People are trying all sort of things to get the best out of their blogs. People are searching online for the quickest way to turn their blogs or sites into a money making machine. Some has gone as far as joining black-hat type SEO scams which eventually get them penalized or banned from google. Well my friend this article tells it all. Focus more on conversion rather than just trying to get back links. I am not saying back links are not good, back links are great actually.  I read somewhere once that if your contents are good enough you don’t need to fetch for back links, people will want to link to you.

Checkout this great article I found online.

Conversion Optimization Is The New SEO

Posted using ShareThis

Popularity: 1% [?]

During the past years, on-line business has changed especially when it comes to cyberspace marketing. Though some individuals still use those old techniques of online marketing and have good results, it is important to refresh ourselves with recent and emerging cyberspace trading methods. Whether you have a huge or small online business, you could make easy income online with clickbank affiliate loophole.

I originate from a land where online business is very alien to many. As A Matter Of Fact, when I inform my friends that I run cyberspace business, they gaze at me strangely. We are used to traditional ways of business where you need to get an office or store, and people see you reporting everyday and trade tangible items. It then gets as a storm to them when they see me operating a home based business.

It actually took me a long time to find out the many secrets that I reveal now, actually for over five years I have found out the tough means on greatest on-line business concepts and cyberspace marketing methods. Now, I could surely impart how I handled to earn income from my home based business. Though I have made plenty of trials and errors to reach where I am today, it is the love to succeed that has got me going.

We’re in the info age, hence to get people with your on-line business course or merchant products you have to give them data about anything you are performing. Among the finest cyberspace marketing ideas is article marketing. Determine a niche market that you are great at and get goods and write ups on the related field.

The benefit of article marketing is that in the write ups that you post, you will include keywords that your target market visitors use to seek for data when they are surfing the net. This enables you to optimize your blog or web site for research engines to cite you therefore direct traffic to your web page

Popularity: 1% [?]

“Prospecting is the work of the weak. My business comes to me”. Who dares to proclaim this type of arrogance and confidence.  I don’t recall any one knocking on my door to give me their business. It is true that, once in a while, a product or service comes around that people do stand in line for hours to get – like World Series tickets. This is probably not true in your business.

As a sales manager, it is necessary to develop a strong routine of developing sales leads and finding prospects.  Business cycles change and new customers replace the old, regenerate the new and refresh the sales process.  Hopefully, you have a prospect list to start from. This list usually can come from listing companies, the phone book, current customers, the Internet, networks or associations or from your old dead files (past customer that have not bought in years).  I normally use all of these methods to find prospects and then I go through a qualifying process to help narrow down strong possibilities for my products or service.  To qualify these prospects I ask the who, what, how much and when questions to who ever I can get a hold of at the prospects office. Once each account is qualified I try to take the next few steps to get me in the door.

I will call the prospect and try to set up an appointment. This sounds easier then it really is. I don’t believe in masking my true intentions to get me in the door so I try to pitch the value of my visit. I prepare an argument of why the prospect should see me and how I will help his business. I try to push some type of added value for them – actual savings to their bottom line, added value to their consumers, or I try to illustrate how my service is needed in their business. This call will basically setup an appointment or a disappointment. In case of the disappointment remember that sales is a numbers game. Some of the best batters in baseball are .300+ hitters (that’s 3 out of 10) and a great sales manager could do the same. The goal of the first call is to sell the customer on getting an appointment or creating some type of need for you and your product.

If success grants you the appointment then go to prospect prepared. If you sell a product make sure you have the proper samples, appropriate deals and order sheets.  Do your homework on the competition. How does your product measure up and compare? Show the dollars and sense of a deal in black and white. It is suggested by some that visualization the sales call helps you succeed. I use this technique and run through the pro and con scenarios. Go through all of the FAQ’s in your head – anticipate the questions and have the right answers. I want to stress at this point that I never recommend making things up as you go along. The sales profession has come a long way to battle those stereotypes and I can assure you that your competitor is keeping it factual. If you don’t know the answer the typical response would be “ I will get back to you on that”. Make sure you do. I actually plan this step out and keep my Daytimer handy (yes-I still write it down). When a “..get back to you…” question comes up – I stop the presentation, take out my Daytimer and write it down. This is done to help me remember and for effect. Of course, I do get back to prospects whether the deal closes or not.

