Go ahead and check it out and leave a comment if you are so inclined. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkSxn99uc4E

Thxs

I highly recommend this for all my friends and clients while the FREE offer remains.

Go ahead and take advantage of this limited time offer.

My initial response to the question, selling is twisting arms while smiling. The iconic definition of this process is the “used car salesperson.”

Sales occur naturally when a customer or clients needs are met. A skilled sales person is able to quickly identify concerns or objections. Provide answers and most importantly demonstrate a level of value greater than the competition.

Relationship Selling is an on going process of proactively identifying the needs and offering solutions. 

Relationship management is the ability to track all communications and activities one has with an individual or organization. In times past, the ability to manage a relationship required good notes and a photographic memory. The relationship was individually based, since there was no easy method or singular repository.

Technology has enabled individuals and organizations to implement the relationship management throughout their company. This allows the potential for sales from all points of contact.

What this means for contractors and other small business owners is:

• Companies must approach their customers as valued members of their organizations.
• Engagement is no longer on a singular basis, all persons responsible for completing a project or providing a service must be able to add value for your client.
• Passing it off to the “Sales Guy” is no longer an option.
• Successful marketing campaigns are personalized and segmented.

When a decade ago I was faced with having to sell my services for the first time I was terrified. I hated asking for the sale and dreaded the part where my potential clients inevitably came up with objections why they couldn’t use my services.

I’ve since learned that lack of objections is not necessarily a good thing. In fact, I now welcome it when prospects tell me why they can’t do business with me.

Frankly, when a potential client shares his reasons why he or she hesitates to take advantage of my offer, to me it’s a sign of two things; one – they are interested in my services, and two – I’m getting closer to closing the deal.

But many professionals, like consultants or coaches, find “overcoming objections” and “closing” the deal stressful, unpleasant and pushy. If that’s you, I want to share with you two lessons that helped me develop a different mindset around this.

First, a “no” doesn’t always mean “no”. Often it simply means “not now” or “I don’t have enough information yet
to say yes.”

Second, you can’t “overcome” your prospect’s objections – but you can give them information and tools that allow them to make a new decision.

In my Attract Clients Like Crazy program I teach a specific process that doesn’t rely on memorizing scripts and is the most natural way to lead potential customers towards making a buying decision. (Note: my new ACLC program will be available for sale in a couple of weeks – you will love it!)

For now, if you too experience anxiety around “closing” sales here are my tested and proven responses to the top five objections your prospective clients are very likely to raise.

OBJECTION #1: I HAVE TO THINK ABOUT IT.

“I don’t blame you. Hiring a can be a big decision. Can you share with me what specific aspect of my services you are concerned about?”

“Yes, I can see how this can be a big decision. You know I found that typically my clients are initially concerned with one of the three things: is the problem important enough to solve it now, is this the right solution for your situation, can you afford the solution? Which one of those concerns you the most?”

“Hmmm… I see. Let me ask you… Let’s say we get started on this project – what are the downsides?”

OBJECTION #2: I HAVE TO TALK TO MY PARTNER ABOUT IT.

“Great. What kinds of questions do you think they might they ask?”

“Good idea. I always discuss decisions like this with my partner (or spouse). But let me ask you a question – what will you do when your partner doesn’t like the idea of us moving forward with this?”

OBJECTION #3: IT’S TOO EXPENSIVE.

“Expensive comparing to what?”

“Expensive?! What’s really expensive is your current way of thinking! It’s produced the results you have right now and I think we both already agreed that without outside perspective and help you will just keep getting harder and harder and nowhere really fast! Now, let’s looks again how we can ensure that you get a great ROI on your investment in the next 90 days and then let’s make it a top priority at the beginning of our project…”

“Yes, it’s a solid investment. I tell you what – I know this is only worthwhile if you produce solid results, right? What’s the one result you would want to be absolutely sure we could produce in the next that would have you really happy you hired me? Great! Why don’t we make this our top priority and get started right away?”

