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January
2009
Warming Up For The Cold Call
Abandon Shopping Cart!
In A Slow Economy Your
Website Could Be Your Most Effective Marketing
Channel
Keep Your PC At Peak
Performance – Manage
Files
 
Warming Up For The Cold Call
The bad news is… if you want business, you need
to put a lot of effort into chasing it. And the
really bad news is… that will mean doing some
cold calling. Many entrepreneurs look forward to
cold calling like they look forward to a visit
with their dentist. However, there is some good
news: if it's done properly, cold calling is an
effective sales tactic. It really needn’t be the
futile, gut wrenching experience it’s so often
pictured as.
To a large degree the success of your cold call
is determined before you ever pick up the
handset because the key to cold calling success
lies in the preparation you make beforehand.
Here’s some advice on how to prepare to make a
business winning cold call.
Understand the goal of a cold call
It’s NOT about making an immediate sale; it's
about getting the chance to make the sale.
Specifically, the purpose of a cold call is fact
finding, creating a dialogue (a request for you
to send more information or even a quote means
another contact) or, perhaps best of all,
arranging an appointment with your contact where
you can make your sales pitch.
Prequalify your targets
Find out as much about the prospect’s business
as you can and work out where your product or
service meshes with what they do. Local
newspapers, industry journals, and their website
make good starting points for discovering this
information. In this way you can start your call
by discussing some aspect of the prospect's
business and what need your product/service
could answer to. If there’s no mesh, there’s no
chance of getting the appointment – or if you
did, it would be a waste of time for all
concerned.
Identify the decision maker
If you have done your homework and pre-qualified
your prospect you should have some idea of who
the decision maker for the type of
product/service you sell is likely to be. That’s
the person to ask for when you ring. Treating a
gatekeeper (say, the company secretary) with
respect can get you that information and an open
door (or phone connection) to the decision
maker. Have a story in mind to encourage them to
put you through – something that makes them an
ally rather than a barrier.
Have a prepared opening
Your opening statement can make or break your
chances with the prospect. Base your opening
statement on the business need you have
identified in your research. It might go like
this:
Good morning, Mr. Reese. This is Ray Jones from
Enviro Plumbing. I read in the local paper that
you recently won the contract for Prime Estate
development. We specialize in supplying and
installing hot water systems that substantially
reduce electricity charges and comply with the
latest environmental regulations. They also
attract a government subsidy in some cases. I'd
like to ask a few questions to determine whether
our product might meet your needs for the
buildings on the new estate.
Practice your opening before calling – you don’t
want to make it sound like you are reading from
a card. Rather, use your notes to arrange your
thoughts so that during that critical first few
seconds with the prospect you stay relevant,
remember the hot buttons and keep their
attention.
Prepare a script for the rest of your cold call
Having prepared a winning opening, don’t blow
your chances by mishandling the succeeding
conversation. The conversation may flow freely
and widely but through it all you should know
the questions you need answers to, points you
want to make about the benefits of your
product/service and how to answer any objections
or questions the prospect may raise. So this
‘script’ isn’t a piece of dramatic dialogue –
you can’t control the conversation to that
extent. It is more like a set of notes to
yourself to keep you focused and make sure you
are prepared for anything that comes up. It can
include information on the features of your
product/service (you’ll be selling the benefits
but technically inclined prospects will have
some features in mind they’ll consider necessary
as well) and factual data, such as statistics or
case studies, to knock down objections. If an
objection arises that you hadn't anticipated,
react as best you can. Then write it down and
prepare a detailed response before you try the
next prospect.
Practice until it’s perfect
As with any job requiring some level of skill,
the more cold calling you do, the better you'll
get. Rehearse your pitch out loud with friends
or associates until you have all the points
clear in your mind. Then go make that call!
To Top 
Abandon Shopping Cart!
For online merchants one of the most useful
metrics is shopping cart abandonment rate, the
percentage of online visitors who fill a
shopping cart, only to abandon it before
completing purchase. Etailers who keep tabs on
this metric may be in for a shock. For a number
of years abandonment rate dropped, but recently,
in what may be a sign of the times, shopping
cart abandonment has started to ratchet up
again. Analysts believe this reflects the fact
that more shoppers use the web for comparison
shopping purposes and are opening up, and then
abandoning their carts, to go check out the
price at other sites.
