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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 June, 1999 CONTENTS
++++++++++++++++++++++++ Y2K HELP. The National Institute of Standards and Techonolgy (NIST) has a free Y2K "kit" that includes everything from self- assessment checklists to software upgrades. Small Businesses can use this kit to conduct a Y2K inventory, develop contingency plans, and manage any remediation necessary. Download the kit from http://www.y2khelp.nist.gov. NIST also operates a Y2K help line. The Y2K Help Center for Small Business can be reached by calling 1-800-Y2K-7557 or by email at: y2khelp@nist.gov. Please include your name, company name & address (including county), phone number, and a detailed inquiry. An analyst will call with a follow-up within one business day. CUSTOMER RELATIONS. Deliver more than you promise! You will keep more customers and generate good will for your business. It's easy and can be very inexpensive. For example, when I take my car in for service it comes back washed and cleaned inside. This costs the dealer a few dollars but what a great idea - customers love it. Think about this for your business - I'm certain you can come up with a similar idea related to your service or product. BUSINESS CARDS. This is a tip worth repeating - Utilize the back of your business card for a sales message or advertisement. Printing the backside of the card only marginally increases the cost. And do I need to remind you to include your URL on the card? E-MAIL HINT. Many aggressive marketers using e-mail are now sending very large files as attachments to their messages. I think this is VERY poor practice but to prevent yourself from being inconvenienced by having to wait while a 1-meg attachment downloads remember that most e-mail software allows you to set the size of the maximum permissible attachment. (I set mine at 50K). If an attachment is larger you will be asked if you want to download or delete the file. PASSPORTS. If you need a passport (new or renewal) in a hurry call the Passport Support Line at 1 (900) 225 5674. It cost 35-cents/minute for the recorded stuff and about $1/minute if you talk with a real person. KEEPING A LOG. A neat way to keep an event log is to use Notepad. Open Notepad and type ".LOG" on the first line. Every time you open this file, the current time and date will be recorded and you can simply add your comment. Very handy USEFUL MICROSOFT SITES. Here are some Microsoft pages that can be hard to find but are quite useful: Support options: http://www.microsoft.com/insider/mi/support.htm Home users: http://www.microsoft.com/insider/mi/homeuser.htm Y2K info: http://www.microsoft.com/insider/mi/y2kguide.htm Software library: http://www.microsoft.com/insider/mi/softlib.htm 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. ++++++++++++++++++++++++ FixIt also includes PowerDesk with a number of useful additional utilities the neatest of which is a greatly improved version of explorer. For example, you can display two explorer views which makes drag and drop very convenient. In my view, this feature is also worth the cost of the entire package. Visit the Mijenix website for more details. Street price is around $50. ++++++++++++++++++++++++ Today, there are many ways you can market your product from direct mailings to internet advertising. In ALL cases, however, you must know how to write an effective sales letter. If you send only the material requested, you will drastically decrease your chances of success. The PERSONAL sales message is the most VITAL piece of any direct or response marketing campaign. Write a good one, and you can literally make a fortune. Try this exercise before proceeding with the rest of this article. First, write a letter from 300-500 words long explaining to your friend why you got involved in your product/business opportunity, and why it might be something he would like to try. Next write a letter of the same length explaining the same thing to a prospect. SALES LETTER EVALUATION Now, note the differences between your two letters. If you're not experienced with this, you will notice that you gave both the prospect and your friend different reasons why they will like your product/opportunity. Excellent - the most effective sales letter for BOTH will be somewhere in the middle. The letter must be short to keep the reader's attention. Many of the people you reach receive loads of offers EVERY WEEK. Focus on the most important benefit the owner will enjoy from your product or opportunity. Then tell the customer about the benefit in a COMPELLING way. Let's take examples from this sales letter selling the Crust- Buster Widget. (The best widget available for busting crusts, and reduces the daily time required to bust crusts). "I'll have to admit I was shocked. Two weeks after I got my first Crust-Buster Widget, I got so mad it was frightening." Intriguing? You bet. You've caught the reader off-guard put those two lines in capitals at the top of your letter, but don't use underlines or it will look too contrived. You could use this line to open a letter to a friend or a stranger. Now, here's where you're taking the reader: "At first, I was amazed that the Crust-Buster really did cut a lot of the time it takes to bust crusts. But when I realized how long I'd been doing it the old way, and how many chances I had to own a Crust-Buster Widget, I was furious at how stubborn I had been." The first sentence does not explain the rage mentioned in the lead sentence, so the reader has to READ ON to get the explanation. It also explains the major benefit of the product without saying anything about BUYING it. The writer is "amazed". The product "really did" the job. By using a personal testimonial, (an excellent technique), the writer talks about busting crusts the old way a situation the reader has probably encountered. He can subtly point out why the prospect doesn't own one and show how he relates to him. Now, the writer knows that it is a mistake not to own the product, but if he actually came out and said "If you don't own the Crust-Buster Widget, you're wrong", he's not going to make any friends or sell widgets. "I'm not saying it'll do for you just what it did for me..." This