Control Your Sales Calls From The Start

Sales calls that you control are what all salespeople want. I am a big believer that questioning is the most important skill for sales professionals. In order to stay in control of your sales calls, whether by phone or in person, you need to be the one asking questions most of the time. To be the one asking questions most of the time, you have to get to questioning right from the start of your sales calls. This issue's tip is about how to make this transition quickly with finesse, whether you are calling by phone or are in person. To accomplish this, you will need to eliminate beginning your sales calls with long-winded "presentations" about your company. This may seem counter-intuitive. You may have reasoned that your prospect doesn't know who you are, and needs your introductory "presentation" as background for a sales discussion. Although this is the mode many of us are used to, the reality is different. If you politely give your customer a valid business reason for you to ask questions from the start, you will find that virtually all of your customers will let you do this. You will then be able to spend most of your valuable time investigating what your customer wants and needs. OK so here's how you do this. Once your sales calls have started and you have established rapport, you say something like the following:

"Mr. Jones, I am with XYZ Company, and we help companies to [insert your benefit here]. What I would like to do today is ask you a few questions to see if it makes sense for our companies to do business together. How does that sound to you?" You can modify the above to your own style, but let me first show you what makes this opening work. In reverse order, you are asking permission to ask questions, you are stating that your purpose is to see if it makes sense to do business together, and you are suggesting a common benefit of doing business with your company. By asking permission to ask questions, you establish the format of your sales calls, and put yourself firmly in charge. In stating that you want to see if it makes sense to do business together, you are saying that this is a mutual decision, and that you aren't just out to sell them something that they may not need. By suggesting a common benefit of doing business with you, you are giving a prospect, who may not know much about you, a reason to continue with the sales call. Until a prospect has decided that you understand their business problems, a simple benefit of doing business with you suffices to get your sales calls started. If your company is a known quantity in your market or to your prospect, you can skip the benefit completely as the prospect already has a reason and context for the discussion. There's no need for long-winded openers on your sales calls. © 1999-2004 Shamus Brown, All Rights Reserved.

5 Top Tips When It Comes To Writing Good Content

Writing web content should be considered no different to writing offline content when it comes to quality, but if you are struggling then we take a look at a few tips that should help you along the way.

Spelling / Grammar - When you write an article, blog or press release and broadcast it to the world via the Internet, then this content is a reflection on you, so if it is full of typos and grammatical errors then this is going to make you look really bad. From your readers point of view, there is nothing worse than reading content that is littered with spelling errors or badly structured content, so make sure you write well, check and then double check to make sure that content is a good as it can be.

Know Your Audience - Your audience are the people that are going to love and follow your content or quickly reject it and move onto the next author. Therefore, it is vital you get to know your audience and make sure you know what they want and what they want to read, because this is the way that you can grow your content and your readership to make sure both continue to grow over the next few years.

Know Your Subject - If you are writing about a specific subject and you are basically guessing your way through it and trying to make the article sound thorough, then your readers are going to read straight through it. If you are writing about a niche or subject then you need to expect a large percentage of your readers and visitors to know a lot about this niche as well, so you need to concentrate on what you know rather than trying to write about everything.

Concise Yet Informative - If you can say what you need to in 300 words, rather than trying to flesh the article out to make it look big and end up with 500, then your readers will be very happy people. A common misconception is that the more words you write, the better you will do, but in fact, if you can be concise and yet still informative, you are going to have far more success with your content than just writing for the sake of writing.

Write For Your Readers - When it comes to writing online content, one of the biggest mistakes that writers often make is trying to be clever and write for the search engines. Years ago, this would of worked, but these days the engines are clever enough to figure this out and so will your readers, so try to make sure that all of your content is written for your visitors and not for the search engines.

What's The Next Stage of Interactive Web Media? Online Radio Could Be the Answer

Audio and video streaming really gets you noticed on the web, that's according to the top internet marketing experts. Google seem to agree. Rumour has it that the search engine will be giving higher rankings for sites with video content.

The spoken word is a powerful too. It's the best way of getting messages across but often media content on the web has to be got across quickly. Content makers, have to work hard at building a rapport quickly with the visitor. As we've seen with social media like Facebook, selling a product or a service shouldn't always be done as a hard sell. In fact, that is internet suicide for you business if approaching social media in this well.

Radio as a medium, including online radio stations, work well because they build up a rapport with the listeners. It takes time if done well. A good presenter will now how to relate to their audience and he or she will become a friend.

BBC

One talented presenter who worked for the BBC had listeners asking him how his building work was coming along. He used to have to update them every evening. So what if you were able to build such a rapport with your visitors to your customers. Wouldn't that be powerful. It wouldn't take long to convert your loyal new visitors into customers.

Just like some stores do, you could have your own in house online radio stations. How cool would that be. You could offer tips and advice, perhaps some advice and crucially one or two sells messages. You wouldn't need to set up an online radio station. Instead you could work alongside existing online radio stations, many run by volunteers who would only be too keen to broadcast to a larger audience which you would supply through your visitors.

