of its best clients would be willing to refer their stockbroker. Eighty-four percent.
The firm asked brokers: What percent of the time are you asking your clients for referrals?
The answer: Only 15 percent.
Their clients were absolutely willing to refer them, but the brokers were not asking.
You can easily see how a fabulous opportunity was overlooked. Think about how much money the brokers were leaving on the table. Those referrals could easily have generated millions of dollars in revenue for the firm, if they’d been maximized.
The Hard Fact: Your Clients Will Help You Get More Prospects and New Clients – But You Need to Ask
The hard fact is most clients think of us only when they need us. It’s up to you to get them thinking about you between orders. Your clients are not going to automatically refer you. You must constantly remind them that you exist, so when a referral opportunity arises, you’re the one who gets it.
The clients you serve well – the ones who know you, like you, and trust you -truly want you to be successful. After all, they know what you do and they’ve received measurable business results from your solutions. Referring you will make them look good to their customers and business partners.
So are you now ready to get more referrals, prospects and clients right now?
Top 5 Tips to Help You Get More Referrals During a Global Economic Slowdown
1. Review your database and gather information about your current clients. Find out:
– What percent of your current clients were referred?
– How profitable are your current clients?
– Have they bought additional products from you?
– How often have you contacted them?
– How many have referred you to other clients?
2. Put a plan in place to check in with your clients and find out what they need.
3. Make a note about why they like working with you.
4. Ask for ways to improve.
5. Invite them to help you build your business through referrals and ask them to refer you.
Your current clients are going to be your best source of referrals. They’re just waiting for you to ask.
It’s time to ask. What are you waiting for?
About the Author:
America’s leading authority on referral selling and founder of No More Cold Calling, Joanne Black, helps salespeople, sales teams, and business owners get more referrals and attract more business fast without increasing costs. Discover how to turn prospects into clients more than 50 percent of the time, even during a down economy, with her Recession-Proof Your Business Emergency Kit at: http://www.nomorecoldcalling.com/products.html

Categories
Starting Up

When Strategies are not Strategic

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This article is contributed by Guy Kingston
Modern business planning owes it origins to two very different parents.
The first is the obligation to prepare a “Prospectus” when floating a company, outlining the “prospects” of the new venture. Although an early prospectus has little in common with a modern business plan, it might well have contained elements that might find their way into such a plan – a statement of purpose, a “vision” of where the new company intends to be in a few years, an analysis of opportunities and threats, and so on.
A prospectus is primarily a legal and financial document, but it is also a marketing tool to sell the new company to investors. What it is not is a strategy.
The second major influence on business planning is military planning. Many of the early pioneers of business planning were professional soldiers or naval officers who were retired or who found themselves surplus to requirements between wars. They brought the techniques they had learned in the services into the world of commerce.
There is a saying to the effect that “When amateurs talk about war, they talk about strategy; when professionals talk about war, they talk about logistics.”
There is much truth in that. The key to winning wars is less actual fighting than being able to move men and material at short notice and under pressure to the place where they are most needed. The army that does this most effectively will usually win the fighting.
Since professional soldiers devote a great deal of their time and thought to this, they tend to get good at it. Experience has taught them a few simple techniques that are usually very effective in practice. Although there are many famous logistical failures, they are famous because they are exceptional.
This is the military efficiency that proved so useful in the private sector.
However, the downside of professional soldiers being good at logistics because they talk about the subject more than strategy is that they are not so good at strategy.
Career soldiers are not necessarily expert strategists. The skills that make them good at logistical detail rarely come with a view of the bigger picture. Experienced commanders have often made elementary strategic errors that even a well-informed amateur would have foreseen and avoided. Whatever one’s view of the policies of the West in Iraq and Afghanistan, no one can deny that the implementation of those policies has been full of avoidable strategic errors.
Many of the fine military minds that influenced the development of business planning were characterised by the same combination of logistical skill and strategic blindness.
Here then is the great gap between the two sources of business planning: neither was particularly interested in actual strategy.
Those who could draft a good prospectus might be able to conjure up an enticing picture of how things could be, and those in the military tradition could deal with the nuts and bolts of running a business, but the problem of turning the pretty picture into the nuts and bolts was never addressed.
There were plans and plans but no real strategy.
This original problem has never quite been resolved. One sees it reflected in too many business plans today. They are big on the broad vision and sound on the operational details, but have no strategy to turn one into the other – which, one would have thought, was the whole point of a business plan in the first place!
About the Author:
Guy Kingston produces and presents the Mind Your Own Business podcast, offering free business advice to entrepreneurs and business owners. As well as audio podcasts there are more articles like this, compelling videos and a must-read blog. All at www.myobpod.com or you can network and join in discussions on the MYOB Facebook group.