soft-sell approach works wonders. It tells the reader that the product is not perfect. It's honest. It implies that the reader should see FOR HIMSELF how useful it will be. "...but it's allowed me to spend a lot more time doing other things, and that's meant my business runs more efficiently and makes bigger profits." This is the benefit the reader has been waiting for... money. Depending on the product, it could be happiness, beauty, anything. All products touch on human needs to either increase happiness or avoid unhappiness. The writer has led up to this benefit (climax). At this point, it's a good idea to mention that the product will pay for itself over a certain period of time, if indeed that's the case. It's effective because it makes the product look nearly cost-free. Use emotion-charged words and phrases often but don't overdo it - you'll seem like a cheap hustler. "An extremely good value" or "jammed with amazing ideas" are good phrases. Excite people's emotions and hold their interest. How many of these points did you include in your letters? Take out any filler material or excessive hype. Find the middle ground, and rewrite the letter. It should be ideal for both your friend and for your prospect. Make sure to get it checked for sentence structure and grammar. Now, add a short note before your signature, reminding the reader to look over the sales material and make his OWN decision. Follow it with something unique like, "May you make thousands rich and yourself happy, (signed)" is thoughtful, conveys the writer's sincerity and leaves you with a good feeling about the person who wrote it. Use top-quality stationery; the best you can afford, and make the one-time investment of having letterhead made up. Especially if you're marketing income opportunity information, you must look as if you're doing well yourself. Then, sign each letter individually. Include a personal hand-written note (50 words or less) attached to the major letter (like a yellow sticky note). If you've received a request for specific information, target the note toward that person's needs. If not, simply advise the person to look over the material carefully. Using this note makes it unnecessary to put an address such as "Dear Sir" at the top of the sales letter, which will alienate your readers. Unless you are using a specific person's name, don't use an address at all just start the letter. Visit Sue Barrett's web site at http://www.homebusinesscenter.com or contact her at editor@homebusinesscenter.com ++++++++++++++++++++++++ During 30 years in business and consulting with other business owners, I've found the three most cost-effective sources of business are always the same - regardless of the type of business. They are: 1. Existing customers 2. Referrals 3. The business's own "house mailing list". These sources may not produce your largest block of business. However, they always produce your most profitable block of business. That's because there is little or no advertising expense involved in getting business from these sources. Every business should have programs operating to promote repeat business from existing customers. Every business should also have systems in place to produce referrals from existing customers, prospects and contacts. However, the volume of business you can generate from these two sources is limited by the number of customers you have and contacts you know. Plus, you have very little control over the flow of business generated by these sources. By comparison, the volume of business you can develop from you own house mailing list is predictable. You can also control the flow of business from this source. WHAT IS A HOUSE MAILING LIST? Let's start by defining "house mailing list"? A "house mailing list" is any list owned by a business and compiled as a result of inquiry or buyer action. Your customer list is a house list. However, we won't talk about your customer list in this article. Instead, we'll talk about your prospect list. For this article we'll define house mailing list as "the stored database of contact information for prospects who have expressed an interest in your product, service or business opportunity but have not yet done business with you". Contact information in this database should include some or all of the following: * Person's name
If you don't save this contact information from every inquiry you receive, begin saving it now. You'll pick up a lot of very profitable business in the future by using it to make future offers to these prospects. Let me use my own business to illustrate the value of saving this information. I maintain a house mailing list of potential clients and customers for my consulting and business publications business. The list includes contact information for everybody who at sometime requested information about my services or publications. Every 60 to 90 days I contact everybody on this list with a special offer related to their original inquiry. About 50% of my profit every month comes from business generated by these special offers made to prospects on my house list. USE LOW COST METHODS OF COMMUNICATION Here's the best part. The cost of contacting prospects on my house list is very low... lower than any of my other advertising. I keep the cost low by using two very inexpensive methods of communication - email and postcards. I use email whenever I have the prospect's email address. The cost for email is close to zero. I use postcards when I don't have the prospect's email address. The cost of preparing and mailing a postcard by First Class Mail is only about 24 cents in the US (20 cents postage and about 4 cents materials and preparation). Postcards provide another benefit in addition to the low cost. Nearly 100% of the recipients will read my message because it's delivered "already opened" on a postcard. If you don't already have your own house mailing list, start building it today. Keep expenses low by using email and postcards to communicate with prospects on your list. You'll soon discover that a house list is a very cost-effective marketing resource that adds substantial profits to your business. Contact Bob Leduc
at BobLeduc@aol.com Subject: "Postcards" Return
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