Don’t Just Stand There – Say Something!
The biggest sales meeting of your life lurks. A sales meeting where you’re career may well skyrocket if you close the deal. You’re psyching yourself for the big ‘Sales’ day.
You press your clothes so crisply; you could swear the folds could cut you. When you’re done, you lay in bed rehearsing your day tomorrow. You visualize yourself closing the biggest sale ever. Then after a few minutes, you slowly doze off.
Then you rise early still thinking sales.
You climb in the shower still thinking sales.
You put on your finest clothes, new shoes, spend 20 minutes on your hair and are meticulous about everything looking perfect.
As you grab your folder to head out, you give yourself a quick glance over in the mirror.
You think to yourself, you clean up pretty well. You quickly rehearse a few lines, poses and smiles. A few bursts of your best fragrance and you’re set!
And yes, you’re still thinking sales.
You get to the clients office and are warmly greeted. You take pride they noticed how immaculately groomed you are. They welcome you into their office and gently push the door until it clicks shut.
After a few words and glances around the office, it falls eerily silent.
This is it.
It all boils down to this.
You collect your thoughts, clear your throat, stand, take a deep breath, and look at your client square in the eye and you…
Just stand there. You don’t say a word.
They raise their brows in puzzlement. Then tilt their head inquisitively wondering if you’re ok.
And you just stand there rocking back and forth on the balls of your feet, lips curled inwards but looking great with your new clothes and shoes.
Ok, what does this have to do with your sales materials or website?
TOO MANY SALES MATERIALS AND WEBSITES JUST STAND THERE DECORATED WITH THE MOST AMAZING GRAPHICS, FLASH AND DESIGN BUT DON’T TALK TO THE CLIENT!
Well, you won’t sell a damn thing looking pretty. You must “talk” or you will simply lose the business. Not just any talk. The right talk your clients respond to.
You may think
“Well, I do have content on my site and sales materials so ‘I’m not just standing there, I AM saying something”
Re-imagine the above scenario. But you’re mumbling and the client’s face is squinting in aggravation trying to understand what you’re saying. Or using abrasive language the client doesn’t appreciate. Or present yourself in a way that makes you appear unprofessional, insecure or not confident. You don’t mean to come across that way of course, but you do. Bottom line: You need help.
A professional copywriter will know exactly how to give you the best sales presentation possible for your product/service. They will grab your audience’s attention, hold it and engage their minds towards buying from you. That’s their job. They answer questions, overcome objections, ease fears and strengthen confidence in your business.
Isn’t that a lot more valuable to you than just looking good?
It’s no accident materials professionally written consistently outsell materials written by those who think there’s nothing to it.
There’s plenty to it because the fact you’ve read this far, proves engaging copy does what I claimed in this article!
Sammer Hakim is a Dallas-based copywriter serving clients worldwide and helping them with their sales materials. He can be reached at http://www.marketing-commando.com.
7 Proven Tips To Market Your Cleaning Business
Marketing your cleaning business is something that you will already have an idea about when you start your business plan. Nothing is better for an emerging cleaning business than a really good marketing strategy. This is when all of your research will work to your advantage. Cleaning business or any other type of service business cannot survive without a proven marketing plan, In order to build a good marketing strategy you must first:
1- Correctly assess your competition and what they are doing to market their businesses. You have to offer your clients something that is fresh and different if you want to get their attention.( You can offer free information on keeping your clients area clean – this will show your clients that you are an expert in your field).
2-Survey your potential market beforehand so that you can establish what your clients are missing in their current needs as consumers. You will want to know what they want and give it to them.( may be they need special cleaning product or prefer more special services)
3-Learn what types of advertisements work best in your business’ locale. Sometimes commercials are best whereas other area get a better response by utilizing the local newspaper or pennysaver.( how about direct response marketing? )
4-Begin your promotion before you plan to start your cleaning business so that you can garner an interest in your services before you even start. Building up some interest ahead of time can help to ensure good contract. If some consumers are not satisfied with their current cleaning service they could be waiting for any opportunity to switch to a different cleaning company.
5-Promotions and discounts are a necessity to running a successful residential or commercial cleaning business. You must make sure that you are in a position to compete in this manner. Your business start-up will run a lot better if you begin with a special promotion.
6-The key to successful marketing will be your ability to meet the basic supply and demand of your community. Be sure to stay on top of this because these things are always changing. You can offer extra services that are not supplied by most of your competitors.
7-You should be able to keep up with market changes and try to anticipate them beforehand because it keeps you a step ahead of the average consumer. This will prove invaluable to you later. by following the news about the cleaning field.
About The Author
Khali S,
http://www.office-cleaning-business.com
How to start & run an office cleaning business.
Cleaning Business StartUp Free Mini-Course.
How A Deliberate Mistake Can Create Massive New Business
Want a fast way to get customers? Do you want people to really pay attention to your ads and read them all the way through? Here is a tried and true ploy that has earned its tried and true status because it works.
Put an ad in your local newspaper with a headline like this: “There’s a Spelling Error In This Ad – If You Find It, We Will Give You $__.” The dollar amount can be anything, but this ad will work best if it is proportionate to the cost of your products or services.
Within the first paragraph you will tell readers that the dollar amount will be given in the form of a gift certificate to anyone who finds and circles the error and brings the ad into your place of business.
Don’t make the gift a coupon or a discount. Your customers will feel cheated if they get anything less than a real gift certificate that can be used to buy any of your products or services.
Then write a really compelling ad, but place the single error late in your copy. You want people to read all or most of your ad, so make sure they must read at least enough to really understand your offer.
Combine this promotion with a really enticing offer with a very strong benefit. Don’t combine it with a discount, however. You will already be giving away a gift certificate so you don’t want this ad to cost more than the face amount of the certificate.
This tactic forces readers to do something they don’t ordinarily do – read your entire ad carefully. Take advantage of this by making a truly exciting offer. You want readers to be glad they read the ad and feel they are getting more out of this promotion than merely the face amount of the gift certificate.
Increase the effectiveness of this campaign by capturing their contact information for future mailings. Not only do you want to get traffic through your door, you want to build a database of customers to send out your future offers.
And by the way, don’t make the spelling error too hard to find. Your goal is for everyone to be able to spot the mistake. They just have to read 90% or more of your copy in order to find it.
Obviously you can’t run this same campaign every week, but you can run it once a year. And each time, you will see tremendous results.
What makes this ad work is the motive of getting something for nothing. It not only appeals to a little greed, but it also makes the whole thing a game in which you have challenged readers to match wits with you and find your error.
COPYRIGHT(C)2006, Charles Brown. All rights reserved.
Download your free copy of 99 Ideas For Writing Irresistible Web Content, written by Charles Brown, a Dallas, Texas based freelance copywriter who writes web copy, advertisements, white papers and direct mail. Subscribe to his “Freelance Copywriter Secrets” at http://dynamiccopywriting.blogspot.com or contact him at 817.715.3852 or **charbrow@gmail.com**.