Can you list multiple approaches in which to generate potential business for your company? Have you thought about using telemarketing? By using the correct procedures and techniques you could improve your profit margins. The correct direction and assistance can enable you to make the best use of every last free lead and build up stable partnerships with all of your client base. The potential benefits are enormous — so why not give cold calling a try today? Make sure you get yourself prepared first! Phoning random phone numbers in the directory is not the best use of your time. Use a method of identifying potential business opportunities and go after those chances. All you need to do is call likely customers. So, what comprises a likely lead? You must calculate which elements your likely clients have in common. What issues are confronting them and how might your company help them to overcome those problems? Factor all of this info into an effective plan, referencing goals for your sales department to work towards. Every single thing they raise during a phone call should concentrate on these topics.

Writing the correct cold calling script is important. Ensure that it gets across every crucial bit of information about your business, as well as the services you tender. It’s vital that your sales staff obtains the customer’s trust during the first cold call, for your business to convert those leads into confirmed sales. Trial several approaches and determine which ones bear fruit.

Remember which leads you have followed up on and which clients you have contacted, in addition to tracking their agreements to meetings. Use these records to measure your progress and center on those which might yield business with future sales calls. This process can unveil formulas for devising follow up opportunities. Before you even know it, these ideas could see your profit improving. You will witness your client list broadening and the repute of your company enlarging. Applying the proper method is important, though. By sticking to this advice, you’ll make enlightened use of your leads and should quickly enjoy the benefits. To find out more, look online for “telephone prospecting scripts business to business”.

White labels are used by some websites to facilitate a successful brand for offering its services

The name (white label products/services) has come from their packaging image. This packaging allows marketers to give their own trade dress to the products. The origin dates back to vinyl records. At that time, DJs used to take out the label from a known record, concealing the actual source of that record from other DJs. In this way, they would create white label record.

In general, white label production is for generic electronics manufactured at a large scale, such as television sets and DVD players. There are companies that also own a sub-brand for their products, which represent the brands used solely by those companies. For example, Brand-D may sell the same DVD player model-D which brand-E sells as a model-D.

Moreover, certain websites adopt white-label software for facilitating a popular brand to provide a service, that too without investing in developing infrastructure and technology itself. To list a few examples, Amazon.co.uk ran Waterstones website until recently, while LoveFilm runs Tescos DVD Rental services. A majority of store brand or supermarket private brand products are offered by companies which change only the labels of the products and then sell them to various supermarkets. Besides, there are some manufacturers who develop generic brand labels of low cost bearing merely the products name (Cola).

Credit-card operations are occasionally outsourced by smaller banks to larger banks. Cards are issued and processed by larger banks in the form of white label cards, usually for a fee. This, in turn, enables smaller banks to brand credit-cards as their own without any need to make any considerable infrastructure investment, which would otherwise lead to excessive overhead.

Washington-based online information provider Intellius Inc helps customers make intelligent decisions that create a positive impact in their lives. Because of this, it became one of the finalists in the Software and Information Industry Association’s (SIIA) 24TH Annual CODiE Awards. To date, this leading information commerce company has gained more than eight million unique customers. These customers utilize Intellius’ information to reconnect and protect their family and loved ones, their assets and their businesses. The company is likewise one of the Internet’s 100 most visited sites.

Intellius‘ services offer mainly people search, background checks, complete employment screening services, as well as an award winning identity theft prevention product called IDWatch. One of its latest products is a people look-up service called iSearch.com, which competed in the Best Online Directory and Business Leads Service Category. iSearch.com enables its users to look for records, or any information, about people using data from past and present perspectives. With the use of proprietary semantic technology that connects numerous offline and online records extracted from both professional and public databases and profiles in social networking sites, iSearch helps put together a comprehensive data listing in order to come up with panoramic individuals profiles.

According to Intellius’ CEO and Founder, Naveen Jain, since the society is now constantly on the move, there is an increase in the frequency in the instances when people switch addresses. People now tend to spend shorter time in certain jobs and this result to constantly changing information. This is the main reason why Intellius came up with iSearch. Through iSearch, people can connect new and old information with offline and online data in order to come up with significant and reliable results.

The CODiE Awards annually recognizes and celebrates companies that show an excellent vision and outstanding achievement in the fields of digital information, software, and education technology. The awards have been given out for 24 years.

