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We hope you find this arcthve useful. A subscription to The Small Business Advisor Newsletter is free. Subscribe now - it's easy! The Small Business Advisor Newsletter for July, 1999 CONTENTS WEBSITE HOSTING. Looking for a place to host your website? Check BSCNet at http://www.bscnet.com FINDING AN ISP. Searching for an Internet Service Provider can be a time consuming process. For help visit http://www.InternetList.com/screens/search/ispsearch.asp REDUCE PHONE BILLS. Find the best deal for your long distance telephone and cellular service at Teleworth: http://www.teleworth.com REDUCE SHIPPING COSTS. What's best? Postoffice, UPS, FedEx, or Airborne? Try using iShip (http://www.iship.com) or SmartShip (http://www.smartship.com). MARKETING IDEA - DISCOUNTS FOR SENIORS! It works. Consider an across the board discount for all over xx-yrs. Or, have a "senior discount" day. This can increase traffic to your store. Have large prominent signs advertising this discount policy. BENEFITS. Be careful when setting up benefits packages for yourself and your employees. Most benefits are governed under US law and a mistake can cause tax problems. Visit http://www.benefitslink.com to learn more about this complex area. INSURANCE FOR THE SOLE PROPRIETOR. To learn about policies available for individuals, check out HealthAxis at http://www.healthaxis.com, which provides policy information, quotes, and application forms for insurers in a large number of states. MONEY SAVING IDEA. When thinking about purchasing a computer consider the possibility of refurbished PC's which are available from most of the large mail order houses like Dell and Micron. FREE SHIPPING SUPPLIES. Does your small or home-based business use the USPS to ship merchandise to customers? If so, you should probably be taking advantage of the free Priority Mail shipping supplies from the US Postal Service. You can get several sizes of boxes and shipping tubes plus rolls of priority mail tape delivered to your home or business location - all for FREE! Call 1-800-222-1811 to place your order. Too good to be true? Not this time! The Internet Marketing Center, http://www.marketingtips.com/t.cgi/7115 Marketing tips, strategies, and secrets for internet marketing, online advertising and website promotion that will skyrocket your small, medium or home based business profits through the roof. ++++++++++++++++++++++++ I get a BIG chuckle out of experts who preach the joys of working from home. Magazines often feature a photo of a nicely dressed model with her full attention focused on a client on the phone. Her equally nicely dressed child quietly explores an educational toy on the floor beside her. That's never the way it works at my house. As I write this from home, my 15 year-old is bouncing a basketball off the outside of my office, my 12 year-old is blaring her new Back Street Boys CD, the kindergartner has just let the neighbor's dog into the living room, and my toddler is trying to climb onto my shoulders while attempting to shut the computer off. Experts advise this isn't the way a successful work-at-home business is supposed to operate. The professional home- worker is told to make clients think she is in a big, plush office in a mirror-covered professional building. "Never allow noise from kids and pets and never answer the phone 'hello.' Clients won't take you seriously," they write. Uh oh, I'm in trouble. Let's be realistic for a second. Of the six million North Americans who work from their houses, I'll bet more than half have noisy kids, dogs, and unfolded laundry competing for their attention. Yet, studies routinely show work-at- homers often get as much or more done than those in the office. Here are a few ideas to help you succeed with a home business when you have lots of family responsibilities to deal with at the same time: 1. Don't worry about kids interrupting a phone call. Being there for family is cool these days. The vast majority of business people wish THEY were at home with their kids. More often than not, when a small voice starts demanding a popsicle in the middle of an important negotiation, the client on the other end will be delighted. "Are you working at home? How neat! Isn't it wonderful that you can be there for your kids," your client will say. 2. Working non-stop with full concentration is only for people locked in a corporate office. Get used to working in a start-and-stop fashion. When you see your work is about to be interrupted, don't stop at a natural place. Stop in the middle. It will help you get re-started when time allows. The feeling you MUST be constantly productive at all times is a recent invention of our industrial societies. The majority of the world's people are much more laid back. Take a little more time to get a project finished. Oddly, your productivity will increase. 3. If you are a firm of one, promote your one-ness to the world. Every customer wants to feel like they can talk to the person in charge. That's never a problem for people who do business with you. Think of all the big corporations that strive to be identified with their founder. Microsoft has Bill Gates, KFC has the Colonel, and Wendy's has Dave. They spend millions to insure you identify their mammoth corporation with a single individual in charge. 