moderndaypeasants.com

Building Trust & Relationships For Your Online Business

I had a little bit of downtime today and was sitting here thinking about building trust and relationships along with the effects those two requirements have on any given business.

I was remembering back when I first started writing service for a Chrysler Dealer in the early 90′s. The store had it’s share of regular customers who purchased and serviced their cars there but also had new customers who had never visited the store before. These folks needed repair work and wanted to find a good place they could trust.

Roughly 50% of those people were what I like to call stand-offish from the get go. They had a pre-conceived notion that car repair shops were known for ripping people off and they weren’t about to personally become part of that statistic.

I soon started enjoying dealing with these kinds of customers because It was a challenge for me to win them over and try to make them life long customer’s of the store.

After getting cursed at, threatened and chewed out enough times from me dropping the ball I quickly learned that establishing trust and building relationships had a whole bunch to do with listening to people and asking good questions. I’m not talking about the kind of listening where you’re just nodding your head and saying “I understand.” I’m talking about really listening to people.

This can be sometimes difficult to do after you hear similar stories all day long everyday. However, it is also what prompts people to spend money with your business and then come back to become repeat customers.

If you are truly listening to somebody when they’re talking to you about a need or concern, you will probably be asking many questions to understand the severity of the situation or concern. More than likely you will also have the ability to relay empathy to their story. In other words, you can sympathize with their problem because you’ve personally been there and know what it’s like or you’ve asked enough questions to really understand what they’re trying to tell you. Your empathy tells your customer that you care. When they know you care then they know it’s ok to trust you. Now it has become valuable for the customer to keep a relationship with you.

Once I learned to really listen to people and ask questions the job became quite a bit more enjoyable. On top of that I actually landed many knew customers for the store. Most of them were so dedicated that they would only ask for me. Some of them still bring their cars there for repairs to this day. I know this to be true because I know the owners and the managers that currently run the place and ever so often I stop in and say hi to some of my old customers.

If you think about it, this is how trust is built in any relationship whether it be personal or business. You get to know each other by talking and listening. The ice is broke after you find common ground.

It’s a fast paced world we live in today. Working online, doing business online and sending emails make it very easy to not see the people on the other end of the spectrum. It becomes simple to overlook the trust factor. Pretty soon you start earning a little money and then begin thinking it’s not necessary to build relationships.You must try to avoid making this mistake and keep it in the front of your mind.

It can mean the difference of having a mildly successful business or an extremely successful business.

Best Wishes!

20 Reasons Why Your Product Isn’t Selling

Almost anything of value can be marketed on the Internet. Here is a list of 20 reasons why your product may not be selling.

1. You’re not properly displaying the features and benefits of the product.
2. Product is not being displayed to a targeted visitor. (trying to sell TV’s to somebody in search of shoes)
3. Your product isn’t selling because you have no call to action (not asking for the sale)
4. No business base (no website)
5. No opt-in form (no way to keep visitors and future customers informed)
6. Website shows a lack of professionalism (too many misspelled words, site not user friendly, etc.)
7. Product checkout not secure.
8. Your product isn’t selling because your ad copy is too pushy (people don’t like to be sold…they buy what they need or want)
9. Lack of credibility (you must build trust with your visitors)
10. Sub par product (has no real value to the visitor)
11. Lack of ad copy testing (You haven’t tried multiple ad copies)
12. Lack of Sincerity (Visitor doesn’t feel you are genuine..you don’t care about their needs…just the sale)
13. One of the biggest reasons your product may not be selling is a lack of website traffic, SEO Site Promotion, key-wording, optimization (not enough people viewing your product)
14. Lack of advertising (again…not enough people viewing your product…no product awareness)
15. Product improperly displayed on site ( placed on bottom of page instead of top…no visibility)
16. Price is too high (when compared to similar products)
17. Price is too low (when compared to similar products…visitor perceives product is no good)
18. Product has no distinction (market is flooded)
19. Lack of return policy (shows you have no faith in your product)
20. Many people fail to sell their products because the shipping rate too high for physical products (when compared to industry standards….Customer feels ripped off)

If you can get the first five correct you are already well on your way to success. The rest is all fine tuning.

Please feel free to post your comments if you have something to add to the list.

Best Wishes!

Social Media for Brand Networking

Are you using social media for brand networking? If not then maybe it’s something you should seriously consider. I am guilty myself of not taking it seriously until recently. Social media platforms such as Twitter, Digg, MySpace, Facebook, Delicious and a few others can have a huge impact on the marketing of your business. All of the above sites have millions of dedicated users who may be interested in what your site has to offer. The key is learning how to properly use these tools to your advantage.

Let’s take Twitter for example. Twitter is what I would call a micro blogging platform that allows it’s users to send short instant messages known as tweets. The message can not be more than 140 characters at length. When I first learned how long the message could be I thought, well that seems kind of useless, why bother? I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. I guess it never dawned on me that in that 140 character message you could send a link to a website or a blog or possibly even an advertisers link that you can make money with. Twitter is an excellent social media source to help your business build it’s brand. Just keep in mind that you can’t sign in and instantly start selling to your followers. Like any other business you have to build solid relationships and trust before you begin to try and sell them anything. You can follow Modern Day Peasants on Twitter here.

Other social media outlets like Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Stumble Upon and Delicious should not be overlooked as well. You should know that these sites have outstanding Google PageRank. Just by signing up and entering your site you are building a high PageRank backlink. In addition, if some of your readers Digg your blog articles or maybe give them a thumbs up on Stumble it could feasibly send your website or blog traffic into a whole new stratosphere. Generally speaking a new website start-up is not going to have the PageRank Power to get to the first page of Google, Bing, Yahoo and Aol. The above social media sites do have that kind of power. Use them to your advantage!

I am still learning new ideas about the world of social media and I am no longer naive enough to think that they won’t help. Build your website or business by networking in as many ways that will help you to be noticed. If necessary build your followers one at a time. Be helpful, be friendly and be genuine and in the end the world will know who you are.

Best Wishes!