In a survey of online shopping behavior by
PayPal and comScore almost two-thirds of
visitors who put items into shopping carts ended
up NOT buying them, primarily for price related
reasons. Of these, shipping charges were the
number one reason customers gave for not
completing their purchase. Fair and justified
they may be, but the perception that they make
the deal too costly is there, so that perception
must be managed. First, offer multiple shipping
methods and allow visitors to enter their zip
code to get an estimate of what each might cost
for their given purchase. This will refocus the
decision making on how soon they want it and how
much the parcel service will charge them, not
how much you’re going to charge them.
Alternatively, include shipping in the price and
clearly specify that this is the case. If
shipping isn’t significant to profit margin then
provide it free, or free after a certain
purchase value threshold, and advertise the
fact.
‘Shipping shock’ isn’t just about amount, it’s
also about where in the transaction the visitor
becomes aware of it and the same applies to
other add-on costs such as taxes. When charges
are suddenly added in at the end of a
transaction they come as an unpleasant surprise.
Show add-on costs such as taxes and shipping
either in the first step of the checkout process
or even in the product description.
Another area where marketing can decrease
abandonment is by offering visitors assurance at
the right time and place throughout the
transaction. Shoppers may have questions about
issues you don’t address on the page they are
viewing. Don’t lose them because they can’t
immediately get an answer. Offer them the option
to call customer support, preferably toll free,
so it can be sorted out on the spot.
Don’t bury critical information in tiny type at
the bottom of the page or on other pages within
the website. Product warranty information,
return policies, testimonials, even optional
extended service plans should be available at
the point of action. Adding the policies at the
very bottom of the webpage is not effective
since you are forcing your visitor to search for
it. Place a policy next to the information field
where it is most relevant to the visitor, for
example, the privacy policy next to where you
ask for contact details in the checkout process
and the delivery and return policy next to the
‘confirm order’ button. Using pop ups for this
information will avoid forcing visitors to click
away from their purchase page to read it and
possibly not coming back.
Picking up the dropped cart
Many people use shopping carts as place holders
for considering items, a sort of wish list or
while they do some comparison shopping. It’s a
mistake to empty carts the minute they are
abandoned. Shoppers may come back, maybe in
hours, maybe in weeks. Provide a ‘save cart’
function that will allow them to save their
selections for a reasonable period of time and
resume their shopping later without having to
search out the items again. Provide information
about the length of time it will be held and the
conditions that apply, such as, that items may
become unavailable and prices may alter during
the interval.
Even smarter – if they got to the stage of
providing their email send them a friendly
reminder that they have items waiting in a cart
still available on your site. Closer to
expiration date send a follow up email, as a
‘courtesy’, to alert them that the cart is about
to be removed.
There are signs that the economic slowdown is
leading consumers to consider making a larger
proportion of their purchases online, so now is
a good time to get to know your shopping cart
abandonment rate and start implementing
marketing tactics to reduce it.
To Top
In A Slow Economy Your Website Could Be Your
Most Effective Marketing Channel
In the current economic climate your marketing,
like most else in your business, has to achieve
more with less. So, think about your website. It
could be the most important marketing channel
you have with much greater reach than the
newspaper, radio and TV. As in past recessions,
the businesses that make the right marketing
moves will emerge from the economic downturn in
a stronger position. One of those ‘right moves’
according to the experts is to keep up your
marketing efforts. Your website should be
playing a major role in this so business owners
need to take a close look at how they can
improve the effectiveness of their website to
attract visitors, hold their attention and sell
to them.
Remember, internet marketing is always cheaper
than other media. Here are some thoughts on how
to expand and improve on what you're doing on
your website.
Improve search listing position:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art and
science of developing page text, keywords,
metatags and subject headings that will get your
site listed high in a search engine’s results
page. If you haven’t already done so, then now
is the time to invest in hiring a web developer
to optimize your site. It’s worth the cost of
some professional advice because SEO is the
cheapest form of internet advertising and really
contributes to conversion rate, but it can’t be
done by guesswork. Web developers have the
knowledge and the tools to do it right.
SEO can also align your website to current
customer concerns by introducing words like
‘discounted’, ‘cheaper’, ‘low prices’, ‘sale’ –
words likely to have increasing resonance with
cash strapped consumers. You can make changes
like this by adding and/or modifying pages on
your website and have them available almost
immediately.
