She said she's not interested in my product

If you've done any sales work before, you know that the old fashioned telephone is a powerful tool, especially if you know how to use it.

Yesterday I was making phone calls to the local schools in my town. I am offering my candle product for fundraisers. I was moving along at an acceptible pace until I got the dreaded "NO" answer. It stopped me cold in my tracks even though I am used to hearing the word.

She hung up after I told her the company I represented. What? She didn't even want to hear the details? How rude. How ignorant. How mean spirited.

And guess what. She was being efficient. I was a cold call after all. There are plenty of reasons why she was abrupt, not the least of which is that time is valuable. Why waste it talking to someone you know you will reject.

But it is an awful feeling. One which we need to get used to if we want to be successful. What we need to do is.......

Embrace “NO”

You must not be afraid to hear the answer “no”. IT’S GOING TO HAPPEN. A lot, if you sell for very long. It’s not personal, so don’t take it personally. Embrace it. Learn to appreciate it.

You see, the more times you ask, and even hear “no”, the more opportunities you have to hear a “yes”! No’s can lead to yes’s. Sometimes a no can uncover a problem, objection, or issue that can be resolved and lead to a yes. Even with a definite no, if you’ve served your customer properly, you can take an opportunity to try and get referrals. Always sell. Always ask the questions. The no’s can’t hurt you if you don’t let them, but they can be a big help.

Even when they cut you off in mid sentence. The long awaited "YES" is that much closer.

Greg Cryns
Scentsy wickless candles

Photo by ganessas

Two types of website traffic

Traffic vs. Relevance

A marketer can be likened to a “problem-solving middleman”. A market needs to have a supply and a demand. Picture a great mass of people in front of you, to control as you please. If you said, “buy this product from me,” would they buy it? Of course not! They would need a good reason to do so.

This is the key flaw with what a lot of Internet Marketers believe. Even a lot of seasoned Internet Marketers are chasing after traffic when really they should focus on making what traffic they have more relevant. Let me rephrase that. They should focus on encouraging people who want their product to come to their website.

What would you rather? 1000 people, out of which 1 person might consider what you have to offer, or 100 people, out of which 10 people are clicking, “buy now?”

I have experience in this marketing snafu. A few years ago a porn website took one of the products I was offering (a pregnant keychain) and displayed it on his site as something that needed to be looked at since it was so funny. I had 11,000 visitors to that page during the night. They all came from the porn website. Can you imagine?

How many pregnant keychains did I sell? One. Not sure if the sale came from one of the 11,000 visitors sent by the naughty website.

But I will say this, if someone lands on a porn site they almost always find what they were looking for (protests to the contrary are filed). So the porn site stands to sell a lot of product to the people who knew they were going to that type of website.

You have to make sure that your focus is relevance and not numbers. It’s another situation of quantity vs quality again. I have not yet found an example where quantity wins out.

For a traffic stream such as article marketing, sure it’s important that you have a lot of articles before you start seeing consistent results, but if you write on a topic that your audience does not care about, I guarantee that no matter how many years you write, you will not get much, if any, income.

Treat Internet Marketing as a business and really go out to understand your intended audience and they will treat you well.

Greg Cryns

Work At Home Profiles
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How to build your business by helping a charity

Build Your Business by Helping a Charity

You may work with a direct sales company that makes a product that fits fundraiser needs. Or you may own a small business in your town. Either way, people like to buy from people they know locally.

Here is old fashioned way to build your public relations. Help a local charity. Volunteer your time and knowledge. This will help your business perhaps more than simple advertising.

Here is a good article - Build Your Business by Helping a Charity. It has good tips on how to find charities in your area and ways you can help. Take a look.

Greg Cryns

Work At Home Profiles

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The personality of a Guerrilla marketer

I am reading Jay and Jeannie Levinson's Startup Guide to Guerrilla Marketing: A Simple Battle Plan for First-Time Marketers. It is a very powerful book.

Here is what they say are the traits of a guerrilla marketer.

The personality of a Guerrilla marketer

You must have all of these traits

1. Patience - your prospects need to know you exist. Once they do that then you must present your message to them often and consistently.