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Newsletter

BIZNESS! Newsletter Issue 78

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Better Support From Japan: Bras For Men
Kramer really was on to something after all. The ‘Men’s Premium Brassiere’ is the number one wishlist item being devoured at Rakuten, the online Japanese store. The male bra trend is sweeping the country…
Continued in BIZNESS! Newsletter Issue 78 >>>
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– 6 Reasons Why This Economy Is Good For Startups
– 7 Reasons To Grow Your Business With Ezines
– Sole Trader Basic Accounts Income And Expenditure
Continue reading these top stories in the BIZNESS! Newsletter >>>

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Categories
How-To Guides

Sole trader basic accounts income and expenditure basic tax account

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A sole trader in the UK can operate a very basic accounting system. Provided supporting evidence is retained to show the basic accounts are realistic and the income and expenditure statement accurate for basic tax purposes sophisticated accountancy, debits and credits are not required. Basic accounts for a sole trader do not require the production of a balance sheet.
In order for a sole trader to be able to keep basic tax accounts certain conditions regarding the status of business accounts must be satisfied. Sales turnover should be under the vat threshold limit, a balance sheet not required, a business bank account not used and no employees employed. If the conditions are met then a simple income and expenditure statement is all that is required greatly simplifying the bookkeeping.
Self employed businesses are not required to maintain a balance sheet. If a balance sheet is maintained then to produce one the business needs to operate an accounting system based upon double entry bookkeeping and involving technical features such as debtors and creditors control accounts. Sole traders who do not need to produce a balance sheet can then maintain their basic accounting using single entry bookkeeping which is basically making lists of the financial transactions.
If a balance sheet is not produced the sole trader must keep a record of all capital expenditure items as part of the basic tax accounts to enable the capital allowances to be claimed each tax year. Receipts need to be retained as part of the basic accounts to enable the annual investment allowance to be claimed in the first year and writing down allowances in subsequent years.
More detailed financial records are required to be kept by the sole trader if they are vat registered. The vat threshold for the financial year starting April 2008 is £67,000. Part of the vat rules state that when a business is vat registered they should maintain an audit trail of transactions to support the vat return.
A sole trader does not have to operate a business bank account however if a business bank account is used then accounting records should be kept as the taxation authority, HMRC can ask to see details of the account. This inspection is to verify the transactions support the basic accounts produced. If a business bank account is not used then HMRC do not have a statutory right to view the sole trader personal bank account and that personal; account does not have to be a feature of the sole trader basic accounts.
When a sole trader has employees then as an employer a PAYE system is required which involves maintaining accurate wages records of employees, gross wages, income tax and national insurance deductions and net pay. Various PAYE records must also be maintained such as the working deductions sheet and also payslips must be issued to employees. The payroll records form part of the financial accounts of the sole trader who would actually be better called self employed if they have employees.
In the circumstances where a sole trader has no employees, is not vat registered and does not maintain a business bank account then formal accounts are not essential and a simple income and expenditure account statement can be produced. It is still essential that those sole trader basic accounts are supported with copies of invoices given to customers or records of amounts taken plus documentary evidence to support the payments made to suppliers.
On the sales side the basic accounting can consist of a list of the sales which when totalled produces the sales turnover of the business which is the income side of the income and expenditure statement. As not all sales may be received at the time of sale it is useful to keep a record of the date of the sale, the customer, amount and when and how much the customer has paid for credit control purposes.
Similar to the income side the expenditure can consist of a list of the amounts paid out to suppliers. It is advisable to perform a small amount of analysis of this expenditure as when reported on the self employed tax return the expenditure may need to be analysed according to the type of expense. All expenditure items claimed as business expenses should be supported with documentary evidence of that expense for basic tax purposes.
At the end of the financial year the sole trader income and expenditure account statement will state the total sales with the expenditure side being a list of all the expenditure by type of expense including any capital allowances claimed. Total the expenditure and deduct the total from the sales turnover to produce basic accounting record showing the net taxable profit.
A simple method of keeping the information to produce the income and expenditure account statement is to use accounting software spreadsheets with preset columns for sales and the expenditure types. The sole trader should also consider maintaining a separate list of the assets purchased as part of the basic tax accounts.
TerryCartwrightPhoto.JPGTerry Cartwright qualified as a Chartered Management Accountant and Chartered Company Secretary in 1971. A successful business career followed as Head of Finance for major companies in the UK and several consultancy appointments. In 2006 he created DIY Accounting producing Accounting Software for self employed and small companies that use simple accounts spreadsheets to automate tax returns.