This past week I had the incredible opportunity to experience first hand customer service that delighted and delivered loyal customers as well as just the opposite.

Delightful Customer Service Experience

Since I do a lot of traveling between my office and clients within the Chicago metropolitan area, I spend a lot of money at gas stations and hence I am always trying to save a few cents. At one Interstate intersection, there is one station that is convenient as it is on the same side of the street and an easy in-out. However, this station is always several cents to a dime more than the one on the other side of the overpass.

Time was short and so I stopped in this national gasoline store to purchase fuel. Before I left, I went inside to the convenience store to buy a soft drink. The dispenser was not functioning properly on my favorite diet soda so I took the other diet drink.

When I went to pay for the drink, I nicely told the cashier, Toya, that the one dispenser was not working correctly and they may wish to fix it. She immediately apologized, gave me my drink free and then handed me a card for another free drink at a later time. I told her that I was more than willing to pay for the cola, but she said No, because the one I had wasn’t the one I wanted. Toya continued to express to me that my satisfaction is important because my patronage pays her salary and she wanted me to come back. Wow, does this lady understand the bottom line or what? I asked her if this was part of her customer service training or was she always so customer service focused? She said that she is always like this because she truly appreciates every customer who walks through the doors. I thanked her and walked to my car thinking that the couple of cents I pay more for this fuel was worth it.

Undelightful Customer Service Experience

As I attend and speak at conferences, I was attempting to reserve a room at a national chain. Since the conference had just moved, I was a new person to this particular hotel. The reservation person that I spoke to was not physically located at the site even though the number was for this hotel’s geographic location. After waiting several minutes, I finally reached a reservation’s person. This lady was polite, but sounded like she was speaking to a dead fish. And I was the dead fish!

I had to repeat information to her several times before I could learn if any rooms were available. When room availability was confirmed, I asked physically if these rooms were away from the pipes and noise that I had heard several other of my colleagues had experienced during the last conference. She couldn’t tell me that. I said I would think it over.

My fingers quickly dialed or rather pushed the phone number of the other national chain where I had stayed in the past. The Manager of the Hotel, Dennis, answered and quickly assured me that rooms were available. When I gave him my name, he remembered me and said he was glad that I was returning as a preferred customer. Since I was driving in, I asked him for a phone number of my favorite restaurant as I wanted to make a reservation during the drive. He quickly complied with my request and said he look forward to seeing me again. Again, his actions have created a loyal customer.

Both of these individuals, Toya and Dennis, understood the value of connecting with their customers and providing service that delights. Exceptional customer service does deliver loyal customers. Now the only challenge is to make sure that all of your employees are delighting and thus delivering loyal customers.

Leanne coaches individuals, small businesses and large organizations to double performance in warp time. As the small business coach, Leanne shares the Secrets of Success and provides a free monthly newsletter. Please feel free to contact Leanne at 219.759.5601.

If you truly don’t believe doubling your business or personal results is possible, read some case studies where individuals and businesses took the risk and experienced unheard of results.

One quick question,if you could secure one new client or breakthrough that one roadbloack, what would that mean to you? Then, take a risk and give a call at 219.759.5601 to experience incredible business.

Do many of us realize that we are working an unpaid part time job for the grocery stores and some home appliance stores? We are ringing up our own goods, are not getting any price discount for doing so and are saving these retailers money.

Each self-serve lane contains two to three self-serve scanners. Retailers have an average of two to four self-serve lanes. Retailers are saving each store an average of four to eight cashiers’ salaries per store. One attendant is assigned to these self-service machines. Hypothetically, if stores are paying full time cashiers $7 per hour, they are now saving $14,000 annually in wage expenses for each cashier that they do not have to hire. Multiplied by four to eight cashiers, each store saves $56,000 to $112,000 per year on wage expenses. This simple calculation does not even count other benefits that companies pay to their cashiers, such as healthcare, vacation pay, sick pay, 401(k), pension benefits and tuition assistance.

Are these savings passed on to the consumer? Nope!

Why should we work an unpaid part time job for the grocery industry?

