Email Marketing: Subscribing To A List!

I am a Linked In Open Networker – this basically means that I accept most connection requests and will archive a request rather than hit it with an “I Don’t Know”. I have made some interesting contacts but I am surprised to see how many of my new contacts automatically subscribe me to their mailing lists. Not the Linked In contact lists, but their own mailing lists through services Aweber, Getresponse, Constant Contact and the like.

As someone who has built a solid Email Marketing database (and experienced some interesting situations along the way) and also consults with Small Businesses to develop and implement an Email Marketing campaign, I find this practice to be counter-productive and a possible breach of the CAN-Spam laws. [Read more]

Business Building With Children In Hand!

There is no doubt about it, starting a business is a daunting thing – but starting a business when you have toddlers in hand in even more daunting.

The sheer idea of trying to break your time down into manageable chunks so that you can look after your little ones during the day and create a successful business is mind boggling for many – but without a doubt, Moms (and Dads) all over the world are doing it.

My children are now teenagers, but I remember the challenges we faced trying to run our businesses when they were little – balancing the need for some pretty long hours at times, with spending time with the kids and allowing time for ourselves. Sometimes we weren’t so succesful about it, soemtimes we were. [Read more]

Closing The Sale…Tips to overcome the hangups

Closing the sale is an art and possibly one of the biggest ‘hang ups’ for budding business and sales people, copywriters and more…  but why and what can you (or we) do about it?

Let’s look at why Closing the Sale can be a challenge for some… I believe it’s the fear of rejection that makes Closing a Sale a challenge for most. We all want to be liked, and if we ask someone to ‘buy’ what we’re selling and the prospect says no, then we feel that they are rejecting us personally.

Really, nothing can be further from the truth – our prospect is not really rejecting us personally, they are just rejecting our product or service – AT THE MOMENT.  However as most Sales or Business People are passionate about their product, it can be difficult to differentiate the ‘no’ for the product or service from a ‘no, I don’t like you’…. [Read more]

Cold Calling Tips For Entrepreneurs

I was recently asked by a reader of my newsletter about what they should consider when Cold Calling on businesses.  I thought I would share my answer here.

The one thing that I would like you to consider, is that when you Cold Call – whilst your goal is to create life-long customers, the purpose of a Cold Call is to take Suspects to Qualified Prospects. What I mean, is that when you Cold Call on someone, you SUSPECT they could use what you’re selling, but you’re not certain.  After you’ve called on them and discussed what your product can do, you will know if the Suspect is really a fit for your product or not. Once you have a qualified prospect, you then focus on converting them to a customer, and then to a life long customer. [Read more]

Manage To Own – Franchise Training and Bakers Delight

Sponsored by Nuffnang

Starting a small business can be very, very daunting. There is a lot of information that a Small Business Owner needs to have, including but not limited to, personnel management, financial management, stock ordering and OH&S requirements, as well as having sufficient capital to fund the business through the start up and lean times.

Certainly, most first time business owners will not have a fraction of the skills they need to run a business and there really is no substitute for the learning that occurs with experience however, that learning often comes at a high price.

A JOB is a safe option and some of the bigger companies, retail or food service chains, have a complete managerial program for their staff. They will train you to become a manager – so that you learn the system, you breathe the system – and then they let you loose to manage the system.

Unfortunately, for small business owners this option really doesn’t exist – it is highly unusual for anyone to provide you with on the job training for your business. The Small Business owner is required to invest (often heavily) in their business and deal with what comes – without having a support framework to turn to. [Read more]

What Is Your Financial Fitness Like?

Do you really know the connection between a healthy, mind body and wallet?  Larissa Zimmerman from National Financial Fitness does and she shares that with Connie and Charly from Stretch Your Mind And Body on their weekly talk show.

Larissa provides financial education for individuals and businesses – to help them gain control of their life.  Larissa promotes, and lives, the concept that when you get your mindset right around your financial situation, your health and wealth follows. [Read more]

Reclaiming Your Power In Business

Have you lost your power in business? No, I don’t mean “are you weak in business”…. Listening to Jenny Leather, a Melbourne born and bred Mother of 3, on the Stretch Your Mind And Body Talk today, I wondered how many of us have let go of our power, or put our power in the hands of others.

Jenny is a successful property investor who found that the old adage “It’s easy to make your first million, it’s not so easy to keep it” is true.

When Jenny and husband first experienced wealth generation, they handed the management of that money over to someone else. This was not necessarily the best thing to do – and Jenny shared that it was like handing over you power to someone else. [Read more]

Be The General Of Your Army

It is very easy for a business person to become so ‘bogged down’ with doing everything for their business, that they lose focus on ensuring that they do the important things that will ensure success.

Now this has several effects – the main one being that we rarely get anything done WELL.  We’ll get things done – but we are typically so strung out that we just do whatever we can to finish the job.  The other thing that seems to happen is that we are tired and ill – a lot!

For those business people fortunate enough to have staff and contractors – trying to be the soliders instead of the general only annoys them – because we end up doing their job instead of ours. [Read more]

Where Do You Find Your Target Audience?

Once you’ve defined your target audience, you need to start talking to them.  This is possibly the one thing that really trips business people and affiliate marketers up – just where and how do you talk to your target audience and get them to visit your site?

The answer is quite simple really – but it does take dedication and time to achieve.

You need to interact in the places that your Target Audience is.  I’m going to talk in the sense of an online business for this article, but the principles are the same for an offline business as well.

Let’s look at speaking directly to a target audience who want to teach their bird to sing.  Think about where these people may be looking for the ‘answer to their question’.

In this article, I am going to discuss places where you can find your Target Audience and help them get to ‘Know You, Like You and Trust You’. [Read more]

Finding Your Niche: Using Surveys

Following on from my last article, let’s talk about finding your niche and a few practical examples of how you can ‘listen to your niche’.

If you’re just starting up, online or offline, you can ask your potential target market what problems they need answers to by using surveys.  Surveys work nicely online and offline.

There are a number of ways you can conduct a survey – which don’t have to cost you much, if anything at all.

One way of conducting a survey is online – and there are several excellent resources to do this (and all of the ones below offer a free account): [Read more]

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