Get the Good News out sooner

If you (your organization/company) have good news about your product, clients using the product or any other good and positive news which can impact positively on your brand image or your sales and ultimately the bottom line one should try and do a press-release asap.

And you should not stop just by releasing press-notes, put that on your home page with highlights, write a blog post, update on social media channels and make a good positive wave.

I have observed sometimes we try to perfect the word going out, including marketing materials or the way we want to push that on websites. But it should not take long time because as the time passes it may loose the value and even if not value you might already have lose a customer just because that news/update was not on the website and it would have made a positive impact on the perspective buyer.

Assume that you have got some certification or achieved some milestone with your product which is highly recognized (in your domain or industry) and you're taking some time (due to the process of getting things/materials approved from people who are busy with their own things). Now here with delay of each day you possibly are loosing your perspective buyers for which that news would have mattered to change their decision in your favor.

For example: if designing a flash banner with flashy content and pictures takes time, get it out with just some colorful text on your product/company's website. It would help you get the things going and for those buyers to whom that news (read some milestone/feature or certification) is important, it does not matter whether it's flashy presentation or just a colored text.

When there is a "Good News", just let it go. Don't wait to prepare it to the perfection, just do it whatever you can do now.! later on no one is going to stop you and replace current with the better or best you have prepared after efforts of few days.

Basically now a days for IT, ITES and Tech or non-IT business their website plays important role and so one should preferably get designed in a way (I mean it should be built on top of CMS - Content Management System) that, it can be updated by management/marketing people without knowing much about it's internals.

This post is outcome of what I learned from one of the indecent happened in my current organization. What's your thought on this? Did you experienced anything? Your thoughts are welcome as comments.Similar Posts:

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Website's Appeal

Your website is the online face of your business or you can say it is the "storefront" of your business (even if you have a literal storefront, too). Your website should be appealing  and it needs to attract customers and keep them coming back for more. So evaluate your website yourself by asking yourself following 8 questions:

All the Best for your success and let us know if we @DiGiTSS can help you make your web-face more appealing. Similar Posts:

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Motivated Affiliates - Shortcut to Success

One of my favorite moments was when someone taught me about synergy. The example they used was two horses pulling a cart. Each horse can pull approximately 500 lbs. (I'm making that up, because I don't remember the actual number.)

A basic understanding of math would logically determine that by strapping the two horses together, they could pull 1,000 lbs. In reality, two horses working together can pull three times the amount they could on their own--not double.

This same principle is the reason business owners need to consider using affiliates. You see... you can't be the "perfect" entrepreneur. You can try. And, maybe get close. But, at some point in time everybody needs additional skills, markets, and time they don't possess.

So, what exactly does having affiliates add to your business? Here are just a few benefits:

• More Referrals
• A Larger Market (yours + your affiliate's)
• An Outside Promoter of Your Products/Services
• Increased Networking Abilities
• & Ultimately More Sales!

Consider the value of having another "salesman" reaching out to your customers. Now, you don't have to grow your company on your own. By creating an affiliate program, you can achieve much more than you will EVER be able to achieve alone!
When you develop lasting partnerships, your business is going to grow automatically, just from the leverage you gave it. Strap yourself to affiliates, and see where the synergy can take you!

Creating successful Affiliate Programs:

Here are the three main aspects of creating a successful affiliate program.

Who should my affiliates be?

When selecting people to partner with you, consider their value. Find someone whose influence is going to drive sales. Seek out the gurus and experts in your industry and see if they'd be willing to partner with you. Look for individuals with a market that is either larger, or hits another set of prospects than yours does. Finally, choose affiliates that are excited about, and preferably use, your products and service.

How should my affiliates be paid?

Always pay your affiliates on a commission basis. Like most salesman, if they do nothing... they receive nothing. The harder they work, the more they earn. However, the value of each of your affiliates is going to vary. Consider paying commissions based on a tiered payment structure.

How do I motivate affiliates to act?

Even the best partners need motivation to work with you. Here's the key: make it EASY and LUCRATIVE for them. They're busy. You've got to do as much of the work for them as you can. And, you need to be generous. Remember, it's their influence and list you want, not their work. Make it easy and lucrative for them and your success will soar.

Creating and managing multi-tiered affiliate structures should not be difficult. Find an affiliate management software program that does this for you. Then, sit back and see what your affiliates can do!Similar Posts:

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7 Must Know - about Customer

This is a follow-up to last post. To refresh your memory, we talked about the "7 Things You Must Know About Your Prospects."

This same information is certainly important to know about your customers as well. But your customer bios should be slightly more extensive. Here are the 7 things you must know about your customers:

1. Their Name: Nothing speaks to an individual faster than their first name. Use it to build your relationship with your customer.

