From in store upselling, excellent customer service, product bundle packaging, sales pipeline, meetings, presentations, needs analysis are all part of the sales persons role, whether in store, telesales or in person. These sales training courses will give you some guidance on how your business can sell more and earn more revenue
Someone made contact with me recently and told me about an opportunity where “I could make an obscene amount of money. Does that interest you too?”
This persons problem is that the link to his website didn’t even work!
Who makes an obscene amount of money?
Continue reading Do you want to earn an obscene amount of money?
Sales is an interesting thing. It involves skills which don’t seem to be well defined enough to create a qualification for – You don’t see a Diploma in Sales or a Cert IV in Sales do you?
Sales is also a topic that scares some people who feel it invovles pushing things upon people who don’t want them but that is not the case.
The most important step in the sales process is called Qualifying and it helps a sales person understand if the person they are talking to really needs what they have available for sale.
Continue reading Are you saying the wrong things?
I’ve always been fascinated at the difference between sales people and accounts people. I consider myself a sales person first because I love meeting people and finding out what they need, then helping to find them a solution.
Although it just seems like sales people are just talking it is important to be aware of what you say and why and one of the most important tasks for a sales person is to quickly identify if someone is an ideal client.
If you can’t help someone or a new lead is not ideal it is best to spend less time talking to that person as possible without being rude or impolite, OR change your ad because it might be reaching the wrong people!
Continue reading Are you talking to the right people?
Buy now pay later (BNPL) services are growing in popularity for many retailers. If you’ve been in store recently, or even online shopping as you go to click ‘proceed to checkout’, you might have noticed a poster or button that advertises how you can pay for your purchase in easy instalments.
Afterpay and PayPal are just two companies that provide BNPL options for customers. We’ve started to make all our MYOB, Xero and Excel courses available on PayPal’s Buy Now Pay Later platform: PayPal Pay in 4
The best part is that you can use the discount coupons to reduce the price of each course and then pay it on instalments!
Continue reading Square Afterpay or PayPal Pay in 4: Which BNPL Service Your Business Should Use
Airtasker is an Australian success story in the Gig-economy for individuals who want their own micro business doing odd jobs for other people. Just like Uber, Ebay and other online marketplaces they leverage their digital marketing and brand to help individuals find clients and customers – for a fee.
Airtasker and marketplaces are a great place for people who want to start their own business but these systems fail when a better alternative comes along.
IN THE PAST I wrote a blog titled Three Mistakes That Will Cost Your Business Thousands in Lost Revenue. Here I explored the importance of timeliness when it comes to quoting for work. However, there’s a difference between timeliness and a quick quote.
A painter I know was asked to give a quick price on how much it would cost to paint a room the same size as one he was currently working on. He said it would cost around $300, and that was that. The problem?
As I’ve mentioned in three Mistakes That Will Cost Your Business Thousands in Lost Revenue, you must always get a prospect’s name and contact details, so you can follow up on their interest in working with you.
Don’t assume that they’ll contact you if they want the work done. Sometimes they might, but most of the time the person will wait for YOU to close the sale. If you don’t, they’ll simply assume you’re not interested or too busy, and they’ll go find someone who is more interested.
Then ask for information on the following:
Even if our case study example; in this instance, the painter, was going to give a quick quote; he should be sure to make clear that it’s a rough quote that may change depending on those things.
Usually, the answer to this question is no. But the painter should make this clear. Often the cost of paint is the most expensive part of the job, and that $300 paint job might just be closer to double, depending on the type of paint used. Remember, people all too often confuse pricing a little on the low side, with winning work (and then making it work for you). In reality, this is usually mistake.
Our EzyStartup Course will you teach you about pricing your services, business planning, marketing, and running your small business efficiently. Visit our website for more information or to enrol — OR stay tuned by subscribing to our blog. Remember too: right now, for every student that enrols, you become part of our Lifelong Learning Hub where you can access our Selling Academy Sales Success Training Course absolutely FREE.
