Material Monster

Freebees–Freebees–Freebees

WHY PAY, WHEN “YOU CAN HAVE IT FOR FREE?”

There are all sorts of things that we would like to have but we cannot always afford them. That is where Freebees come into play.

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People will tell you that there is no such thing as a ‘free lunch.’

I don’t know who first said it but it is as true now as it was then.

You can bet your boots that every thing that is on offer for free has a hidden catch.

Internet marketers use freebees in the hope that you will remember who gave it to you and purchase something from them at a later date.

I can’t see any thing wrong with that. It’s just good business practice.

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As I said, there is a reason that they are offered for free. In almost every one of them you will find one or more links to other products or services that the person is promoting.

You are under no obligation to purchase any of these offerings. It is just another form of advertising.

Instead of being bombarded with demands to buy this or buy that, you are given something of value in the hope that you will click on one of their links and purchase something at a later date.

Don’t decry the goods just because they are for free.

If they don’t give good value, you are not likely to go back and buy from them later.

If you are selling information from your website and you haven’t tried it yet, you are probably passing up on one of the strongest marketing strategies available to you.

There are thousands of e-books, reports and various other items out there that are available to you, all for free.

Collect a selection that are compatible with your product and offer them for free when someone buys your main product. Be sure to include a link to another one of your products towards the end of the package. Someone who has purched from you once, is most likely to purchase a 2nd or 3rd item if they were satisfied with the first transaction.

Make sure that they are of real value. Not just a selection of out-of-date trash that is of no use to anyone.

Every thing has a sales value. Let your customers know the retail value of the freebees you are offering. Be honest. There is no need to exaggerate the price.

Over sell. For instance: If you are selling something for $49.99. Offer a bundle of freebees worth $69.99 to go with it. It will cost you no more to offer a big bundle than a small one.

Don’t over-do it. A product worth $30.00 with a bundle of freebees worth $150.00 is a little bit over the top.

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P S. There have been a number of surveys on pricing, with some interesting results. It would appear that the number seven has a particular magic. People are more likely to purchase an item with a seven at the end. ie. $39.97 rather than $29.99.

I don’t know if it is true but I am going to try it.

Robert J Farey

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About The Author

Robert J Farey

Bob has been on line for over five years. He loves affiliate programs because all of the technical stuff is done by the owners of the programs. Leaving him free to concentrate on the promotion side of the business. If this article has set you thinking. Please take a look at: http://www.33daystoonlineprofits.com/video/?robertjay

Repeat business is the key to ultimate long term success in any business.

Your goal as entrepreneur or business owner is to turn every first time customer into a life-long customer. However, in order to maximize the value of that customer, you need to encourage regular purchases on an on-going basis.

Encourage customers to come back frequently with special sales, events, frequent-buyer programs, credits towards gifts, unique offers or reminders.

In order to make this strategy work best, you need to buy aware of your customers preferences, buying patterns and styles. It’s very different between industries as well as individual customers. A window contractor might only buy regular supplies once every 4 months. So if you’re supplying this outfit with screws, caulking, glazing tape, and the like, you’d better be aware of their buying habits, or else you’ll be wasting your efforts and probably annoying them at the same time, by not being aware of their preferances.

Keys To Success

Constant communication is vital. You want to establish a relationship and to do that you need continuous contact. Keeping in touch with your customers on a regular basis helps them remember the benefits they get from doing business with you. Whenever you’re holding a special sale or event of any kind, be sure to inform all customers and prospects on your list.

You may have to notify them more than once to get them to show up. Keep your clientele informed about new stock arrivals, upcoming sales, what’s hot and what’s not, special guest appearances, seminars, expansion plans, new store openings, etc.

Enticing offers are critical to response. Even the best customers won’t show up repeatedly if there’s not something new or unique or special for them. Make it interesting, inviting and difficult to ignore.

Examples

To renew the buying relationship on a frequent basis, determine the best means of connecting with your customers. A wholesale foods supplier serving cafeterias, lunch counters and restaurants, should be marketing on a weekly (or daily) basis, featuring limited-time specials at reduced prices.

A computer retailer on the other hand, wouldn’t want to contact customers every week. Perhaps a quarterly newsletter would work better in that scenario.

Holding a special event? Try sending invitations out to your customer list. If you hold several sales or special events throughout the year, create a calendar of special events that you can send to give customers advanced notice of those important dates.