With your website, consider interactive media and building up a good rapport working with online radio stations.

Knowing Your Rights As an Employee Means Understanding Basic Labor Law

Most of us work a job for another person known as our employer. This that we have rights that are specific to the workplace and having a basic labor law understanding is necessary for anyone that works. This is a great way to make sure you are protected and you also need this basic knowledge to help yourself in any situation that may arise at work.

This could include sexual harassment, harmful work environment, equal treatment, and many other things that could happen in a workplace. It could also include overtime pay and different things that have to do with compensation for injuries at work and other issues. This is very important because you never know what is going to happen and having a bit of basic knowledge is always a helpful thing.

Basic Labor Law and How you can Learn it

There are many resources out there that can help you with understanding basic labor law. You can start by using the internet and doing a basic search for labor law that is specific to your area. If you live in Indiana, then you want to search for laws that are specific to Indiana. There are some laws that are federal and there are many others that are at the state level.

After you have used the internet to find out a little about the basic labor law in your area you can move on to using your local library or your actual employer to find out more. The library will have many law books that should help you find what you need and your employer should have some posters and some information about different laws.

Another place to find information is an attorney and if you have one in your family or one that you can talk to about anything you need to, then you can find some information out. This also includes speaking with the EEOC. They will have some information on equal opportunity employment and the laws that have to do with it. They also have basic information on many other employment laws that may help you out.

Finding Basic Labor Law in your Employment Handbook

If your employer has a human resources department, then you can find out quite a bit of information from there. They should be able to answer any questions you have and they may offer seminars or training to help you understand the basic labor law that is specific to your area. This can be very helpful and some employers offer pay for this type of training.

Check with your employer to see what you can do to understand the basic labor laws for your area better. This is the first place to start and if they offer training you should sign up to go through it. If you want more information you can use the internet, your local library, or even the EEOC or an attorney to help you learn about basic labor law.

Divorce - Contested Or Uncontested

Most of the disagreements concern the Children, Visitation and how to divide the assets of the marriage along with Child Support, Alimony, How to deal with Family Debts, and who will pay for the Education of the Children and Possible College expenses, Insurance and Tax Problems

After a divorce case is filed, you are given a number and depending on how many people filed before you, will determine how long it will take to come to trial. Generally unless you know someone the cases are determined in the order of your number. When your number comes up you are called, either by phone or mail. Depending on where you live it can be on the spot.

Divorces are all Contested until both parties can come to an agreement and the attorneys can come to a consensus on all relevant issues. Then they can address the Court that it is no longer a Contested Divorce but now an Uncontested Divorce. When this happens there will be a hearing that will consider both parties that sometimes requires proof of claims made by either party. If the laws of the court and the state are considered and are acceptable the court will approve the settlement and enter a divorce Judgment on that the same day or in the near future

Why Voluntary Benefits Work for Your Company As Health Care Cost Continue to Rise

These past few years, many small business employers have passed on the rising cost of health insurance to their employees by increasing deductibles and co-payments, and in some cases, smaller employers have dropped their health coverage all together. With the economic times changing, how does the future look for health care cost? Mercer, a human resources consulting firm, predicts that employee health care costs will rise 5.4% in 2012.

Health care costs continue to rise faster than inflation. The average cost of a family plan rose 3% from 2009 to 2010, but workers' contributions to family health coverage jumped 14% as employers attempted to control costs, according to a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

With these staggering statistics, what can you do to control health insurance benefits cost and keep key employees happy with your benefits offerings?

Small business owners and their employees are finding a more helpful option to manage rising health care expenses. This option is voluntary insurance benefits. These benefits normally add no additional cost to the employer, and might reduce corporate taxes by cutting FICA tax contributions. In addition, the adding of voluntary benefits plans to a company's benefits menu helps small businesses enhance their benefits choices while staying within budget or cost constraints.

What is Voluntary Insurance Benefits?

Voluntary insurance benefits can vary from dental, pet insurance, critical illness, supplemental health, accident or hospital indemnity, life insurance, vision and short-term disability. Some of these benefits, if not all, help employees manage out-of-pocket costs associated with serious accidents and illness costs that major medical insurance is not designed to cover. Recipients of these voluntary benefits plans receive cash benefits in the event of an accident or illness. The benefits can be used to help pay for daily living expenses, such as the mortgage payments, child care, groceries, rent and other medical expenses that may be acquired during the time the insured is out of work.

Traditional medical insurance plans do not cover every expense related to an illness, injury or death. The bills and expenses continue to add up, especially if you have stopped working and your income is lost. Voluntary insurance can help you prepare for these and other out-of-pocket expenses. Most of all, these plans help remove the worry of how you will pay your medical and other everyday living expenses.

With the rising, cost of health insurance many small businesses have to cut back on their major medical insurance coverage. With voluntary insurance benefits, employers can now offer a cost-effective supplement to their primary benefits that will be vital to their company and their employees.