I want to share with you a story. This story happens everywhere and everyday in America . If you grasp the simple lesson from it, you can make more money each month without working harder or spending more.
I just bought a printer. My trusted ink jet printer finally gave up and sputtered to an untimely demise. Poor thing.
You see, I needed a printer fast, so I went to a local, well-known large electronics store here in San Jose. It was afternoon time, so not too busy. I clearly remember walking by 3 or 4 groups of well dressed salesman standing together chatting.
Too Many Choices....
When I arrived at the printer aisle, I was surprised at the huge number of choices. Laser-jets, ink jets, with scanner, with fax, 5000 page cycle (whatever that means)...I like to think of myself as a high tech guy but I honestly didn't know how to estimate value for these printers.
Now mind you, I had a figure in my head I was willing to spend. That number was at about a max of $350 dollars. I was willing to walk out the door that very day with a $350 printer...if I only was given a reason to buy a $350 printer and told why I needed to pay the higher price.
Anyone There?
I was there a long time checking out all the various brands of printers. During that time, not a single salesman asked me if I needed any help. Here I am...a guy, standing there, credit card in hand, obviously only concerned with printers, and not even a single salesman stopped to help me.
I like to figure things out anyways, so I decided to go ahead and check out all the printer features. Slowly but surely I noticed the $99 and $129 started to look pretty good. They were not quite as fast, but seemed to do almost everything the $350 dollar printers could do. But really, I don't know because nobody was there to explain them to me.
Time To Give In
So I finally decided on a $129 dollar printer. I had to look for a salesman, and tell him I made my choice. The salesman got very excited, went to the back and came out with my new printer. He seemed giddy he was able to get a commission on the $129 printer.
They Could Have Gotten So Much More
But the joke was on the salesman and the electronics store.
You see, when I walked in, I was totally committed to paying a premium for a relatively expensive printer. If someone had been there to explain why the $350 printer was worth more than the $129 one, the salesman would have gotten a $35 dollar commission instead of a $12 dollar one, and the store would have made a much larger profit.
Give Your Customer A Reason Why
Think about it. If that salesman had taken 10 minutes to give me the information I needed and give me a reason why...then the store and the salesman would have been much better off and I would certainly not have been unhappy. In fact, I still don't know if my decision was the best one I could have made, but I had to make a decision.
Now, I know this isn't the most earth shattering story...but sometimes simple everyday stories can contain powerful elements of truth.
Educate Your Customer
So the lesson to be learned is this: if you own a small business, take the time to train your staff to freely give information to customers. The key rule can be stated: Educate your customer. Do this yourself if you are the one selling. And don't just say "Can I help you?". Be more specific. Offer to explain why more expensive models cost more.
Explain that they are made
in the US and raw materials come from New Zealand (or wherever) and that you've never seen a return come in on that item because of its durability.Explain that the widget works faster, saving your customer 20 minutes a day.
Explain that the more expensive item has more features so the customer will never have to come back and upgrade.
Small Adjustments Can Give You Big Gains
If you incorporate this form of sales into your daily business operation, you'll see your monthly income rise dramatically. Employee salaries are the same whether a sale is made or not. Training can be done in a day or two -- a very small investment.
So let's calculate. Lets say you sell an inexpensive version of a widget as well as a more expensive version. If you just sell one more of the more expensive version per day, and if the difference in price is $50, then over a month you could add $50x6x4 = $1200 extra per month to your bottom line.
Can you see how easy this can be to implement? The good news is it will hardly cost you much to implement this idea. Just some training and a little follow through.
Now can you imagine if you took that $1200 and wisely redirected it through direct mailings to your customer list? This is an example of pyramiding I'll talk about in future articles. Stay tuned.