The air miles program has become very successful at increasing customers buying frequency patterns and developing loyalty. The lure of getting a free trip to some exotic destination is enough to generate tons of excitement and increase the number of purchases.

Coffee Time Donuts offer another way to get you coming back to enjoy their brand of coffee. When you buy a coffee, they give you a club card that you present with each visit. After buying 10 coffees, you get one free. Then, you start on another card. It’s using credits to build repetitive purchases.

How?

Building a database and developing ways to keep in touch with customers and prospects is a good place to start. Then figure out some enticing deals you can create and a way to communicate the value of these deals to those most likely to be interested.

More resources at www.makeyoursalessoar.com

Robert Boduch is an author of dozens of best-selling books, reports and articles on the art and science of selling. A free newsletter targeted at anyone interested in selling more of anything is available at www.makeyoursalessoar.com

Any company in today’s global economy must eventually face the issue that if it is not growing, it will be expiring. For most companies, mergers and acquisitions are too risky to be a revenue growth option. Organic growth, though low risk, may have some considerable limitations. A third option - alliances - just may be the right blend of risk and reward to accelerate your company’s revenue engine.

Over the past 15 years, the successful formation of alliances has emerged not only as a critical management competency but a revenue weapon as well. The top 500 global companies average 60 major alliances each. In 1999 Andersen Consulting Global Alliance Survey stated that alliances account for an average 26 percent of Fortune 500 companies’ revenues, up from 11 percent just five years earlier. What is more, companies estimate that alliances contribute 35% to market value with an expectation that alliances will contribute 48% to market value by 2007. Clearly, being a good business partner, regardless of the duration and objective of the alliance, has become a key corporate asset and competency.

If your firm has not successfully engaged in collaborate alliances, or if it has tried and failed, this article is for you. We will first briefly outline the advantages of deploying an alliance strategy to grow revenues. We’ll then take a look at the perils, goals, and principles of alliance management in hopes of encouraging you to engage professionals (such as Plenum Revenue Group) to seek out and manage your alliances.

Alliance Overview

Alliances are a fast and flexible way to access complementary resources and skills that reside in other companies and have become an important tool for achieving a sustainable competitive advantage. Alliances require leveraging valuable internal resources and current competitive advantages in new and innovative ways. Alliance formation requires a minimum amount of cash and can be formed with a number of alliance partners horizontally or vertically in numerous markets. However, as alliance formation is a fairly new growth option for most companies, they tend to bring some increased risk to the inexperienced. Regardless, growth through alliance formation has seen an almost explosive energy in the past fifteen years as a vital secret and silent competitive weapon by many companies. Most alliances formed between companies are not made public, either because the companies choose not to publicize the collaboration, they want to keep the deal confidential for competitive reasons, or because business journalists do not see them as “sexy” as mergers and acquisitions.

Finally, many companies have learned that an alliance strategy is a good preliminary step prior to an acquisition. If an alliance will not work, it’s more likely an acquisition would not have worked as well. But the lesson costs are far less with an alliance - typically 25% - 35% of the cost of a doomed acquisition.

Alliance Management

With all of the upside potential associated with collaborative alliances why do almost half fail? Is it possible management devotes more time to seeking out and screening potential partners in financial terms than to managing the partnership in human terms? Is it possible management promotes the future benefits of the announced alliance to their shareholders but fails to help managers create those benefits? Our long experience in alliance formation and management confirms such, because we have seen too often that management fails to provide a clear long-term objective for the alliance. Too often the goals and objectives for the alliance are not clearly communicated to the rank and file so that they may contribute to its success. Too often the alliance dies a silent death from neglect.

The critical skill . . . will be that of coordinating units that cannot be commanded but which have to work together. Peter Drucker

Managing an alliance can be frustrating: coordination must be the rule; diplomacy is a necessity; and the internal politics of allies are often confounding.

The process of managing an alliance is one of the best kept business secrets. It truly has been a mystery because it is not taught in any business school. Neither has it been effectively written down in any books or magazine articles.

The Shift From Strategy to Execution

Once an alliance has been initiated, responsibility for its success shifts from the strategists, deal makers, and top executives to the champions, alliance managers, and liaisons who seldom received any training to accomplish their task. It is amazing how innovative and adaptable some alliance managers have been to make their alliances “work.” However, for those alliance managers who lack such skills, the result has often been alliance failure, frequently with severe repercussions on their companies or to their careers.

