This is an extract from the 30 Day LinkedIn Challenge by @nigel_morgan

The chances are you own a small business and creating a Company Profile on LinkedIn is a way to punch above your weight and showcase the range of services you offer and it also, like Groups, gives people the chance to see what you are about without being connected.

To get started click ‘Companies’ on the horizontal menu and you’ll see from here you can search for companies and it is worth searching for a few as you can ‘follow’ them and get any updates, just as people can from your company page – which will take shape when you click ‘Add Company’ over on the top right, below the search panel.

You’ll need to add the company name and an email address at the company and verify that you represent the business. Follow the instructions and create a nice description of your business in line with the rest of your profile and of course your website.

As you did with your personal profile you can add key skills here and you need to add details of your company too. You can also add an RSS field for your blog which will mean every time you post an new blog it will automatically appear on your company page for visitors to see and will automatically update those people who follow your business, who you may not actually be connected to.

Once you have made all these changes click on publish and your company page is live!

Clicking on the right hand side admin tools button will take you back into the interface and this time click on ‘Products and Services’ and here you can add precisely that with a description, images and web link to your own site or where there are more details of the service. You can also add links to a YouTube video if you have one, which will then appear on the page too.

There is another tab worth exploring. ‘Network Statistics’ will reveal how many people are visiting your company page, which you are likely to find surprisingly high after you have such an active profile.

Like this post? Don’t forget to check out the 30 Day LinkedIn Challenge, and kickstart your LinkedIn use in just 30 days!

This is an extract from the 30 Day Sales Challenge by @GaryGorman

A great way of growing your customer base and your sales is to get building up a library of customer testimonials.

One of the biggest challenges I think you might face in getting a new customer is SCEPTICISM. They will be thinking ‘Is this business as good as they seem?’ ‘Can I believe them?’

Well…testimonials help to reassure prospective customers by providing feedback from someone who has used your product or service before.

Why does this matter?

Research shows that only 3 out of ten people believe advertising is ‘truthful’.

However 9 out of 10 people believe brand recommendations from friends.

(source: Hubspot.com)

Now testimonials might not be from your friends I realise (although why shouldn’t your customers become your friends?) but nevertheless they enhance your credibility and your business ‘currency’ making a prospective customer more likely to buy from you.

But to really turbo charge your testimonials they need to be SPECIFIC. Just saying what a nice person you are won’t really make much difference to be honest. People want to know the impact your product or service had BEFORE they used you and then AFTER they have used you (ideally with some figures to back it up).

For example a great testimonial might look like this:

“Before I worked with Sarah I felt confused as to how to make my website work for me.

Having asked Sarah for help I now know exactly what to do, how to improve it going forward and already I’ve had 20% more visitors to my site in two weeks”

This is :

• Specific
• Emotional…it uses the term ‘confused’ which is something many people can relate to
• Based around before & after

Today I want you to contact ten of your current and previous customers and ask them if  they’d provide a testimonial for you. Tell them to word it : ‘Before I used…. I felt…… Now I feel……and my business has grown by x%’

If necessary offer to write one for them as well in return.

Commit to getting a minimum of two new testimonials a month and maybe add them to your website, brochure, e-mail signature etc. as soon as you get them

Want to know more about how to improve your small business sales? Get the 30 Day Sales Challenge ebook now below:

30 Day Sales Challenge - eBook

Billed as the sales guide for the non sales person, this Challenge will: Take you from feeling worried about selling to loving helping people buy Teach you easy ways to get customers to come to you. Help you to find how to close more sales with less effort. Show you how to plan and structure a successful sales meeting. Help you to know how to manage sales objections successfully so the customer wants to buy from you, and more!

This is an extract from the 30 Day Starting up as a Virtual Assistant Challenge by @HelenStothard

Image via CrunchBase

There is nothing worse than seeing someone in business using a Hotmail or Yahoo email address, something I will keep talking about throughout the challenge. You are not setting up as a back bedroom worker, you are setting up as a proper business and need to be perceived that way.

I am also going to suggest that you really consider your existing email client if you’re using something like Outlook. You’re setting up as a Virtual Assistant. This means that provided you have an internet connection you can work from anywhere in the world! If you use Outlook then you lose that capability as you are stuck with the machine that it’s installed on.

What happens if your computer dies? How quickly can you be back up and working again?

My suggestion, and of course it’s up to you, would be to set up a free Google Apps account.

You may have a Googlemail account but did you know you can get a free Google Apps account? This allows you to have your emails linked to your domain name, share access to documents online, and even share calendars.

