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As you prospect, do you long for a real live person to answer your phone calls?

Are the phrases, “I’m not able to answer your call in person right now …” “I’m in a meeting right now or talking with another client …” and “If you want help with this, please press #2, #1, …” starting to wear on your last nerve … like nails on a chalkboard?

Are you feeling trapped by the very technology that was supposed to serve you?

Well, you’re in good company.

Our informal survey shows the overwhelming majority of sales professionals share your frustration. One of the most frequently asked questions asked by our clients is, “I leave a lot of voice mail messages without getting any personal contact–ever. Do you have any tips for me?”

Yes, I do!

There are simple, yet effective steps to take that will get you around voice mail so you can make contact with a human!

Whether the recording indicates it or not, many systems will reroute your calls to a human being if you press the “0″ Operator button on your phone.

Then when your prospect’s operator/receptionist answers, you can honestly say, “I was connected to the executive’s voice mail and I’m looking for a real, live, breathing, speaking human to talk to directly. Is the executive or the executive assistant in today?”

Chances are that you’ll get an empathetic chuckle from the receptionist. Those folks understand how annoying pre-recorded messages can be.

If your prospect isn’t readily available in person, the operator often knows that and will be glad to offer to reroute your call to another human being within the company, such as the executive’s assistant, who can tell you the whereabouts of your prospect.

Equally as import as circumventing voice mail jail is knowing what to say when you succeed and make contact with your prospects operator/receptionist!

In many companies, the operator is authorized to page the prospect for you or to connect you to direct lineif you do one thing in particular …

What’s the key to “authorizing” the operator to search for your prospect on your behalf?

You must ask for your prospect by first and last name and pronounce both correctly.

Here’s an Insider’s secret peek into the mechanics of the executive suites that will equip you to understand what’s going on in their world. Really good executive assistants, with the approval of their executives, talk with receptionists and give them specific guidelines for handling inbound callers who ask for the President’s office.

There are so many calls each day that they must come up with a system of handling them. Or never get any work done! Executive assistants direct receptionists to divert inbound callers who say, “I’d like to be connected to the President’s office please.” The preferred method of handling such callers is to politely reroute them to voice mail jail.

With your new knowledge of this Insider’s secret you’ll want to call and say, “I’m calling to speak to Jack Doe or his assistant, Mary.” You’ll find you receive a different kind of treatment when you use these words. Because of their “in-house” system for handling inbound calls, the operator/receptionist will be more likely to give you the inside scoop as to their whereabouts.

Then, because your words indicate that you “know the rules” the receptionist is far more likely to be forthcoming with information that will help you, information such as whether or not the executive is in the office and the best time to call back to reach them in person.

Those executives and their assistants are early risers!

They frequently slip into the office between 7:00 and 7:30 AM. Executives take advantage of the still of the morning to work through the ever-present to-do list without interruption.

Knowing this about the habits of executives, many a successful sales professional will make prospecting calls during those times and connect with their high-level prospects on the first ring.

Use these tips to circumvent voice mail, be relentless in your pursuit for a human, and get ready to smile as you make personal contact with a real, live, person who wants to do business with you!

Forward this article to friendsthey’ll thank you for it!

For your FREE mini-course “Jealously Guarded Secrets to Cold Calling Company Presidents” visit http://www.ColdCallingExecutives.com! Or call Your Sales Coach for Extreme Profitability, author/speaker Leslie Buterin (like butterin’ bread) at (816) 554-3674 9-3 CST (that’s Kansas City/Chicago Time).

The best course of action to take sometimes isn’t clear until you’ve listed and considered your alternatives. The following paragraphs should help clue you in to what the experts think is significant.

Now that blogging has become so popular among everyone from the novice writer to the most experienced journalist, businesses are starting to take notice. A well-written and frequently updated blog can help market almost any type of business. Blogging can help target readers who are interested in a company’s product or service and businesses can keep track of what their readers are looking for through blogging. In addition, blogging can help link together companies that compliment each other very easily.