Each alliance begins with a stated mission and purpose. As time moves along, alliance leaders are asked to answer for the alliance, to guide its course and to energize its people. Each new challenge creates an opportunity and presents a problem to solve.

The Ultimate Goals

The ultimate goals in alliance management are achieving the desired strategic returns and maintaining a win/win relationship. To successfully attain these two goals, the alliance manager must be aware of several critical factors that distinguish the management of cooperative ventures from usual corporate experience:

Managing the extended company requires new and different set of skills and control systems; The role of the middle manager in alliances changes significantly from tactician to strategist;
Flexibility will be vital in adapting to change and maintaining a win/win condition; The differences among the partners’ strengths, goals and styles will create conflicts as well as opportunities for success; Surrounding all actions must be a spirit of cooperation, constantly built and reinforced by the alliance team; and The process of governance for the mutual interests of all alliance partners is as critical as achieving the desired results. Successful alliance management requires the mastery of these factors by knowing the time-tested principles and processes on which they are based.

Critical Alliance Management Principles

The architecture of the alliance can be founded on two essential management principles:

Integration
Interface Management

The application of these two principles will be required on virtually a daily basis.

Integration

Integration empowers the alliance. Without it, the alliance will never hold together. Integration cannot be ignored. The alliance partners develop linkages and shared ways of operating so that can work together smoothly. They build broad connections between many people at many organizational levels. Partners become both teachers and learners.

Without getting into detail in this brief article, integration can be accomplished through:

Leadership (champion, alliance manager, management)

Teamwork (cross-functional task forces and teams)

Control by coordination (cross-functional decision making and problem-solving)

Policies and values (establishing and maintaining trust)

Consensus decision making (formal decision making)

Resource commitments (technology, personnel, capital, etc.) and

Lateral liaison (effective and timely communication and decision making)

Interface Management

Interface management involves the point of contact between two internal departments or any differentiated groups. Problems and complexities, whether organizational or technological, lie at the interfaces.

The role of the alliance integrator is to manage the interface to maximize people’s ability to get the job done. Prior to alliance commencement, interfaces should be identified so that the potential points of conflict can be isolated beforehand and personnel assigned to head off potential problems.

All Alliance Partners Must Be Winners

The two basic objectives of management are to adapt the changing needs of the alliance and to get results. Maintaining the win/win condition is essential; with the presence of this condition, no strategic plan, no legal structure, no formal agreement and operational schedule will overcome such a fundamental deficiency. An alliance partner who perceives a losing condition will not perform well and may eventually undermine the alliance itself.

Steven Mednick is President and Founder of Plenum Revenue Group, LLC. Based in Newport Beach, Calif., Plenum is a revenue development company for emerging and medium sized businesses. Working shoulder-to-shoulder with its clients, Plenum actively seeks out and delivers tangible revenue opportunities for its clients that drive incremental top-line growth and bottom-line results.

If it’s time to begin working on your business by exploring revenue opportunities that will position your company for future top-line growth and bottom-line results, please call us today at 949.218.8657 or visit our website at http://www.plenumrevenuegroup.com

Remember in the last message we talked about your directional pipeline and how sometimes you’ll be approached by prospects who just don’t fit with what you want to achieve? We looked at the different types of prospect - Desperate, Curious, and Inspired.

Well, now we’re going to have a think about what might happen if you realise you have some of the desperate or curious people as your clients. Oh, the shame!

One of the tools we use is called the Brand Power Wheel - not got one of these? Then you know the drill, send a blank email to: leanbrandwheel@aweber.com with “Send Me The Brand Power Wheel - I’m Missing Out - Again!” in the subject line!

The Brand Power Wheel really helps you to identify what’s important to you and the way you work, so you can see whether prospects (people who haven’t bought yet) and clients (those who have) fit with your values and beliefs.

What we find is that for many companies, doing this at an advanced stage in their business lives, they get a bit of a shock. I know we did! You might find that some elements in your brand power wheel are probably out of line. The good news is once you’ve lined everything up, you’ll have far more power and magnetism than your competitors and they’ll struggle to ever really comprehend the reasons why.

The Brand Power Wheel consists of layers (Belief, Capability, Action & Image, Externalities)- each layer, makes up an important part of your overall brand and communication. Working from the inside out will generally have a more dramatic effect on your final Brand communication than working from the outside in. You really need to see it - send a blank email to: leanbrandwheel@aweber.com with “Send Me The Brand Power Wheel - I’m Missing Out - Again!” in the subject line!

