Ideas to Success

Part one in a two part series on generating sales by using several simple and effective tactics. In this podcast Ben and Christian debate how pricing will effect your online sales and how several other factors such as affiliate marketers can radically increase your sales.

All start-ups need to keep their cost down, just to stay alive. In honor of our frugal listeners we have compiled a this short list of software and services that, even though not all are free, will help you save money. Zoho has a huge list of software and services available, including reporting, a CRM and Invoicing. Dropbox is a virtual hard drive service. Mozy we use to save important documents. It is a safe secure online backup service. Google Docs is another great resource, as are all of the google tools. Portable Apps allows you can carry your favorite computer programs along with all of your bookmarks, settings, email and more with you. Use them on any Windows computer. All without leaving any personal data behind. Mail Chimp makes it easy to send email newsletters to your customers, manage your subscriber lists, and track campaign performance. It is a free online email marketing solution. Fulfillment by Amazon is an innovative service, you send inventory directly to Amazon where it is stored and managed in a secure, climate-controlled facility. When orders are received, Amazon will professionally pick, pack and ship the product directly to your customer. Skype you should already know about, but if you don’t it a free online phone service and chat application. There is a pay service as well. But primarily we use it to track and record conversations for free. Business Nation has a library of free and fee based legal forms such as lease and sales agreements. It also has directories of services, opportinities and a business library. Open Office is the Free and open productivity suite. It has software that mimics all of the Microsoft Office applications. GIMP according to their website GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc. GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted. This is by no means a comprehensive list, if you know of a valuable free tool for business users please share it by leaving a comment

I am often amazed to still find websites where serious money has been spent, on design, on SEO work but are a complete and utter failure when it comes to providing value to the end user. In this Success U podcast we explain why Content is King. There is much more information and many more podcasts and blog posts at the main site http://succesu.com

In this podcast the Innovocus team explains the basics of using social media for your business. By creating value for your readers and followers you gain prestige in the community. By doing this you actually create a demand for your expertise. There are a few things you need to understand in regards to social media for business and we cover them in this podcast. Check out our blog and podcast at http://succesu.com

Every great invention or idea has run up against the same first roadblock… fear. The would be entrepreneur fears the unknown, fears to possibility of failure and fears the innate risks involved with a new venture. So, what separates the entrepreneur from just some person with a good idea? The successful professional knows the steps to define the unknown and by doing so they eliminate fear.

In this podcast Andrew Bennett of BenSpark.com and NotAFamousBlogger.com joins Ben and Christian to discuss online self marketing and how to successfully build an online community.

Tools such as Twitter, Digg, and Facebook are Horrible sales vehicles. In fact using them poorly can do more to hurt your brand than help it. Social Media as a tool for business is much more useful to your PR group than it is to your sales team. At best it is a soft sale tool, that is not to say it cannot be part of a holistic solution that radically increases sales. In fact it can be a part of an overall system that is very effective in driving sales. The trick is knowing how to use them. Most people immediately try pushing a product or service, and end up with no followers or friends. Some try and tweet advertisements. All of them fail for one simple reason. They are not creating value or giving an interesting reason for anyone to care what they are doing. That is really all Social Media comes down to, be interesting.

There is a direct relationship between good UI design and increased sales. On the flip side, bad design inevitably hurts sales. Pretty obvious if you think about it, but why? Quite simply, good user interface design is primarily about giving the user what the expect, where they expect it in a pleasing way. Doing this one thing wrong can destroy your sales on several fronts. The first and most obvious way is due to angry customers who are not satisfied with the product. They will cause you no end of headache. Even if they don’t end up asking for their money back, they will cost you considerable time and money in tech support. And this tech support need will invariably lead to revisions, with their additional development costs. The other major front is the loss of customers before they buy. So even if you don’t have a piece of software, bad UI design on your website can destroy your sales. Conversion in the web is soley a factor of good or bad design. Taking the time to understand your clients needs and expectations allows you to deliver on these, and thus have a happy customer. A web user becomes a customer only when they find what they are looking for, simple as that. Your goal in creating solid usability for a website is to try not to hide what they are looking for, without creating choice paralysis. Managing your SEO work and your CPC , SEM and CPM campaigns to always deliver the user to a page that is optimized for what they expect, and making it obvious where they should go to act on what-ever it was that drew them to your site in the first place. If you run an advertisement that allows the user to download a free white-paper when they sign up for a newsletter, then make the sign-up the dominant element on the page. Anything other than giving them exactly what they want is effectively chasing them away, more than likely never to return.

The success or failure of most start-ups can be determined even before the company is formed, just by looking at the founding team. So how do you create a team that is likely to be successful? First “Know thy self”. Without really knowing yourself, your strengths, your weaknesses and what drives you. You cannot hope to build a team that will motivate, encourage and strengthen your short-comings. There are a great many tools for “defining” personality types such as the Jung Myers Briggs, Kiersey and the EQ. Each of these have their strengths and weaknesses. And they all do a good enough job for what you need. Determine where you fit and find people that are strong where you are weak. To use Basketball as an analogy, if you are a great Center, building a team full of other centers will not be as strong as a team made up of a Center, a couple of Guards and a couple of Forwards. And the best team will have great players at all positions. You cannot be the master of all trades, bu from time to time you might need to be everything from Chief Cook to Bottle Washer. When I build a team I look for well rounded people that can handle multiple jobs but who are expert at one.

Last week we talked about Viral Marketing from a stratospheric level, this time we go a little more in depth and give a great example of a company building a program that will definitely create a viral effect. What it all boils down to is understanding the value you offer your customers, and packaging that in such a way as to motivate them to tell others about you. As always you can view all of our podcasts, blog posts and more at Success U. Don't miss our ever popular short podcasts: Life Lessons