Tag: email addresses

  • 5 Tips for Improving Performance in Small Sales Teams

    5 Tips for Improving Performance in Small Sales Teams

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    In my years of experience in sales and sales management, I have observed many small and medium sized sales teams. Often, they struggle to perform at capacity and hit their goals and it's frequently a sales management issue. Sometimes it's because the CEO or business owner is the de facto sales manager and is wearing many hats. They are often just too busy running their business or spread too thin. Sometimes they're the technical experts in their field and their expertise and time is being used to improve products, systems or services. It's sometimes because a top performing sales person was promoted into a sales management role and their strength lies in salesmanship and delivering revenue to the business personally rather than in a broad sense. Below are five things you can do to improve sales management in your company now.

    1. Planning
    Many business owners have at best a rudimentary sales plan. If they do have one, often times it consists of higher and higher sales goals, without accounting for what will drive that new business. Will a new product line be added, a new market be opened or new additions made to the sales team? Will the company be able to support the added expense while markets are opened and new sales people trained? How much risk will the company bear? A good but simple sales plan takes this into consideration. Takeaway: Make a better sales plan with concrete steps to get to the desired goal.

    2. Modernize
    There are many new technologies that make it easier to interact with prospects. Among them are CRM systems, collaboration tools, the cloud, dialers, email tracking, prospect and customer information systems. Existing systems are being upgraded all the time with the newest capabilities. All are designed to more efficiently and effectively reach more buyers, disseminate information, warm them up and help make sales. Social media platforms allow a business to extend its reach inexpensively and makes your business more visible to search engines such as Google.com. Takeaway: Evaluate new technologies on a regular basis to make sure you are keeping up and modernize as needed.

    3. Training
    Training sales people serves three purposes. The first is that it provides them an opportunity to hone and refresh their skills. The second is that it reminds them that performance is important and that expectations for them performing well are high. The third is that it shows a willingness to invest in them and that they are part of the long term plan for the organization. Takeaway: Make sure you offer training to your sales people every year (a sharp ax cuts better than a dull one).

    4. Lead Generation
    All businesses need sales and most small and medium sized businesses are subject to the feast / famine paradigm. When they're busy, the first thing that gets pushed aside is prospecting for new business. Until business slows down. Then there's a flurry of sales activity and soon business is back where it should be. For a while. Most small businesses don't have bandwidth to prospect effectively in a consistent way.

    Lists should be highly targeted and refreshed regularly. Technology should be used and a proven process followed. The technology should reinforce the process rather than detract from it. Top management should enforce the use of the technology and following of the process. Utilize social media and blogging to widen your reach inexpensively. Finally, no one can be an expert on everything so get help from the professionals when needed. Takeaway: Make prospecting part of the company routine and culture and call in the experts when needed!

    5. Measurement
    You get what you measure is the old adage and it's mostly true. The challenge is top management often has a hard time pinning down the exact actions, activities and behaviors they are trying to encourage and measure. Here's a practical example. Maybe top management believes that offering free webinars will increase sales since it worked well in the past. So the goal is to run well attended webinars.

    How will these webinars be promoted to prospects and clients? Will a set of emails be sent, starting a few weeks before the first webinar? Then a prospect list with email addresses will need to be purchased and loaded and a compelling email invitation created.

    Will prospects be called and told about the webinars? Then phone numbers will be necessary, a script will need to be created and a person designated to make the calls. To track call results, an activity report should be created and run on a regular basis to test the messaging, to make sure the calls are being made and to analyze the prospect responses. Will the report be grouped by prospect type (or industry or state or city or source)? Then that data will need to be captured or imported for each prospect.

    Finally, reports should measure the success of each webinar, so that results can be tabulated. How many people registered and attended are important to measure, as well as what happened to the prospect once the webinar was complete to determine the ROI. Takeaway: Create reports that measure actions, activities and behaviors that drive sales success, run them regularly and share the results.

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    Source by Jerry Crowley

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  • Top 3 Ways To Boost Your Affiliate Commissions Overnight

    The ideal world of affiliate marketing does not require having your won website, dealing with customers, refunds, product development and maintenance. This is one of the easiest ways of launching into an online business and earning more profits.