IF YOU’RE A TRADIE, working as a plumber, builder or carpenter, handyman, gardener or electrician, then you probably already know that some of the best jobs come by referral.
During my recent renovation of an investment property in Newcastle, most of the good tradies would tell me, “Someone you’re working on a job with on Monday will ask you to do a job for them somewhere else on Friday, or a neighbour of a client will ask you to do some work for them.” I soon saw from other tradespeople how “work can come to you just because someone happens to be walking by while you’re on the job” — gardeners get a lot of work this way, for example.
The important thing in this scenario is to act efficiently in finding out what the potential client needs, finding out what else is important, and then selling them on your services. I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Kristine Seymour, an experienced sales person and business builder, for the Sales Training Course at the Australian Small Business Centre (ASBC). She spoke in detail about how to act when your future income depends on how well you can sell. This Sales Training Course is available on the EzyLearn LMS.
Continue reading Sometimes “Real World” Marketing, Not Digital, is More Appropriate
HOW TO PROVIDE REALLY exceptional customer service is just one of the modules covered in our EzyStartUp Course which teaches you all about how to start up your own business.
We handpicked this inclusion as our experience is that, time and time again, good, nay excellent customer service goes a long way to ensuring a business has longevity. Continue reading Don’t Wing It With Customer Service – Plan It
PowerPoint has many different uses, chief among them being a sales presentation for prospects. Another excellent use for PowerPoint is to illustrate your sales process, and then add it to your website.
If you’re a bookkeeper or real estate agent or someone else who sells professional services, rather than products, providing valuable information about your business or explaining the way it operates can help convert more visitors into customers.
Most of the time, when someone comes to your website for the first time, they’re scanning it to see if you meet a certain criteria they have for a potential supplier.
This could be based on price, services, turnaround times, or something else. If they can’t find this information quickly and easily, they’ll generally move on somewhere else.
Creating a PowerPoint presentation that contains this information, which you can upload slide-at-a-time, or altogether as a video, is an excellent way to present this information to visitors of your website.
How you determine what to include in your presentation depends on how well you’ve identified your ideal customer.
This is very useful for bookkeepers and other businesses that have a particular way of working with their clients. Take prospects step-by-step through your process, so they know exactly how your operate and what to expect before they even contact you.
This helps demystify the process, which makes people feel more at ease with the practice of hiring you, and also shows you’re transparent about process, and that makes you trustworthy.
The fewer questions prospects have about you and your business, the more comfortable they will feel about contact and hiring you.
You can use PowerPoint to explain any of your business’s processes that involve the customer, whether it’s your returns or refund policy, setup procedures, or technical support.
Our PowerPoint training courses will teach you how to create persuasive PowerPoint presentations that will convert visitors. Alternatively, our sales training courses will show you how to identify and target your business’s ideal customer.
After you’ve set the correct prices for your bookkeeping services, it’s time to perfect your sales pitch. It’s good to think about the way real estate agents sell a property to prospective buyers: Good sales agents don’t pitch to the buyer at all. Instead, they get to know the buyer and their needs.
If that happens to suit the property they’re selling, they tell them so. If it doesn’t they tell them that too. Often, they’ll mention another listing they have that might better suit the buyer.
Continue reading What Bookkeepers Can Learn From Real Estate Agents: Sales Pitches
As a bookkeeper, or someone thinking about becoming a bookkeeper, you may be surprised how much you can learn from real estate agents. For an example, take the way a real estate agent has to price a property for sale.
The key to selling a property quickly and efficiently, is setting the right price. A real estate agent who sets a price that’s too high for the market, isn’t doing her or his job properly. In such cases, the property will sit around for many weeks, or possibly even months, until the price is eventually reduced to one the market will bear, sometimes to well below market value.
Continue reading What Bookkeepers Can Learn From Real Estate Agents: Setting Prices
For those of us in small business, be it as a bookkeeper, real estate agent, sales rep, virtual assistant or the like, most of us are selling every day of our lives.