1. Self-serve scanning machines are not always user-friendly

When grocery bags get filled up and you have nowhere else to put your groceries, the machine will say something like “Please place your item back in bag” and not even let you know what the problem is. The machine treats you like you’re an imbecile. The machine is wasting your time while an attendant has to correct the problem.

2. Self-serve scanning machines do not always scan every bar code.

Some of the machines do not scan deposit bottle return slips, which requires an attendant to manually scan the deposit slips. If there is other merchandise that the machine will not scan, an attendant also has to manually override the system, which is consuming more time for the customer.

3. Self-serve scanners cannot correct price variations.

If an item should scan at a certain price, but the store’s system scans the item at a different price, an attendant has to manually override the scanner to give the consumer the correct price.

4. Risks of alienating senior citizens

If self-scanners are challenging for younger people, imagine how intimidating the machines must be for seniors. Sometimes, perception and not reality can dictate a retailer’s success. If seniors perceive that cashier-scanning is going to be phased out by self-scanning, seniors may take their business where the human touch is still being utilized.

5. Gas stations offer a price break for self-serve

Although full-serve gas stations are becoming more rare, those stations that still offer full-service and self-service combinations offer price breaks to those customers who pump their own gasoline. If gas stations can offer a price break to customers who pump their own gasoline, why can’t grocery stores offer a price break to customers who ring up their own goods?

6. Impersonal aspect could dissuade customers

Many customers go to the same store, restaurant or tavern because people who work at the establishment remember them. Remember “Norm” from Cheers? They want to go “where everybody knows their name…” A U-Scan Machine is not going to know you from Adam.

7. Self-scanning is currently not set up to handle large amounts of goods.

Currently, U-Scan machines are set up to handle about fifteen items or less, which is fine with the light shopper. What happens with customers who are purchasing over fifteen items? Are the larger-quantity purchasers being rewarded by not having to scan their own goods? Why do shoppers with fifteen items or less have the opportunity to do voluntary part time work for retailers? Is it a case of if customers purchase enough groceries, they don’t have to work for the store today?

Should this concept be called self-scan or self-scam? Fortunately, ringing up one’s own goods is still optional. Yes, it is still optional to do part time unpaid work for a retailer in which you are patronizing. Customers are doing the retailers a favor by purchasing goods at their stores. Is this how the customers are being rewarded? What will be next? Will customers go into a restaurant, order their food, be expected to prepare the food and pay the same price as if someone else had prepared the meal?

Sean North primarily helps writers gain focus, motivation, remove mental blocks that help to unblock the writing process.

EVERYONE who writes has been stuck at some point in his or her career. You do not have to accept these mind-boggling roadblocks!

seannorthstn@aol.com

(586) 216-7516

Today’s retail marketplace has become an aggressive playing field. The internet provides consumers with a new medium for purchasing a world of products and services, and retailers with a new frontier to engage and retain customers. This competitive marketplace has allowed consumers to sit back and watch retailers slug it out until one brand remains standing. If most retailers deliver on what they promise, what are the attributes that make us partial to a brand? The winning brands sweat the small stuff.

Coffee Anyone?
Coffee has been around for centuries. Dunkin’ Donuts got its start in 1950 and began selling “America’s Best Coffee.” I sat in a Dunkin’ Donuts twenty years ago and read the Sunday paper. How did they fall behind Starbucks? Starbucks put their brand on the world map by creating a process and culture caffeine hounds couldn’t resist. How? Starbucks sweats the small stuff.

Starbucks shifted the retail mission from coffee transaction, to coffee relationship. Baristas aren’t happy to make you a cup of coffee; they are delighted to present you with one of their creations. Their employees report they can recall many first names of morning regulars and how they prefer their coffee. They handle the rush of customers with the flair of New York City bartenders. This kind of employee performance can make you believe you can taste the difference in their coffee.

The genius of this retailer began with empathizing with coffee drinkers. What else would customers appreciate with their beverage? Starbucks expanded their breadth of products to include breath mints, bottled water and even their own brand of music CD’s. They created an experience people were inspired to revisit. An environment replete with “little things” (products and services) made a major difference to the average Joe visiting for his cup’o joe. That shift in thinking built an empire.