2. Imagination - you need to stand apart from the crowd. I'm not talking about fancy headlines. Not that type of imagination, creativity. You need to do something your prospects have never seen before. example: don't use a 44 cent stamp - use 5- 6 cent stamps and some 2 cent and 1 cent stamps

3. Sensitivity - be sensitive to your surroundings - make sure you are not over-promoting

4. Ego strength - ability to stand up to those who don't love you - you can look at misinformed
well-wishers (friends and relatives who think you should quit) in the eye and continue with your
marketing plan

5. Aggressiveness - you know what it takes to earn money, it's not easy.

6. Embracing Change
a. don't be afraid of change
b. when you see change happening, put it to work for you

7. Generosity
a. give and give some more - help your teammates succeed
b. give a nice present now and then to your customers

8. High Energy - startup businesses need high energy people to succeed

9. Constant Learning - always keep your mind and eyes open to learn new things

10. Love of People - necessity

11. The Ability to Maintain Focus
a. don't worship the shrine of diversification, rather worship excellence
b. add more excellence to your current endeavors - don't go chasing rainbows
c. maintain your focus or else - don't chase gold

12. Takes Action
a. information not acted on is wasted information
b. be a hands on person - learn by DOING

Greg Cryns
Work At Home Profiles
*Amazon pays me a commission on sold items

5 Useful Links on Facebook Advertising

I think the best assessment about Facebook advertising is that there needs to be more honest reporting on results for small business. As always, there is a lot of hype for big business. But the little guys like you and me? Give me a break. Show me the money, please.


Free Facebook Advertising Tactics

5 Steps to Successful Facebook Advertising

Is Advertising on Facebook Really Effective?
The jury is out on this one.

Facebook- PLEASE do better with your ads
Written by one of my favorite bloggers, Chris Brogan

How Effective is Advertising on Facebook?


Greg Cryns
Work At Home Profiles
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5 Very Useful Links About Facebook Fan Pages

Facebook fan pages are the rage. Here are five solid articles I found to help you learn more about using Facebook fan pages in your small business.

5 Elements of a Successful Facebook Fan Page
Offering something to consumers to join can help build a large community. Some examples of things to offer: Coupons, free shipping, weekly deals.

How to: Create a Facebook Fan Page

Facebook Tips: How do I find and "fan" a Page?
Offers 3 ways to find a fan page

Target Your Marketing Campaign with Facebook Ads

15 Applications For A Better Facebook Fan Page

Greg Cryns
Work At Home Profiles
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How do I take down Facebook pictures?

Picture has nothing to do with this post. I just like it.

There they are. Those ugly photos of you that someone else tagged you with. You didn't want them on your Facebook page. But now it's not so easy to remove them.

It's really simple. Do this:

1. Go to your photos page.
2. Click on a photo you want to remove.
3. You should see your name like this: Greg Cryns (photos remove tag)
4. Click "remove tag".
5. Go back to your photo page. That picture should be gone.

Greg Cryns
Work At Home Profiles
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10 Powerful Local Marketing Ideas

Picture: FAITH candle warmer



10 Powerful Local Marketing Ideas

1. Give a brochure to the workers at local businesses you frequent - bank teller, beauty shop, grocery store

2. Volunteer to be interviewed on a local radio station

3. Volunteer with local charities

4. Offer your product as the prize for a local contest

5. Place ads in the classifieds section or your local newspaper

6. Volunteer to be on the board of local events

7. Advertise on local websites and local blogs

8. Learn how to fundraise and promote yourself as a great local fundraiser

9. Teach a class on your hobby

10. Contact your local Newcomers group for advertising

Greg Cryns
Work At Home Profiles
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10 Powerful Small Business Marketing Ideas

Picture: UCLA candle warmer

10 Powerful Small Business Marketing Ideas

1. Make a committment to know your customers better. What do they do? What are their kids' names? What is their favorite hobby.

2. Trade shows - think of them as a way to meet people, not to sell product. Follow up with people who show interest. Send them a personal handwritten card immediately following the show.

3. Use flyers more often. Hire someone to hand the flyers out where crowds are.

4. Send your customers a monthly newsletter. Not email, the old fashioned way, throught the mail.

5. Send your customers birthday cards. If you do a good job getting to know them, be sure to ask for their birth date.

6. Hand write letters to your best customers. Give them your home phone number.

7. Ask your customers for recommendations about your products.

8. Ask your customers for referrals. "Susan, I need your help. Can you think of someone else who would like to use my product?" or "Can you think of someone who would enjoy earning free and reduced price products (home party)?"