“Not really. How does this investment compare to what it’s costing you to do nothing about this problem?”

“Frankly, that’s exactly why you need me.”

OBJECTION #4: I SHOULD BE ABLE TO DO IT ON MY OWN.

“Hmmmm… how long have you been dealing with this issue? If you haven’t solved it on your own so far what makes you think you can do it now?”

“Yes, I suppose you could. But let me ask you something: when was the last time you saw (heard) of a heart surgeon performing an open heart surgery on himself?”

“With all the respect… I must disagree. If you thought you could solve this problem on your own we wouldn’t be talking right now. Tell me, how would things be different if you could rely on an unbiased opinion to give you a fresh perspective/solutions to this problem?”

OBJECTION #5: I DON’T HAVE THE TIME RIGHT NOW.

“Yes, it will take some time to address this issue. How much more time per week could you devote to other, revenue-generating activities if you could eliminate dealing with this problem on ongoing bases?”

“That’s funny; you just told me it takes you 10 hours a week to deal with this problem – wouldn’t it make sense to hire someone like myself and solve it so that you can use your time on more productive tasks?”

“Wow, if you are that busy and you are still not getting the results you want perhaps it would make sense to start the project by helping you better prioritize your activities and leverage your time more effectively?”

These are only a few examples of responses I found helpful in getting to a “yes” in negotiating a sale. Rather than trying to memorize those specific sentences I suggest you try to understand and learn the underlying concepts each of the responses is based on.

Here is what you must understand; an objection is a cover for a deeper concern. By voicing it your prospects give you an opportunity to address it and provide information to eliminate it. So quit trying to prove your point and instead ask thought-provoking questions. I think you will be pleasantly surprised by the outcomes.

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© 2000-2009 Marketing Mentors Inc. All Rights Reserved.

The author, Adam Urbanski, helps service professionals and business owners how to
attract all the new clients they want, and how to develop marketing
strategies to increase sales and profits. His website offers more how-to
articles and free tips to create a winning
marketing action plan at www.themarketingmentors.com.
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The importance of online reviews, can not be emphasized enough! If you perform a local search in Google, you will find numerous examples of top performing companies in competitive markets ranking highly on the maps because of reviews.

Some of the social review sites don’t want companies to solicit reviews through bribes or other incitements. But let’s get real! There is one that I know of, begins with “Y” that will hang on to bad reviews for months, and the good reviews disappear after a month. Fair is fair. It’s hard enough to get reviews from your customers.

So, I have created a little form in which you can download and customize it for your use. I suggest if you are a one time company, like a pool builder, that you offer an incentive such as a gift card. And for those of you with ongoing relationships, like a housecleaning service, offering a 10% off your next visit is one of many good ideas.

I know this will help!

One of the biggest hurdles that general contractors have to get past is the trust factor. Are we who we say we are? Will we do what we say we will do? Can we produce what we say we can produce? As a contractor we expect a total stranger to call us, schedule to meet, enter their home or business, tear something apart, then rebuild it to look awesome. That’s asking a lot from someone we just met or talked to on the phone.

That’s what it is all about in the service business – trust.

Today the property owner has ways of getting to know the contractor before ever meeting them face-to-face.

Thanks to social networks like Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter, the general contractor can be “checked out” long before ever meeting him. Before the internet boom, you had a square box in the yellow pages, or a flyer shoved into your door as a first impression to the contractor.

Today we can look at companies and people in a different way. We can see the contractors work, comments they have posted, who they associate with – and maybe that trust can be increased a little by getting to know them better. And there is more that we can do.

In searching for the right contractor that you can trust you probably want someone near you. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way that we could finding someone that we could trust nearby. There are ways to look up general contractors in your area. Here are a few popular sites.

Google , Yahoo, and Bing all have local search directories. Yelp is another. These local searches may help pinpoint contractors near you to help get started on your quest for the trusted contractor. Are there any other ways to finding a service business? Many more. How about the most trusted source of finding a contractor ever – Word-Of-Mouth.