There is a lot of talk about blogging. Some feel that blogging is just a passing fad, but others feel it is just the beginning. Some business analysts feel that blogging does not significantly help a business market the company. Many businesses feel that this is not so. Blogging can be a beneficial way to mark a business, build an audience and help link in other companies together.

Blogging can help almost any business expose their readers to their services and products. Sometimes with new products, a blog can create interest in something new. Blogging is helpful because it can talk in depth about the product, and it can also give step-by-step instructions on how a certain product can be used. A reader, who is interested in the product after reading about it on a blog, will be more inclined to research similar products on the Internet. This can lead to a more informed consumer and can save a consumer time when shopping or researching a new product. In turn, a company may save time because customers who have read the blog are already informed about the product. These customers can also read reviews on these products and services, which can be helpful in the buying process.

Another great thing about companies using a blog for their products and services is that a blog enables the company and the customer to communicate effectively. A customer can read the blog and comment on it right away. This provides good feedback to the company and they can know what the customers want. Usually blogs will provide places for readers to leave their comments or send emails to the writer. This is a good marketing tool for businesses. People enjoy communicating about products and services that they have had good or bad experiences with and blogging provided the opportunity to do so.

See how much you can learn about blogging when you take a little time to read a well-researched article? Don’t miss out on the rest of this great information.

Blogs can also help market a business because it will be included in search engines. When people enter certain keywords, blogs that contain those words will show up. When blogs are updated frequently, search engines can provide your company with a lot of hits. This can lead to many people looking at the company’s blog who might not otherwise have done so.

When companies use blogs, it also has the ability to create a sensation around a product and influence public opinion. This is an excellent tool for companies to use. Because of the huge popularity of blogging, this can be a more effective tool than some forms of advertising. Readers are more likely to share interesting blogs with their friends and this can help companies get the word out about their product.

Another way blogging can help market a business is that blogs often help a company position itself as a leader in a certain field. This means that those who blog can show their expertise about certain subjects and then updates this information on a regular basis. Blogging can help generate leads and send a positive message about your company without spending a lot of money for advertising. Readers can look at these blogs and know that they are dealing with a quality company.

Companies also use blogs to help network with other companies that compliment their business. This is beneficial because they can easily share their links and readers will see all of the blogs that relate to what they are searching for on the Internet. Link swapping is often used in blogging, especially with businesses.

Blogging is proving to be a beneficial marketing tool for businesses all over the world. While it’s a fairly new way for companies and customers to communicate with each other, blogging provides an immediate and unique form of advertising for the company. Customers are able to read and research products and services through blogging and companies can better understand what their customers want.

Now might be a good time to write down the main points covered above. The act of putting it down on paper will help you remember what’s important about blogging.

Articles for Website Content SEO Tips

I was discussing the compensation plan of a reasonably new company with its national sales director the other day, and for a very intelligent guy he sure sounded dumb.

“We pay 10%” commission,” he asserted, though my math indicated it was 7.5%.

(These differences add up when you’re speaking of thousands of dollars on every deal.)

I asked him if he knew what’s typically paid in straight commission situations.

He said 10%.

Wrong, again; it’s closer to 20%, and 25% and 30% are not unheard of, especially if you’re speaking about paying an outsource company.

Straight commission deals mean salespeople are taking on tremendous risk. If they sell, they eat, and if they don’t they’re blamed for their own ineptitude.

When in truth, it’s very possible that selling that product or service is like finding needles in haystacks; very difficult and very speculative.

If companies felt they had the numbers down to a science, or that demand for their product was solid, they’d be able to model what constitutes good, better, and best performance, and then offer salaries plus commissions, or salaries plus bonuses, or even draws against commissions.

In effect, they’d be bankers, financiers. Most mature, proven companies are in the money business, though, nominally their signs say they sell vacuum cleaners, burgers, or insurance.

They happen to sell what they sell because they believe they can earn a better return on their investment with Albuquerque real estate than with car washes. Otherwise, as sober businesspeople, they couldn’t care what they do for a living, providing it’s honest.