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In essence affliliate marketing is akin to an auction web site. Merchandise is promoted on your site and for your work, every last sale pulls in money. There’s much less work, very few overheads, it works twenty-four hours a day, and it’s easy to learn. Firstly, you have to determine what items or niche market you wish to work in. A method of going about this is, discover solutions to issues a certain market segment is going through, and then discover a way to resolve those issues. A good method of achieving this is to look for unique extremely targeted longtail keywords or phrases; there are less internet searches for these in general, yet they convert far more into sales. To discover these profitable words or phrases, it is recommended that you use Micro Niche Finder. Data collected by this computer program or other programs or services will give you related words and phrases in an extensive list format which you should focus on in order to gain top ranking on the internet search engines.

Micro Niche Finder data will in addition tell you how many searches each one gets, exactly how many different internet sites who use them, even competitor details. Finally, the information generated can identify related domains, content for your site, and also draw attention to desirable goods to market.

Next you need to build a internet site; but there are still essential things to do. Having the top placing on internet based search engines needs the optimization of your web site. Here SEO Elite information comes in. Competing sites are analyzed by SEO Elite information which then provides advice on improving search results. With applications such as SEO Elite, data created by the software package advises you on links, the most profitable keywords, and details on where to upload articles. In Brief, SEO Elite information is the same sort of data you may get from a skilled SEO professional. Once you have decided on your target market sector, set up some product promotion, and your web site is finished, then all you need to do is decidedly improve your search engine rankings. You’ll collect steady payments and you will wonder why you always struggled to make money!

Radio Rentals brings back shocking memories of mullets, Ford Escorts and series of The Sweeney on knackered tv sets. However, one of its close descendants BrightHouse Electricals is starting to recapture the place it lost on the high street through the rise of the likes of Currys, Dixons and Comet and the reduction in the price of TVs.

BrightHouse was created out of Thorn-EMI, the owner of Radio Rentals, by Terra Firma, Guy Hands’s private equity group. It earned infamy for exorbitant APRs and expensive mandatory extra cover. Todaythe chain is on the front foot, attempting to clean up both its branches and its name as it embarks on a very challenging growth programme. It plans to inaugurate 21 branches next year and estimates that there is enough market for at least 600.

Just a dozen of BrightHouse 178 shops are in within the M25, but, as Leo McKee, the straight-talking chief executive of the outlet, enjoys saying the high street becomes a very different place beyond the M25.

Its prospects, almost exclusively from the lower socioeconomic groups are having problems to get credit - if they ever could - as lenders cut their risk profiles.

“We’re going into areas that [Lloyds] TSB are pulling out of,” Mr McKee stated. The prospect of BrightHouse stepping in to offer credit to our poorest areas will not satisfy everyone. However the Scot believes that this is an invalid perception.

“When I “started in my job [in 2004], we “requested a “independent “market research to examine “our positioning asking: ‘Is it sufficient?’ and: ‘Does it have longevity?’ he said.

“The results came back: your name on the high street is garbage; you’re seen as a rip-off merchant; the prices were high, the stores shabby.

“The first thing I did was to change all the prices to match the high street, on the day I found out [the results].”

The previous thinking was that as long as customers could afford the £10 a week, they would not pay attention about the cash price. And this thinking had side effects right through the business.

That is what Brighthouse are now trying to fix so their image improves amongst the general public.

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How you answer your phone can make or break your company. In the age where the Internet has become indispensable, the good old telephone is still a favourite when it comes to customer service. People still like speaking to a person rather then sending emails and wondering when they’re going to get a response. The telephone is quicker and more enjoyable to use for a lot of clients.

Being such an important business tool, the telephone, if used properly, can turn enquiries into long time business. When training new staff, make sure you spend time training them on how the calls should be answered.
Here are some tips for you to consider:

1. Make sure every one in your company answers the same way - mentioning their name and the name of your company in a courteous way.
For example: “Good morning name of your company this is Samantha, how can I help you?

2. Make sure that you smile and sit up straight when you answer. That will insure you speak clearly and send out a welcoming and positive voice to the person calling.

3. Answer the call by the second ring.

4. If the person the caller is after is on another line, give him an option of either waiting or taking a message.

5. If that caller decides to hold, make sure you give him feedback every 30 seconds to see if he still wants to wait or leave a message.

6. If the caller wants to leave a message, take his name, phone number and company name. If you don’t understand ask him to repeat or spell the name. This will make sure that your co-worker knows who he is calling back and asks for the right person.

