One of the hardest cues to decipher is when a customer is truly ready to buy. While it can be a bit of a challenge in person, it is considerably more challenging when communication is conducted via phone or email. However, that is exactly how business gets done these days. Sales professionals must learn to recognize buying cues, regardless of the communication medium.
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As people become increasingly wrapped up in social media, networking is in danger of becoming a lost art. Networking is still the most reliable way to get promoted, land lucrative contracts, and find choice jobs.
Everybody should know how to be a good networker, both online and off-line. Network relationships are most powerful when based on real-world connections, and social media can help by keeping these connections alive. Read on to learn how to blend classic techniques with modern social media.
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If you consider cold calling to be a useless sales technique, think again. Successful cold calling can open new doors, bring in new clients, and grow your personal network.
Making cold calls is not for everybody, but if you are an entrepreneur you already possess the drive and passion necessary for making cold calls successful.
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For any business, getting customers is a top concern. But are all customers created equal?
For a marketing agency or a freelancer, the best customers can become indispensable in growing your business. Your worst customers can suck up your time and energy, send your costs through the roof and jeopardize the success of their own projects while providing little in return in terms of referrals or testimonials.
Besides paying on time and other revenue-related advantages, your best customers do so much more for you.
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One of the common concerns some of our resellers have expressed is about a client's web developer. What if after you've sold a prospect on a need to have a mobile presence, they hire their web developer to build it?
First of all, it's not the "web developer" you should be concerned with.
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One of the common mistakes many of us make is not dumbing things down enough. The terminology and concepts may seem easy when we deal with them on a daily basis, but may be completely over the head for an average business owner. In fact, too much jargon and industry lingo may scare them away.
The rule of thumb is too keep things as easy as possible (and that applies both to explaining the options as well as covering as much work as you can for your client). Often this means taking a little risk, making a decision for your client or applying a bit more effort. However it is all well worth it in the end.
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The question we get asked a lot is "How much to charge for a mobile site?"
Just like with traditional web development, prices charged for setting up a mobile website vary greatly depending on the type of client's business, the requirements, the value of the site to the client, and the agency or freelancer doing the work. In this post I'd like to mention a few things that may help in developing your pricing guidelines.
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Responsive web design has been a popular topic in 2012. With Google noting that responsive design is the "preferred" method for developing smartphone sites, and enough bloggers re-posting on the idea without really looking deep enough into the subject, Googling "responsive web design" now makes you feel like the age of custom mobile websites has already come to its end.
But is it so?
Not so much, if you look at a couple of factors:
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In this article I've mentioned why responsive web design is not always the best option. The popular buzz of 2012, responsive design does not always offer the best mobile experience, increase conversions, and often is not the route that the big consumer brands take.
With Google noting that responsive design is the "preferred" method for developing smartphone sites, there's been a popular assumption that the "preferred" is turning into a "must" for mobile SEO.
A separate mobile site (on its own m. or .mobi URL) creates a couple of challenges for Google:
We‘ve all seen the statistics on the staggering growth of mobile. According to Google, mobile search will be surpassing the desktop search by the end of next year, with Google's mobile ad revenue reaching $8 billion this year (which is more than 3 times the increase from last year).
And yet, many brands and agencies have been slow in utilizing the mobile channels in their marketing efforts. The typical challenges are the ability to track the right metrics, difficulty in understanding the consumer context, questionable effectiveness of the mobile ads and conflicting "best practices" advised by the industry leaders. Read the full article here.