This means we get pretty good at it. We develop techniques that we can replicate and that become part of our daily lives.
The process of selling is really no longer about selling per se; it becomes about a systemised process of:
Continue reading Are You a Bookkeeper Who Needs More Clients? Want My Advice?
The sales stages for wining new business in the building and construction industry can be a lengthy process that starts with specification and design. An architect will create a design from meetings with clients and gradually this design will turn into a multi-million dollar building that functions perfectly but how does the builder find the right team and resources? By tendering out the work.
I was speaking with Mat, the Managing Director of UltraFlow Siphonics for our Small Business Marketing and Small Business Sales Courses and he mentioned to me that they could literally be doing tenders every hour of every day. He mentioned that there are many different tendering portals where small (or larger) businesses can register and tender for the work that is available and that the key to a successful tender strategy is to narrow down the tenders you go for to one where your business is suited.
When a retailer sells a widget in a shop, that widget is clearly defined and the buying process is often quick and even impulsive but larger works use the tender process to clearly define what they are looking for and try to flush out as many bidders as possible. When the bidders are identified the goal for the organisation offering the tender is to get the best possible result at the cheapest possible price – weighing every aspect of the tender of course.
Go for tenders that meet the sweet spot criteria for your companies capabilities so you can perform them efficiently and profitably
It is important to have excellent Microsoft Word skills if you are a tender writer because tender documents are long and often very detailed. Sometimes the tender documents are provided by the offerer and it’s important to be able to move around the tender document swiftly. Our Microsoft Word course includes every skill level from Beginners to Advanced so unlike some training companies which make you choose between one course or another we include everything.
Common Microsoft Word tools used in long and detailed documents are
Here are some sites that have information about the tendering process to win government work:
Commonwealth Contracting Suite
New South Wales: Small to Medium Business Suppliers
Victoria: supplying to Victorian Government
Queensland: Tips for writing successful tender bids for Qld Government
South Australia: Standard Tender and Contract Documents for SA
If you have experience writing tender documents for companies to win business we’d like to hear from you to get your perspective. I’m currently working on interviews with successful business owners for our small business courses and if you are Sydney-based there is an opportunity to contribute to our course and build your online profile at the same time. If you fit the description send an email to support@ezylearn.com.au (you MUST be Australian based and ideally from Sydney).
Whether you’re starting a new business or hoping to expand your existing one, networking can be your life support. Successful networking helps you to find and connect with like-minded individuals, with whom you can share your experiences as a new (or established) business owner, and gain valuable insights on the ways you can grow and develop your own business.
I’ve written about networking before, because I think it’s something every business owner should engage in regularly to complement their current marketing strategies. Networking with other business owners not only gives you access to a great brains trust to provide you with tips and advice, but it’s also a great opportunity to use referral marketing to grow your business.
Many people think networking events and groups are places people go to sell their products or services to other attendees, but that’s not actually what a networking group or event are about at all.
[quote]The true definition of networking is ‘the process of interacting with others to exchange information and develop professional or social contacts’.[/quote]
That being said, as a business owner, you should always look for new or potential business opportunities in everything you do. This is how you can help to grow and expand your business. But, where discussing your business might not always be appropriate in typical social settings, at a networking group it’s more than welcome; it’s encouraged.
Networking is a balancing act of meeting people and being social, while also looking for opportunities that will help take your business to the next level. To achieve this balance and make meaningful connections with other business owners that will prove beneficial to your business requires planning beforehand.
If you run a home-based business, it’s not uncommon to find that you can go entire days and weeks without interacting with another person on a professional level. This lack of interaction is not only isolating, but it can prove detrimental to your productivity and the continued growth of your business.
Your business needs new, fresh ideas and perspectives to thrive, and networking groups and events can help to connect you with people who can provide you with those ideas. They also give you the opportunity to do the same for other business owners, which is what makes the arrangement so mutually beneficial.