Gmail

I moved away from Outlook at the beginning of 2011 because I was tired of losing information when I changed pc and couldn’t remember how to restore the backup file, or the pc crashed and refused to restore Outlook, but mainly because I wanted to access my email from wherever I was and for it to look the same and be the same. In other words if I hit delete on my phone I wanted it to delete on my laptop as well. I wanted one list of contacts, I wanted to be able to use my phone, netbook, tablet or laptop or even a friend’s computer if I was away from the office. I’m not greedy, I just like to stay connected. Google allows me to do this. To start with I couldn’t quite give up my Outlook folders so used the Outlook/Google sync tool that linked my email and calendar, but once I understood the ‘labels’ in Google there was no excuse not to make the move permanently.

My email now filters itself as it arrives, email relating to client A goes into a folder specifically for client A, newsletters go into a folder to be read later when I have time, certain senders go into an ‘Urgent’ folder, and there’s even a filter for my daughter’s school who now use email to communicate with me.

Calendar

Google calendar is an excellent tool if you wish to work virtually as you can allow access to other users, who can either view your calendar or view and edit. This means that as a Virtual Assistant you can book meetings on your client’s behalf and they automatically appear in your client’s calendar.

Another useful feature of Google Calendar is the reminder service. You can choose when you wish to have a reminder arrive and in what format. This means that you can not only book an appointment on behalf of your client but you can set a reminder to go to their mobile phone several hours before as well. Other options include pop up or email reminders.

Google Docs

If you have a document that both you and your client need to edit then Google Docs is an excellent idea, it allows for word and excel, albeit without a lot of the pretty formatting, and the best part of it is that you can both edit the document at the same time. It is kind of spooky the first few times that you do this but is so much better than trying to share a document via email, with different revisions. This way there is one document and all the changes are made on the one document.

Domain Name

Google Apps works on your domain name, the one we bought yesterday just for our email through 123Reg.co.uk.

As you go through the sign up process you will be able to create your personal email address that is linked to your domain name.

I have helen@hlsbs.co.uk, I also have accounts@hlsbs.co.uk for when clients send me receipts etc for bookkeeping. With the free version of Google Apps you can have several email accounts or users. This will be very useful later on in your business when you need to start working with Associates (an Associate is another Virtual Assistant who you subcontract work to when you have too much on, or if you don’t have that particular skill).

Google Apps will guide you through the sign up process. You will need to log into your 123Reg control panel and make some changes but these are explained to you as part of the set up process.

Once your email has been set up you will be able to access your email via the internet, and download a shortcut to your desktop which will make Google work in just the same way your Outlook used to work.

When you decide on your email address don’t go with the generic style such as info@ or help@, everyone does that. Use your name, it’s more personal and more reflective of the type of service that you are offering your clients. In my opinion an info@ or sales@ email is the one that was given to the office junior as they hadn’t yet earned an email address of their own.

We need to set up our email account today as we will need our email address quite often during the rest of the challenge.

Challenge Ten

Today’s challenge therefore is to set up your free Google Apps account (they offer a free professional trial but professional charges for each individual email address so this isn’t necessarily the best option for your new business, stick with the free for now).

http://www.google.com/apps/

Scroll down the page until you find the Google Apps Free in the footer at the bottom of the page and sign up for your free account.

Because you will need to carry out the amendments to your domain name this is the only challenge we have set for today. If you get stuck drop me a line helen@hlsbs.co.uk and I will see if I can offer any advice.

You can see the rest of the Challenges by buying the ebook below:

30 Day Setting Up As A VA Challenge - eBook

With the 30 Day Setting up as a Virtual Assistant challenge author Helen Stothard will share her experience of running a successful business and help you over the pitfalls that many start up Virtual Assistant businesses encounter. Out now!

This is an extract from the 30 Day Sales Challenge by @GaryGorman

Cover of Who Cares

When selling it’s often very easy to fall into the trap of talking about features rather than benefits. I bet you can think of a time when you went out to buy something and a sales person blew your mind with so many features and jargon.

Let’s look further at what a feature is.

A FEATURE is what a product actually is….an intrinsic characteristic of the product or service.

Examples of features are:

• Priced at £19.99
• Coloured red
• Transparent
• Compact
• Lightweight
• TV advertised
• The market leader
• The latest technology
• Covered by a three year warranty

………All very interesting and relevant but, frankly, of no real concern to a buyer who really wants to know, certainly initially, what the product will actually do for him/her.