    Assuming you are already into an affiliate program, what would be the next thing you would want to do? Double, or even triple, your commissions, right? How do you do that?

    Here are some powerful tips on how to boost your affiliate program commissions overnight.

    1. Know the best program and products to promote. Obviously, you would want to promote a program that will enable you to achieve the greatest profits in the shortest possible time.

    There are several factors to consider in selecting such a program. Choose the ones that have a generous commission structure. Have products that fit in with your target audience. And that has a solid track record of paying their affiliate easily and on time. If you cannot seem to increase your investments, dump that program and keep looking for better ones.

    There are thousands of affiliate programs online which gives you the reason to be picky. You may want to select the best to avoid losing your advertising dollars.

    Write free reports or short ebooks to distribute from your site. There is a great possibility that you are competing with other affiliates that are promoting the same program. If you start writing short report related to the product you are promoting, you will be able to distinguish yourself from the other affiliates.

    In the reports, provide some valuable information for free. If possible, add some recommendations about the products. With ebooks, you get credibility. Customers will see that in you and they will be enticed to try out what you are offering.

    1. Collect and save the email addresses of those who download your free ebooks. It is a known fact that people do not make a purchase on the first solicitation. You may want to send out your message more than six times to make a sale.

    This is the simple reason why you should collect the contact information of those who downloaded your reports and ebooks. You can make follow-ups on these contacts to remind them to make a purchase from you.

    Get the contact information of a prospect before sending them to the vendor’s website. Keep in mind that you are providing free advertisement for the product owners. You get paid only when you make a sale. If you send prospects directly to the vendors, chances are they would be lost to you forever.

    But when you get their names, you can always send other marketing messages to them to be able to earn an ongoing commission instead of a one-time sale only.

    Publish an online newsletter or Ezine. It is always best to recommend a product to someone you know than to sell to a stranger. This is the purpose behind publishing your own newsletter. This also allows you to develop a relationship based on trust with your subscribers.

    This strategy is a delicate balance between providing useful information with a sales pitch. If you continue to write informative editorials you will be able to build a sense of reciprocity in your readers that may lead them to support you by buying your products.

    1. Ask for higher than normal commission from merchants. If you are already successful with a particular promotion, you should try and approach the merchant and negotiate a percentage commission for your sales.

    If the merchant is smart, he or she will likely grant your request rather than lose a valuable asset in you. Keep in mind that you are a zero-risk investment to your merchant; so do not be shy about requesting for addition in your commissions. Just try to be reasonable about it.

    Write strong pay Per Click ads. PPC search engine is the most effective means of advertising online. As an affiliate, you can make a small income just by managing PPC campaigns such as Google AdWords and Overture. Then you should try and monitor them to see which ads are more effective and which ones to dispose of.

    Try out these strategies and see the difference it can make to your commission checks in the shortest of time.

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  • How To Avoid That Affiliate Marketing Scam

    You have finally decided that the 9-5 day job isn’t for you. Your tired of your work being undervalues and underappreciated. You would like to work when you feel you are most productive, not when some boss or manager feels it is so. You are also tired of working hard with no incentive or reward scheme in place.

    Affiliate marketing is a great opportunity for those who want to venture out on their own. The minimal risk and zero start up costs make it an attractive option to many. Affiliate marketing programs are perfect for those people who are motivated and self starters. They are also great for those who want to set their own working hours.

    The internet has helped up change so many aspects of our lives. We can study and work from home with the help of a computer and high speed internet access. However, there are unfortunately lots of scammers out there ready to take either your money or your work to use for their benefit. Many of these email scam programs and work at home schemes have little hope of amounting to any kind of living.

    Unfortunately, these scammers have made their way into the world of affiliate marketing as well. There are some excellent affiliate marketing programs to get involved with; the trick is how to spot the scammers.

    The face and manner of the internet and affiliate marketing is constantly changing. This makes it very difficult to produce a definitive list of do’s and don’ts. However, there are some signs that one can look for. If your company displays any of these signs it does not mean for sure that they are con artists. However, it should warrant further investigation.