Have yourself organized. This includes the sales presentation, the samples, the process, the close and the follow-up. Organization can go a long way to combat any negative feelings that may develop during a prospecting call.  It is always difficult to build repoire with new prospects but organization, professionalism and courtesy are the building blocks.  After all is said and done and you have come to the conclusion –ask for the business. If you don’t try to close it may not happen.  If you get the objections, the brush off or the follow-up call always be grateful to the prospect. A thank you also goes a long way to help build new business relationships.  Since I still like to pen things out, I do send a thank you card or follow-up note just so that don’t forget me so soon.

Ken Ninomiya has marketed and sold products internationally for nearly 20 years. He holds an Executive MBA from the Chapman School of Business, FIU and currently is VP of Sales and Marketing for EKN Links. EKN Links is a solutions company for domestic and international businesses providing sales, marketing, Public relations and business strategies. Ken can be reached at kenninomiya@eknlinks.com or www.eknlinks.com

Popularity: 3% [?]

Prospecting for new business from your desktop.

Business is grown in just three ways – grow your existing account base, develop new revenue streams with new products or ideas or get new business.  All three options have their own positive and negative effects on a business but all three have to be considered in a slow economic times or when your business has reached a certain level of market maturity.

This article will focus on gaining new business through prospecting.  Each company has a set of key elements that bring its product or service to the market. These key elements are presented to a targeted group of prospects who have the need for your product.  Locating this targeted group can sometimes be elusive and the lack of new prospects will deter the growth of your business.  So how does a company look for new prospects?

The internet allows us an affordable way to do our own searching for prospects.  I have worked with a sales person lately who needed to open up 16 new accounts a year selling a high end hair treatment and shampoo line. The opening order cost for any new account was a minimum investment of $3,000.00.  After understanding who will use the product and I turned to the internet for some quick searching.  Sometimes entering a key word or description of the product will turn up hundreds of potential customers. In my first online search I came up with thousands of hits. I used a drill down technique for each search. By simply adding the word “Florida” after the key words and a comma, I was able to narrow the list down just to the specific targeted territory.

Another internet strategy I use is to enter a key word for who would use the products. In this case I entered “high end hair salons, Florida” and “hair salons and spas, Florida”. This resulted in another list slightly different then the first but added several hundred additional more prospects.  I also looked for competitive websites. There are times that a competitor will post their entire account list on the web – yours for the taking.

Now that we have some new prospect names – what do we do with them?  Here is where most companies, sales managers and sales reps fail.  It can be a daunting task to have 43 pages of new prospects. Where does one start? My first suggestion would be to go through the entire list and read the name, location and type of account they are if this information is available.  Often times it would be a good idea to share this list with your controller or “accounts receivable” person within your company to see if you can eliminate any deadbeat accounts. If you have a sales manager it might be a good idea to share this list with them also to see if there is any history there.  I would not suggest eliminating any names because you don’t like the area they are in or the name of their business. Remember, a good sales person does not make the decision for the buyer and one should never be quick to discount new business.

Qualifying the prospect is the next most important thing to do.  It’s time to make sure that they fit your customer type and that they will have a need for your product or service.  Go to their website and look around – you may find out that they already buy your competition or have a missing need to fill with your product. You can learn a lot about a company from an on-line search. I would also call them up. The first call is an exploratory call. If it’s a large company and you get the receptionist see if you can ask some qualifying questions to that first screener. Questions I have used are “Do you currently sell or use (enter your product or service hear)? If you get a yes, dig some more on the who, what and how much? If you get a “no”, find out if they ever tried to sell or use your products? If it sounds like a possibility for a customer, ask the screener for the person who is in charge of making that buying decision. If they can set up an appointment for that person do so on the call. There are times when you make one call and get to the decision maker immediately. In this case, I would recommend a conversation that starts off with “I hope that you can offer me your opinion about my product or service” and then get into some qualifying questions.