That’s right, people are most comfortable getting a referral based on what their friends and family have experienced. Someone they know has already tried using the contractor and was happy with the results. Don’t have friends and family that have used a general contractor?

Example: Customer Testimonials

Maybe the contractor has a list of past customers for you to contact. Don’t be afraid to make contact with the past customers, it may help you build that trust. And in this business, trust is very important to both you and the general contractor.

The combination of various factors attribute to your website’s decreased visibility.

• Fresh content
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Saturation

While these terms may seem “Greek” to most small business owners, once explained they are really quite simple to comprehend.

To understand, you must first have an idea of the basic concept of how customers find your company on the internet. One of these methods is called Direct Traffic. This is where one of your customers enters your website into the address bar of their browser.

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content. Hyperlinks present in resources enable users to easily navigate their browsers to related resources. Wikipedia
Common Browsers – Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, Blackberry

A second method of web site traffic is Referring Sites. A good example, is any internet Yellow Page site. A customer will search for your company and will be directed back to your website via a link.
And the third most common way is via the search engines, Organic. This method by far has the greatest potential for new clients. The 5 biggest search engines are (listed by percentage of users): Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask, & AOL.

To rank highly on these sites, a website must be optimized. Optimization in a nutshell, is the process of catering your web pages’s information for it to be found vial the search terms commonly used by your audience (clients).
Books are written on just this topic alone. Let me give you a quick example. If you were selling “spark plugs”, a web page devoted to spark plugs would have to compete with all the major brands – Bosch, Champion, AC Delco, etc. That is only the beginning! Add to that, all of the major auto parts stores – Napa, Kraegen, Pep Boys, etc. The likelihood that your website will be on page one of the search engines is ZERO!
On the other hand, if you had a page that discussed the benefits of “Bosch BMW Spark Plugs” your chances of ranking increase. Taken one step further, what if you had a page listing all of your brands and wrote specifically about “Spark Plugs in Reno Nevada”? A number one page ranking for consumers looking to purchase a spark plug in Reno, NV would now be within reach. (This practice of targeting longer phrases to drive traffic is commonly referred to Longtail Marketing)

Search Engine Optimization allows your potential clients to find you.

Another factor that has been responsible for decreased traffic to your website is saturation. The percentage of your competitors with websites has been exponentially increasing. Added to this is the number of competitors who were once called associates. Many companies struggling to survive have added services and products that were once outsourced to companies like your own.

Critical Things You Must Do To Generate Traffic To Your Website

1. Provide Fresh Content - Every time you update your website, the search engines have a reason to come back and visit. With increased visits, you will have more pages from your website listed on the search engines. Quick question, how likely will your website be found if you are only listed once for a given search term? Versus, having 10 or more pages for an equivalent search?
   Contractors and other small businesses that work with a consistent flow of new clients have an easy means of adding multiple pages for a given search. This is accomplished by blogging or discussing a completed job in one or two paragraphs. You can read more about this tactic in the article WordPress Revolution for Small Business Owners.
   To emphasize my point, let’s just say you bought a brand new home. You move in and do nothing! The landscape quickly overgrows, the dirt and debris accumulate and very quickly your new home looks like manure.
   Are you expecting different results with your website?
2. Authority - To gain the status of an authority in any market, there must be others willing to recommend and promote your products and services. Newspaper articles, television appearances, referrals and the likes, help establish you and/or your company as an authority.
In today’s market we can not overlook the authority given by user review (Yelp, Angies List, Google reviews, etc.) and social media site (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) Take a moment to look at any local search business listing on Google. Those companies with the most user reviews, consistently rank the highest (are displayed at the top of the list.)
3. Get your site listed!

When working with clients, I have found many to have a pretty website that is showing up on one of the major search engines, but not the others. What about all of those other potential clients that aren’t using the search engine that your website is listed?

