World Business Web

Have you ever met with a prospect who thought they knew everything about your product or service? But, after talking to them you discover they have been misinformed or did not know as much as they thought they knew?

With search engines like Google being such an easy place to get information for your prospects, you may find prospects who are educating themselves before talking with you. The real challenge becomes making sure the information they are researching is really good information to help them in their decision process.

Imagine for a minute you’re going to have a kidney transplant and you decide to do some research on the internet before hand. Do you take that information and tell your doctor how they should be doing the surgery, or even how you plan on buying their service? My guess is you would probably not do that, but it is just a guess.

Your doctor would probably do a good job of explaining how the procedure was going to go, what things you should be aware of, where to expect pain, why they’re doing what they are doing, etc. If you have good rapport with the doctor you will allow yourself to fall under their care, guidance, and protection.

So the ultimate question you need to ask yourself is who is the expert with your product or service? You or the prospect? Just because somebody read some information on the internet does not make them an expert. Remember that you are the expert in what you do, it’s now time for you to take charge and act like the expert.

Let me share how I go about guiding my prospects through the key areas they should be concerned about as it relates to growing their small business. There are two main areas I share with them.

The first area you want to be aware of is where can you achieve business growth. You have three opportunities to grow your business.

Growth Area #1: You can sell to more clients.

Growth Area #2: You can increase your frequency of sales to your clients.

Growth Area #3: You can increase your average sale.

The second area you want to be aware of are the four disciplines in your business to achieve growth in each of the three areas.

The first discipline is getting in front of enough new prospects.

The second discipline is converting your prospects into paying clients.

The third discipline is expanding the current client relationships you already have.

The fourth discipline is getting the right people on your team to execute the disciplines.

So after I share this information I ask my prospect the following. “Mr. Prospect, as you and I talk about growing your business, do these areas and disciplines make sense, and more importantly, are they relevant to the conversation you and I are going to have?” My experience is that after starting the conversation together like this, my prospects are in complete agreement with me.

If they are in agreement I always ask if there is anything else we should add to our conversation to make it worthwhile to them. This makes sure that any other items they may want to discuss are added to our meeting together.

There was a time where I had been instructed to ask people what they wanted to accomplish together and it almost always lead to nonsense. When I say nonsense I mean prospects said things like, “I want to find out how much it is, who else you work with, why I should buy from you, etc.”

I’m not saying these things are not important, but they never shared their real issues openly. All that other stuff is just intellectual fluff and not the real emotional goals and frustrations that drive prospects to buy.

By sharing the structure of the areas we help small businesses grow I have been able to guide prospects on the key areas that are either helping or hindering their business growth. I promise you that people want to be lead, and as small business owner it is your duty to lead them in the right direction.

Now it’s your turn. I want you to think about the areas or structure of what you do that helps your clients. How can you do something similar to what I created?

I have a client who sells furniture. We helped them define the best objectives for clients in the areas of comfort, quality, and style. By creating a basic outline you give yourself a framework to operate within. It also gives your people responsible for building business relationships great confidence, and helps you manage the process more effectively.

Your objective is to now go and brainstorm the components of structure that will help you guide your prospects. Then you can help them discover you are indeed the best fit to help them achieve their goals and overcome their frustrations.

Search engine optimization is a class of interrelated techniques that serve to increase the positioning of a web site in the search results of the major internet search engines. Since most users find the information that they need via the major search engines such as those provided by Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL, the rank of the internet site in the search engine results is a very important factor in determining how many web surfers will find and view the page.

There are a number of techniques that can be employed when using search engine optimization. One of the primary ways that web masters use search engine optimization is to increase the number and placement of key words on the web site that customers are likely to use when searching for goods and services offered by the web site. Many search engines index a page based on key word phrases and oftentimes add value if the key word appears within a certain concentration range. The caveat here is that many search engines will lower the web page ranking if the keyword appears too many times since this is perceived as an attempt to fool the search engine. Keyword search engine optimization uses not only keyword concentration but also keyword placement. Many search engines place higher emphasis on key word phrases that are placed in web page titles and HTML header tags.

Another method of SEO is to increase the number of links to the web site being optimized. Most search engine companies design their algorithms with the assumption that a page that is highly linked to is more likely to offer quality content then one that has no links to it. Many web masters took advantage of this assumption by using link exchange programs to increase the number of links to their site. For this reason, many search engines now devalue two way links in favor of one way links. This means that a major goal of modern search engine optimization is the creation and maintenance of one way links.

Since one of the main goals of the search engine optimization specialist is to increase the number of one way links, a number of methods have been developed to accomplish this goal. One great way to create one way links is to provide testimonials on web sites. These testimonials will often feature a link to the testimonial provider’s web site. Another way to create one way links is to make postings on internet message boards and include the web page URL in the signature line.

Search engine optimization is a vital component of any internet marketing strategy. By positioning a web page to rank highly in search engine results, it is possible to increase the number of visitors to the web site.