Close the deal. Not the door!

Contact us to

help your sales

team makes the numbers.

www.EKNLinks.com

Phone 1.954.558.9599

Don’t forget while we are prospecting to ask for referrals and leads to new business. Sometimes the next big contract comes from your last source of business. If you provide a valuable product or service and maintain a professional and courteous relationship with your customers-they will refer you to others.

Ken Ninomiya has marketed and sold products internationally for nearly 20 years. He holds an Executive MBA from the Chapman School of Business, FIU and currently is VP of Sales and Marketing for EKN Links. EKN Links is a solutions company for domestic and international businesses providing sales, marketing, Public relations and business strategies. Ken can be reached at kenninomiya@eknlinks.com or www.eknlinks.com.

By Ken Ninomiya, MBA, Professor

VP Sales and Marketing of EKN Links

Popularity: 3% [?]

Voice over Internet Protocol is this new booming technology that allows you to make phone calls using your already available internet service. Let’s you are paying your cable company or your internet service provider $50 for internet services and you are paying your regular phone company about $50, for the month you are spending about $100. Now can you image using a company like Vonage and/or RingCentral which will charge you a fee ranging from $9.95 to $25 a month, already you are saving about half of your phone bill! Now you may ask, why didn’t I know about this before, well there are many reasons why but let me tell you one: We are all afraid of change, since we have been around regular phone lines for a very long time it would be hard to just change and move to something else which we barely understand. Well that’s what VoIP does; it allows you to use your current internet service to call. There are some free services online you signup for.

Popularity: 3% [?]

I have often come across great product ideas within companies that fail. The failure is not because the product is bad. The product fails because of poor management planning that applies the wrong new product strategy. The old saying of “Fail to plan – plan to fail” holds true with the launch of a new product or product strategy. ekn links has helped a number of our clients understand the process of launching a new product.

Management must always challenge themselves to be better regardless of financial consideration within or outside the walls of the company. The new GM management team will be struggling with the reposition of the company in the coming years and it must start with new product development. Can the new GM deliver a new vehicle that the U.S. consumer wants? Will the new GM management team be able to use the old GM positioning to re-launch the company and bring it back to its former glory? The management team must answer the question of which market their business should be focused on? Where will their opportunities come from? How do we grow the business with existing product and the launch of new product?

There are three basic ways to increase revenue for any given company. The company can increase market share with existing lines in new channels, sell more of the products to the same channels or come up with a new product for key channels. ekn links has helped our clients recognize revenue growth through product development, market development and sales development. These are several strategies management can take to help accomplish growth goals and each one of those decisions have cost and ROI factors to consider. In today’s fast past market and in the case of the new GM, a new product is key to building the business. The concept of new product development and new product strategy is one that requires an understanding of who you are and who your customers. You cannot develop new products without knowing your existing business and how you fit into the marketplace.

The first goal of a company that wants to release a new product is to know where your company stands in the market place today and to know what your position is as a company. In marketing we often use product-positioning grids to identify where our products are and in this case I suggest using a company-positioning grid. There are several specific company strategy positions that most companies can be lumped into. Identifying your company strategy position type will be key to helping you plan out your new product release and outlining future plans.

A company strategy can be broken into these four types:

1. Innovators: These companies are normally first to market with new product and generally rely on new technologies to help advance their market position. Innovative companies often respond very quickly to new emerging opportunities and can get a product out fast through their existing channels.
2. Followers: If you are second in line than eventually you will be first. The followers believe in this strategy. These companies usually monitor their competitors and are rarely first to market but learn from the innovators mistakes. In some cases the followers can make a better model than the innovators and are able to reduce production cost. They also have the advantage of releasing a product into a familiar market and they ride the success of the innovators first mover advantage.
3. Defenders: This company will generally serve a niche market or geographic environment in most cases. They will seek to hold a position in the market place and rarely follow the leader. Often times this company remains stagnant in growth but maintains a steady market share and profit. These defending companies may also offer a high quality product at competitive pricing which allows them to fortify their market position.
4. Re-Actors:  These companies are not aggressive at all in trying to gain market share. They normally hold their position well and are well funded with market resources. These types of companies only go into a new market because they have no other reasonable choice while being forced by the micro and macro environments to make a move.