Improve stickiness:
Keeping people on the site long enough to get
them involved and searching your offerings is a
battle. Some proven ways of keeping their
attention include the freebies on offer, the
attractiveness of the webpage, and how easy it
is for them to contact you and get questions
sorted out right away.
Free Reports (aka White Papers) can be offered
no strings attached or as an incentive to an
opt-in subscription to your email newsletter.
Create them as Word or PDF documents so people
can download and print them to read at their
convenience.
Landing pages have to be visually attractive to
visitors so start with the basics – do the
colors, fonts, graphics and layout make each
page easy to read and present the information
clearly? Introducing rich media such as video
can provide a very powerful way of promoting
product. A blog provides an informal way to
update people on what’s happening with the
company and get feedback from visitors that may
be useful to creating the right product for them
or the right marketing message to appeal to
them. Rework your marketing copy until every
single webpage is a perfect sales letter.
Constant improvement of your copy will mean
better conversion and better search rankings.
Again, unless you have particular skills in this
area the services of a web designer are
recommended. The pulling power of individual
pages can be fine tuned by running experiments
on them to determine which layout, offer,
creative and copy combination delivers the most
actions for your business. You’ll know if it’s
working or not by analyzing the statistics from
the website. This means looking at the numbers
and the flow of visitors on your website. Are
the majority of visitors coming to just one page
and then leaving? Are many visitors starting a
shopping cart but then abandoning it? The
answers to these questions will help you and
your web developer to make the necessary changes
to your website in order to continue improving
it and increasing the ROI.
Make it easy for visitors to contact you:
Listing your email addresses and phone number on
the website is fine but an online contact form
provides an immediacy that removes the
opportunity to forget or lose your contact
details if shoppers have to put it off till
later.
To Top
Keep Your PC At Peak Performance
– Manage Files
Over time computer slowdown is inevitable. Every
session on your PC means more files and more
chaotic file structure on the hard drive. The
information in this article is general – it aims
to explain why actions are necessary rather than
how to do them on any particular PC operating
system or application since, while the problems
are common, the location and names of the fixit
tools may not be. To carry out the required work
your options are:
- Read the manual and then use the tools bundled into your computer
- Purchase a disk cleanup software application
- Sign up with a service provider and have it done for you remotely via your internet connection
- Take it into a computer dealer or repair shop and have someone do it for you
Which way you go will depend on your level of
knowledge of how computers work. While some of
these actions are perfectly OK for computer
newbies (they are marked DIY safe), others
involve hands-on with your operating system and
should be left to an expert.
Archive or delete rarely used files (DIY safe)
After a few years your computer is likely to
resemble a museum with a large number of files
created in the past but now rarely used or
completely irrelevant. Others, like the family
photo album, movies and music can also be
removed and put onto another device to save hard
disk space on the work computer. Start by
deleting those files that are no longer relevant
at all. Then decide which should be archived to
a CD-R or memory stick.
The fewer items you have on your hard drive, the
quicker it will be for your computer to locate
the files you need on a regular basis.
Disk Cleanup - delete unnecessary files (DIY with caution)
Over time your PC builds up a storehouse of
debris and unnecessary files that can really
slow the computer down. The Disk Cleanup utility
in PCs can easily determine which files on a
hard drive may no longer be needed and allow you
to delete them. Select the drive to be cleaned
and the utility searches it and then lists a
number of file categories that might be cleaned
out (Downloaded Program Files, Temporary
Internet Files, Recycle Bin and a few others).
Now review each category by clicking on it to
display more information relative to that
category in the Description section of the
window. If you're unsure about what sort of
files they are or what they do it is better NOT
to remove them until you seek advice from
someone knowledgeable. Perform a disk cleanup at
least monthly.
Where files are removed there will be gaps and
empty spaces created on the hard drive, so this
is an excellent time to defragment as well.
Defragment the hard disk drive (DIY safe)
Magazine articles are often split between
different pages within the publication. Reading
would be much faster if the article was all in
one place and you didn’t have to flip around
finding the next segment. Files on your computer
get split up (fragmented) like that with a bit
in one part of the hard disk drive and another
bit in a different part. When a file is
fragmented it takes longer for the computer to
read it because it has to skip to different
sections of the drive to locate them. The PCs
Defragmentation utility improves your computer's
performance by bringing the parts of a file
closer together. How often you defrag your
computer depends on the size of your hard drive,
the amount you use your computer, and type of
use you give it. Once a month is a good practice
for most average users.
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