And that is just a start! You need to have your company listed in not just the search engines, but social media sites, internet yellow directories, business directories, and with mobile search GPS and local directories.

Why is this important? Imagine for a moment, you have a stunning billboard offering a $100 dollars to anyone that calls. You’d be overwhelmed with phone calls! But is that really true? What if your billboard was on some dusty one lane road in the middle of the Arizona desert?

Same scenario, you now have 50 of the same billboards in all 50 of the top cities in the US (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, …) What do you think your phone traffic will be like now?

Listing your company and website in multiple locations in the internet is like having those 50 billboards!
The downside, is this can be time consuming and expensive to accomplish. I know too well the time it takes to just list in one directory. For me, it takes about 5 minutes per site. And I have all the tools to get it done quickly via copy and paste, etc.

Good news, you can accomplish this yourself with patience and time. Or you can have our construction marketing agency do the work for you for an incredibly low price.
Enough of the self promotion…

Let’s recap: Your website’s traffic is constantly being eroded by increased number of competitors (Saturation)
More importantly, smarter competitors who understand the value and necessity of a holistic approach to on and off line marketing.

3 of the most important things you can do to ensure your website is being found by your potential clients

• Update your site often
• Capture reviews from your clients
• List your website in as many quality locations as possible
  WARNING: If you are selling water heaters, listing your site on a kitchen gadget sales page, won’t get you noticed BUT it will hurt you.

Be sure to visit us often for great free tips and advice on marketing your company on and offline. Sign up for FREE for our newsletter with other great tips and advice.
We are always welcome to your comments, questions and feedback. You may comment by clicking the link below.

There has been a recent trend with all of the major search engines, that you need to take advantage of now. That trend is local search. Going back as recently as 8 months ago, when searching for your company on the internet, a person would have to enter your company’s name and city in the search box. What if the customer knew you were a general contractor, but forgot your company’s name. The same sort of search would be made “general contractor sacramento”.

Local search has changed!

Today, search engines have gotten smarter. To find a roofer in your locality, all one would have to do is enter the term “roofer” and depending where the client was located Google will display a map with 10 options. That too has changed, Google has upped the ante to include just 7 possible choices. This has made it critical to for you to ensure your presence, otherwise you’ll get lost.

I’ve written before about local search, social media and website optimization as sorely needed tools for any business looking to get found on the internet.

Well today, I have good news! You don’t have to spend a fortune to accomplish high rankings in local search. Frankly, most company’s offering similar services are newbies in local search and charge “big bucks” for their website optimization services. That would be great, if you are looking for top rankings in a broad market. What I mean by that, is getting ranked highly for the term electrical contractor means you would have to compete with all of the contractor directories and national organizations.

What’s missing is a laser targeted placement in your local hometown, listing your company and your specialty. And come to think of it, wouldn’t it be nice if you were a dentist, let’s say, and you were listed in the top spot for “emergency tooth replacement”. We all know not many people are searching for that particular service, but when they do, they are willing to pay a premium if your comapny could be found. The same analogy could be used with a roofer, “emergency roof replacement”.  This is where a targeted local search campaign can reward your company with bushels of money!

Until now, if you wanted to take the time to list your company with 40 or more website directories and yellow page sites, you would have to spend a minimum of 10 hours! I know this to be true, because this is one of the most important ways to get your company listed and ranked highly with search engines. Using this strategy alone has quadrupled or more the number of visitors to my clients’ websites. The downside has always been the time it took to get listed.

The good news is, after spending numerous hours of submitting and systematizing my work for my clients, I have been able to offer an affordable option. Starting today, for an annual fee of just $199 I can have your company listed in all of the major search engines and over 40 internet directory and mobile search sites.

So where will my company get listed?

