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All About The Customers

All About the Customers

The golden rule for every business man is this: “Put yourself in your customer’s place. – Orison Swett Marden

Who are they?

Where do they come from?

How do I find them?

How do I keep them?

The customers.

Did you hear me? The customers. These people are the one thing that no business can do without and all business must seek to add more and more of them.

Your customers are what will make your online business the thing that will provide for you and your family. These people are gold to you and should be treated as such. Your customers have to be first located. Once located they must be treated well and made to feel as welcome as possible. Then these customers must be held on to at all cost. The easiest sale you will ever make is to a repeat customer. They know you and what products and or services you can provide. They will be happy to spend more money with you if you treat them well.

Identify repeat customers. Keep a list of them and stay in contact with them as must as possible.

The customer is king and you are there to serve them. They pay not only the bills that keep your business up and running, but your home as well. Keep that in mind when you obtain a new customer. Never look away from that fact when you are in contact with an existing customer.

In other words keep your eyes on the prize. Your online business grows only because of the customers that you are able to find and keep.

Good luck guys and get back to work.

Doing Business is About Getting There First

Doing Business, Getting There First

-The first man to the oyster bed gets all the pearls, the next one gets nothing but shells.-

Being first in all things is not always the best policy, but usually it is. Someone was first to come up with the idea of an international auction site to be used by anyone and everyone, Ebay. There have been many copycat sites and some of them actually do a better job of it than Ebay, but because they were first and had built such a head start it will be years before their spot at number one will be challenged.

Being first at doing something leads many customers to believe that because you got there first, that you invented the niche you must be the best at it and for those who wish to compete with you it will be up to them to convince consumers otherwise.

Being first gives your business an advantage. Black Friday is just a few weeks away and look at how many businesses maneuver each year to be the first to open. The first with the biggest sales offer. First to get you into their shop or store. Even if the consumer does not buy anything that day it still gives this business the advantage of setting the price point. Best Buys or Target has set the price. The customer runs all over town checking out other sale prices, with that original price always in mind. After two or three days they are back where they started and they are making a purchase. Running an online business or online store is no different. Reach the customer first with the best deal and they will come back to you sooner or later.

To be first does not mean that you will be a success anymore than scoring the first touch down in a game does, but it does give you an advantage. Find a way to be the first one to offer your customer what they are looking for. Stores spend millions of dollars each year sending out sales circulars. They do this because it has been proven to work. They fill the pages with items from all departments in hopes that the potential customer will see something that they must have and they will have to come by their store. Once they are inside the game is on.

You can and should do the same thing. Find out who your
customers are. Build a list of them. Collect existing names and emails of those whom have done business with you in the past and then be the first one to contact them. Tell them about that item or service you have to offer. Keep doing it. Keep offering invitations for them to come into your store or visit your site and sooner or later you will see your sales increase.

Okay that is it for this post. Please remember to add us to your google plus and to tell a friend about this site. If you do nothing more than to just check out the sponsors of this site that would be a great help. They pay to keep this site going and they actually pay a little even if you only visit and glance their offers.

Thank you for stopping by. I think it is time to get back to
work.

Online Business Plans

Online Business Plans

Your business plans have not gone exactly as you thought and you are at a loss what to do next. There will be days like this. Days when your online business plan is not the smoothly running machine that you thought that it would be. Days when plans that you knew would come off without a hitch have fallen apart and dark clouds are forming.

Let them form.

Allow yourself to take a few minutes or even as much as an hour or two to allow the rain to fall. To allow yourself to feel bad about how things are going. Then get back up. Dust yourself off and find a new approach to what ever problem has come up.

How do you do this?

The answer to that is largely up to you. I can suggest some things, but no one can do it for you. My advice is to check out the competition and see what they are up to. If they are thriving and you are not then investigate why. If their business is doing better than yours then you need to ask some question. Do this, but do not dwell on the bad day that you are having. Your goal has to be to put this day behind you.

