Archive for November, 2009
Are you are a business professional? Then you are among the busiest of people in this world. They are often on the go during almost every waking hour and simply do not have the time they need to sit down and read a good book, let alone read a business book.
Typically, as you are a business professional you can have so many things going on all at once, it is difficult sometimes to even find time for family and friends let alone reading, which is where an audio business book comes in extremely handy.
If you have not started to download audio books from the internet you are missing a real treat. They are providing many business people with a great opportunity to use their time in a really effective way.
Today, your questions about audio books are answered. We will explain just how they can help the busy professional.
Can an audio business book help me manage my time?
Absolutely. With audio books, you are making the most of your time and effort. It takes a great deal of time to read a book page by page. How many people do you know that have the ability to read and drive at the same time? Is it really all that easy to eat and read at the same time? How about walking and reading or exercising and reading? None of which are particularly easy or even possible. So instead of having to take time out of your busy day for reading your book, now you can listen to an audio business book.
What formats do audio books come in?
What is great about audio books is that they cater to everyone, with the different varieties of formats available. For example, thanks to MP3 format you can download them to your MP3 player and listen while you walk, exercise, eat, and ride the subway or carry out almost any activity really.
With CD format, you can pop the CD into your portable CD player, your car CD player, or your home CD player and listen while you are on the way to work, doing your household chores, or exercising as well. The cassette format is still very popular today, but to download audio books has become so easy and fast, not to mention cheap that they are overtaking in the CD format in popularity.
How does an audio book help a professional?
Well, if you think about it, you often need to learn new skills and information that pertains to your business. Perhaps you have a client that speaks only a foreign language, instead of your native tongue. Well, there are audio books available that can help you learn a foreign language, all the while you are getting your work done, or making the most out of the little free time you get.
What types of audio books are there?
When it comes to the download audio books for business, there are many different varieties, such as foreign language, management, marketing as well as books on different programs, software, and techniques. A lot of research materials for projects and meetings can be found on audio books as well. An audio business book allows you to make the most out of your workday and personal time, which is something a busy professional does not get a great deal of time to enjoy.
Most people get into house cleaning to earn some extra money. You may have family, friends and neighbors as your regular clients. Are you ready and motivated to take your part-time business to the next level?
Growing any business takes time and patience. And if you have a loyal client base now, set aside a portion of your gross revenue for advertising, custom business forms and your own products and equipment.
Expanding your house cleaning business also takes planning. How can you start getting new clients without a large advertising budget? A small one-time investment in custom business forms is the first step.
So what’s wrong with not using business forms? Absolutely nothing if you’re satisfied with your client base right now and not interested in making more money.
But I hear from a lot of professional house cleaners that are struggling in their business. They wonder why they don’t get more of the jobs they bid on. They ask why people won’t pay their rate and instead want to negotiate the price down.
If you’re not presenting yourself as a professional cleaning business, your prospects assume you just need to make some extra money; you don’t have their respect and they think you’ll be happy to take whatever they offer to pay.
Now think about this for a minute. Who would you be more likely to hire: the plumber that shows up to estimate your job with a clipboard and custom business forms or the plumber that shows up with a flyer? Be honest with yourself; you are going to trust this plumber inside your home around your personal possessions. What if this person were to break or damage something? Do you think about this issue with the plumber with the clipboard and custom business forms, or is it more of a concern with the plumber with just the flyer?
Your prospects are judging you and forming an opinion from the moment you answer their call. And you know what they say about first impressions? It’s absolutely true in running a business. Not only are they judging you before they hire you, but they judge you again when you arrive on the scheduled service date.
– Use the Service Agreement to define your terms of doing business and to document the service for each client. This form performs a dual purpose as it is also your estimating form that you use during your in-home or telephone bidding. You will discuss the content with your prospect and then have them sign it, not as a contract, but to provide you and them with an understanding of your terms and the service start date. – The Customer Checklist records your estimate for your new client and has all the cleaning tasks listed that you perform. This form alone can get you the job immediately or even later after your prospect has tried other services.
- The Work Order is created from the important notes you recorded on the Service Agreement during the walk through or telephone interview. It specifies the client, the address and phone number, information pertaining to pets in the home, client specific requests and directives, including important notes you documented about the home.
The Service Checklist is used by you or your team on the scheduled service date. It is a reminder of the regular service tasks that are to be performed and is used to maintain quality. One of the biggest complaints from clients is that quality deteriorates over time. If you’re not using a Service Checklist, you’re not instilling trust in your clients, especially new clients. They will auto- matically check your work on every appointment to make sure you didn’t miss anything. And if you did, you’ll hear about it – quick!
When you start to use business forms for your existing clients, they will probably ask you why the sudden change. This provides you with a chance to tell them that you’re expanding your business and would appreciate referrals. This leaves them impressed and knowing that you are serious about running a professional business and will be more likely to make referrals.