The Auto Wins the Lotto
Car dealerships have been around for seventy years. At the time of this writing, there are about 270 LEXUS dealerships in the countrycompared with 5,000 Ford dealerships. LEXUS is the number one selling luxury nameplate in the U.S. Why has their success been a steady, steep climb since its conception in 1989? LEXUS sweats the small stuff.

Consider a car buying and servicing experience from a customer’s point of view. What affects where you decide to take your business? LEXUS conducted a comprehensive study and put their findings to work. It doesn’t make sense to guess at what people want, or try to condition customers to like what we offer. If the dogs don’t eat the dog food, all else is immaterial.

At your typical LEXUS dealership, you can sit in a comfortable customer lounge, and enjoy a cappuccino while watching CNN on a flat screen television. Still not impressed? You can connect to the internet during your complimentary carwash. These are little details that make a car shopper partial to their brand aside of product attributes. For the average buyer, the buying decision isn’t based on what’s under the hood. (How many pounds of torque does your car offer?) The decision is based on the subtleties of value-added services that have little to do with the core product offering.

The Ritz Service Blitz
There are an abundance of hotels in the U.S. Each promise a hassle-free, turnkey experience. They worry about us while we tend our agendas. How did the Ritz-Carlton and The Four Seasons establish luxury brand name recognition? They focused on the small stuff.

Most premier hotels provide a luxurious $500 a night room. The reasons some perform better than others is due to an obsession with the little details. Many brands can offer you a room key with a smile, few anticipate your needs days before you arrive. The best brands take note of your pillow preference, wine preferences and if you are partial to egg whites? You don’t think a little chocolate on your pillow is a major coup until one night is not there. It’s always the little things.

W.I.I.F.M.? What’s In It For Me?
You’re wondering, “How does this apply to me?” Individuals who ask themselves “what’s the small stuff in my business?” and convert the answers to actions will distinguish themselves from the competition in any industry. This may mean sending a hand-written thank you note, remembering a birthday, or offering customers complimentary bottles of water. These are the deeds and gestures that nudge new business in your direction when opportunities straddle the fence.

Ken Lodi is a productivity expert, author of Tapping Potential and other performance improvement books. He can be contact at ken@kenlodi.com or 323-932-1026.

Recently we asked which was more important: new customer growth or repeat business?

The answer depends on your business goals. If you want fast-paced quantum growth, you should concentrate energy on adding new customers. But if your goals are more incremental - if you envision continual year over year growth in the 10 to 20 percent range - booking repeat customer revenue is far easier than adding new customers.

(Of course, don’t lose sight of new customer acquisition; doing so entirely would doom the future of your business.)

While it is not easy to double your existing customers spending year after year, it is easy enough to 1) keep them happy and loyal, and 2) develop additional products and services for them, which they will buy if they are happy and loyal.

How can you build loyalty and garner repeat business? With two customer words: service and communication.

• Enhance the customer’s service experience

• Customer service is all about fixing customer problems. What kinds of problems?

• Fixing things which are broken, or that don’t work as expected.

• Facilitating deliveries, exchanges and returns.

• Resolving billing and payment issues.

• Fulfilling the exceptional need or the odd request.

• Providing technical advice and user guidance.

This last is very important because many products are so complicated they can’t really work without solid service.

And that doesn’t go just for technical products. It applies to self-assembled furniture - the kind you can’t seem to put together based on cryptic instructions. Or home repair - consider those valuable retired plumbers in orange aprons at Home Depot. Or what about your weekend hotel stay, transformed by that special concierge into something you remember the rest of your life.

In each case customer service is a critical part of the product. And in every case, it’s the part that makes customers feel great about doing business with you.

Customer Service = Repeat Business

McDonalds believes that once you successfully address a customer’s complaint, that customer is several times more likely to come back and buy more Big Macs. McDonalds store managers search for problems; they long for problems; they pray for problems.

Train your people to listen closely for problems and look for things that are out of whack. Establish customer service protocols to insure those issues are dealt with quickly and completely.

Plus, your company gets a bonus for good listening: creatively solved complaints are often the genesis of new products and services. Build a system which rewards both customers and employees for those new business ideas.

