Ways to Find Customers

(fishing a customer through www.MutualBargains.ca)

What's the hardest thing about starting a business?
For many new business owners, the answer is "Finding customers." Having a great product or service that you are sure many people will need isn't good enough. Customers won't find you or your web site just because you have started selling a product or service. Indeed, most business owners have to go on regular and frequent fishing trips to find customers and keep new business coming in their doors. But how do you do that? Here are several suggestions to get you started.

Develop a plan. Consider who would make the ideal customer. If you sell to businesses, consider what department is most likely to buy your products or services, and what individual (what level of responsibility) would be the one to determine the specific purchase requirements. (Make some calls if you don't know!) Then consider how that individual would normally find products or services like yours. What circles do they travel in? Who are they likely to listen to or where do they look when they want to buy a product or service. Find a way to put your information, or yourself, in their path.

Realize there is no one path to success. Sales often happen because prospective customers hear about your products and services in several different ways and from several different sources. The more often they hear about you, the more likely they are to consider what you have to offer when they are ready to buy.

Work your local newspapers. Daily and weekly newspapers are an incredible source of contact information and leads to potential customers. Watch for names of people who have been promoted, who have won awards, who have opened new businesses, or who in any way may be potential customers. Send those people personalized mailings letting them know the benefits of what you sell. Try to attend meetings they will be at, as well. When you meet them or send mail, let them know you read about them and congratulate them on their success or mention how interesting the article about them was.

Watch for events that may bring your potential market together. Contact the organizers of the event and offer to give away your product or service as a prize during the event in exchange for having the group promote you in their promotions.

Attend meetings and seminars that your prospects might attend. If you've been doing that and haven't made contacts that could lead to sales, look in the newspapers to see what other organizations hold events that might attract your target market and attend some of those meetings.

Follow up after meetings. Contact the people you've met to see if they may be prospects. If they say they don't need your services now, ask when a good time to call them back would be, or if they have business associates who could use what you sell now.

Give a little to get a lot. Give away free samples of your product and ask the recipients to tell their friends if they are pleased. Or, if you are a consultant, give away some free advice. This could be in the form of a newsletter with that contains news or tips and hints, or it could be a free consultation during which you provide just enough information to help the client scope out their project and know that you have the ability to handle it.

Work your personal network. Ask your friends if they know of people who can use your services, or people who may know others who could use your services. If your pricing structure will allow it, offer friends and business associates a finders' fee for referrals that turn into jobs.

Study your competition. Advertise where they do. Promote yourself where your competition promotes themselves.

Use multiple small ads instead of one big one. If most people in your type of business advertise to bring in customers, you should do the same. But don't plan on making a big splash with one large ad. Plan smaller ads to run over a long time in the same publications that your competitors advertise in. The repetition will build name recognition. If you advertise in the yellow pages, consider taking out ads in multiple category headings. If you provide office support services, you might want to advertise under the Word Processing and the Typing headings.

Ask for feedback when prospects don't buy. Did they find a product that better served their needs? Did they decide they don't need the product at all? Did they just postpone their buying decision? Did they find it difficult to place an order on your web site? Use what you learn to make needed changes and watch your sales start to grow.

Why pay for online ads?

There are several reasons and some are as follows:

First, Read this story written by one of internet advertisers:

"You will see many online business resources that recommend using free classifieds to promote online businesses, web sites, affiliate programs, etc.

We have used them continuously over the last twelve years. You will see many marketing reports and ebooks online that recommend placing free classifieds. Many recommend placing several ads on a daily basis.

Why? On most if not all free classified sites, each time a new ad is placed into the system the ad goes to the top of the lists for whatever category or keyword you have placed it in. Then as each new ad is placed in that same category, your ad will get pushed down lower and lower until there is little chance someone will see it. It is similar to what happens when you place a link at a FFA site. Many of these sites receive 1000's of links per day and your link will disappear from the list, sometimes in minutes.

So when you hear someone recommend that you place free ads continuously it is basically to keep the ad near the top of the list. Of course this can get very laborious after a while and we stopped trying years ago since it took so much time trying to keep it at the top.

How have we done it since then? At one of the classified sites that we have advertised at for the many years, we have been using what is called an "Automatic Hourly Renewable Ad" service.
Very simply what happens is our ads are renewed every hour automatically so they again go right to the top of the category we chose. It does these twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Does it work? Yes it does. We receive hits from these ads on almost a daily basis.
The cost of this service is around $8 per month per ad which I believe is very reasonable considering it saves us from manually updating the ads on a regular basis. There is no way that we would be able to renew these ads every hour manually, especially since we have multiple ads running all the time. And each time we get a hit from these ads, we automatically receive an email notification that someone visited our site and which site it was. These renewable service ads also have an extra bonus of having bold headlines in a larger font as well as having the body text highlighted. This makes them more visible to the prospects viewing the ads.

If you are on a small advertising budget, this may be one of the ways that you could use your funds very efficiently and save yourself considerable time. The time factor can be especially important for those of you who work full time and are running your online business part time. I know how that is since I did it for a couple of years.

So if you are looking for an inexpensive way to generate traffic to your site and want to maximise exposure to your ad I recommend you to use the paid per ad sites."