LOCAL SEARCH / MOBILE

Yahoo! • MSN / Live.com • Google • AOL • Citysearch • YellowPages.com • SuperPages • WhitePages • Yelp • Local.com • Quebecor/canoe inc. • InfoSpace/Idearc • Ask • BlackBerry/RIM • infoUSA • Express Update • Acxiom • Dex • iBegin • Insider Pages • OpenList • Yellow Book • Yellow Page City • Yelp • Disney • Topix • VP.com • Zingy • Deep Data • AllPages • LocalMatters • BeanPool • HelloMetro • OneCallNow • Search Iniatives • Switchboard.com • Electronic Directories (Yellow Pages, Inc.)

GPS Navigation / Mapping

MapQuest • OnStar • tomtom • Lowarnce • TeleAtlas • DigiWalker • ALK • ViaMichelin • Zenrin

411

LSSI • INFONXX • V-enable • TellMe

Some list, eh?

I don’t want to turn this blog into a sales page, if you would like to do this yourself, I just provided a great list of websites to go to and sign up and submit your company. If you would like to have our company submit for you, then you’ll have to visit our client services website by clicking here!

In the meantime, I hope this helps to understanding how you can get your business found on the internet. Please feel free to leave us your comments. If you would like to speak to me personally, click the “Call Me Now” button on the right hand side of the page and I will be happy to speak with you.

It almost goes without saying, when you are working on a job you typically put up a sign in the front yard. Why stop with your website?

Construction Marketing 101 tells us that we need to advertise our company. We all rely on a few tools.

• Business Cards
• Truck signs
• Yellow Page Ads
• Street signs

Why? …

We do these things to promote our business! We pass out cards to acquaintances, friends, associates and other businesses.

Our company vehicles pass 100s’ of potential clients every day hoping to catch the attention of an interested buyer.

We spend good money placing our ad in the Yellow Pages. Because we know the phone company will distribute 1000s’ of directories into our local markets.

Lastly, we proudly display a yard sign in front of a home or business where we are working.

Again I ask, why?

We do these things because we want to gain exposure to our companies and the services we provide.

I’m sure some of you have heard about the power of Ophrah. A recommendation from Ophrah is a ticket to best seller list for books, your own TV show or celebrity status. Getting Ophrah’s stamp of approval produces far greater results than the time tested Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.

We are ALL GUILTY by not promoting our company’s website.

It occurs to me, we all recognize the need to have a website. What we don’t realize, having a website doesn’t guarantee results.

The missing element is promotion!

Having a stack of business cards doesn’t gain you new clients if you don’t pass them out.

Driving your company vehicle around with out your company’s name and phone number won’t get you calls.

Then why do some of us not at least use a street sign? Yes, there are some HOA’s (Home Owner Associations) that don’t allow it. And so too, they can be costly to produce. That shouldn’t stop you. One sign can generate you new calls. One call and you are able to harvest a ROI (Return On Investment) 10 or more times.

Everything we do as business owners has to be evaluated based on our returns. Having a website and not promoting it produces no returns!

In my last article, I discussed the WordPress Revolution. WordPress is a tool to use for your own website.

• Automated traffic generation
• Ease of Use
• Ability to syndicate your content.
• and more

We need to promote our websites to get traffic!

So how do we promote our website?
We enhance what we already do. Our business cards, truck signs, yard signs and yellow pages should list your website.
We make sure our websites can be found by people searching the internet. We do this by ensuring our sites are optimized for the search engines.

We provide fresh content to keep the search engines coming back.

We syndicate our content.
Let me briefly explain. we’ve all heard of the AP (Associated Press). This is a news service where all the traditional media use to capture new content. From radio, television, newspapers and the like, all rely on AP for breaking news.

And here is the POWER of SYNDICATION. One person writes an article, one time, one place and literally within seconds, it is distributed to millions of potential publishers.

Your company can leverage the internet to gain similar results.

We develop an ongoing conversation with our clientele. Whether it’s a customer we built a home for twenty years ago to an interested lead. We need to engage.

We engage these people with two main methods:

Email marketing

Social Media

RECAP: Evaluate what’s missing with your current efforts to promote your company.