7. When you take a message, make sure that the person it is for gets the message. Return your phone calls within 24 hours. If you are still waiting for an answer to a customer’s question, make sure you call that person and explain that you haven’t forgotten them and that you will get all the information to them as soon as possible. Keeping your clients informed of the progress of their request will be very appreciated and you will earn great respect from your clients.

8. Never put your clients on speaker phone. That is by far the rudest thing you could do to them. It will make them feel like there is no privacy in your conversation and may prevent them from telling you what their request is. If you must put them on speaker phone, ask their permission and let them know the reason why you must do it.

9. If you let your calls go to the company’s answering machine, make sure the message is professional and said slowly and clearly to insure that your customers understand the instructions to follow. Mention the name of the business, why they got the answering machine i.e. state the opening hours, or public holidays, etc. If for a public holiday, mention when you will re-open (day and time).

10. If the calls go to your personal voice mail, record a message each day mentioning the date and if you are in the office or not. If you are not, give an alternative to reach you. Either your mobile number or the number of a person that could help them in your absence, or your email address if you can access your account from a distance.

In a nutshell, the key to answer your telephone calls is uniformity (making sure everyone answers the same way), professionalism (answer phones promptly and with a smile) and being courteous (make sure the calls are returned in a timely manner and keep your customers informed of the progress of their request). If in doubt, think about how you would like to be treated if you were the one calling with a problem!

About the Author

Paul Smith is the manager of Auratech Software, a company that specialises in Help Desk Software to help businesses with their customer support.
If you would like to read more articles on improving your support or would like to check out Auratech’s range of Help Desk Software, please visit:
http://www.helpdesk-support.com/better-support.htm

What’s all this about thin affiliates?

In a “leaked” document reportedly coming from Google, the big G gave guidelines to human spam-busters on how to classify affiliate sites as thin or not.

A “thin affiliate” is basically one that creates pages with the sole intention of ranking well and directing traffic to an affiliated merchant site, without adding anything unique to the World Wide Web.

It seems that the algorithms at Google HQ are no longer the only ranking factors involved in where your pages end up in the search results. Now, human beings are scouring the Internet looking for sites to penalise.

Some have called it a hoax, others have seen it as the end of affiliate marketing, but if you actually read this report, you will hopefully see what I see:

(a) Affiliate sites are here to stay

(b) If you do things right, you will end up with less competition from other affiliate marketers (since so many will ignore this report and continue to churn out thin sites created with little or no focus on the visitor).

This report was apparently given out to people chosen to work for “Google’s spam department” as “Raters” - maybe they should be called ratters ;o).

That’s right, Google apparently has hired people around the world to do web searches, look at the results in Google, and identify those sites that Google should penalize for Spam.

With Google doing such weird stuff lately, and some affiliate sites disappearing without trace, things are starting to make sense.

This “leaked” report details what the raters should look out for, what to label as spam, and what not to label as spam. I am sure that you agree, whether this document is real or not, it is certainly something we should all look at carefully.

Below, I have highlighted the main points of the report. I hope to show you exactly what you need to do to stay on the right side of these “Raters” and of course Google itself.

Before we begin, I just want to say that I don’t think any of this is new. I think that what Google is trying to achieve here is what they have always tried to achieve - relevant quality results without spam. I think that Google’s filters only go so far, and Google realise this. There is nothing as reliable as a human for determining quality, so hiring people to search out spam was the next logical step forward.

OK, let’s look the main points.

(a) the first thing Google instructs its raters to do is read and learn the Google Webmaster Guidelines.

You can read the full guidelines here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Let’s have a quick look and see what Google have to say about what makes a site good.

Summary of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines:

Under the section Design and Content Guidelines, there are some useful tips on how you link the pages of your site together.

GOOGLE: “Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.”

This should make sense. If a page has no links to it, the search engines cannot find it. In addition, links pointing to pages help that page rank well (because of the influence of link text).

GOOGLE: “Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages.”

A sitemap is there to help users, but the search engines use them to find new pages. When you add a new page to your site, add a link on the sitemap, and the search engines will find it. If you want the spiders coming back to your sitemap frequently, consider adding an RSS feed to your sitemap. Last week I mentioned some software that makes adding a feed to your site very simple, so there is no excuse for not using the technology available to you.

GOOGLE: “Create a useful, information-rich site and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.”

Here we have a reference to content. Quality content is the way forward. Page generators that create 1000s of pages with no unique content are struggling to survive.

GOOGLE: “Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.”

An invitation to use primary and secondary keywords.

