One of the Most Important Words That Will Help You Build Your Business

There are many words that are incredibly important in business. However, lately I think this word tops them all when it comes to building a very successful business… that word is:

Relationships.

You can have seven different business degrees, you can understand every nuance of successful business ventures, and you might have the best product in your industry.

But if you don’t have the ability to develop and grow successful relationships, you’ll find yourself working ten times harder to achieve every goal… and sometimes you won’t be able to achieve them at all.  Dan Kennedy, the millionaire maker, has told me the strategy several different times.  He never lets one day go by without sending a note, a letter, a fax, or a phone call to someone of influence who he wants to connect with. On many occasions, these folks turn into business for him.  This relationship building strategy alone has helped him build a multimillion dollar business.

I discovered this myself over 4 years ago when I started my business, just how important building relationships really is….  Where I benefit from it the most is whenever I’m the product launch manager for a launch I’m doing with a client. It’s amazing how much more successful a JV (joint venture) launch can be when the client has wonderful relationships with influential and powerful people who have big lists that we can email to.  Look at this photo of Paul Lemberg, myself and Brad Peterson. This photo was taken at our launch planning session at Paul’s house for his new course that we’re launching this week.  The three of us have terrific JV relationships that we’ve built really to ensure Paul has an incredibly successful launch. You can check out his launch here.

You don’t have to have a big launch to build relationships. In fact, there are some simple things you can do right now to start building some powerful and influential relationships:

• It’s all about connecting – Get to know them, connect with them on a more personal level, it’s not just about you wanting something from them, or charming or manipulating them.  Be real, this could be a future long term relationship in business and also friendship.
• It’s all about respect and reciprocity- If a person doesn’t respect you, they will not go above and beyond to help you. But if the people you know respect you, they will be there for you in ways that exceed your every expectation. And in business, you simply won’t thrive unless you have those kinds of relationships. When it comes to the law of reciprocity, when you help others, they will feel obligated to reciprocate and help you.  So what I’ve done is gone out of my way to always lend a hand and give others help and advice, which has helped me build many successful relationships in my business.  Just ensure you’re sincere; don’t help them in order to just have them reciprocate. Be genuine; it shows and will go a long way in building more long term relationships.
• Follow-up with them – Remember, communication is key here.  Follow-up with them on social media (Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter), or send them an email. Or better yet, if you have a printed monthly newsletter like I do, add them to your list. This has done wonders for my business. (If you’re not on my free newsletter list, sign up here now.)

So keep this in mind the next time you meet someone at a conference, a workshop, or anywhere.  They could be your next influential relationship where you both can benefit from in each of your businesses.

How to Fine Tune Your Facebook and Turn Your Followers Into Customers

There’s been much talk about Facebook and how it’s growing so big so fast that now Google is starting to be concerned. So look out for some fascinating adventures and changes with this. If you haven’t noticed on the right hand side of Facebook, they’re now heavily promoting their ads feature. The cool thing about this feature is you can highly target your market and who sees your ad. That is pretty cool, something Google can’t do… yet…

So what I wanted to do here is give you a couple of tips that you take to tweak your Facebook page that will help you get noticed and will help you in the long run turn your followers into hot prospects and even paying customers. Before I get started I do want to mention that if you’re seriously interested in turning your Facebook into making money, you’re going to want to get a fan page, not just a personal profile page because your profile page limits you to only 5k followers, whereas your fan page, you can have unlimited pages. In this article, I’m just going to focus on your profile page, which some of these do come into play for your fan pages. I’ll save the fan page tips for another article…

Here are some tips for your profile page. Tip #1 – Add desired copy and links to your profile page. I would highly encourage you to go to the box under your name and your photo (see example photo), and add some copy that reaches your desired audience. Then add your pertinent website links. In the example, I focus on my main website for my core business with some copy. To edit this simply click on the pencil next to it. If you’re putting a website URL, make sure you put in the whole thing like I have, including the http://www.—“ otherwise it won’t be hot linked and go to your site. (You can click on any of the pics here to make them larger so you can see more detail.)

Tip # 2 – Your Personal Information-

In the box under your brief profile, this is where you can show specific personal information or not. (See photo example.) You can have your birthday, but you don’t have let everyone know what year you were born, you can take that out. (Just click on the pencil in the right hand corner to change it.) You can have your city, your relationship status and anything else that you want to show. I also use this box to list all my pertinent websites. Plus I added my links to other social media, like LinkedIn and Twitter. Again, don’t forget you have to put the whole URL, including the “http://” or it won’t be hot linked and go to your sites.

