Lexington

How to have a sales army to sell your products or services

If your business is a small one and you wear most, if not all, the hats then the title of this email must sound odd to you. You’re probably wondering how you’d be able to afford to hire a sales army.

There really is a win-win situation here.

You simply set up an affiliate program and allow others to sell your products for you. You pay them a commission, often 50% but it could be whatever percentage you want, when they make sales.

Otherwise, you pay them nothing. They are not employees so you don’t have to worry about payroll, insurance, vacation pay, sick pay, etc. Yet they will work hard to sell your products because it means money to them when they make sales.

Yes, your earnings will be less than when you sell the product yourself, but to be honest, you can only reach a fraction of the market by yourself.

That’s why I call affiliates a sales army. Just imagine the potential if *each one* of the affiliate reaches as many customers as you could? I think I hear the ca-ching of many cash registers!

There are step-by-step instructions floating around the web, some with great info and others that leave out crucial pieces, about how to set up an affiliate program.

It will require an affiliate software program (I’ve got recommendations) and some “tools” for your affiliates to use. Sound interesting? I can explain it better when you contact me.

Graphics mistakes that will lose you business

So you’ve finally taken the plunge and put a website up. Congratulations, it’s a wise move!

“What? You did it yourself?

“Let me take a look… oh… ummm…”

Does your website scream amateur? It might be that you did put your site together yourself or you got your cousin, Charlie, who knows a little more than you do, to put it up for you.

Now cast a critical eye over it, as if you were your customer. While you may be proud of your new-found graphic skills, you may actually be scaring potential customers away.

Simply put, a professional website header and other graphics make your online business face professional by association.

If your graphics look, well… lame, then everything else is suspect too, even if you do have valuable information on your site.

A site’s graphics are so important, but often overlooked. If you’ve gone to all the work to bring new people to your website, don’t you want to leave a good first impression?

Take a look at some of the websites you like to visit and check out their website header, their “buy now” buttons, and the other graphical elements.

• Are they in keeping with the overall theme of the business?
• Are they pleasing to look at?
• Do the graphics in the content make the site easier to read?

The good news is you don’t have to be a graphics artist to have a professional-looking website! I can reveal my resources or arrange to have it done for you to save you time and hassles.

You can email or call me anytime to discuss this.

Online shopping carts – boost or bane?

Here’s a bold statement – All small businesses should have a website, even if they do most of their business offline. A website may be where your next customer finds you, and with people buying more and more often online, it makes perfect sense for you to sell online too.

If you do want to offer products for sale on the Internet, then you’re going to need an online shopping cart. Choosing the right one is important because the wrong one could mean more work for you fixing problems.

It’s true, the right shopping cart can be a huge asset to your business and even increase the number of products sold to each customer when they buy. (Think Amazon and how they suggest other products you might like.)

The wrong cart can cause lost sales and mean huge headaches for you!

Here are some things to look for in a shopping cart:

1. The cart is secure and hacker-proof.
2. It can calculate shipping charges and tax.
3. The shopping cart can charge clients monthly for membership-type products.
4. It integrates with major credit card processing companies.
5. The cart can also offer customer upsells.
6. It will create a client database, which is very important.
7. The price for the shopping cart service is reasonable for what you get.

I realize how picking the right shopping cart can make a big difference to you. Give me a call and I can help you set up just the right one for your business.

Can your business pass this online reality check?

Here’s a reality check, or checklist, regarding your business. You can mentally tick a Yes or No to each of these…

__ I have a website that perfectly showcases what my business is.
The face of your website is the face of your business. It should reflect what your business is and does, and what your values are. This is important to remember as more and more people search via the Internet.

__ My website has professional graphics and design and looks beautiful.
Image is important. It doesn’t have to be all slick and over-the-top but it should be professional enough to be engaging and evoke trust.

__ New people are visiting my site every day.
People, aka traffic, are important to your business. Get that traffic through various marketing methods.

__ I sell products from my website.
You’re not just selling products but also your services and your brand.

__ I look at my site’s stats and know where my customers are coming from.
Knowing how people are finding your site means you can beef up the weak areas or put extra time and resources in the strong areas.

__ I use social media and there are links on my site.
At the very least you’ll want to consider getting on Twitter and putting up a Facebook fan page.

__ I collect names and email addresses of my site visitors so I can market to them down the line.
This is huge! Offer something people want in exchange for their email address and you’ll have a targeted list of people who are interested in what you have to offer.

__ Other websites have links to my site.
This is called backlinking and it helps your site get higher up in the search rankings. The better your site sits in Google, the more traffic you get.

Don’t feel bad if you marked many of these No. You’re not alone. But you can turn that around and make these all Yeses and get ahead of your competitors. I’m here to answer your questions.