Now:

Here are the reasons to pay:

• Most of the ads sites are fully automatic and no one watch the ads and they pay just the hosting fee and that’s it. Resultantly, they get junk ads and those junk ads surpass the genuine ads. There is a need to stop those junk as to show the genuine ads. The only possibility is that if someone watches the ads manually and that costs money and ads should be paid as to cover that cost.
• With the paid ads system, only those customers would give the ads who are really the advertisers and they are serious in selling something.
• With paid ad system, we would be able to manage the number of ads per city or per town so that the people can find the ads very easily.
• With paid ads system, website owners can help make ads more attractive by adding some pictures or text in the ads.
• The paid ads website would be able to advertise them over the internet. Resultantly, ads would get more exposure as this website is being advertised over the internet effectively.
• With paid ads, customer get better customer service from that website company and resultantly get better their products promoted.•
  

Finding a Customer

How to find customers?

The customer prospecting.
The most difficult thing for any salesperson is finding new customers.
New customers come to you two ways:

• They find you,
• or you find them.

Weak salespeople wait for customers to come to them.
Average salespeople do some prospecting and then stop to take care of a new customer. Great ones constantly prospect to keep appointments and sales flowing.

A variety of ways exist to reach prospective customers, including stopping in unannounced, direct mail, e-mail or the telephone. One of the most effective ways is the telephone.
Unfortunately, among the most dreaded aspects of sales for most is prospecting, especially "cold-calling," contacting anyone and everyone and hoping he or she will have some interest in your product.
This strategy alone can be exhausting and self-defeating without the proper mind-set and skills.
The reason most salespeople hate cold-calling is that they associate it with negative images such as rejection.
Instead, they should associate cold-calling with success, higher income and controlling destiny.
That's called "warm" calling, and it is far easier than cold-calling.
It means finding people you have some connection to or people you have a reason to think will benefit
from the product.
If you don't already have the name and title of a company's decision-maker, you need to find it. This
is often difficult because most decision-makers frequently are unavailable or on another call.
That is where the help of the receptionist comes in.
Most people, including receptionists, don't like pushy, unkind people. However, they will be nice and provide assistance when asked with respect and kindness.
Most salespeople don't appreciate the tremendous value of receptionists. Receptionists are the people who know what each employee's area of responsibility is to direct calls properly.

When dealing with a receptionist:
Smile and think positive. Be highly respectful and courteous. Use the receptionist's first name and ask for it if it's not volunteered. Ask him or her to provide the name of the person in charge of decisions on your product, and be specific. Verify the prospect's proper spelling and pronunciation, direct extension number and e-mail address, and find the best time to reach him or her. Ask to be transferred. Once you establish rapport with the receptionist, you can ask a wide range of questions, including whether the decision-maker has an assistant, the assistant's name, business hours and current vendors the company works with regularly.
The assistant's job is to save the boss as much time as possible. This includes blocking unnecessary callers. Your job is to present your call as one of the important ones.

When the assistant asks who's calling, state only your name, and make certain your tone descends at the end. By doing this, you sound important and like someone the decision-maker already knows. Being referred by someone is another effective way of getting past the assistant.
If you strike out with the assistant, try reaching the boss when the assistant is out.
Try the decision-maker's direct extension during hours that many assistants are away from the desk, such as before 8 a.m., during lunch and after 5 p.m.
Once you reach your prospect:
Smile, and offer an enthusiastic greeting. Introduce yourself and your company. Tell who referred you. Use a question that solicits a positive response, such as: "I have been told that you are the person in
charge of maximizing office efficiency. Is that correct?" Be direct. Tell what you can do to make life better for the decision-maker. Assume you will get the appointment. Ask the customer to choose which of two days and/or times is
better. Confirm the appointment. Hang up, and call someone else back within the company to get directions or other information. The
decision-maker's time is valuable, and you do not want to tie it up seeking these details.
Not able to do all these things: try our website MutualBargains.ca

Home Business Ideas

MutualBargains.ca and sell from home ideas

Running a website or a web based business. No! You do not need to be an expert in anything web related. You don't even need to know a lot about computers or how to build/manage websites. The trick is to identify what exactly you are good at, what you like doing, and open your mind to ways you can make money out of it. Or find someone who's already done it and buy his services to advertise your products and services.

Other local opportunities: Apart from hobbies and skills there may be openings in your local area for a particular type of service that is not currently being met. And, the laws of supply and demand dictate that if there's no competition people are likely to be willing to pay you a high price for your services.

Some ideas could be as follows:

· House/Office Cleaning

· House Minding

· Door to door leaflet/local paper/coupon distribution

· Window Cleaning

· Accounting Business

· Auctions: Sell on eBay and Other Online Auctions

· Home-Based Professional Alterations and Seamstress Service

· Professional Pet Grooming Service

· Answering Service

· Bridal and Wedding Consulting Service

· Cake Decorator and Custom Cake Design Service

· Cleaning Service

· Dance Instructor

· Child Day Care Service

· Desktop Publishing

· Family History and Genealogy

· Freelance Photographer

· Create Custom Gift Baskets

· Medical Transcription

· Marketing Consultant

· Newsletter Service

· Internet Research Service

· Online Tutoring Service

· Proofreading Service

· Recruiter

· Resume Writing Service

· Scrapbooking Business

· Selling Your Arts and Crafts

· Virtual Assistant Secretarial Service

· Web Design Service

· Write eBooks and advertise them over internet

Question:
How to tell people about these services?
Answer:
Advertise at http://www.mutualbargains.ca/