Too many companies see customer service as an expense. In reality it is the most cost-effective customer retention program you could possibly have. So hire reps who want to help people and train them to spot opportunities. Use technology to make it easier to find solutions. Lavish money on it. Gather knowledge and wisdom in databases and make it available to everyone in the service chain.

Customer Communications

Continual communication is another key to building the kind of customer loyalty that translates into repeat, and increasing, business.

Here are seven ways to stay in touch with your customers.

1. Find out how customers are really using your products and services. Call them casually or conduct formal surveys. Visit and observe them in action. Track their online behavior. Look for ways to enhance the value they get from you.

2. Put yourself in front of your customers. User groups, conventions, conferences, road shows, tours, online forums, and even interactive webcasts, are viable ways to create a two-way free flowing dialogue. Give customers a deeper understanding of how you help them, and find out what’s on their minds so you can serve them even better. For high-end, big-spending customers, schedule an annual review or strategy meeting to set the agenda and lock them in.

3. Publish a valuable newsletter. Most newsletters are filled with self-serving drivel about the company. Who cares who got promoted, or that you just had a wonderful company picnic? Fill your newsletter with stimulating ideas, case studies and practical tips that add value to your customers and help them do better business. Important to your newsletter’s success is frequency and consistency, so publish often - monthly or even twice a month, and keep it on schedule.

4. Ask your customers the magic question: “What would you like to buy from us, if only we’d offer it to you?” Do this yourself or outsource it. Either way, these answers are like customer retention gold.

5. Keep your product and service offer fresh. Keep upgrading and adding on, and announce to your customers that you are doing so.

6. Make special offers to your special customers. And all your existing customers are special. Give them special offers and loyalty discounts that plain old new customers can’t get. Make sure they know it is only for them.

7. Revive the art of the hand-written note. In this age of hyper-convenient email and instant messaging, a hand-written note acknowledges the unique nature of the recipient. There’s just no way to duplicate the one to one feeling a note will create. Do this and you could have the customer for life!

These customer service and communications tips are just a few of the hundreds of ways to communicate with customers to build loyalty and repeat business. Combine them with judicious up-sells, re-sells, and cross-sells, and that 20 percent annual revenue growth is yours forever.

(c) Copyright Paul Lemberg. All rights reserved

Paul Lemberg is the president of Quantum Growth Coaching, the world’s only fully systemized business coaching program guaranteed to help entrepreneurs rapidly create More Profits and More Life. To get your copy of our free special report with detailed steps on how to grow your business at least 40% faster, even when you aren’t sure what to do next, go to Paul’s business coaching website.

Click here if you are interested in Quantum’s Business Coaching Franchise opportunities.

In customer satisfaction research conducted in recent years, one theme has emerged: the essential importance of superior customer service. It has been shown that service-related attributes stand out even over attributes such as product quality in their importance to customers. While this is not universally the case, it warrants discussion about customer satisfaction measurement and how your company can translate the information to achieve higher customer satisfaction.

Most companies believe they provide a unique offering to their customers. In many industries, a company achieves this uniqueness by delivering customer service that is superior to its competitors. This leads us to the question, “What does superior customer service mean?” While the details are industry and even firm specific, the basic principles can be generalized. The following list provides a good starting point for thinking about customer service research and how it can help your company deliver superior service.

Seven Superior Service Strategies

1. Always try to exceed customer expectations. Whether customer expectations are set by the firm or by a competitor, exceeding these will reflect on your company’s reputation and leave a lasting impression. To achieve this, you must have a strong understanding of customer needs as these dictate expectations. Conducting a customer service survey will provide you with a true understanding of these needs. Managing expectations up front sets the stage for you to exceed customer expectations later in the relationship.
2. Track changes in customer expectations over time. Any successful company must learn to identify and adjust to changing trends, many of which will be reflected in customer expectations. Measure customer satisfaction with tracking research in order to monitor trends over time.

3. Make a strong first impression. The first contact with a customer (the “moment of truth”) often sets the tone for their lasting impression of the company. Customer Satisfaction Research shows that how a customer feels about a transaction tends to be more important than the product or service purchased.