9. Have a party at your house for your best customers. Make sure they know they are your best customers.

10. Give your best customers a gift they will use in their home. They will never forget you when they use that gift.


Greg Cryns
Work At Home Profiles
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Direct Sales - Create A Special Experience With Attitude and Flair

Photo by LAWad

Create A Special Experience With Attitude and Flair That's my take-away from this article.

A Hot Dog Sales Lesson
By Steve Martinez

It was 10:30 on a Saturday night with nothing to watch on Television. We turned to the Food Network and began watching a show about food. A short segment was on Chicago Pizza which got my stomach talking to my brain. The next segment was on Pink's Hot Dogs. They looked incredible and I turned to my wife who had the same look on her face. It wasn't long before we had changed from our PJs and slippers and were out the door for a late night food adventure for the Worlds Best Chili Dog. My mind tried to reason with my stomach, but it was too late. We needed to discover if Pink's hot dogs did make that snapping sensation when you bite into them and if the mixture of flavors exploded in our mouths.

Sixty four miles later we were standing in line knowing we would be making the drive worthwhile. During the drive my wife told me she felt like a 20 year old and it amazed me how a Hot Dog adventure would turn this drive into a romantic memory. Heck, when I looked into her eyes, she looked like the woman I fell in love with 20 years ago. Anyway, I'm sure she will be telling this story to her friends for sometime. When we finally arrived, the line was long and parking was impossible. I dropped my wife at the corner and parked the car 4 blocks away.

Apparently, we weren't alone in our quest for satisfaction because a crowd of people at this legendary stand created a 45 minute wait. I don't know about you, but I don't usually wait 45 minutes for many things, especially a hot dog. As we stood in line the menu was a testament to the saying, "if you build it, they will come." The names of the different Hot Dog and Hamburger creations made the selection an experience in itself. We enjoyed the legendary chili cheese dog and the Planet Hollywood creation. Our quest for the perfect late night snack was completed.

Create A Special Experience With Attitude and Flair Our adventure made me think, if I was selling Hot Dogs, would people drive 64 miles to do business with me? What can I do to make my business an experience people will talk about? Pink's made the journey from ordinary to extra ordinary a few decades ago. They developed a great chili, blended it with a warm bun, added a great hot dog and served it with flair. Today, they are the "Hot Dog to the Stars!"

What do you sell? What can you add to your selling proposition that will add the attitude and flair that will make you a legend and have people talking about you? If you make the transition, people will do some crazy things to find you. Good Selling

Steve Martinez is the leading authority on automating and systematizing the selling process for the Printing Industry. His company, Selling Magic, LLC teaches business how to simplify, balance and automate the complex selling process.

http://www.sellingmagic.com/

Greg Cryns

Scentsy wickless candles

Work At Home Profiles

Network Marketing: creating additional sales

Gort lives at a Fry's electronics store in LA

It's too bad for people when they think selling is all about getting into someone else's face and barking out platitudes about your product. Sorry, this doesn't work very well. Networking can work if you know how to do it. This article offers some solid tips. I've come to believe that most people fail in their business because they are fearful. Get rid of that fear and you might have a chance.


Network Marketing - Creating Additional Sales
By Audrey Okaneko

I can not tell you how often I hear that you must sell consumable products in order to make money in network marketing.

I completely disagree with this statement. I believe you need to sell a good product at a fair price in order to make money.

I have many ideas for selling non-consumable products to the same customers over and over again:

1. Show your customer how your products can be used as gifts. Provide ideas. Share examples. How might your product be used outside of the normal uses? For example, if you sell makeup and your customer has a child in theater or has granddaughters, sell your products to fit each of these needs. If you sell kitchen supplies, show alternate uses for your products that might fit a gift need. Show how a storage container can be used for craft supplies or show how a gadget can be used outside of the kitchen. Put together special wedding or anniversary bundles and show why your bundle is a better offer than the local store's offering.

2. Talk to your current customers about fundraising. What organizations do they belong to? Do they belong to a church? Do they have a child or grandchild in preschool or private school? Do they have a good friend or family member who is part of a non-profit organization? You have a loyal customer in front of you. Work with them to have them help you get your products into the hands of more people.

3. Ask your customers about taking your catalogs to work with them. If they don't work, what do they do and where do they go that they can bring a catalog or two? Offer them a discount on products for getting you orders. This gets your current customer buying more and brings in additional customers to you.

4. Offer a "refer a friend" program. Both parties get one specific item at a discount or even a free small gift when they both place orders.