2. What They've Purchased: If you know what your customers purchased in the past, you have a good idea what they will buy again. (And won't waste your time promoting products of little to no interest.)

3. How Often They Purchase: Individuals who buy rarely from you may need additional encouragement…more marketing. Whereas, consistent customers may not need extra sales pitches, but might benefit from a newsletter or coupon.

4. How Much They Spend (on average): Why spend precious time pitching products to customers that they can't afford? It might embarrass your customer, shows your lack of personal interest, and may cause customers to lose interest.

5. The Last Time They Purchased: Have you lost a customer without even knowing it? Who's still loyal? Who has strayed (and needs to be brought back)?

6. Each Interaction You've Had With Them: Documentation is important for obvious reasons. But being able to "recall" previous conversations will make your customer feel important and appreciated.

7. How They Feel About Your Business: Feedback from your customers is the best way to improve your products/services, meet your customers needs, and attract more customers.

Note: Remembering each of your customers and all of these details about them is impossible. Be sure to keep an accurate database that can easily store and retrieve this information for you--and make you look like a star to your customers!Similar Posts:

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"?" Must Know..!

In Last article/post I wrote to you about selling benefits (or emotion selling) rather than features. I want to add to that concept. You see, in order to sell to your prospect's emotions you should know something about them. So I put together a list of 7 things you absolutely MUST know about your prospects.

1. Age: Everything you say and write, including slang, allusions, word difficulty, and topics should be adjusted to meet age appropriateness.

2. Gender: Despite the dual roles men and women tend to fill, most individuals can be segmented (and sold to) based on gender-specific interests or needs.

3. Location: Values and culture tend to vary based on demographics. Having a clear understanding of regional difference will improve your targeted messages.

4. Education Level: Similar to age appropriateness, education levels should determine how you address your prospects and what benefits they will find in your product or service.

5. Income: The needs and wants from one social class to another should be a guide to the types of products and services you should be selling them.

6. Marital Status: The values, needs, and desires of married persons greatly differ from those that are single. Marketing family messages to single persons (and vice versa) can lose the deal for you.

7. What Keeps Them Up At Night: This is the most important one. You've got to know your prospect's fears, worries, concerns, excitements, hopes and dreams. When you know the conversation inside your prospect's head, you can enter it, speak to it, and build a relationship that leads to a customer.Similar Posts:

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Emotional Connections

A friend that works at a car dealership was recently discussing a sales technique with me. "We're not allowed to let customers leave...until they take a test drive," she said. "If they take a test drive, the chances that they'll buy really improve."

What does this have to do with today's topic? The car dealership's policy clearly illustrates the difference between selling features and selling benefits.

So what can you do to make sure your message is speaking to your prospect's heart and not their head? Ask yourself a series of questions:

• How will their life be better, easier, or more fun with my product or service?
• Why will they want to tell their friends about my company?
• Without my product or service, what will the prospect be missing?
• How will the prospect justify this purchase to themselves or their spouse?

By answering these questions, you will discover the benefits that will attract your prospects. No matter how tempted you may be to point out the incredible "features" of your product, sell with the prospect in mind.

When you constantly put the prospects emotions first, you will create marketing messages that drive sales like you've never seen before.Similar Posts:

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Follow-up (When, How, What..?)

In every business whether it is existing customer or new prospect followup is a must. Effective followup strategy can win and retain customers. Follow-ups by various means will create an impression on audience about business existence, this is true because lot of small business owners do not have luxury like brand names.

Here are some quick FAQs about followups:

What is the REAL purpose of follow-up?
Not everybody is ready to purchase your products or services right now. But that
doesn't mean they won't eventually.
Follow-up keeps your name in front of your contacts until they are ready to buy.

When should my first follow-up message go out? Immediately. If you obtained a lead from your website, make sure they instantly receive an email from you. If you purchase your leads, get in touch with them right away. If you spoke to a prospect in person or on the phone, send them a follow-up m essage. Don't give them time to forget about you. Start building that relationship right now.

How frequently should I follow up with my contacts? When first marketing to a lead or customer, it's all right to send them several sequential emails. Remember, the average person needs to hear your message seven times before they buy. Follow up regularly during the first year of contact. After that you can include them in a less frequent campaign.

How long should I continue to follow up? Follow up should continue indefinitely. If you have a system in place, this should be a simple task. It never hurts to stay in touch. After all, you can never guess when a prospect will be ready to buy.

To advertise or not to advertise? Marketing is the Answer:

Have you ever heard the saying, "I know that I waste half of my advertising budget. The problem is I don't know which half!" It is this very philosophy that is prompting me to strongly inform you... advertising doesn't work!

Let me show you why:

• There is no way to track effectiveness (or ineffectiveness)
• It's impersonal
• The target audience is too large
• It's costly to redo or improve
• There is no call to action

What surprises me is the number of small business owners that save their marketing dollars just to waste them on ineffective advertising. Then, they complain because nothing is working and they don't have any customers.