4. Get over the idea that TV is bad for kids. It is a popular, healthy, worthwhile activity when used wisely in moderate doses. Most of TV's criticism is perpetrated by people who sell books. There are a lot of terrifically educational TV programs and videos that kids love to watch. Plan to get a project underway while the kids (we'll include spouses, too) engage in some quality TV consumption. A few hundred years ago people ALWAYS worked with their kids under foot. It was only when business became dominated by factories that workers were forced to leave their children at home (and even then, it took at least 100 years to make workers change). You certainly CAN be a success working at home while taking care of children--even if your children are rowdy, noisy, and demanding. The articles I've written (which are read by 1 million people each week) were all written with various children sleeping on my lap, pulling my hair, or trying to delete the file. I earn a good living working at home and YOU CAN TOO! Just don't expect me to always pick up the phone when you call. It's not that I don't want to talk with you, but probably that my 2 year-old has just swiped my keys and is heading for the garage. Read Kevin Nunley's FREE marketing tips at http://DrNunley.com/. Reach him at kevin@drnunley.com. ++++++++++++++++++++++++ (Read this carefully, folks - Sheldon's comments are "right on the money" - using guarantees will make a difference in your bottom line! ..ed) In order to make sales or get hired on or off the Internet, people have to have TRUST. Guarantees -- even for professionals offering services -- are a power technique for pulling wavering prospects over the line to the sale/engagement. What They Don't Believe When You Approach Them: You need to understand that your prospects don't believe -- or have serious doubts about -- one or more of the following: 1. YOU They don't necessarily know you or trust that you are a person (or company) of integrity. This is not about what you OFFER but about WHO YOU ARE. 2. YOUR PRODUCTS OR SERVICES They often doubt that your product or service will give them the benefits you promise. They don't necessarily believe that if I read this book or hire you as my lawyer/CPA/etc. that I'll get my money's worth. More on this in a moment. 3. THEMSELVES If your product or service requires ANY work on their part, they often doubt that they will have the MOTIVATION and/or the ABILITY to do what is required for as long as it is required. (One of the things we teach professionals is how to offer clients a step-by-step SYSTEM that makes achieving goals just a matter of following directions. We offer them our own professional practice-building system that isn't dependent on the PERSONALITY of the professional but on strategies anyone can easily do. You should do the same with what you offer, although that's another article!). What to Guarantee: Your goal is to REVERSE THE RISK of people buying your product or hiring you for your service. Think about it this way. If you offer a money-back guarantee, who is taking the risk that what you are selling people will not satisfy them? YOU are!! If you don't offer a guarantee, THEY are having to buy something sight unseen and if they aren't satisfied, too, too bad. 1. GUARANTEE SATISFACTION. At the very least, you can guarantee that people will be satisfied. What is "satisfaction"? It's in the eye of the beholder, just like beauty! Don't worry about it. Don't try to put any limits on it if it's a product. If they aren't satisfied, even if you think they copied it, return their money and pray for their souls. They're in trouble. 2. GUARANTEE RESULTS If you're confident that what you offer will produce results MOST of the time for people, then you can greatly strengthen your guarantee to include results. -- "If you don't lose 30 pounds in the next 60 days, I'll return your money to you right away, no questions asked." -- "If you don't save at least $12,000 from my tax avoidance system, I'll return every penny you gave me." Don't worry about the people who don't do anything to earn it. I know some people require proof that customers actually tried the system, but they are on shaky legal ground, at least in the U.S.. What About Services? If you offer services that require your time, should you offer a guarantee? It's one thing to take back a product -- you can sell it again. But your time...you can't "resell" that. Here's a few ideas: 1. YOU CAN STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD by guaranteeing your services. 2. CREATE A PORTFOLIO of Products and Services At the least, do what I teach professionals in our 6-Figure Practice System and create a "portfolio" of products and services that help clients as well as your direct services. There is a very specific method of doing this so that it has integrity and REALLY helps people. Then, guarantee the products. 3. TRIAL PERIOD or PHASED PAYMENT Another smart thing you can do for a service is to offer clients a period of time in which they can try your services and back out if they want. Or STAGE YOUR WORK (phases) and let clients pay for each stage. In seminars, offer people the opportunity to attend one day of a three-day seminar and if they don't like it they can leave and get their entire fee back. What to Offer the Customer Back: 100% of their money back -- 100% of their money back MINUS shipping costs POWER GUARANTEES: -- 100% of their money back PLUS additional money "just for trying my product". I've seen anything from an extra $10.00 to a TRIPLE your money back offered. -- 100% of your money back if you return the main product(s). KEEP THE BONUS products just for your trouble. Of course, you only want to do that if your bonus products don't cost you very much (they may be worth a lot, but shouldn't expense your business very much). So...'GUARANTEE" your success -- with power guarantees. (c) 1999 Sheldon D. Nix, Ph.D. Visit Sheldon at http://www.successfulpractice.com Return to top of page - Back to Home Page - Back to Archive Index |