4. Be accessible, approachable, and responsive. If your customer finds it difficult to get in touch with someone at your company, they are less likely to do so, and the prospect of developing a strong, long-term relationship built on customer service satisfaction is greatly diminished. Make a habit of regularly reaching out to your customers to enhance customer service satisfaction and build lasting relationships.

5. Determine how your well company delivers. Initial customer satisfaction research will provide a baseline against which to measure future improvement initiatives. Regularly conduct a service satisfaction survey to help identify specifically what attributes of the product/service are of greatest importance to customers, how the company performs against those attributes and how both change over time.

6. Solicit input from your service personnel. Most public-contact employees are self-motivated to achieve customer service satisfaction. They are the best source for identifying roadblocks to superior service delivery (too much paperwork, difficult return policies, lack of information, interdepartmental miscommunication, inability to schedule service call times, etc.) and what upsets customers most. Spotlighting and addressing these issues not only improves customer service satisfaction but front-line employee attitudes as well.

7. Improve employee satisfaction. Regularly conduct an employee attitude survey to measure and improve employee satisfaction. This will, in turn, have an impact on customer service satisfaction. More satisfied employees will produce higher quality products and provide better service to your customers.

These seven strategies provide a generalized approach for exceeding customer expectations and achieving superior service. An ongoing customer satisfaction research program will help to identify the issues facing your particular business, as well as their relative importance to customers. Through such a program, a full-service marketing research firm could help identify the specific improvements that will have the greatest impact on improving overall customer service satisfaction.

The economy is unpredictable. War is raging. People around the globe are expressing a renewed interest in re-evaluating priorities and rumor has it that humankind is embarking upon a major shift in consciousness. These are just a few of the reasons why adding a personal touch to your communications with customers and employees can lead to greater levels of success in today’s impersonal business environment.

During the recent years of economic growth, many industries scrambled to keep up with a constant stream of new business. Buildings expanded, product lines grew and “mandatory” overtime became the norm. Customers were sometimes expected to overlook service and production delays due to an unusually high volume of business. Employees were often required to work extended hours to fulfill customer demands. Throughout these years of rising profits, many businesses promised customers and employees that the workload would return to a less frantic “norm.”

Now, companies are facing an environment of slower growth and “normal” seems to be a word that can only describe a long forgotten era. Corporate down-sizings and plant closings litter the evening news and lease signs litter the industrial landscape. This uncertainty provides the perfect environment for business leaders to build more personal business relationships by offering a genuine thank-you to customers and employees.

Everyone leads busy lives. In our high tech, often impersonal society, people remember those who add a personal touch to their day. The key to success in a lean economy may be to retain, instead of having to replace, your best customers and employees. Consider the following questions.

Customers

1. Who is your best customer today and why?

2. Who was your best customer a few years ago and why?

3. When was the last time you personally asked customers to express questions or concerns?

4. What areas of your business need improvement based on customer questions and concerns?

5. How much would it cost you to replace a lost customer?

6. When was the last time you called each customer to say “thank you for your business”?

Employees

1. Who is your best employee today and why?

2. Who was your best employee a few years ago and why?

3. When was the last time you hosted an open forum for employees to express questions or concerns?

4. What suggestions do employees have in regard to customer questions and concerns?

5. How much would it cost you to replace a lost employee?

6. When was the last time you thanked your employees for helping you stay in business?

If you are wondering what all of this has to do with improving your bottom line, then think of a time when you have done a little something extra and found yourself muttering, “They didn’t even have the decency to say thank you.” I am not suggesting that you should thank others solely to improve your bottom line. Many kind acts do go unnoticed, but thanking others may help you focus on the things in your business (and life) that you have to be grateful for. And, aside from the bottom line, aren’t you also in business for the victory, the accomplishment, the success, the reward of hearing someone say “thank you” for your contribution?

In my experience, thank-you notes are even less common in business relationships. It’s a quick, thoughtful way to show clients and employees how important they are to you. An added benefit of business thank-you notes is that the receiver of that note will probably remember your gratitude long after the words have been expressed. As you move through the days and weeks ahead, think about those people in your life who deserve a genuine thank-you. Who goes above and beyond what his or her job requires? Reward that person by hand-writing a personalized thank-you note.