The sales manager’s excuse for not adjusting the compensation plan is that “I was hired this way, and everybody else is, too!” In other words, despite the fact the firm is just a few years young, it’s already falling back on the line, “We’ve always done it this way!”

Horse feathers!

Arguing to tradition is the most common way of resisting change. It presumes: (1) How something came to be must be the best way it could have been done; and (2) The results you’re getting now, are adequate.

If you really go back to first causes, you’ll find compensation plans were designed on completely speculative grounds. The products hadn’t been sold by anyone but the founder, and it wasn’t known whether anyone else could do it, and if so, with what rates of success.

Therefore, after a few years it’s always a good idea to revisit the plans and to ask if they’re working.

Specifically, is a 7.5% commission rate enough of an incentive to attract, motivate, and retain top flight salespeople, given the known difficulties and challenges of selling this product?

And to answer this, you don’t have to fly by the seat of your pants. Look at recent pay stubs.

Are your sellers making an excellent living, are sales booming, and are you awash in money?

If not, if you’re just plodding along, getting by, it’s time for revision, and the fact that you’ve always done it a certain way, is just an excuse and an obstruction to making progress.

There are two main types of communication that take place in selling situations:
conflict and cooperation. Which type of communication you’re using will have a
profound impact on whether or not you get the sale.

Conflict takes place as the result of the vast majority of sales processes and
especially as the result of those taught in traditional sales training, which usually
goes as follows: The salesperson initiates the sales process through a cold call.
Because the prospect does not expect or anticipate the call, sales resistance
automatically exists and the salesperson is forced to overcome it. This is conflict.
When the first appointment takes place, the prospect again has his defenses up in
anticipation of a pushy sales pitch. As a result, frivolous objections are thrown out
that the salesperson must overcome. More conflict. At the end of the appointment,
the salesperson must secure a time for a second appointment in order to present a
proposal. The prospect says to call next week for a time, but the salesperson wants
to secure it now. Even more conflict. The second appointment takes place, the
proposal is presented, the salesperson asks for the order, and now the prospect
really has objections. Conflict. The salesperson works to overcome them and then
uses a sleazy technique such as the infamous alternate close to again ask for the
order. Conflict at its worst.

Now let’s take a look at a sale where the state of mind is not conflict but
cooperation:

The prospect learns of the salesperson’s offering through the salesperson’s
thoughtful, organized self-marketing plan. The prospect contacts the salesperson
and asks for a meeting, to which the salesperson of course agrees. Cooperation.
During the first appointment, the prospect willingly explains the need that exists
and the salesperson listens and takes down all pertinent information. They mutually
agree to a time to review a solution. Cooperation. The day for the proposal
appointment arrives and the prospect is excited to finally learn of a way to solve his
problem. The salesperson presents it and the prospect agrees that it looks great.
More cooperation. There is no need for the salesperson to engage in any ethically
questionable closing tactics because the prospect sees the value in the proposal and
simply buys. Cooperation at its finest.

Ask yourself, do your sales processes look more like the first or second example? If
you’re experiencing conflict instead of cooperation with your prospects, perhaps it’s
time for you to drop the old methods of prospecting and selling and learn a new
way that fosters goodwill and cooperation. The answer is self-marketing. Instead
of annoying people with cold calling and pushing them to buy with tacky closes, it
will induce qualified prospects to call you and simply agree to buy.

Frank Rumbauskas is the author of Cold Calling Is A Waste Of Time: Sales Success In
The Information Age and The Sales Mastery Program. His focus is on teaching
salespeople and sales organizations how to stop cold calling and replace it with
smart self-marketing that will bring in a steady supply of qualified, eager-to-buy
prospects. For more information please visit http://www.nevercoldcall.com.

Today with the ever growing number of web hosting companies to choose from, everybody should be able to find the perfect package to fit their needs. But if you are new to the internet, the vast array of choices out there may be rather confusing.

What features do you really need and what can you do without? Why should you pick a particular web hosting company over another? These are just a couple of several web hosting issues that may be confusing if you are new to the web hosting scene. Hopefully this article will help you make an informed decision when you are ready to select your dream web host.