    An affiliate marketing program should always provide you with some support. This can include an agent that you can contact with questions or problems. A legitimate company should want you to do well. The better you do the better they do. It should at very least contain a toll free phone number, email address and fixed street address. If your company is an online affiliate marketing program, the lack of an email or web page should definitely raise some red flags. Other things such as no phone or address do not mean necessarily that they are trying to scam you. However, you need to investigate them with a fine tooth comb.

    A good test is to send the company an email with some basic questions. If it takes them weeks to get back to you then you need to give this venture careful consideration. Again, they may not be out to con you but if they are poor at communication, this could be a sign of other internal problems.

    If the company has no website then you should consider something else. Legitimate affiliate marketing programs generally have a detailed website with all the information you need. One should be suspicious of companies that operate only by email. A website is fairly easy to create so why hasn’t this company invested the time to do so? Also, a website leaves a bit more of a trail to a company. If they do end up scamming you, the chances of tracing the people via a website are much better then tracing them through masses of email addresses.

    Many of us would love the opportunity to work for ourselves. We would love to chuck in the day job and start our own businesses. However, the costs of starting a business combined with the risk involved stop most of us before we even get started. Affiliate marketing is a great way to make some money by working for yourself. The costs are none and the risk minimal. One needs to use some caution when signing onto a program. Make sure there is adequate support available to you. Make sure the company is contactable and that they answer queries in a timely fashion. Be incredibly cautious of companies that have no website. These factors do not always mean that the company is out to scam you; however they should be looked at carefully.

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  • Getting Started With Autoresponders

    If you’ve just started your online business or decided to get into affiliate marketing, you’ll be looking to make money.  Making money on the net with your new business can be a little tricky, unless you have an autoresponder.  An autoresponder is the ideal way to carry out your day to day business – saving yourself quite a bit of time and money.

    If you don’t have a lot of money to spend, there are places on the Internet where you can get an autoresponder for free.  Keep in mind that if you don’t purchase your autoresponder, the free ones normally come with downsides.  The most common downside to free autoresponders are ads on your emails, which will more than likely send your customers the wrong idea.

    When you get your autoresponder, the first thing you’ll need to do is set it up with messages or articles that relate to your business. This way, when you send out emails or messages, you’ll be sending out material that relates to your business or products.  You should try to write some of your own if you can, which will help you get started in the right direction.

    When you load up your autoresponder, you should try to load it with at least 52 messages.  This way, you’ll something to send for each week of the year.  If you have trouble loading your autoresponder with this many messages or articles, there are places online where you can get your material for free.  If you simply don’t have the time, you can always start with a few messages then go back and add more later.

    Once you have your autoresponder preloaded with messages or articles, you’ll need to set up your signature.  Your signature will be displayed at the bottom of every message your autoresponder sends, and should be your name and link to your business.  You can also add a short description of your business as well, which will let clients or interested customers know a bit of information about your business.  Your name and link to your business will go a long way, letting your customers know that you are professional.

    Once you have everything set up, all you need to do is start sending out emails.  Your autoresponder can be set up to send messages automatically.  You can also send out emails daily, weekly, or monthly if you prefer.  Almost all autoresponders are flexible, easy to use, and will send out your messages when you decide.  Once your subscriber list starts to build up, and you get more email addresses to your autoresponder, you’ll quickly see that it’s very beneficial. After you have used your autoresponder a few months – you won’t be able to imagine your business without it.

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  • Increasing Your Sales With Autoresponders

    The autoresponder is without a doubt one of the best marketing tools you can get.  It is a widely used application that will automatically respond to any email that it receives.  They are considered to be magical indeed, triggered by a blank email that they receive to their address.  Once they receive this email, they automatically start working for your business.

    Whenever someone sends the autoresponder a message, the individual who sent the message will receive a preset email message with the information they were seeking.  Depending on the servers and speed of the Internet, the email response will happen very fast.  Autoresponders have always been known for their quick speed and fast responses to any type of email message they receive.