Once you have defined the type of company position you are in your management team must identify the type of product strategy you follow. In some case companies you may have several different product lines that fall into different product strategies. If this is true than you should identify the strategy that best matches your new product launch.

Here are the basic product strategy choices:

• Differentiated: Your product is highly sophisticated and different. There are possible high growth markets and your product has little to no competition.
• Low Budget: These products are usually copycat products made of inferior components and quality. These products do rely on heavy marketing but drive revenue through volume of low prices.
• Tech Driven: Innovative high tech products that need to be released into a rapid changing market environment. These types of products may have a very steep product life cycle and often have a lack of focus towards their targeted market.
• Low Tech: This product lacks innovation and is low tech. These products exist for a small market and have very little market strategies.
• High Budget: These products use a large amount of company resources and do not have a string promise of success. Development of these products is key above all and their cost are evaluated based on the opportunity of future markets.

ekn links can help your management team understand your company market position and your product strategy. We will help you develop your product with your management team as they recognize the steps of developing a new product strategy. With a understanding of who you are as a company, the second step demands that you understand where your current products are now.

For this exercise, I like to create a grid that identifies all of the products by individual item. If you have many items across different product families you may only want to use those products that you feel are candidates in the comparison and that will help you define this new product launch strategy. Consider products that share the same marketing channels, the same consumer or same selling space. Will your new product launch affect current product sales? Do you want a consumer dollar swap as a new product launch result?  Plot out your products, your competitors and your new product scheduled to be launched.

Take a look at your existing products and compare your new product against them does it fit in? If you sell white tennis shoes to men over 65 can you sell 4” high heel pumps to women under 25? If your new product doesn’t fit in you may need an additional set of resources to launch the new product. Using this comparison you should be able to identify gaps in the market place and in your product portfolio.

Define your new product target market and potential markets based on where the gaps may be located. Eliminate any markets that seem a far reach so that you can focus on the sure ones.

After you have identify some gaps in the current market and you have convinced yourself that your new product will have a shot you, you will need to answer what I call the Go Questions. The set of GO Questions are the basic fundamental questions you will need to have answered as you begin the product launch.

Now you have gathered enough data to understand where you are as a company and where you products currently sit in your existing market. You have also plotted your new product against your competitors and your current product portfolio to identify gaps in the market. You should have also thoroughly answered the GO Questions with well thought out answers. All of this information will be used to help you formulate your product launch plan. You should follow these basic steps to launch the product.

1 – Create your goals. Make them realistic and attainable for the first two years. When developing these goals ask yourself these questions:

a) How do these new products fit into your existing product portfolio?

b) How do these new products fit into your company?

c) What will our consumers think about these new products?

d) How will our channels react about our new products?

When creating your goal statement you should be very specific with exact deadlines and numbers to meet. A realistic achievable goal will help you set the pace for the launch.

2 – Identifying your target areas. Where will your new products be focused? Who will be your customers? How will you get the product to them? What do you need to do to reach them?

3- Allocate your resources and prioritize your spending. Create a budget that captures all of the potential areas of resources needed to complete your goal.  Remember that resources also include people, places and things not just dollars.

4- Develop a plan for implementation that includes all of the information you have gathered so far.  This is where you have to be as specific as possible to capture the details of the plan. You may want to use a project worksheet to help you keep track of all deliverables and assign specific team members task with clear objectives and deadlines.

Launching a new product is a wonderful experience that the entire company can be involved in. A successful product launch can help to re-position your company in the market place and take market share away from your competitors. A poor product launch could drain the company of valuable resources and allow the competitors to bite into your current market share due to a lack of focus and market rejection.

Your products tells a story and that story will help your product sell.  Success of any product relies on proper planning, goal creation and the development of a unique selling proposition. Many products fail due to lack of planning from the manufacturer and limited buy-in from the market. Estimates have product failures at between 75% to 90% due to lack of planning, weak sales execution and poor product development. ekn links can help you with your product launch.

Popularity: 6% [?]