5. Offer a "buy five, get one at half price" card. If you can, offer "buy ten and get one free." Many retail stores do this. It causes customers to keep coming back. They want that free item or that half priced item.

When you sell a consumable product you do get repeat business on that one product. When you search out ways to get more product orders from existing customers, you end up with higher total sales overall and more customers in the long run.

Audrey Okaneko has been in direct sales since 1983. You can read more of her articles at http://mydirectsales.com or you can Become a Tupperware Consultant

Good tips, Audrey!

Greg Cryns

Scentsy wickless candles

Work At Home Profiles.

Long-tail key words are powerful

Yvonne loves Freddie

I love articles that are backed by painstaking research by one person. This article about long-tail keywords is one of those. If you don't know what a longtail key phrase is, here is just one example out of millions: "Scentsy in Paso Robles". Notice that my site is ranked seconde in Google for that search. because I did one simple thing. Contact me for details. That is extremely self serving, but very important for your financial future if you own a small business (including direct sales businesses, listen up AVON reps)


Never Underestimate The Real Power Of Long-Tail Keywords
Copyright (c) 2010 Hunter Waterhouse
Popular Marketers
http://www.popularmarketers.com/


Before 2010, May Day simply referred to May 1st, a celebration of
the beginning of Spring, or International Workers' Day (Labour
Day), as practiced in many countries, most notably in Russia...
The alternate spelling Mayday was a signal used by ships'
captains and airplane pilots to announce "Come and Help me!",
as derived from the French word, "m'aidez"...

Google's Mayday Update

Beginning in May 2010, Mayday became the code word for a major
ranking change in Google and new attacks of "Google paranoia"
by webmasters everywhere...

As webmasters, we should leave the paranoia to those who truly
have a reason to be paranoid, like my ex-wife and her family. ;-)

Google has always advised that we, as webmasters, should focus on
giving searchers what they are trying to give Google's search
users: the most relevant, useful results possible for searchers.

As for myself, many of the new ranking factors included in the
Mayday Update are things that I have expected the engineers at
Google to include for a long time...

Call me strange if you will -- my ex-wife and her family do --
but I have always tried to plan my website optimization based on
what I thought Google should have been doing already...

So, when Mayday finally came, I was ready...

Unlike many of my peers, I was not crying in my beer in the
aftermath of Google's Mayday Update...

About The Mayday Algorithm Update

An article on Search Engine Guide ( http://bit.ly/8ZQ9yL ), about
Google's May Day Update, suggested that Matt Cutts, of Google’s
Webspam Team, said at Google I/O 2010, ”this is an algorithmic
change in Google, looking for higher quality sites to surface for
long tail queries. It went through vigorous testing and isn’t
going to be rolled back.”

So if your website was hurt by the Mayday Update, you should pay
attention to this article, because "the way things were" is
gone forever...

Vanessa Fox, formerly of Google, in another article at Search
Engine Land ( http://selnd.com/bOqqcE ) suggested that the update
primarily affected e-commerce websites that rely upon a product
manufacturer's product description... In other words, if a
webmaster uses the default product description given by the
original product manufacturer, then the product sales page will
have taken a hit in Google's search listings...

Fox also said, "Before, pages that didn’t have high quality
signals might still rank well if they had high relevance signals.
And perhaps now, those high relevance signals don’t have as much
weight in ranking if the page doesn’t have the right quality
signals."

It seems that a lot of webmasters dismissed Fox' view as just
plain wrong, but I side with Dave Davis, who said, "I believe
she was right on the money." ( http://bit.ly/b4sGKy )

As the questions about Google's Mayday Update spiraled, Matt
Cutts did a video for the Google Webmaster Central Channel at
YouTube ( http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp ), about
the Mayday Update ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ6CtBmaIQM ).
In that video, Cutts emphasized that Mayday is only one of more
than 400 tweaks that Google does to its algorithms each year, and
he further emphasized that Mayday has been fully tested and is a
permanent change to Google's search algorithms.

What Mayday Means For Google Search

The Mayday Update was primarily focused on changing how Long-Tail
Keywords were handled by Google's search engine...

To make sure that you and I are on the same page, Long-Tail
Keywords are those search phrases that contain more than 3 words.
For example, as I was researching this article, my search query
at Google was: "Google long tail keywords mayday".

My five-word search query is a great example of Long-Tailed
Keywords.

In the Matt Cutts' video shown above, Cutts defined Long Tail
Search Queries in contrast to Head Search Queries, with Head
Queries being the one-, two- and three-word search phrases.

