Sales Techniques

Sales are simple, and that's why I'm going to keep this post very simple. 4 Key points to help you on your way with sales are:

• Control the conversation
• Listen to the customer
• Give them a reason to buy
• Ask for their custom
  

That's it! (but I'll expand a little on each point)

Control the conversation
Lose control of the conversation and you'll lost the customer. Sales is a journey. You know the beginning and the end so you just need to ensure you keep the customer on the same journey.

If the conversation starts to stray pick up on what they are saying, emphasise, relate, and bring it back to your journey. It can be the most unrelated simily, it doesn't matter, your back in control. Dumb sales people are often the best, they don't care if it doesn't make sense as long as they keep control.

Listen to the customer
On your journey your customer will talk and give you clues. Pick up on these and make a mental bullet point list. It will arm you to help them make the best choices. Drip feed these points back to them, use it to qualify your customer and remove potential obstacles when you come to close.

Give them a reason to buy
That's great, thanks for that I'll be in touch... SALE LOST. If the customer has no reason to buy now, generally they wont'. Incentivise them. Greed & fear are common tools of the salesman.
Reasons to buy now can include:

• limited stock
• waiting lists
• opportunity from a "cancellation"
• Special offers
• etc etc

Ask for their custom
You've done everything right so far, you've given your pitch they've listened and you've come to an agreed service offering and price, now what? Sign them up. That's it again, very simple.

You'll be surprised that once customers start to give you details they open up and become much more open to closing. Start asking their details, fill in an order form and ask them to sign. Don't be shy about asking for money, don't ask for money, ask how you'd like to pay and they will do the rest.


Lastly, an extra tip, customers who start by telling you "they are not ready to buy now" are telling you the exact opposite, don't get disheartened you will be able to convert them.

Good luck, now go get some sales!
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Twitter Experiment

I've noted lots of people have started to add me to the list of followers just after a post. I'm assuming these are happening from keywords in my posts, which begs the questions:

a) why
b) how

One can only assume that the why is because if I follow you there is a good chance you will follow me. This can lead to an inflated ammount of followers but are they really useful? I guess if you have enough followers (aka listners) it could be deemed a powerfull tool and not just an ego nursing exercise. So I think I'll test this with a new twitter account on a subject which is more of a hobby to me than anthing else right now, poker. Rightly or wrongly I'm probabley just going to leave this as an automatic update system for now but I think it will be interesting to see how many followers I can get from using a service such as twollo (the how).

Twollo was supposedly developed in a day for $150 but appears to be a paid for service after a free trial, so this may be a pretty short test, but none the less I think its with a twirl.

ps. next I'll be testing out OutTwit Retweet this button on every post blogger

Handy Google keyword analysis tools

Handy Google keyword analysis tools

1. Google Insight
2. Search based keyword tools
3. Google trends

Not looking good for CF, but this could be misleading with all the other CFML providers out there now. Retweet this button on every post blogger

Stink'ernet

Smells trigger memories but can memories trigger smell.

I've known that distinctive odours can trigure distant memories for a long time, but recently while working on the internet it happened to me again, which got me thinking, if you could brand your site or provide a sales message with an image i.e. an orange, would that sales message be triggered each time oranges were smelt?

Just a musing right now, and not even sure how to sensibly test it but one I may like to revisit at some point. Retweet this button on every post blogger

Thesis Word Press

There's a lot to be said for research but a lot of the time you can go with your gut and impulse buys can come up trumps.

On this occasion I've earmarked Thesis for future blogs. I'll test this on a couple of projects I've got lined up and may or may not convert this blog too. Retweet this button on every post blogger

Yahoo Query Language YQL

This is new to me but sounds pretty sweet. I've read that Yahoo is now providing an SQL interface into their data services. There's already a handy coldfusion package over at riaforge.

Off the top of my head, obvious opportunities are:

• built in natural language searches on sites
• SEO reporting tools
• News feeds
• Auto image displays

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Adapting software start up

This can easily be done by editing the properties of a desktop short cut icon. Simply edit the target value to pass in parameters as you would do in command prompt.

i.e. shortcut > target > C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe ColdFusion Builder>cfbuilder.exe -data c:\workspace\cfbuilder Retweet this button on every post blogger

Planning

Fail to plan, plan to fail. But is there anything to be said for too much planning... having a plan b is this a good thing or a sign that you don't trust your plan A and that it's doomed to fail??

I'm going to be writing a few business plans for my interests and want to make I don't make repeat mistakes. Now my plans aren't to raise capital or gain favor with the corporate bank managers, more for a guide of approach and goals.

There are some (to be read) good titles to some help guides but I need to ensure my plan works for me.

Initial thoughts, are that it needs to be short enough to be read. Clear focus on the goals that I would like to obtain. Structured strategy and timelines. And for a change perhaps a little pessimistic (or realistic). Pretty standard stuff, but I'd also like to ensure the overall plan is good plan. "The plan is good, so stick to the plan". That's not say that we can't adapt our stratiegies but the primary goals of the plan should remain consistant.