So, the first thing you need to do is set about lining everything up so that you can project a potent and congruent brand to your target.

I would just like to say that there is no right or wrong way to get everything in alignment. Some people may favour working on their own beliefs while others address capability with training. Some people will realise that their only blockage is in a sloppy image that doesn’t reflect the quality of themselves or their customers.

However you approach the challenge, you should do it based upon your beliefs, goals, and unique challenges.

There is, however, usually a hard way and an easy way…

Occam’s Razor
William Occam (William of Ockham) was a mediaeval philosopher credited with emparting the following wisdom…

‘Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitas’ (Plurality should not be posited without necessity)

Now this sounds a little bit too pompous and academic for my liking so here’s my simplification…

If you have to choose between two actions, models or plans that are both likely to create the same outcome then choose the simpler one.

If you apply this principle to your brand power and the rest of your marketing - you’ll quickly discover it’s effectiveness.

Applying Occam’s Razor and Sacking Customers

When we were faced with a Brand Power problem a few years ago, we went through this exercise again and discovered that nearly all of our beliefs, capabilities, action and image were lined up, but somehow we just weren’t getting through powerfully to our customers.

At this time we were working with and targeting large, multinational firms. We were being paid very well but:

* Our customers were happy to pay for our advice but rarely followed it through far enough to get results

* We had occasional skirmishes with middle managers in Marketing, IT and HR - so every project felt like a battle

* We became bored, tired and uninspired in our work and as a result began to feel that we weren’t giving our clients our best shot.

We looked into this more fully and realised that we were actually targeting and working with the wrong types of companies for us.

We’d taken part in occasional projects with smaller, more inspired and hungry firms and had really enjoyed the sense of achievement and the celebration of their success.

Small people in big firms really didn’t appreciate our approaches for a number of reasons. The biggest one being that people in large firms are battling for power within. They generally (there are bound to be exceptions) aren’t as interested in the firm’s success as they are in their own.

Marketing Managers wanted to spend more on marketing - not less. They wanted a bigger budget, more people around them and more things depending on them. This way they could grow their prospects, power and security.

What we were offering was in direct conflict with what they wanted and it had repercussions through all elements of management, from HR through to IT and Communications.

So who did want what we were offering?

Owners of small, inspired expert businesses did. People who were spending their own money on marketing loved what we were saying.

So looking at our current brand wheel, we could see easily what we had to do to get through. Sack our clients.

We changed our focus to small expert businesses, graciously (well almost!) sacked some of our best paying customers and set about positioning ourselves as a company that works with small expert businesses. Most of what we did, said, believed and were capable of lined up perfectly with our new target, so with an occasional tweak here and there, we began to get work with exactly the customers we wanted. And they really wanted us.

So, how did we sack our clients?

Remember Occam’s Razor and do it simply and elegantly.

We had a few to get rid of. One of them was our largest client for the previous 2 years, but when we investigated the economics of keeping that client we quickly realised that they were only just profitable for us. They were an 80 person consultancy. So our first strategy was to increase our prices by 100%. Now, remember we weren’t trying to get a price increase, we were trying to find a way of extricating ourselves from the relationship.

They said they’d pay. Bugger!

So, we held a very frank meeting with them (those of you who know us can guess how frank!) where we discussed what would need to happen for us to work together in the future. I must say we were blunt. The main and recurring issue with this client was that they “played” desperate ALL the time. Every requirement was urgent, every piece of marketing material was needed yesterday, they never planned ahead and they were always ungrateful! So, we suggested ways that might work in the future. They promised to try!

Now, some people may be thinking, wow - that’s so arrogant. And, you might be right. But, this is our business and if we’re not enjoying it why are we doing it? We knew what we wanted out of a client and we laid it on the table. They tried, but they were so ingrained in their old ways that it was impossible for them. So, we parted company!

We attempted a similar price raise with a few others we wanted to “sack” - with varying success. We tried a few other techniques, like recommending other companies who could satisfy them better than we could (we generated a few good partnerships with this model) and putting in longer timescales for projects. But by far the most successful was being upfront and telling them why we were releasing them!

I think Jim Womack - President and Founder of Lean Enterprise Institute http://www.lean.org says it most succinctly:
“Customers often have no choice but to purchase the waste along with the value”

When you’re working with clients who don’t fit your ideal client profile, who “play” desperate, who exhaust you and are never grateful, then someone must be suffering.