I know what you're thinking, "Isn't advertising and marketing the same thing?" Well, not really. Let me explain the differences. Advertising includes: commercials, billboards, radio, and newspapers. Marketing includes: emails, letters, postcards, and fax.

So how is follow-up marketing better than advertising?

• You can track response rates
• You can quickly change campaigns that aren't working
• You can specifically target your audience
• It leads prospects to an immediate sell

If you really want to attract more customers, you will learn to market and leave the advertising to those gazillion dollar companies.

If you take the time to consistently follow up with ALL your prospects and customers, you will be adding hundreds, even thousands of dollars to your bottom line.

Source: Infusionsoft Newsletter.
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Why is COPLAST 4 (Plasticiser for Coal Tar Pitch / Tapes made from Coal Tar Pitch) needed?

• To impart plasticity without affecting penetration number.
• To provide better heat and solvent resistance
• Helps in achieving petroleum insolubility.

In market there are many kind of plasticizers are available based on wax/wax derivatives.  COPLAST 4 (Plasticiser for Coal Tar Pitch / Tapes made from Coal Tar Pitch) is unique plasticizer which is not wax/wax derivative that C.G. Chemical manufactures.

COPLAST 4 (Plasticiser for Coal Tar Pitch / Tapes made from Coal Tar Pitch) is not wax/wax derivative. COPLAST 4 (Plasticiser for Coal Tar Pitch / Tapes made from Coal Tar Pitch) is compatible with most materials used in Coal Tar Industry.

COPLAST 4 (Plasticiser for Coal Tar Pitch / Tapes made from Coal Tar Pitch) is proprietary polymer.

COPLAST-4 (Plasticiser for Coal Tar Pitch / Tapes made from Coal Tar Pitch) has unique heat, water & solvent resistance. This when added as plasticizer along with coal tar material does not lower ring & ball softening point of coal tar material. At the same time it improves Needle Penetration from about 1 * 10^-1 mm to about 5 * 10^-1 mm.

COPLAST 4 (Plasticiser for Coal Tar Pitch / Tapes made from Coal Tar Pitch) has specific properties as below,

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Thinking Entrepreneur - Courtesy Flickr

I have been following one of my Twitter friend Jinal Shah since sometime now. She is an entrepreneur or starting up a business and has come up with excellent compilation of points which are like must TODO for a entrepreneur. I agree to all her thoughts and her post has increase my confidence and some of my thoughts.
I am so convinced that I am going to re-post her post on my blog to pin it down.

Because of the instant-nature of my job, I often don’t find time to sit down, reflect and compute the bytes of information that I feed into my head daily via Twitter, Facebook and a number of other networks. I try not to lose focus of my personal goals as I gain more work experience and become more confident and self-assured daily.

I consider my current phase of life as a “training” period for my next phase of life, which is running my own business. I think a lot about how I want my life to make a difference, the impact I want to make. I will be honest - my primary goal is to build a highly profitable and financially successful business and I don’t harbor false notions about my capitalistic desires. However, I also want to be a strong leader and I want to create a business that will impact more than a handful of lives. An honorable business that will create jobs and hopefully, contribute to the general well-being of society. There is a lot of work that needs to be done, but for now I am also sub-consciously training myself to be a leader, to understand how to run a business and to learn from both the good habits and the bad habits of entrepreneurs. I’ve picked up a few ideas and values that I want to build my business around. I just wanted to put them down on paper, so here:

1) Execute quickly and efficiently: This is the most important thing I have learned and it is the single most common factor all entrepreneurial minded have in common. I must have heard, ‘better to ask for forgiveness than permission’ about 10 times from all different people. It is branded in my head now. It is important to think things through and be doggedly focused on the end goal. It is equally important to not gloss over the details in the beginning, because it is not a pleasant situation to deal with midway down the road. But the point is - do your homework fast and just execute. Start making, building, selling - whatever it is your idea is. But just start it.

2) Cut a good deal, but provide equal value: I don’t like asking for or doing free work unless it is a fair barter. When doing a free project for an author, he asked me “How can I make this worth your while?” I had never been asked that question before. It showed me integrity. It showed me that I was dealing with a fair businessman who was also looking out for my best interests. Not everyone in the business world is going to look out for my best interests, but those who do – I know I want to hang on to them.
This is a principle I want to live by and do business by. So when the time comes for me to start pulling in favors, I want to know that I have earned those favors or that I will pay for them. Yes – there are no free lunches.

3) Brilliance shines effortlessly: Some entrepreneurs or wanna-be entrepreneurs feel a strong need to constantly talk about how smart they are, how connected they are and how cool they are. And it gets frankly annoying after a while. The leaders I admire are the ones who know when to talk, when to namedrop and when to shut up. And that is the kind of leader I aspire to be everyday.