For readers who need statistics in order to believe in the power of saying thank you, the National Association for Employee Recognition partnered with WorldatWork to conduct a 2002 Employee Recognition Survey that showed …
* 41% of respondents are “doing more” with employee recognition programs than they were in the 12 months prior.
* Of the companies in the survey that did not have formal recognition systems in place a full 54% of respondents expressed intent to develop policies in the coming 12 months.

Thanking customers and employees is simply the right thing to do. Challenge yourself and your leaders to express gratitude and add joy to the days of customers and employees. Commit to sending a personalized, handwritten thank-you note to one person each day of this week and pay attention to how your business improves. (Don’t cheat; there are seven days of the week to be thankful!)

* Copyright 2005 JoAnna Carey, Carey’D Away Enterprises, LLC.Adapted from the book Rat Race Relaxer: Your Potential & The Maze of Life by JoAnna Carey. All Rights Reserved.

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JoAnna Carey, aka “The Rat Race Relaxer,” is an energetic entrepreneur who delivers influential, customized presentations that meet the fluctuating needs of businesses and associations. Her background includes marketing, public relations and sales experience, spanning the non-profit, healthcare, banking and financial services industries. JoAnna is the producer and host of her own weekly television program titled The Rat Race Relaxer Show and the author of the book titled Rat Race Relaxer: Your Potential & The Maze of Life. Contact Carey’D Away Enterprises, LLC; http://www.RatRaceRelaxer.com/ or call (616) 530-3787.

This is the hard part because everyone is so excited about their new internet marketing venture, and they’ve read the hype about making $3,500 a week and becoming an instant dot com millionaire. Well, it just does not work that way. But you can make money doing simple things.

First you need to be reasonable with yourself, and learn patience. It’s going to take several months of work until you start to see any results. It’s going to take time for the search engines to find your site and index it. It’s going to take time before you have a stead stream of traffic coming to your site. If you want success, you have to plan to be persistent and have plenty of patience.

Set your goals in small steps. First begin with the end in mind. A boat never left port that did not have a destination, that would be foolish, so plan a easily attainable destination. My first goal was $1 per day in Adsense and Chikita, and I wanted to be at that goal within 30 days of launching my first site. A reasonable goal, and it covered all of my cost for the site. My next goal was $100 per month in income from Adsense, Chikita and Clickbank. I expect to hit this target within 3 months…..WHAT, I’m not a dot com millionaire yet? This is reality, these are real results.

My next goal was $500 a month. I started selling hard goods as an affiliate in addition to Clickbank and advertising income. This took only one month after reaching the $100 goal. Now we’re talking! The snow ball effect, growth would surely be exponential in the future…. NO…again I kept adding sites, doing research and working on scripts that will automate my ecommerce operations. Oh yea… I found some free one that are making me tons of money NOW!

The goal of $1,000 per month was much more difficult to reach, but after 3 months of reaching the $500 goal I was consistently making over $1,000 per month.

Next step for me is $10,000 a month! I will achieve this through repetition and replication. More sites, more Blogs, and more affiliate marketing. I expect to be at this level of income within 6 months.

I’m not getting rich quick, but I will be making a nice second income. One that should continue until Google, Chitika, Clickbank or some of the affiliates programs I belong to change their policies. Then, I’ll have to rethink my strategy and continue to plug away.

Bill McRea is the publisher of The
Guitar Warehouse and Free Information About Internet Marketing. Both sites offer free information

Promoting an Affiliate program is a great way to make money on the Internet.
Affiliates can earn generous commissions by advertising someone else’s product.
But choosing the right Affiliate program is critical to your success in this field.
There are certain key factors that your affiliate program should offer which will
make this a win-win situation for you. Here are some tips to consider before making
that decision:

1. Choose a product that you’re interested in. You’re going to spend time and
money advertising this product and it should be one that you identify with and are
proud to promote.

2. The program that you choose should pay you automatically. Beware of the
programs that require you to check in and request your commissions. I’ve learned
from experience that they’re more trouble than they’re worth.