Tip # 3 – If you have a blog, tie it into your profile page. Every time I update my blog it goes to my main profile page and it puts it here in the “notes” section too. I’m not going to go into specifics on actually how to do this as it’s fairly easy. You can just click on your notes section and it should say something about how to add your blog, or simply search Facebook with something like “connect my blog.” It will give you two choices because it needs to verify that it’s YOUR blog. You can either choose to have several people verify that it’s yours (it gives you a check box to do this), or you can simply add a piece of code to your blog. Both work. I opted for the code, it was simpler than waiting on all the people to verify that the blog was in fact mine.

Tip #4 – Use Photos! I bring my camera and my phone everywhere and snap choice shots. In fact, I even have my camera phone hooked into Facebook (no apps required). So after I take a photo, I use my “photos send” tool and I’ve already hooked up Facebook as a choice to send to. This is also easily done. Simply go to “Account,” then go to “Account Settings” then go to “Mobile” to set up your phone to send photos. I always get great comments on photos and they’re always great conversation starters.

These are just a few tips to help you tweak your profile pages and I know they work! Lastly, don’t forget some quick guidelines on Facebook posts- remember keep it interesting, informative, entertaining and add some value, give some helpful links to resources and information. And big caution – if you wouldn’t tell your Mom, then maybe you shouldn’t post it to everyone on Facebook.

As far as selling — Try as you might, don’t out right sell people, you need to earn that privilege. The name of the game in social media marketing is — RELATIONSHIP BUILDING— you simply need to connect with your followers and give them valuable and interesting information. Most of all, have fun and don’t be afraid to take some risks and just be yourself.

P.S. If you’re not a friend on Facebook, just click on my Facebook link on the right of my blog, I’d love to connect with you!

How You Can Turn Social Media into Dollars for Your Business

It seems is all the rage these days and the goal of using it is to ultimately make more money.  You do this by getting more clients and building your list.  What I’m hearing  over and over again is “how do I really turn those Facebook followers into money?” and  “how do I get my hundreds or thousands of Twitter followers to buy from me?”  And another one, “what are some other ways I can use social media to turn all my efforts into real money?”

Well, these are the questions I’m getting asked on an almost daily basis from my clients and colleagues.  So I set out to find some answers and to give you some concrete things that you can do to turn your social media into real money for your business.

Here are the basics, the core of how you can turn your followers into paying customers.  This is a formula that I’ve used that’s helped me tremendously over the years. This formula not only helped me turn prospects into paying clients, it also helped me to get in front of people that I wouldn’t have been able to reach without using the tools of social media.

Here’s my formula:

1. Have a clear goal of what you want to accomplish using social media. For example: I want to grow my Facebook followers to 5k people , and you can go even further, I want to communicate real value, increase my followers and eventually have them buy my products, services, etc.
2. Communicate on a daily basis using social media. I’m going to be brutally honest here, I’ve actually slipped on this one the past few weeks and it shows.  So, do as I say NOT as I do!  (How many time have your heard that?!) I’m back on it again, and the main tool I use to help me is www.ping.fm This is a terrific tool that actually ties my Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. So I go to ping and put my 142 characters and it goes to all three sites, and it’s a beautiful thing.  The other cool thing about ping is that is has a tiny URL built into it, meaning whatever URL you put into it, it shortens it automatically so it will fit into your 142 characters. I basically spend about 20 minutes a day on this in the morning and I’m done
3. Make your communication VALUABLE, entertaining and connect with your followers.  Be interesting, fun, entertaining, and give away ideas and things of value.  Ask yourself these questions –  Is this something I’d talk about at a party? Is this interesting enough to tell other people?  And my favorite: would this be something I’d tell me mom?  (There are some things you just shouldn’t put on social media, in my humble opinion.)
4. 80% of your communication should be about you.  20% should be about your business.  People don’t want to be “sold” anything.  So being yourself, connecting with others on a personal level first, THIS is the key to having people eventually buying from you.  We want to buy and work with people we know and care about, who have the same interests, values, and sense of humor as we do.  So just BE YOURSELF.

That’s it, it TOTALLY IS that simple.

