Do not be too pushy

People hate salespersons that are too pushy and keep on nagging to sell. They are sure turn offs. Never consider your prospects as a disposal box of your product. If you find your prospect is not interested in your product, leave it there. If you become too pushy, you may end up losing the prospect forever and incur bad perception of your brand.

Don’t lose hope

With a failed trial or series of trials do not lose hope, it will show on your face and you may appear boring, sad and cold to a good prospect too. If you are not enthusiastic about your product or service, you can’t expect your prospect to find interest in it too. Staying motivated from street to door, under every circumstance, every atmosphere is important as it’s you who are ‘face’ of the brand. So appear enthusiastic, pleasant, motivated, and persuasive. Remember, your prospect is literally a ‘prospect’ for you, not your customer, so don’t expect him or her to be too receptive. They are the people who are not actively looking for your product and your visit is unexpected, interfering. Conversion rate in this type of sale is low, so accept the fact. In a failed attempt, just think it was a bad one and move on to the next with a winning attitude. Celebrate each successful sale, and stay motivated.

Little planning can be helpful

Rather than being random and ringing all doorbells on your way, with piled up rates of failure why don’t you start planning a bit and secure more chances of success? Good planning and research may help you. Know who is your target audience, where they are located, what promise they expect from you, what is their trust level, when are they available and receptive to your presentation, what motivates them etc. Choose locations accordingly. So before starting with your sales call do a thorough research on the demography and psychograph of the desired target group. Also, do not reach them in inappropriate time. Strike a balance between quantity and quality of calls.

And you are there. Go and shoot, win and celebrate.

How is email marketing perceived at the time of budget? And does maturity phase have anything to do with the perception a company has about email marketing?

These are the questions many online marketers are struggling with, as this knowledge will help them grow their business. To answer this question, MarketingSherpa has conducted a study titled MarketingSherpa Email Marketing Benchmark Survey by taking a sample size of more than 1,100 marketers.

The study result showed that only 38% have said that the company seemed in favor of increasing the email marketing budget in the strategic phase, as they see value in it. But this enthusiasm was not seen in transition and trail phase.

The percentage of marketers who showed reluctance to increase the budget (yet did so) in maturity phase was 38%, in trial phase this percentage shoots up to 41, and in transition phase this percentage was highest (43%).

Total percentage of marketers who refused to invest in email marketing in maturity phase was 24%, and 38% refused to give any money in transition phase, whereas, 40% reflected negative vibes in trial phase (see image).

As per the study, the decision makers seemed to be divided in their views on email marketing expenditure, but the data suggested that more and more people are willing to embrace it. It’s a piece of good news for the industry.

What are the tools of cold prospecting?

Ideally, any tool that connects you with your audience could be uses for cold prospecting, but practically, many of those tools cannot be used because of the expense involved. Typically, a business will use one or more of the following communication tools for cold prospecting:

• Call on cell phones
• Call on landlines
• Text messages
• E-mails
• Direct mails on home or office address

Each of the above tools are also overused (read abused) tools, and that is why all the unsolicited attempts to get in touch with your future market are considered spam or junk. This perception is not too far from reality. It is such perception that renders these tools useless?

Then how to use any?

This is a natural question that springs out in the mind. But the good news is that there is a way to put these tools in use, which I going to outline below.

• The very first rule of cold prospecting is moderation. Do not go on steroid. Everyone equally hates, and some hates more, cold callers. But not all the time. At times people are receptive to the messages they receive. Do not bombard users with multiple calls or multiple variants of your message. They are already too bogged down by such messages.
• Once a user expressed his unwillingness to buy your product or services, strike out his or her name from your database. Your database software should have a list of out of bound contacts, whom you should never contact.
• Instead of cold calls, send emails, text messages, and creatively done postcards to suspects. These are less intrusive mean of communication.
• Never call in the peak time or the peak season when your suspects are busy doing their important works.

Take the above precautions, and you will increase your chances of acceptance. Your cold calls will not remain as mindless.

2,300 marketers, who were interviewed by MarketingSherpa for its Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report, testified this.

7% of the marketers said that social media is producing measurable results, so they will increase the budget. 49% of the total respondents said that their organizations were more than keen to increase their social media budget, for they saw it as a promising tactics.

27% marketers said that the results of social media cannot be seen now, so they do not want to stretch the budget too far for that, and will keep the budget as it is, whereas, 17% sees no value in the investment. They feel social media is free, so there is no need to spend anything. See chart below for a visual representation of the survey result.

What samples to show and what not to show, and how many to show? These questions often haunt a freelance writer, more so because there is no one right answer to this. Every client is different so is there demand, and so is the solution to that.

The question is then how to decide what to show and what not to show? As said, there is not any definite answer to this question, but I can tell you about what I do when it comes to hunting writing gigs. That will help you devise your plan of action.

How to decide which sample to show

What clients want?

The first step in the process is to see what client is asking for, as sending relevant samples is what you should do. Sending a sample of how-to article to a client who wants a sales page will do no good. Similarly sending a sample of an article to one who is asking for a press release will also not get you the job.