3. Watch out for programs that won’t send you a check until you reach a minimum
commission level. When you earn a commission, you should get it on a regular
basis.

4. The best programs offer you ready-made promotional tools to help you succeed.
They provide you with ads and articles that describe their products. I’m not
suggesting that you copy their articles and ads, because you do want to stand out
from your competitors, but you can certainly get great time-saving ideas which will
help you describe the program to others. Some offer ready-made banner ads, or
html codes to place on your website, which can be a real help!

5. Choose a company that offers more than one product. This way, once your
customer is in their system, and they go back and purchase another product later
on, you will earn that commission as well.

6. Choose a company that does the work for you. My favorite type of company is
one that offers a free newsletter. Once you direct your customer to sign up for the
free newsletter, the company takes over and sends them follow-ups to promote
their products. This is a real time and money saver for you.

7. Some companies offer affiliate support. They are in constant touch with you to
offer suggestions and help when you need it. These are winners!

8. Pick a company that allows you to keep your customer for life. This will provide
you with residual income for as long as that customer continues to make purchases.
You will make money on products you’re not directly marketing!

9. A two- tier affiliate program is a real bonus! This means that if one of your
customers becomes an affiliate, you will earn commissions on their sales!

10. If your company offers a service with a monthly fee, such as an autoresponder
or a paid newsletter, you get a monthly income! This is a great way to build a
residual income.

11. Compare commissions before you decide. You will be spending money on
advertising and you may as well pick a company that offers a decent commission.

12. Stick with one or two affiliate programs and promote them to the fullest before
you branch out. Once you start making a profit, you can always branch out.

Remember, Affiliate programs offer you a simple way to make money on the
Internet. You can start to see profits almost immediately. But don’t jump in quickly
and affiliate with the wrong company. As with anything in life, if it’s worth doing,
it’s worth doing right. Take your time, educate yourself and go for it!

Dorothea Carney has been a teacher for many years. When she discovers a fantastic
product, she loves to share it with the world! Visit: http://
newsletter.anyonecandoit.com and http://clickbank-success.com for the best
affiliate programs out there!

There are lots of ways to advertise for free but they are time consuming so I guess technically, they are not free because your time is worth something! But if you have the time and not the money this is for you.

I posed the question of “free advertising” to a few forums and they all can back the same, but with new links to check out. It’s basically what I already knew, but it’s nice to try and find new ways of doing things.

For this article that has helpful links in it, Please go to my Website and click on Free Advertising.

Link Popularity:

This is the most important thing and in doing any or all of the below things, you will gain link popularity. Links to your Website, wither you link back or not, gets you ranked good with search engines ( the best free advertising of all) and you will get visitors from other sites that are “targeted visitors” that are interested in what you have to offer, and that my friend is your “MAIN GOAL”

So here is what I know about free advertising and what I have recently learned in no particular order:

Articles:

Writing articles and submitting them to different Website will get you the exposure you need and also build your credibility. It’s not so difficult to do this, just give good advise on a subject you know a-lot about, hopefully it is somehow connected to the product/service you are selling on your Website. Make sure in your signature that you have your URL or a way to contact you. When you go to submit your article, they usually give you a step-by-step way to do this. You can always go to one of the site first to get an idea of what you will need to write and publish your article. You can also go to my Website and see how I have written them.You can go to Google or Yahoo and search on “Submit your article for free”.

Classified Ads:

Classified Ads are another way of getting free advertising for your business. In this you can highlight the benefits of your site and/or offer a special to get people to come to your site. These have limited space, so you need to make it short-n-sweet, and to the point to get them to your site. The key is to have a headline that sells, I can’t give you my source because I buy a program to get this kind of info., but you can do a search on Google or Yahoo for “Headlines that Sell” and it will give you some resources. If you would like to know what program I received my sources from e-mail me and I will give you the link.

Again, you can search on “Free Classified ad submission” to find places to place your ads.