    One of the best things about autoresponders is the fact that they are always available.  They are always there 24/7, providing your clients and customers with the information they seek.  They will make your business life easier, by boosting your sales.   They require little work from you, yet they are easy to operate.  They can also make managing your customers and clients easier than ever, as they will help you keep track of your responses and keep up with email addresses you receive.

    Even if you’ve never used an autoresponder before, you can easily use it to your advantage with your online business.  You can preset it to say a variety of messages, even inform your clients about future offers and products.  This is a great way to get your message out there, especially if you are currently holding a sale or other deal that you know people won’t want to miss out on.  Autoresponders will work for you day or night, making your company information available to anyone whenever they want it.

    Contrary to popular belief, not all buyers are impulse buyers.  Research has shown that less than 15% of those who visit websites are impulse buyers.  Although most websites focus themselves on getting visitors to buy their products immediately, most buyers need time to think about a product or offer they will purchase it.  Most buyers don’t like to buy something immediately, simply because they may not be familiar with the product or know what it can do for them.  Therefore, most buyers will learn all they can about something before they decide to go ahead and purchase it.

    You can also use an autoresponder to distribute courses, articles or reports to your clients and subscribers.  They are also great for providing free information to interested individuals, or immediately sending out information about your products and opportunities.  You can also choose to send out price lists as well, or welcome new clients to your organization.  If customers have purchased from you before, you can use an autoresponder to send out confirmations, thank you notes, and even offer discounts to those who buy your products.

    In the world of Internet marketing, autoresponders are simply beneficial to have.  They are worth more than the price you pay for them, simply because they will provide you with so much for so little.  One of the best in the business is www.Automatic-Responder.com. Sending out information is easy with an autoresponder – as it will provide information about your company and products to interested clients the instant they need it.

    All in all, an autoresponder will help you operate your business easier than ever before.  Unlike other programs you can get for your online business, autoresponders will keep you in a constant state of readiness.  You can feel free to go out and do what you want – and rest assured that your autoresponder will be there to supply information to those who need it.

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  • WHO reports fivefold increase in cyber attacks, urges vigilance

    WHO reports fivefold increase in cyber attacks, urges vigilance

    Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, WHO has seen a dramatic increase in the number of cyber attacks directed at its staff, and email scams targeting the public at large. 

    This week, some 450 active WHO email addresses and passwords were leaked online along with thousands belonging to others working on the novel coronavirus response. 

    The leaked credentials did not put WHO systems at risk because the data was not recent. However, the attack did impact an older extranet system, used by current and retired staff as well as partners. 

    WHO is now migrating affected systems to a more secure authentication system. 

    Scammers impersonating WHO in emails have also increasingly targeted the general public in order to channel donations to a fictitious fund and not the authentic COVID-19 Solidary Response Fund. The number of cyber attacks is now more than five times the number directed at the Organization in the same period last year. 

    “Ensuring the security of health information for Member States and the privacy of users interacting with us a priority for WHO at all times, but also particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. We are grateful for the alerts we receive from Member States and the private sector. We are all in this fight together,” said Bernardo Mariano, WHO’s Chief Information Officer. 

    WHO is working with the private sector to establish more robust internal systems and to strengthen security measures and is educating staff on cybersecurity risks. 

    WHO asks the public to remain vigilant against fraudulent emails and recommends the use of reliable sources to obtain factual information about COVID-19 and other health issues. 

    For more information, please visit: www.who.int/covid-19.

     

    WHO reports fivefold increase in cyber attacks, urges vigilance
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    https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/23-04-2020-who-reports-fivefold-increase-in-cyber-attacks-urges-vigilance

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  • Growing Your List with Email Append

    Is the success of your email marketing program limited by the size of your subscriber list? Email append, the
    process of adding email addresses to a postal customer database, is a quick and affordable way to expand the size of your email list. If you haven?t considered it in the past, it?s time to take a look.

    Perceptions about email append and the methods for doing it have matured over the past few years, and it?s now a predictable and reliable email list growth tactic. This white paper provides guidelines and best practices for consumer email appending.

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    http://www.associationofmarketing.org/whitepapers/view.php?whitepaper_id=68

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