And here’s one more question that I thought might be helpful to answer for you:

• “I don’t really think I’m that interesting, how in the world can I come up with things to say?” If you don’t know what to say, how about ask a question of your followers, this always works.  Some ideas – - “What was your favorite holiday as a child?” “What do you love the most about…?”  ”What’s your biggest frustration right now in your business?” Here are some places to go to find some content ideas too: check out Alltop.com (Guy Kawasaki’s site of top popular blogs on almost every subject) or PopURLs.com - tons of topics and ideas.

Ok, I hope these tips have been helpful.  If you’re hungry for more information, you can also check out a colleague of mine, Don Crowther.  I’ve heard him speak many times on social media and he’s THE expert.  He’s got a new free video series and in the first one he tells you bluntly why social media doesn’t work. If you’re interested, watch “Social Media Doesn’t Work” here.

And a heads up for all you product launch folks, I’d opt into this one just to check out all his free content and to see his launch. Some good friends of mine are working behind the scenes on this one. Let me know what you think!

7 Proven Ways Scarcity will Help Close Your Prospects

“Time is running out, there’s not many left, we’re almost sold out, for a limited time, you better hurry…”  Do any of these phrases sound familiar?  Well, if you’ve ever watched an infomercial , the QVC channel, or know of direct response marketing, you’ll be familiar with all or some of these phrases.   These are key phrases to prompt a prospect to buy your product or service now and not wait.

In marketing terms this strategy is called “Scarcity,” and it’s used a lot!  In fact, I want to recommend a book to you. If you don’t have this, stop now and go here and pick up a copy- Robert Cialdini’s Influence, Science and Practice, 5^th, edition. This is a terrific book on the psychology of selling and he gives you several principles to use in your marketing and selling to help increase your close rate.  One of the strategies he talks about is scarcity. (He also talks about reciprocity, social proof and authority, among other things.)

Scarcity is when you take away your prospect’s chance to get your product or service and it’s VERY effective.  The simple example of how it’s used – you sell your product, service and get them all lathered up to buy where they just have to have it.  Then you let them know that there’s not really many left, or they’ll have to wait several weeks if they don’t buy now, or many other techniques to simply “take away” the benefits of having this product they so badly desire.

Being on the cusp of the 4^th of July holiday, if you’re using “Independence Day” as an opportunity to promote your product or service, this is a terrific way to add some scarcity to your promotion.

Here are 7 ways you can use scarcity in your business right now. Tell your prospect that….

1. There are only 15 seats left for the event.
2. These free bonuses are available ONLY for a limited time.
3. You produced a really small quantity and will run out so they better get them now or they’ll have to wait.
4. This product is only available for a limited time (This is THE main strategy Jeff Walker uses for his Product Launch Formula product. In fact his new 3.0 version of it has only been on the market for 2 days and tonight at midnight, he’s shutting down the cart and you won’t be able to get it.)  This tactic REALLY works.AND don’t forget, if you want this product, you better get it now, before he takes it down.  Also, if you use my link http://www.productlaunchformula.com/sneak/?18017 I’ll give you my new Create Amazing Survey product for FREE. (That’s a $300 value!). It’s a done-for-you survey product I’m calling Create Amazing Surveys, The Done For You Survey System: “Decode your customers’ deepest thoughts for maximum profit and perfect products”.  Surveys are like x-ray vision into your clients and prospects brains so you know exactly what they’re thinking, what they want and you can create it for them. It will be a physical product that I will ship out to you. I’ll have a big swipe file of proven surveys, email follow-ups, free gift ideas and a bunch more stuff too…My launch for this product won’t be until late August or possibly September.
5. You only printed 100 copies, so if they want it they better act now.
6. You only have room in the course for 200 people and you can’t add any more because you don’t want to compromise your customer service and want to ensure everyone is well taken care of.
7. This product is only available at this discounted price for a limited time.
8. Bonus – In a nutshell – use these tactics – put a date/time limit on your offer, put a number limit on the amount of sales, put a limit on your bonuses offered, or a limit on your discounted price.

The real key to scarcity is that it’s a real emotional hot button for people because opportunities seem more valuable when they are less available or scarce. Psychology theory proves that people are more motivated by the thought of losing something than gaining something.  A good example – if you have kids, think about the holiday time and when you want to get your kids some toys.  The toy market uses scarcity big time to create buying frenzies and sold out items.  There was more than one occasion that we had to get another toy because the one my son wanted was totally sold out.

So the moral of the story- see how you can incorporate scarcity into your business and use it in a way that makes sense and works for you and your business!