Cheer yourself up by looking at new ways to grow you business. Find new ways to interact with your customer base. It will not be easy to start something new. It will be difficult at first, but all things are difficult at first. I promise you that over time you will get better at it.

Again I will suggest expanding your business with email marketing. If you can build a list of existing customers and keep in contact with them then you are going to make more money in the long run. Think about it this way. Who is the best possible customer? Those whom have already purchased a product or a service from you already. If you have provided a good product or a great service then you have a customer ready to return. We all return to stores that we are comfortable in. We all eat at those restaurants that have provided quality services in the past.

To better insure that you do not have another truly bad day at the office then I would suggest getting to know your existing customers better.

Okay, that is it for today. Remember to stumble us on stumble upon and to add us to your google plus.

Learning Equals Better Earning

Learning Equals Better Earning
-I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.- Winston Churchill

-The most important thing I’ve learned since becoming CEO is context. It’s how your company fits in with the world and how you respond to it.-
Jeffrey Immelt

If we are lucky we are learning something new every single day. I was a child when I first heard the saying, there are things that you never knew that you never knew. That saying made me asked the obvious follow-up question.

Why?

The answer was simple. Because like most people, especially children, you think that you know everything so you stop asking questions. The smartest person in the room is not the person who sits back with their arms folded, nice crease in their pants, smug look on their face. Their universe is fixed. In their minds their knowledge rivals God’s and there is no point is discussing it. These people will never learn, never grow and never change. They may succeed in the short-term, but when called upon to adapt to new situations they will be lost.

Then there are the ones who look to tomorrow to act. Trust in the voice of all those who say it can not be done. It must not be attempt. Trying is not nearly as good as dreaming. These are the people who believe in destiny. Everything will work out for me because it is meant to be. We know these people. We see them everyday. Perhaps we work with people like this or live with people like this. There is only one word for these people. Fools. As long as they appear to be learning they equate this to learning. As long as they appear to be successful they equate this to actual success. You could spend a life time telling them about sacrifice and hard work and perseverance. All that you will get is a foolish look in response or worst the uttering of their favorite phrase, “Shut up.” Their goal will always be to end discussion, to end debate and to end the learning process.

If you have read this far then we can be confident that you are not either one of them. You want to learn. You sometimes feel the burning need to learn new things. You run an online business and there are so many areas where you may be losing business due to a lack of knowledge in a certain area. Perhaps you have not learned enough about social media and how it can aid your business. How you can use it to grow your business. Maybe you have not taken the time to learn more about list building or basic email marketing.

You run an online store, but you have never looked into selling digital goods or using affiliate marketing to add an extra income stream. The things that you do not know that you didn’t know are costing you money. Today would be a good day to change this. Please allow me to help you were I can.

Leaders Lead

Leading the Way

Some of us work alone and others work with a team or group of people. This largely depends upon the size of your business and its needs. Perhaps during only certain times of the year you will hire people to help you out.

Once you have these people what happens next?

Some will hope that they just sort of pick up a clue here and there and some how find a way to pitch in.

Others will bark orders none stop. Napoleon will have nothing on this warehouse dictators.

Some will lead by handing out list of things to do and still other will try to lead by example.

Here is some basic advice.

A leader should always be responsible. Take full responsibility for what happens on your watch. If things go well it is thanks to the group or team effort. If things go wrong for what ever reason in the end it comes down to you.

Be responsible.

Own it.

This is your chair and for better or worst people are going to blame you anyway so you might as well be a stand up guy.

Be the most enthusiastic person in the room. Hey this is your business, this is your project and if you are not its number one cheerleader who is going to be? The guy getting paid minimum wage?

A leader must be competitive. Love to compete. If you do not I suggest you learn to love it. Your energy will spread. If you are passive your workers will pick
up on that energy. While if you are competing and aggressive they will be do.