Time to get writting. Retweet this button on every post blogger

Google Keyword suggest

Can never remember where to go for this Keyword suggest tool Retweet this button on every post blogger

Photoshop skills

There's a lot more to photoshop and designing than having a good idea and eye for design. A lot can be said for knowing your software. Check out this post on creating a visually stunning poster. Retweet this button on every post blogger

Blogger vs Wordpress

I'm a creature of habit so I've opted for blogger for my memory board, but I do hear loads more about wordpress than I do blogger so I reckon that I've probably gone for the lesser option.

I've read a lot about the SEO benefits and plugins for wordpress and have recently came across this post with tips and tricks to improve your wordpress site.

At the moment this blog is really just ment to as a place to search when I forget something I've worked on before, but if I ever make it more public I think I will upgrade to wordpress... watch this space. Retweet this button on every post blogger

Cool jQuery image plugins

I've just read and seen the demos on 7 plugins for jquery relating to images. The post at sitepoint covered the following plugins:

1. jParallax
2. 360 Virtual Tour
3. Illuminated letters
4. jCrop
5. Image Annotation
6. jCaption
7. jQPuzzle

jParallax and jCrop both look very good although jParallax is likely to be more fluff than functionality Retweet this button on every post blogger

How to Add Twitter (Retweet) Button to Blogger Posts

Login to your blogger dashboard.

Navigate to Layout >> Edit HTML >> Expand Widget Templates

Search for and paste the following codes just before or after it. Adding the code before will show the Retweet button on the top of your post while adding after will show the Rettweet button on the bottom of your post.

For Digg like Button, use the following code.

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Social bookmarking

Social bookmarking with regards to blogs is a bit of a must and very easy to do.

There are serveral methods for implementing this, some of which will come with lots of additional mark up (code bloating) . I've read that an easy an efficient way to implement social bookmarks is Add this.

Simple steps for blogger are:

1. Go to Add this
2. Use the 4 step wizard to create code
3. Click instal to blogger
4. Use the blogger layout wizard to place the code

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Kuler Colour Palette

Stuck without a designers help, and need to pick a colour scheme? Adobe Kuler colour palette sounds like a quick and easy solution to your problems.

There a good how to guide here but all in all it seems pretty self explanatory. Retweet this button on every post blogger

Feedburner

It's got a bit quiter here for the moment as colleagues have left for a late lunch, so I'm finally getting through some non-essentials that I wanted to tick off my todo list.

I've wanted to add a feedburner rss feed to my blog.

It's quite simple in blogger and these are the exact steps I took to set it up in a minute (or so):

1. In blogger: Settings > Site Feed > Clicked "Feedburner"
2. Logged in on the right hand side to my Google Account
3. Typed in blog address and followed wizard steps
4. Next clicked: Publicize > Feed count
5. Save and activated
   

This last step auto added the feed to the blog, very smooth and easy. Retweet this button on every post blogger

twitterfeed.com

OK, I've found a quick easy way to automatically integrate blog posts into twitter. Not sure why I want to do this but seems to be popular at the moment.

Its a service aptly called twitterfeed. All you need do is pass in an RSS feed, set up an account and integrate it with your twitter account. Retweet this button on every post blogger

TinyURL

OK everyone already uses this, especially those that twitter so I thought it time to jump on the band wagon and have added tinyURL to my firefox brower. Retweet this button on every post blogger

No data transfer utility with SQL Server Management Studio Express 2005

That's correct, with the express version there is no import/export facility.

There may (or may not be) this facility with the developer edition, think there is though, but seeing as I'm running a new install I was going to go with 2008.

However, had fun with that last time so I'm going to try something new, with the DTS tool which I read about.

STEPS TO ADD DTS WIZARD WITH SQL SERVER MANAGEMNT STUDIO EXPRESS

1. Try "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\DTS\Binn\DTSWizard.exe"
If it worked, you already have the DTS Wizard. Start using it right away.

If it will not work, continue to step 2

2. Download the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition Toolkit (223.9 MB) from

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=65111
select all components to install

3. Run "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\DTS\Binn\DTSWizard.exe"

Thats it.. Now you can transfer data using the the great DTS wizard.

Follow the steps If you want to integrate it with the Sql server management studio express UI .
1. Open sql server management studio express.
2. Select Tools -> External Tools
3. Add a Title and Browse C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90 \DTS\Binn\DTSWizard.exe for the Command field.
3. Click OK Retweet this button on every post blogger

SQL Express 2005 Configuration Manager - Cannot connect to WMI provider

It seems like the list of querky behaviour from database's never ends.

Came up against this problem with a fresh instal of SQL server 2005. I found the solution with a quick google leading me to this forum thread that had had the same issues.

This was the command prompt solution:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Shared>mofcomp "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Shared\sqlmgmproviderxpsp2up.mof"

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