Take the following real-life example, for instance:
A home-based bookkeeper was looking for advice about her website and how she could increase her search engine rankings and traffic to her website. She’d previously enlisted the help of SEO experts and web developers and funnelled a lot of money into her website, but she felt it still wasn’t performing well – it wasn’t mobile, for instance, and she felt the copy could read better. The bookkeeper decided to go to a networking group of small business owners who were meeting to discuss online marketing, in the hope that someone might have some advice for her or could refer someone who could help. There she met another small business owner, who operated a content marketing agency and who advised her on how to increase her web presence by blogging, creating shareable content, and optimising her Google My Business page; the agency also had an in-house web designer and developer. The bookkeeper was so impressed with the content marketing advice she received, particularly the tips on Google My Business, that she hired the content marketing agency to manage all of her content marketing, including updating her website so it was mobile; they, in turn, referred a number of fairly big clients to the bookkeeper.
The key takeaway from the above example was that the bookkeeper went to a particular networking group with a goal in mind: to solve her online marketing issues. She was seeking qualified advice from other business owners who could empathise with her situation and perhaps recommend a course of action or someone qualified to help. She received both. At the networking group, she met a person who was willing to give her advice that she could implement at herself. Because she’d received useful advice before that worked, she felt safe in her decision to trust the agency to manage all of her content marketing.
So what are the five main things you can do to ensure the next networking group or event you attend is successful? Well, it starts with goal setting.
Like our bookkeeper in the example above, you need to determine what your needs are and why you’re going to a networking group or event, in the first place. If it’s to find advice on how to improve your web presence, select networking groups with a focus on operating a business in the online world; if it’s merely to share the experience of operating a small business with other business owners in your local community, choose one in your area with that focus.
Now that you’ve established your networking goals, it’s time to find the networking group or event that will deliver them. Check out the attendees and members of some networking events or groups to see which ones are most suited to your business and your networking goals. Once you’ve identified some people you think are worth pursuing at a glance, research them online. Check our their LinkedIn profile, website and other social media. This’ll not only help you to further refine your list of people to connect with at each networking group, but it’ll also help you to find some common interests to discuss with them when you do meet.
Before you attend any networking event, think of some questions that you’d like to ask the group or any individual member. It may seem like a waste of time, but it will help to ensure that, even if the other attendees are unprepared, at least you’re going to come away one step closer to reach the goals you set out for your business in the first place. Having targeted questions also helps to show the other attendees that you’re interested and engaged, rather than just there to kill time.
Show the group that you’re somebody worth knowing and that your contribution to the group is as valuable as everyone else’s. It’s worthwhile remembering that some groups only allow one member from one profession only, to ensure there’s meaningful business opportunities for everyone attending, so you need to show that you’re worthwhile keeping around on a regular basis. Listen, be attentive, show you’re there to help other’s problem-solve just as you are there to problem-solve for yourself. Always be willing to share and contribute ideas, but know when to back off so as not to be the guy who hogs the conversation and makes the group all about him.
Don’t just hand out and collect business cards willy-nilly. Your goal should be to establish a real connection with people that you’d like to add to your professional network of contacts and, in turn, be that person to them too. Exchange business cards, email addresses or other contact information and try to make a plan to meet-up outside of the networking group. After each event or meet-up, follow-up with each person you’ve exchanged details with. It’s probably taking to too far to call, unless you’ve made an arrangement to meet already, but otherwise sending an email or connecting on social media like LinkedIn is a good place to start.
Follow these five steps each time you attend a networking group or event, and you’re unlikely to go wrong. If you’d like to read more about networking and how you can make it work for your business, continue reading our blog. Otherwise, it’s time to get out there!
In the marketing module of our Small Business Management course, our students learn about marketing action plans, and throughout the course come to create their own marketing plan for their soon-to-be business.
We also talked about referral marketing and networking in our last post, in which we outlined what every business should be doing to grow their customer base. For this reason, it should also be included in your marketing action plan. Continue reading But Networking Isn’t Making Me Any Money! Putting Together a Marketing Action Plan