Custom business forms speak loudly to your prospects and in the long run land you more jobs, referrals and larger profits for your house cleaning business!
These customer service tips will save you thousands of dollars and create a lasting bond with your customers. I was thinking recently about one of my worse home based business nightmares and how it turned out to be a very valuable lesson for creating excellent customer service.
It started out like a great dream. We just started our toner and ink-jet business and our first business customer was a medical firm of about 20 offices. I had known the purchasing agent for sometime and before long we got the contract to supply these offices with printer products.
We were so excited to get the order that we did not question when the purchasing agent placed a huge order for hundreds of toner and ink-jet supplies. She had mentioned that they were going to make the main office the headquarters for all the printer supplies.
The business we had set up was a drop ship company which meant we would be getting all the products from various manufacturers. We were on a cash basis with the suppliers, meaning that all funds were paid up front.
We ordered all the supplies believing that the purchasing agent knew what she was doing. Well, it became a logistical nightmare when they could not fit all the products into the storage area they had created.
Of course the medical firm was way too overstocked and we had to send back more then half of the orders. Now that makes it difficult when you are working with numerous manufacturers and their return policies. Our company motto is excellent customer service so we immediately sent a representative down to correct the errors.
Even though it was the purchasing agent who created the mess, when I look back at the situation it was my home based business that was more at fault. We had only offered good customer service not excellent customer service.
These customer service tips will save you from getting into the situation that my company did and save your time and money.
Customer Service Tips
*Pre Qualify Your Customer and their Needs
*Help the Customer with Volume Amounts
*Verify Storage Life of Product
*Test the Product and Business Relationship
Pre Qualify Your Customer
At your first meeting with the decision maker of the company you will be doing business with have a check list of questions. Your primary objective is to help the customer with their needs. First find out how long they have been doing the ordering. Ask if they are new at this or if this is a new company idea. In our scenario above, the company did not put a real strong plan together in regards to using one location as a distribution center.
Armed with these questions and the customer service tips, you can get a better idea of where your home based business products or services can fit in. Offering suggestions if they need them. Excellent customer service begins with getting the facts.
Help the Customer with Volume Amounts
If you have done your pre-qualifying you will know much more about what the decision maker really needs. Sometimes you will find out that the decision maker is not really clear on their objectives and you need to be able to help clarify them.
Did they get an accurate volume of products needed? Most times you will need to test the waters. Always go slow you can speed it up anytime.
Verify Storage Life of Product
If you are selling a product that has a storage life, be sure that the customer?s volume amounts are safely matched but not excessively over matched. You do not want too much product on their shelves. This is money tied up by your customer and also could expire. Someone will eat the product costs of this common mistake.
An extra customer service tip to add to this is that by keeping your customer too well stocked you may lose them. If they do not get a call from your home based business very often they are more apt to run into other product suppliers and you will not be ?in front of your customers?. You will want to continue to be able to work with your customers helping them identify needs that they may not even know they have and telling them about new products and services.
Test the Product and the Business Relationship
When you start with a new customer, go slow and see how the product fits into their needs. Good customer service begins with this but excellent customer service goes beyond this point. See how your home based business products and services are meeting the customer needs. Are your products a good match and are you offering the correct service? What can you do to make the business relationship even better? How can they profit from your products? Keep in mind the extra customer service tip I mentioned above about keeping “in front of the customer”.
If the products or business relationship are not a good fit, end the relationship. It will cost your business money and time as well bad public relations. Remember an unsatisfied customer will tell more people about a bad situation then a good one. It is hard to end a relationship. Sometimes it is better to never have begun one with the customer in the first place. For the sake of excellent customer service I have refused customers because I knew that our products would not fit their needs.
I hope that your home based business will use these customer service tips. Creating a successful relationship with your customers is essential for your business success. Sales will soar and happy customers mean great word of mouth advertising.
Introduction
Home improvement businesses face a unique challenge in marketing themselves to potential customers.
Businesses offering services like loft conversions, double glazing, conservatories, landscaping, kitchens and bathrooms face widespread competition, some of it from larger retailers which can offer low prices thanks to greater economies of scale.
At the other end of the market, less reputable businesses can damage the reputation of the home improvement sector through poor workmanship or unethical marketing practices like cold calling.
Marketing channels available to home improvement businesses are often costly and hard to measure, such as local press or phone directory advertising.
Yet the effort in marketing can be worthwhile, with a typically high average spend per successful order. So how can a home improvement business stand out from the crowd, whilst achieving a good return on its marketing investment?
Direct marketing tools and methods can often offer the answer. Because it’s more measurable than other marketing methods, direct marketing is more measurable and it can be targeted more closely to those potential consumers most likely to buy your home improvement services.