Have you written on the topic?

If you have written on the topic related to project advertise then send that sample, but while doing so do keep the following tip in mind.

When did you write that one?

This is very important. We all grow one article at a time, so sending a sample that you wrote 2 or 3 years back will do more harm than good, as it will not demonstrate you current style. Do not mistake in thinking that writing style is static; rather nothing is more organic than writing style. The more you write the better you become. You should, therefore, send the samples that you wrote in last month, or last to last month. Do not send any sample that you wrote more than 6 months back.

How many

As many as required to get the work. This is a judgment call you have to take. If the work advertised is going to last long than I provide more samples and if it is a small project then I do not send too many samples, or too many types of samples. It also depends on what a client is asking for.

This is how I decide on what samples to send and how many to send. I hope this will help you decide as well.

I am asking this question because these are the things that stop most of the people from making it big in the freelance writing career. Let’s examine each one of them so that we can get idea about what to avoid, and make it big as a freelance writer.

Do not know enough

This is a classic trap that engulfs everyone who has self doubt about one’s quality. It makes you believe that you are not qualified enough for the job. You should, therefore, stay clear of the job, and should never even try to get closer.

I have this to tell you about “the skill” problem: no one is too qualified or too less qualified for the freelance writing job, or for any other job. We all, indeed, have shortcomings, but those are mere matter of proper training, and some research, which is easier these days than it ever was in the history of mankind.

I have no time

This is another classic excuse. People always complain about lack of time for following their dream. They say they are too busy working in the offices, managing their families, and securing better life for kids and spouses. Sure they are very important, but these things could not be a reason for your “I do not have time” mindset. What is behind this “no time” mentality is the lack of organization and schedule. Make a schedule for writing, and stick to it. When I say make a schedule, I do not mean to suggest making a schedule for writing daily. It could be for weekends as wells.

There is no future in it

This is a very short sighted reply I have heard from the freelance writing quitters. They say why join freelance writing. There is no future in it. I will suggest them to look outside the window, take binoculars if needed, and see how the media is operating — online as well as real world. They all source content, and a large portion of content is sourced from freelance writers. They is future in it, dude.

What else is stopping you from taking a freelance writing career? Waiting to hear from you.

The US consumers’ perception of the financial services providers was quite low in 2009, which seem to have got back to its 2008 state in April. Even AIG, whose reputation touch the bottom in 2009 during the financial crisis, has also gone up in 2010.

Visa got the highest brand equity score of 65.76, followed by MasterCard whose brand equity score is 60.66. The Hartford with the score 53.40 and Fidelity Investments Financial Services with 53.29 score on brand equity make the bottom two of the report that studies top 10 highest ranked financial services company. See image for detail.

Not only the perception (brand equity) is on the way up, but the trust is also going up on the scale. Although it has not touched even 2008 level, the hope of its speedy recovery can be felt in the report released by Harris Interactive.

In the trust ranking, TIAA-CREF Financial Services ranked at number one with a trust score of 6.64, and at number two is Vanguard Group with a trust score of 6.55. Visa is at number 3 with the total score of 6.6. The Hartford which was at number 9th position in terms of brand equity has fared relatively well on the trust quotient. It is on number 5 with a trust score of 6.39. See image for detail.

Definition of Marketing

“Meeting needs profitably” is the core on which the gigantic frame of marketing is standing. And when I say, marketing meets everyone’s needs profitably then I mean it for every stake holder. For consumer it is to buy solution at the best possible price, for organization it is to grow at rapid pace, for investor it means to maximize the return on Investment, and for marketer it means meeting their goals.

How can we achieve this goal

All these needs are not mutually exclusive; they can be met all at once. But for this one need to broaden one’s horizon to include other’s point of view as well. To achieve this we need to consider the following:

• Marketers need to be honest when assessing consumer’s need and/or when selling their products to meet their monthly, quarterly, or yearly target.
• Investor needs to empathize with the consumer, and marketer who are interacting in the market. They should not just focus on more and more and even more return. Being too greedy is not the answer to their problem.
• A business should understand that the number of consumers will always be limited, so they should avoid getting trapped in “perennial growth” cycle. Growth in market share, sales volume, profit, etc., should be chased but not as fiercely as companies are doing. Too much greed is not good.
• Consumers should learn to trust the marketers, and should tell them about their needs, desires, ambitions, values, etc.
• Consumers need to understand that they need marketing and marketer to search for the solutions to their problems. Marketers are not some crooked wizard.
• Consumers need to understand that for them marketer is a time-saving device, a need analyzer, and a search engine that help them find what they need.
• Regulator should see if everything is going all right. Regulator should be honest in analyzing the market condition, and if everyone is doing what he or she is required to do.
• Businesses, marketers, and investor need to be more socially responsible. They need to care for the well-being of consumers. They should think of how they can make a world a better place.

Do not think that I am someone else. I, myself is a marketer, but like most of my fellow, I do not take people for a ride.