Imagine that you are the lead of a pack. There is money to be made out there. It is waiting to be taken and all you have to do is hustle out there and get it.
Tell me what kind of pack is a passive go along to get along, it is all good, it is all okay type of leader, driving? A pack of doves. A pack of snails? A pack of turtles?
A pack of gum that is waiting to be chewed up by the competition and spit out.

Try to achieve something like a sense of competitive anger. Controlled anger (no yelling and screaming and
flipping over cars like the incredible Hulk), but still a kind of anger that they job is not getting done faster or better or more efficiently. This type of leader leads a pack of wolves. A pack of lions. A pack of Huns storming the gates of Rome.

“Hey, you are getting a bit carried away. I sell stationary. I sell flowers. I market ebooks. I repair dolls.”

Does not matter. All that matters is how you do it and how well you do it. Become a good leader and you will become a better business man.

Okay that is it. Remember to stumble us on Stumbleupon and add us to your google plus.

Still A Good Business Day

Still A Good Day

The worst day that you will every have as a independent business person will outshine 99 percent of the best days that you ever had while working for someone else.

Think about it. You are your own boss and most likely your only employee so at the end of this day all of the credit belongs to you. Yes, I know that when we fail we know who to blame, but even under those circumstances it is far easier to deal with your own mistakes than those of others. You know what you did wrong so you know how to correct those mistakes. It does not take a meeting. It does not take a memo. It does not take hours of finger pointing. You know how to correct it and move on. You know this during the good and the bad times. You know what is best for your business and if you do not you at least know where to go to get the help you need.

I would like to suggest some things to you that might aid your business. Most of us got into the business that we are in hoping that it would grow over time. Who starts a business and says to themselves I want to reach this certain level and stop right there. Who does not want to grow and improve and make more profit?

What I would like to suggest to some of you who are running an online business is that this may be the time to look into adding services.

If you do not have a website why not? If you are earning a living by working at one of the online marketplaces you are still an employee of someone else. Sure Ebay and Amazon will not put it that way, but they can stop you from running your business on their sites any time that they wish. That sounds like having a boss to me.

Get your own website. If you do not know how to build one or do not have the time then below is the banner for a site that can walk you through it.

Also you should think about collecting information about your customer base so that you can go back to them again and again. You will need a service to do that for you unless you have many free hours on your hands.

Thank you for reading this post. I hope that you found something of interest here. I hope that you will spend time here at my site and if possible support those who advertise here. Also please remember to add us to your google plus and stumble us on stumbleupon.

Compete to Win

Lessons from the Summer Games

A few years ago the US realized that if it did not alter its approach to certain events in the Olympics it was going to continue to lose ground to countries like China. (Yeah, losing ground to China seems to be a national theme lately.)

China saw a chance to own the medal count by dominating certain new events where they could rack up multiple medals while in these same events the US would win none. Fringe diving and gymnastics events. A few swimming events as well. It took us a while to realize this and a while longer to adjust to this. The adjustment took probably 4 years longer than it should have due to the fact that it was done as a national team adjustment rather than done by athletes on an individual basis.

What I am suggesting to you is that you are in a constant competition. You are competing with every single business that offers the same services or sells the same types of products as you. The moment you realize this and adjust to it the better. The moment that you understand the fact that you have to change and grow and adapt. That there are businesses out there that would love to see you lose this competition. Not because they hate you or want to see your family starving, it is as said in the Godfather, it’s just business.

The question for today is what are you gonna do to grow and change your business? What new services will you try to help you gain an edge over the competition? In what ever business we have chosen we are all targets to some extent. What I am suggesting is that it is always harder to hit a moving target.

It is time for you to go out and get new tools and learn new skills to compete and win. If you can not win by out working your competition find a way to out market them. If do not have the resources to out spend your competition then you can always out tech them. If you can drive more business through advertising and social media then do it. If they are better at that than you then go out a find a service that can help you win. If they have a technological edge over you then either find a way to overcome this or get some help to do this.

If you do not do this then I promise you that someone who you are not yet aware of is doing it to you.

Compete to win.

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