We realised that not only were we suffering (emotionally and profitably) but that our ideal clients were buying the waste along with the value! Sacking clients who don’t fit your ideal profile means you have a more efficient business and everyone succeeds.

Speak Soon,

‘Dangerous’ Debbie Jenkins
debs@debbiejenkins.com

(c) Copyright 2005 www.BookShaker.com

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As a partner in a new business within the service industry, time management is essential. To ensure all aspects of running a business are carried out in the most cost effect way, consideration must be taken of time. There are only so many hours in a working week, to avoid working all the hours or becoming ineffective because you are too tired to think straight, a decision was made to buy the expertise in writing our sales letters. It was felt that rather than spend valuable time looking at a blank screen trying to come up with enticing sales copy more time could be spent in marketing the business.

Having bought the product ‘Instant Sales Letters’, I have been able to thoroughly examine the contents of the product. I have found the product to be of a very high quality, both in the content and in the ease of setting up. The complete package consists of a multitude of templates in which the user has the choice. By studying all of the content of the package, I was able to pinpoint which templates would be most suited to the business I was involved in, which is the service industry, but this product is suitable whether is is Professional, Business to Business, Service or Retail/Restaurant.

All that is required is to copy and paste the template into your word processor. Within the template is ‘fill-in-the-blank’sections to be filled in by the user to customise the letter to their own business.

Also included within the package are several bonuses which include joint venture letters, email letters and business opportunity /network marketing. There is also information to help you test and tweak the letters to maximise your results.

To ensure that the purchaser of the instant sales letters gets the most from the product, there is also an e-book manual in an instant pdf format to read on screen that details how to increase your business profits using direct mail, including the secrets to getting maximum profits and results.

I have also received regular free updates with advice on marketing. All in all this is a very valuable resource which I have been able to quickly set up and am now reaping the rewards.

Gwendoline Gould, partner in a new offline, service industry business and working to build her online business. Author of blog
http://instant-sales-letters.blogspot.com/

Are you starting a career and must decide whether to choose between a sales job or a management job? Are you at a point in your career where you have the option to get into a sales field or a management field? Here are my reasons why sales jobs are more rewarding, better paying, and more captivating and why I would recommend them over management jobs:

1. With sales jobs your remuneration is higher and the potential for higher pay is directly related to your performance. Sales jobs typically pay commissions, bonuses, or a hybrid of salary plus commission. So if you want to earn more you can and it’s totally up to you. Your work directly affects how much you get paid so the motivation to work, and work hard, will always be there. This is not so with management jobs. Managers tend to earn a set salary so no matter what they do they will earn the same. So there’s no monetary motivation to do a better job.

2. Sales jobs are the most important jobs in any organization. Sales drive a company’s revenue and growth. Without a sales department there would be no revenue. With no revenue there would be no company and, hence, no managers.

3. Salespeople are the first point of contact for clients. So they hear directly from them what they respond to and what’s not working for them. This also gives salespeople an advantage to alter their pitch as opposed to Managers who advise of the big picture administrative objectives . Sales jobs, naturally, permit salespeople to perform market research through client interactions allowing them to pass on that information to management; managers end up relying on salespeople for information. Your role is a salesperson is more powerful than you think when it comes to your organization’s ultimate decisions and strategies.

4. Through sales prospecting, meeting with decision makers from other companies, meeting customers, and traveling sales work, especially outside sales jobs, deliver substantially more variety in your day-to-day activities. Salespeople are always doing something different, with different people, in different places. Managers commute to the same place every day, do the same things, with the same people. This tediousness often leads to boredom and an unsatisfying work life.

5. If you ever plan to start your own business in the future, sales experience will help you succeed more than would management experience. If you can sell you will be successful anywhere. You cannot learn to sell because that can only come with experience. Nobody can pick up and read a sales book and instantly become a top performer. Management is more about administrative and diplomatic duties. While important, this does not make or break how successful a business becomes and is more easily learned than it is to learn how to sell.

So, I would just like to say, if you are starting a career or if you find yourself at a crossroad and need to decide between a sales job and a management job, choose the sales job, that is, if you’re looking for higher pay and a more rewarding work experience.

Tino Buntic is a lifelong salesperson and is helping other business professionals generate sales leads with his website, TradePals.