Forums:

Forums are not only away for free advertising but you can also ask questions from people that have different way of looking at things or just plain have the answer to your questions. You can also answer question for other; it builds your credibility up and gets you exposure for your business. The way to find forums that relation to your Website is to do a search for “______ forums”, example: it could be video games forums, cb radios forums, Internet business forums, etc…

Press releases:

Sounds so professional, but you can do it, I have faith! A press release simply tells the World about your company and that you are ready to do business. Most sites you go to will have a temple you can go by to do this, I will be providing that soon, maybe by the time you read this. It’s pretty straightforward and anyone that can type can do this. You can do a search on ” Free Press release submission”

Link exchange:

Link exchange is a good way to get free advertising and looks good for the search engines. You can do this in a couple of ways but you need to do what is right for you! There are link exchange programs out there that are for free and some you pay for. Stay away for ones that you cannot pick and choose which sites you want to link with. Link farm are very bad for your site and can go against you with the search engines. Link farms are from companies that upload, let’s say 100 links to your site and those same links will be on all the other sites as well. It’s like a generic links pages, way not good. It defeats the purpose of links and shuts you out of search engines.

Paid vs free, Paid everything is done for you, all you have to do is accept links from other sites or go out and request a link exchange with another site with basically a touch of a button. The free link exchange you have to go out and request individual link exchanges manually. Then manually add their links to your site and there is not guarantee they will link back after doing so. It all depends on how much time you want to put into this.

Good Luck and Please contact me if you need help or have any questions. That is what I’m here for,

Veronica Bath
http://www.home-based-business-opportunities-central.com/

My mission is to help people with their goals of becoming their own boss or just make extra money. I have been scammed big time before and want to help other avoid doing the same thing.

My Website is for this purpose, “Home Based Business Opportunities Central” at http://www.home-based-business-opportunities-central.com/ !

Copyright SC Bath Enterprize - Fruita

So you’re finally at the point where business is booming and you’re getting dozens of calls and emails per day from customers, potential or existing, wanting to either ask a question about your products or report a fault in one they’ve just purchased. And if they sent you an email and it wasn’t answered in 24 hours, they WILL call, adding to your ever-increasing backlog.

As a good business person, you want to satisfy every client that comes to you with a query and make sure that it’s resolved quickly so that they come back for more later on.

The only problem is, you didn’t expect your phone to be going off the hook from the marketing campaign you’ve just finished - not that much anyway!

What you need to do now is find a way to clear the backlog of calls you have and fast!

Getting the proper tool to help you with your customer service will not only take a load off your support staff but will increase your staff’s productivity as they will be in control of the support they offer and not putting out fires all day.

If you own a website, you should seriously consider purchasing help desk software. With this online, all your customers can browse through your database (which contains resolved issues about your products) to find the answer to their queries without having to call or email you.

This database should be updated regularly, especially if a question comes up a few times and it can be solved by your clients on their own.

If your customer doesn’t find what he/she wants and decides to send you an email, an automatic email would be sent to that customer saying that you have received their query and that one of your staff will resolve it shortly.

You can even go further, keeping them updated on how your customer’s issue is evolving, sending them another email explaining where you’re at with his/her issue. That way, he/she won’t need to call to see if you’ve found a solution - one less call to answer!

If you don’t own a website, then a good helpdesk system will also can greatly increase your support staff’s efficiency. This helpdesk software would have all your client details (if applicable), the products they’ve purchased and the history of calls that they’ve lodged with you. Your staff would have access to a general knowledge base where all the calls and resolutions have been posted to act as a reference to help them solve your customers problems quickly, therefore reducing your backlog of calls and increasing their productivity as they would answer and resolve more calls per day.

Lets face it. The support industry is known for its high staff turnover, so having software that’s quick to learn and easy to use will prevent your customer service from suffering.

Also, with the proper tools, you won’t need to spend days training new staff. They’ll be able to answer calls within hours and help you satisfy your customers! If you want more information on how a help desk system can help your business, please check out the following link: http://www.helpdesk-support.com/webciss

Making sure that all your customers’ concerns are answered and that they are satisfied with the service they were provided will make sure they come back and refer their family and friends to you.

Paul Smith is the manager of Auratech Software, a company that specialises in Help Desk Software to help businesses with their customer support. If you would like to read more articles on improving your support or would like to check out Auratech’s range of Help Desk Software, please visit: http://www.helpdesk-support.com/better-support.htm