Here are some of the ways in which direct marketing can help:
1. Planning
Before any direct marketing campaign you have to carry out some planning. For a home improvement business this can involve analysing your existing customers to see what they have in common. Using tools like Easycheck list profiling software (www.selectabase.co.uk/i-have-a-list/easycheck) you can discover more about your customer’s interests, likes, dislikes and lifestyle just from their postcode. Also look at there they are based and what type of home they live in, to help identify potential markets.
Once you’ve analysed your existing customers you can put them into different groups, or segments, and then prioritise which groups are of most importance to you.
For example, if you are a landscaper, you might want to target properties in local areas that you know have larger sized gardens. Double glazing companies may want to target homeowners in coastal or exposed areas, where their properties are more likely to suffer from the elements. Loft conversion or conservatory companies could target growing families likely to need more living space.
2. Direct Mail
Once you’ve identified your target segment, or segments, you can source lists of more people of the same type.
There are numerous reputable mailing lists available that you can select data from. For example the Consumer Profiles list (www.selectabase.co.uk/lists/consumer/) which allows you to target potential customers by lifestyle, Silver Prospects (www.selectabase.co.uk/ppc/grey-market-silver-prospects-list.aspx) is a specialist list of retired older people, and Recently Moved (www.selectabase.co.uk/recentlymoved/) provides a monthly list of people who’ve just moved into your local area.
Mail these lists with a good quality mailer, personalised to each person, explaining clearly why you are approaching them and the benefits of what you have to offer; price, service, testimonials, knowledge etc. Include a clear call to action and offer a no hassle free quotation.
Mailings can also be used successfully to drive traffic to your website, where people can see more about your business and obtain a quote online.
3. Telemarketing
Unsolicited telemarketing, or cold calling as its also known, has done much to tarnish the reputation of the home improvement industry.
However if you have your own list of leads, enquiries or prospects that you plan to phone, you can do so as long as you check each number first to see if it is registered with the Telephone Preference Service. You can check numbers as you go using an online service like www.selectabase.co.uk/1check/ or you can clean your list each month using software like Easycheck.
Also, it is completely acceptable to follow up a mailing to a rented list with a brief courtesy call asking if the homeowner received the information and if it was of interest. If it’s bought from a reputable source, your list will have been screened against the TPS just before you buy it.
It’s worth spending time briefing the person who makes the call to make sure they have good product knowledge and know how they should represent your business.
Summary
In summary, direct marketing methods provide great opportunities for home improvement businesses to identify and target relevant potential customers on an individual basis, without the interference of competitor’s messages that you find with press advertising.
Results can be measured precisely, and the results used to guide future mailings or campaigns. And if direct marketing is carried out in a high quality and reputable way, consumers will see that your home improvement business is going to provide a high quality service.
The cyber community is overpopulated with people offering advice on how to get rich overnight. There are innumerable business books claiming to provide expert guidance on being successful in the online business world, but readers of these books, when interviewed, feel that the information and the business tips given are actually not very helpful in the real online business scenario. Being a vehement protester when it comes to this kind of deception, an online business expert and an excellent e-author came out with ‘The Online Business Handbook’, one of the best business books the market has to offer.
The author of The Online Business Handbook is a very successful online entrepreneur who wants to share his tried and tested approaches with online business enthusiasts. He does not claim to be Alladin and he doesn’t claim that his business book should be seen as Alladin’s lamp or as a path to money, name and fame overnight.
Inspired by Thomas Alva Edison’s statement ‘genius is 99 % perspiration and 1 % inspiration’, this online book on internet business does not make any false promises to quick money. Just like Edison, the author opines that even if one fails 10,000 times, one should never give up and look upon every failure as a stepping-stone to success. He believes that success comes with applying intelligence in the proper way, at the proper time. Being written by a follower of the genuine path to success, one can safely assume that The Online Business Handbook, unlike the other online books, is a treasure house of tried and tested ways of becoming successful as an online entrepreneur.
A bonus that one can expect with The Online Business Handbook is that, unlike many electronic books online that charge exorbitant prices, it comes absolutely free. One just needs to subscribe to Alan Johnson’s newsletter at The Rating Blog. The information in this book is complemented by The Rating Blog, which is amongst the best blogs offering online money making advice to the cyber community today. It is advised that after reading this business handbook, one should follow The Rating Blog for additional and up to date information. The Rating Blog is enriched with features that are of utmost importance to an online entrepreneur. One can subscribe to the RSS feed and then follow the author’s newsletter.
It has been observed that, compared to all of the free online books offering online business tips, The Online Business Handbook shows you how to attain success in a realistic and step-by-step manner. One needs to absorb the contents of this very useful business book online and follow it to the letter to attain success. People who have followed the instructions of this book are seen to be extremely successful in online business ventures. Unlike many of the authors of other free books online, the person behind The Rating Blog displays affiliate links and that, according to him, is a part of his common sense, down-to-earth and cards-on-the-table approach to making money online.