STORAGE: Your storage requirements are going to be determined by the type of website you have. For example, if your website is nothing more than a personal online jotting pad, then server space issues should not be a major concern. If however you have something a little more grandiose in mind–say a business or eCommerce website that will grow with time–then make sure that your web host has a package that not only covers your current space requirements, but is also adequate for future growth or can be easily upgraded.

BANDWIDTH: This is a measure of the amount of data permitted to flow between your site and the rest of the internet. Once again if your site is commercial in nature or generates a substantial stream of traffic then you need a web hosting company that provides ample bandwidth. Also be aware that a lot of web hosting services claim to provide “unlimited bandwidth” but in fact rarely do. And if you do exceed your allotted bandwidth most web hosting providers will slap you with a penalty fee.

SUPPORT: There’s a saying that a web hosting service is only as good as its support. If you conduct your search for a web host with this in mind you really can’t go far wrong. Consider for example, most web hosting companies claim 24/7 technical support. But how true is this? After all, as is so often the case these days, it’s hard to tell where the truth lies and where the lies, well…lie. However one way to get round this is to test run the support team of the web hosting service you have in mind. The value of this trial-test is to measure the response time of the web host’s support department, as well as their degree of competence. Bear in mind that a support team with an indifferent attitude to new business (you) is highly unlikely to become any better once they’ve got you onboard.

SERVER PARAMETERS: Any web hosting service worth its salt should have a server uptime of 97% and above; this simply means that your web host’s server is up and running at least 97% of the time. I mean can you imagine what would happen to your business if your hosting company’s server is down 20% of the time. Your clients–with the merest flick of the mouse button–will turn to your competition to satisfy their needs. Other important server issues to bear in mind are how many servers does the company actually have and what kind of sites are hosted on a particular server.

Why should you concern yourself about the kind of sites being hosted? Well you wouldn’t want to compete for bandwidth with adult websites. This isn’t a question of morality…it is just that adult sites are well-known bandwidth hogs. Sharing servers with them will significantly slow down your websites’ loading speed (another great way to lose customers).

Again, with respect to slowdowns, you should ask how many websites are hosted on a given server and when the web hosting company considers a server to be full (i.e., cannot host any more sites without impairing functionality). Over hosting actually happens quite often because many web hosting services commonly oversell their servers. Most of them get away with it until the day a sufficient number of websites actually make good on their full allotment of bandwidth/storage and then…Ouch! That’s how your website is going to feel if it’s hosted on one such server.

Another aspect to consider about your hosting company is…where are the servers physically located? Though it rarely ever happens, if the web hosting company lacks redundancy or backup, if any drastic event occurs at the site of the servers, there goes your online presence. (This scenario really happened: At the World Trade Center when 9/11 occurred).

WEBSTATS: Traffic is the lifeblood of any internet business. Being able to track and analyze where traffic is coming from is a great advantage. Having such a tool at your disposal would enable you to make accurate and informed changes to your website to better position it for even more traffic. Plenty of web hosting companies provide such tracking and analysis tools with their various packages…even those 4-dollar-a-month or less, hosting services. So there really is no reason for you to settle for a web host that lacks this feature.

SCRIPTS/LANGUAGES: What script types does the web hosting company support: PHP, ASP, CGI, MySQL? The web script you use will of course depend on the type of website you have in mind.

UPGRADING: Does the web hosting company give you the option of upgrading your current package to a more advanced one if the need ever arises? And can you upgrade seamlessly, with minimal fuss and interruption to your business? (After all, the whole point of the upgrade is because your business is expanding. No point upgrading if you are going to lose a substantial portion of your business because of it.

E-MAILS: A lot of web hosting services offer unlimited POP3 e-mail as a big selling point. Don’t be seduced by this, especially if the web host is using it as a factor for charging you increased monthly fees. Truth is, most web hosting services today offer (as standard) more e-mail addresses than you’ll probably ever need.