I found it odd that an article at Small Business Computing
( http://bit.ly/bkOXqQ ) suggested that this Google algorithm
update was simply a reflection of the changing habits of search
engine users, who employ more long-tail keywords in their
searches today, than they had in previous years...

To be honest, I find it hard to believe that long-tail search
queries is a new trend... I suspect that the truth is that Google
finally acknowledged the importance of long-tail search
queries... And in doing so, they fixed their weakness in that
area...

Long-Tail Search Queries Were The Red-Headed Stepchild of Google

Maile Ohye, senior developer programs engineer at Google,
announced at the Search Engine Strategies (SES) Toronto 2010
conference, "For long-tail queries, we now just consider them as
all other queries and place as much value on them as we do into
shorter queries."

Myself, I am blown away by that statement...

Okay... Let's see if you and I see the same message here...
Until the Mayday Update, Google had always treated long-tail
queries with a different algorithm than "head of demand"
queries (1-3 word queries)?

And now, Google is treating both with the same algorithm?

No wonder I was never satisfied with long-tail search queries at
Google... No wonder I had been looking elsewhere for some of my
search results... Google was using two algorithms, and most of my
search habits were met with their other not-as-good search
algorithm...

Digging Deeper Into Mayday Update

I came across the May 11th edition of the Search Engine Facts
newsletter ( http://bit.ly/9V4Fyv ). The newsletter stated, "It
seems that this is not a penalty but a change in Google's
ranking algorithm. Google might now be able to index longer
keyword phrases more accurately. There's a new Google patent
that deals with this topic." (United States Patent #7693813:
http://bit.ly/98cLlc )

So the story is becoming a bit more clear... Before Caffeine,
then Mayday, Google did a poor job with long-tail keywords,
because its main algorithm did a poor job with long-tail
keywords...

Mayday Winners And Losers

Around April 28th-May 3rd a lot of sites (SEOmoz.org included)
noticed a sudden loss of 5-15% of their normal long tail traffic
( http://bit.ly/amEcjY ). Some e-commerce websites reported losses
as high as 90% of its global traffic.

But by the end of May 3rd, there were still ten listings on page
one of Google, so for every website that lost, someone else
picked up new visitors.

My websites picked up around 10% across the board... However, I
was not among Maydays' biggest winners...

Earlier in this article, I mentioned Dave Davis, who is the
Managing Director of http://www.RedFlyMarketing.com/

On the RedFly Marketing blog, Davis said, "We have concrete
Google Analytics evidence that shows 30-60% increases in traffic
to some of our and our clients sites just before and after May.
It is important to note that these sites are all eCommerce and
forum sites that had a steady flow of long tail traffic and now
have a much greater share of this traffic. All this traffic
increase is from Google search term referrals with a word length
of 4 or over." ( http://bit.ly/b4sGKy )

Davis suggested that a lot of AdWords advertisers, managers and
experts saw these changes coming long ago...

Sadly though, a lot of webmasters are still waiting for Google to
fix its' mistake... Those folks might just be the May Flies of
the Internet --- here today, gone forever...

Conclusions To Be Drawn From Mayday

Davis said, "The majority of those complaining (about Mayday)
have relied too much on domain authority and internal linking...
Google is now seeing individual documents as their own entities a
lot more."

I agree... I have been preaching the value of Deep Links --
inbound links to pages deep within your website -- for a long
time... As a result of my practicing what I preach, I am one of
the Mayday winners...

Before the Mayday Update, you could build links exclusively to
your domains' home page, and use internal linking to support the
rankings of your internal pages... But that was yesterday's
Google... That strategy will never work again...

Returning to Maile Ohye's comment, one more important
distinction can be drawn...

If you have come to understand how to rank your website for Head
Queries, then you already have the knowledge of how to rank your
website for Long-Tail Queries... You simply have to take that
knowledge you already possess, and apply it to your website, one
page at a time...

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Try the Popular Marketers Free Long-Tail Keyword Research Tool
here: http://www.popularmarketers.com/long-tail-keywords.php
Get your free profile page at http://www.PopularMarketers.com/
and consider one of our Premium Membership packages, designed to
help marketers sell more products and services... Learn more at:
http://www.PopularMarketers.com/ Written by: Hunter Waterhouse

Thanks, Hunter!

Greg Cryns

Excellent Fundraising possibilites with Scentsy Products
Check out WahmSearchEngine.com