Jay McKee is a freelance copywriter and marketing consultant located in San Jose, CA. Jay specializes in all forms of direct response marketing. He also provides marketing advice to small businesses located in San Jose. To improve your direct response ads or to learn more about how you can use direct marketing to get more customers, sell more of your product, and boost profits without spending more on advertising go to: http://www.jaymckeemarketing.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/
Since I sold my last business in 2004 I have been trying hard to make a living online. Most of my neighbors knew what my last business was as it was very obvious from the garage full of soda, water, snacks and vending machines. When I say garage full I am talking about maybe 1000 to 1500 cases at least. Yes, I was a vendor and I did this for about 8 years. 8 years of people complaining about out of date soda, warm candy bars and dimes stuck in the machines. 8 years of 40 foot Pepsi and Coke trucks coming up to my driveway and unloading materials. 8 years of counting coins and dollar bills every day. Had it not been for the recession, 9-11 and the dotcom bust I would probably have grown to where I hired a few workers and I would still be doing it.
However things did slow down and besides, I was looking for something with less headaches and had more of an upside.
Now my neighbors wonder what the heck I do. They see me stay inside my house all day long and when I do come outside I am in a robe, shorts or tee shirt and jeans. They ask me what I am doing and I say I am doing some "internet marketing." They just kind of look puzzled and don't say much else. Nothing like " Oh. My son is doing that also" Or I know a friend I who is an internet marketer and they are making tons of money" Nothing like that.
So at times I try to explain and that is what I will do now.
Internet marketing is very simply making money from the internet. You may say "Duh. What a genious" but the thing is, it has to be described in that broad of a sense because there are so many types of internet marketing. Here are a few different ways to make money online that I have discovered:
1. Affiliate programs.
Affilaite means you sell other people's and companies products and you get a commission.
Many huge companies around the world use the affiliate system to sell their products such as Yahoo, Microsoft, Macys, AT&T, Walmart, Blockbuster, etc...The products that can be sold from affiliate sites are never ending. I honestly can't think of a product that can't be sold through an affiliate program. Here is a short list of some of the products I can sell through various affiliate programs: e-books, solar panels, books, magazines, homes, mortgages, wart remoaval medicine, hypnosis tapes, leads, movies, car insurance, anti theft devices for cars, self improvement courses and the list goes on and on.As an affiliate you sometimes are able to have other affilaites join under you and you also get a percentage of their sales. The typical affiliate commission structure is for the affiliate to be paid a higher percentage on their direct sales, say 50%, and then a lower percentage on the sales of those affiliates they sign up, maybe 10 to 20% commissions. Usually what we consider affiliate programs are limited to two levels. Most affiliate programs are free to join.
Many of the top internet marketers used affiliate programs to get started in their carreer.2. Network Marketing.
Network Marketing is simular to affiliate programs except they go more than two levels deep. They can go unlimited levels even. What this does is create great leverage so that you can possibly make huge amounts of money if you get an organization of thousands of members. There are different government rules for network marketing businesses, or MLMs, than for the typical two tier affiliate program. Network marketing has been around for about 50 years, way before the internet started. However the internet has proven to be a great way to promote network marketing companies.
34-->34-->3. Selling your own products and/or on your own website.
Having your own products and/or services with your own website is of course a great way to make money. There have been constant improvements to doing this and additional ways to make money this way. One addional way to now make extra income from your own website is by using Google adsense. these are ads from Google's customers who pay by the click to advertise on other people's websites. This can make a good income for the website owners but you need traffic to the sites to make money this way. You can also have links to affiliate sites on your own website. Or sell advertising directly to other website owners.
Here is an example of a website with Google adsense ads and also some affiliate programs. Cutting Edge Real Estate
4. Blogs
A web log is called a blog. This is a way to instantly publish any information online. There are 9 million blogs out there, with 40,000 new ones popping up each day. Amazing. A blog can be set up quickly at no cost at blogger.com, a site owned by google. Anything that can be sold on a website can also be sold on a blog so many people are using blogs instead of websites.
Here is an example of one of my blogs.
About the author
Tim Phelan is a full time internet marketer and has owned his own business for over 10 years.
Email addressnalehpmit@yahoo.com
Plug-in4profit.com
Tim Phelan's Blog
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/
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