GOOGLE: “Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in images.”

An indication here how highly Google ranks keywords, especially in text links. For a well-optimized site, I do not recommend using fancy image navigation buttons built with JavaScript. Good old-fashioned text links will help your site get indexed better, and rank higher.

GOOGLE: “Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are descriptive and accurate. “

Reading between the lines - don’t stuff keywords. Write these tags naturally and with ALT tags, make sure they reflect the image (since these tags are used by blind visitors). The title tag is very important, so do use your primary keyword in the title. However, be careful with ALT tags. Keyword stuffing is likely to result in a penalty.

GOOGLE: “Check for broken links and correct HTML.”

Do you have any broken links in your site? These can cause problems. Additionally, you should verify your HTML using a service like HTML Validator. They actually have a free version.

http://www.htmlvalidator.com/

Invalid HTML could be affecting your rankings.

In the Technical Guidelines, there are a few good tips as well:

GOOGLE: “Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If fancy features such as Javascript, cookies, session ID’s, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site. “

Speaks for itself really. A lot of new webmasters like to load their pages with fancy animations, scripts and eye-candy. Avoid them unless absolutely necessary.

Here is an interesting point:

GOOGLE: “Once your site is online, submit it to Google at http://www.google.com/addurl.html“

Many marketers including myself never submit sites at this URL. My advice here is to add a link from a page already in Google, and let Google find the site for itself. I don’t think I have submitted a page at this URL for over 2 years, and my new sites get found within days, using this linking technique.

GOOGLE: “Submit your site to relevant directories such as the Open Directory Project and Yahoo!”

Since directories are highly valued by Google, try to get your site listed in them. These directories will provide a quick route to getting indexed, as well as provide valuable PR and link reputation for your site. The way Google probably sees directories listings is that if the site is there, it is quality (since places like DMoz are edited by humans).

If you don’t read all of the Google guidelines, you should at least print out the Quality Guidelines - Basic principles section.

GOOGLE: “Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users, or present different content to search engines than you display to users.”

Here is a clear warning to webmasters. Don’t use tricks, and don’t over-optimize your pages.

As I always say “if it makes you nervous, don’t do it”.

Google themselves say something very similar here:

GOOGLE: “Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”

Another bomb-shell for many:

GOOGLE: “Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighbourhoods” on the web as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.”

This is a clear indication that Google does not like reciprocal links. In addition, there is a warning there that linking to a penalised site can cause your own site to get penalised. A site that is carefully controlling their linking, will be able to spot bad sites, and avoid penalties. A site that links to all and sundry wont, and are therefore likely to get into trouble.

GOOGLE: “Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our terms of service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.”

This guideline warns against software that automatically checks rankings or other automated tasks. If you are using a rank checker, make sure that software uses the Google API key (which Google introduced to help developers create Google-friendly software) which can then check Google safely. This API Key limits the number of automated queries the software can do, and keeps you within safe “Google limits”.

The Quality Guidelines - Specific recommendations sections should act as your checklist of things not to do. Here is the list:

Avoid hidden text or hidden links.

Don’t employ cloaking or sneaky redirects.

Don’t send automated queries to Google.

Don’t load pages with irrelevant words.

Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.

Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

Keeping within Google’s guidelines is so important if you want your site listed. I highly recommend you print out the entire set of guidelines and read them again and again until you are familiar with them.

OK, back to the Google raters.

Google have told their raters to pay particular attention to:

(b) “The distinction between pages designed for human viewers and those set up for search engine robots”

and

(c) “The specific enumerated manipulative techniques for which sites may be ‘punished’ by Google”

You can see a lot of pages in Google’s index that have been setup purely for search engine robots, or pages that are designed to do nothing more than increase your rankings of other pages.

These are typically pages that hold no interest to human visitors, and are merely there to either manipulate your own rankings, or make revenue from Adsense (or affiliate programs).

Techniques here might include “hidden text”, keyword stuffing, pages containing search engine results (like TE pages), pages that only contain RSS feeds and little else, cloaked pages and doorway pages.

If your page is not interesting for a visitor, and is only setup to get Adsense clicks, or boost rankings of other pages, then these are the pages Google considers spam.

Do this test:

Remove all income generating code from a page (Adsense, affiliate links etc).

Then ask yourself this:

“Is this page still of value to a human visitor?”

If you truthfully answer yes, then you are OK. If you answer no, then that page would be considered spam by a rater. Later in this course, we look at a more comprehensive checklist to see whether your pages are thin or not.