More web hosting tips

Ba Kiwanuka is the webmaster of http://www.internetbusinessmart.com

There are a couple of things you will require to acquire when you start cycling. The first and most clear is good quality bicycle that fits you! Whilst that may well seem like a no-brainer, ample of people start out on bicycles that are too small, or built with very poor quality components, merely because they are a great deal less expensive. The right fit & a well manufactured bike can make your journey a lot better, nonetheless, don’t be coaxed to bargain shop for your mountain bike. However, it will be more clever to 1 one that will last you a considerable amount of time. Once you have a bicycle that is just right for you, it’s time to acquire the other items that will support you in becoming a regular cyclist. Find great offers on cycling gloves.

Lights: The minimum needed by United Kingdom law for your bike is a couple reflectors. Nonetheless a headlight & tail light are worthwhile even in daylight hours. When it’s dark & rainy, they can make a tremendous difference in your visibility to vehicles.

Tools: Just like driving a motor car, accidents do occur while you’re biking. Therefore, it is important that you keep some kind of tool kit on you at all times to take care of flat tyres, uncooperative chains, loose bolts & any other issues.

Helmet: Whilst it’s legal in most locations to go without a helmet, in numerous others, one is essential. If you are planning on biking on a regular basis, it is prudent to have one even in locations where no helmet law exists.

Clothes: While special cycling clothing is without doubt optional, it’s prudent to pay attention to what you’re wearing. Loose clothes should be prevented, or tucked up so they don’t get caught in the chain.

Locks: Unless you’re lucky enough to live in a place where you are able store your bicycle inside all the time, a lock is imperative. Even in country, there are people who will gladly take & resell your bike.

Related topics of interest include: Formula 1 & Toy Shops.

A slowing economy is particularly bad news for people in debt. Shrinking incomes and rising costs of living can soon turn small debts into big debts – and big debts into bigger debts.

So today’s newspapers make grim reading. Take the construction industry: Taylor Wimpey has cut almost 1,000 jobs. Or the retail industry: supermarkets are slashing the price of milk and other items in an attempt to win customers. It sounds like good news for customers, but those reductions have to be paid for somehow, and farmers are worried the big stores will “come looking for farmers to help redress the balance”, in the words of National Dairy Board Chairman Gwyn Jones.

Whether they’re facing lower incomes or actually losing their jobs, many people are finding they can no longer make their debt repayments. When income doesn’t cover expenditure, they need to find some way of raising their income or reducing their monthly outgoings.

A debt solution could be the answer – but if so, which one? Debt consolidation loans, debt consolidation mortgages, debt management plans, IVAs (Individual Voluntary Arrangements), Trust Deeds… With so many different kinds of debt help available, it can be hard to understand what they deliver and who they’re right for.

So in the majority of cases, the first thing a borrower should do is seek debt advice from a debt professional who can take them through the various options and help them choose the right one.

For many, the best way forward could be debt management, which involves renegotiating the repayment terms of their unsecured debts, trying to bring their monthly expenses back in line with their income.

There are two basic forms of debt management: people can do it themselves or ask a debt management organisation to do it for them. If the negotiations work out, the creditors might agree to accept lower monthly payments, freeze interest and / or waive charges. Of course, making lower payments means it’ll take them longer to repay the debt, but it’s a good way of helping them stay on top of their debts until their income rises again.

People with ’substantial’ debts (around £15,000 or more) may wish to consider an IVA, a debt solution in which creditors agree to write off a portion of the debt if the borrower can pay back the rest over an agreed time period (normally five years). Unlike debt management, an IVA is a legally binding agreement – if the individual and enough of their creditors agree to the terms, they’ll be bound by law to live up to this commitment.

Finally, if their debts aren’t so significant, there may be no need for an actual debt solution. Even when their income drops, many people find they can still stay on top of their debts with the right debt advice – how to budget more effectively, for example, or how to prioritise and cut down on non-essential spending. Again, the key thing is to start by talking to a professional debt adviser.

Source: GregoryPennington.com