4) Inspire loyalty: The founder/ public face of a huge non-profit never thanked his volunteers or even bothered to find out their names when he flew into Philly for a conference organized and managed by the volunteers. Three months later, every single volunteer had quit or moved on. A small gesture of appreciation would have avoided this situation and kept the volunteer roster loyal and motivated. Instead, the non-profit had to struggle for another few months before they could build a sound volunteer board again. Lesson: No employee is too lowly. Don’t gush, but certainly don’t ignore anyone’s contribution. I admire companies and entrepreneurs who are able to retain employees long-term. To me, it says a lot about the company.

5) Give control: I read these stories about how once you are an entrepreneur you cease having a life. No vacations, no time-off. But I have met an equal number of amazing entrepreneurs who build their business around the idea that it will survive and run smoothly without their continued presence. And that happens upon relinquishing control and trusting the right person to take care of the business in your absence.

So that’s what has been on my mind so far. Would love to hear your thoughts and your ideas on what you think makes a good entrepreneur/ leader.

I already had belief in 3rd and 4th point and rest of them I completely agree with.

There is an great comment on her post by Dennis Demori, which I would like to post as well:

Hey Jinal,

Great post, especially your points on execution, inspiration and delegation. I feel like I’m in the same “training period” that you refer to, and I’m excited about getting to the next stage when the time comes.

Here’s 5 things I would add:

1) As a leader, you’re always setting examples (good and bad)for those around you. If you’re always positive, show up early, etc. then your employees will follow suit.
Accountability starts at the top. Companies with “Do as I say, not as I do” attitudes create apathetic employees.

2) Continue to network…all the time. If you try to network when you need something, it’s already too late. You need to nurture your relationships, or they will wither and die. Regardless of which industry you pursue, the bottom line is that EVERY business is a RELATIONSHIP business.

3) Don’t be afraid to hire people smarter than you. As a leader, you don’t need to have all the answers. You just need to know how to find them (or hire someone who does).

4) Respect and learn from everyone in your company, from Senior Executives all the way down to the mailroom - their insights can be invaluable.

5) Focus on building your strengths instead of trying to turn around your weaknesses.

I hope this helps.

I already agree with 1st, 3rd and 4th points of Dennis.
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Steve Jobs - Courtesy Flickr

There have been many quality posts around the Internet talking about what is better alternate for a Company to make progress during organization's life-cycle. Selection of CEO is the crucial process to make sure company's progress and direction are on the right track.

I believe it's up to the board of Company to decide based on hundreds of complex criteria whether to promote a CEO from internal staff or to hire a new one.

I am not in the management branch but have been experiencing some of such situations closely these days and I believe there are pros and cons in both the cases and which I can sum up in following points. These thoughts are completely based on my experience and could be wrong in certain criteria.

Pros of Promoting a CEO from inside:

• A positive wave in the next line of managers that hard-work will pay off and they can get a promotion if they can prove themselves.
• He/She would know the existing processes and flows in them and would be easily able to identify the weak-links easily and can cure with their expertise. Existing domain, business and organization culture knowledge would help internal CEO.
• Will increase the confidence in the every level of employee and make them believe that everyone will have equal chance of getting promoted to next level if they can perform.
• Would be able jell up easily with existing team and would be able to guide them in showing them new path or direction.

Cons of Promoting a CEO from inside:

• Sometimes if he/she is not able to bring up the new ideas it could washout the bringing in new person.
• Acceptance of new CEO from within would be a question when he/she has been picked up from the 2^nd line of management.
• Must be able to see the processes as outsider to be able to evaluate the organization in a correct manner. This could not be counted as a one of cons but still if this is missing it could be a big hit.

Though selection of the person who can be the Chief Executive Office is really an important and crucial decision to be made by board.

Pros of Hiring a CEO from outside:

• Would be able to bring new ideas based on their experiences from different work culture where they have been working.
• Will be able to see things as an outsider easily and so will be able to provide corrective actions whenever required.
• Could bring a positive energy into existing workforce when they were not able to see any light of hope with existing process or management. Would be able to bring in best practices from the other organizations he/she might have worked with and very much helpful if he is having past experience in similar domain.

Cons of Hiring a CEO from outside:

• Would be difficult to reach till the roots of processes and knowing that what to find from where and from whom.

In any case be it outsider or insider, new CEO would be under great pressure to bring organization to the next level as that would what board members might have expected and that's why the change might have occurred.

There is no universally accepted answer to this question and it depends and changes from case to case. There could be lot of debates and dilemma on the question and here are some more articles discussing about similar topic:

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1175

http://www.bnet.com/2403-13056_23-270141.html

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