Do you even have a website?
If not, you need one to survive. ROI 10x or more in 1st year returns.

Is your website on your…

Business Cards?
Truck Signs?
Yellow Page Ads?
Street Signs?

Are you promoting your website? Or is it gathering dust in the corner?

Feel free to comment on this article. If you would like further information on our service and would like a free consultation by clicking the CALL ME NOW button on the right or by going to our contact form. Otherwise, please sign up for our email newsletter. And as a bonus, we will send you a copy of our eBook 2 Easy Steps You Can Do NOW To Generate Leads

Here’s to your success and survival!

I will introduce to you a technology that’s easy to use, maintain and gets results! But before we get into the details let me give you a little history.

Gone are the days, when business owners would belly up to the bar and pay a web designer to build a website.

Why? Because pretty websites don’t get you noticed!

The way business advertise and market has radically changed. Yellow pages simply don’t work. Can I hear an Amen, bothers and sisters?

Brochure sites are dead. What do I mean by a “brochure site?”  Most websites built are ones that I consider to be a brochure site. Nice layout, good content and pretty pictures. But like a brochure, it’s rare we redesign our company’s brochures. We see this with our suppliers, some come out with a new catalog annually, while others simply add sales sheets when a new products are added. Keeping their same ole catalog for  multiple years. We only wish the prices would remain that constant.

At least with pricing, you can print in black and white with 100s of line items per page.

The dirty little secret that seems to get no attention is…

Most websites are built by web designers with expensive programs like DreamWeaver and the likes. Any changes you would like to make requires a call back to your web design company. Which always takes time and money.

In the end, we all have heard stories from business owners that have a website and not traffic!

No traffic is a direct result of not providing fresh content for your site. Mind you there are other way’s of driving traffic to your site. PPC(Pay Per Click) advertising, article marketing, social media(FaceBook and Twitter come to mind) and others.

Which brings me to the point of this article…

The WordPress Revolution

WordPress is a widely known in the blogosphere as the number one blogging software.

WordPress has grown from a blogging platform into a fully functional CMS(Content Management System) Briefly, CMS’s separate the presentation from the content of your website. Website pages consist of a design elements such as graphics and layouts(presentation),and content: headlines, paragraphs, links and such. With CMS, you can change the entire look of a website without changing the content. CMS’s are database driven. Information is stored in a database and combined with the template or presentation layer by the CMS.

In contrast, using the services of a web designer and their high-end programs creates individual, static web pages. Each web page is a single file. Adding new pages creates more files. This has been sufficient for small “brochure type sites(< 20 pages.) Remember, brochure sites don’t get you traffic! No traffic = no new clients.

With the rapid transfer of business advertising from traditional methods(print, media, direct, etc.) to web or internet based advertising and marketing. The competition is exponentially greater than it had been even last year.

If you are not constantly updating our website you will be buried by the sandstorm of competitors and websites that do.

WordPress not only allows you to easily make changes, WordPress also allows you to automate the traffic generation to your website.

Why WordPress?

• Easy to update
• Over 8,000 plugins to extend and automate your website
• It’s search engine friendly, out of the box
• Thousands of competent developers, designers and a huge community of active members willing to help
• It’s FREE

WordPress is revolutionizing the way websites are built. With WordPress, you too can easily update and add content to your website. I like to tell my clients, many of whom are contractors who spend the majority of the time working in the field and not on a computer…

If you can type a Word document or send an email, you too can update your website.

Why is this important? When you post new content on your website, it is possible to automate notification to 100’s of websites. But, most importantly, it tells the major search engines(Google, Yahoo, Bing and others) to come back and visit your site because, you have something new to show.

And that my friends is why the brochure type site is dead! If you are not updating your site regularly, the search engines stop visiting. When they stop visiting, your site is destined to disappear into the abyss.

WordPress has revolutionized the internet and the way websites are built. If you would like to learn more about our design services, please visit us SiteDesign.HomeBuildR.net