In other words, the BENEFIT it brings….the end result.

For example: “This promotion will increase your sales (feature) which means that you will get increased turnover and profit” (benefit).

Or…. “The new floor display unit is compact and eye catching (feature) which means that you will get more impulse sales at the till points (benefit), therefore increasing your profits” (benefit)

Or…”If you order today we will be able to deliver next week (feature) which means that you will have your new car just in time for your family holiday” (benefit)

Note that a real quick way of changing a feature into a benefit is to use the linking words ‘which means…’ or, if you prefer, ‘which gives you’….

Never forget….the product features are important but they are unlikely to clinch the sale without making the link in the customer’s mind to the specific need they have shared (through answers to your questions) that your product addresses and the benefit they will derive from using it.

That is what the customer is really interested in!

Challenge Eleven

Write down all the possible features of your product or service. You should be able to think of lots.

Now add a benefit to each feature by using the linking phrase ‘which means that…’

Note that some features could have the same benefit. If they do that’s fine.

30 Day Sales Challenge - eBook

Billed as the sales guide for the non sales person, this Challenge will: Take you from feeling worried about selling to loving helping people buy Teach you easy ways to get customers to come to you. Help you to find how to close more sales with less effort. Show you how to plan and structure a successful sales meeting. Help you to know how to manage sales objections successfully so the customer wants to buy from you, and more!

This is an extract from the 30 Day SEO Challenge by @NikkiPilkington

It’s important that you monitor your search engine listings, and there are many tools out there to do this.

However, I always recommend Raven Tools

Raven Tools will tell you what your positions are now, how they’ve moved since your last report, whether they’ve gone up or down, how many visitors you’ve had from each phrase, and a whole lot more.

It will also track your Facebook and Twitter account (and Google Analytics)  in the same report, so a lot of your marketing info in one neat report, emailed to you daily, weekly, monthly etc.

Your challenge today is to either sign up with Raven, (there’s a free trial) or to find another system that will track your listings on an ongoing basis. You should by now have started moving up the listings, and it’s important that you are able to see any changes.

If you use a different system to check your rankings, please drop me a line to nikki@nikkipilkington.com and let me know so I can check it out and maybe write about it (crediting you of course!)

30 day SEO Challenge - eBook

In this Challenge you’ll learn about: Finding the right keyphrases Making META tags work for you Why Titles matter How to get front page Google listings and keep them Whether link building campaigns are worth it How to get links to your site that really make a difference and more!

This is an extract from the 30 Day LinkedIn Challenge by @Nigel_Morgan

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LinkedIn (Photo credit: Christopher S. Penn)

Have you ever raised a dubious eyebrow when you see testimonials on a website? You know what I mean, those glowing words that are almost too good to be true and are only affirmed by practically anonymous sets of initials.

They are a waste of time – unlike recommendations on LinkedIn, which, properly done can land you piping hot business leads in a heartbeat.

On LinkedIn you can give recommendations and you can be given recommendations and there is a good argument that you should give in order to receive. You can also request them and we’ll be looking at that over the next two days, but first, what makes a good recommendation?

You would hope this author has plenty of recommendations and you may well have already checked them out, they show what we consider ‘best practice’.

For example, this is one from an insurance brokerage that Morgan PR created a social media strategy for:

“Like so many businesses, at Macbeth Insurance we knew that we needed to add social media to our marketing mix and were lucky enough to meet Nigel Morgan through networking and he was able to explain how fundamental social media is not just to marketing, but to public relations too.

Nigel spent time understanding our approach to business and what we want to achieve and created a Social Media and PR strategy for us that is a roadmap to help the firm use these tools to fulfil our wider business goals.

The strategy is a living document that we constantly refer to as we continue to develop our use of social media – always with blogging at the heart, and using the other platforms to drive traffic to our website and to build the relationships that will often lead to business and referrals. Nigel continues to support us too and often an email will arrive with a topical insurance-related blog idea.

If you need to understand social media and want practical solutions to how best to use it, I recommend you contact Nigel Morgan.”

Do you see how it comprehensively it covers the services we offer and takes the readeron a journey that illustrates how we might work with them? Also it uses key phrases that help with searches on the website. PR, Social Media etc.

This is much more useful than a short recommendation that says you are marvellous and normally only happens with truly satisfied clients.

As an aside, case studies that are in the first person from the client and take the reader on a journey, knocking down barriers to purchase and clearly attributable are way better than testimonials.

Take some time to read this author’s recommendations and have in mind what you’d like yours to say because tomorrow we look at giving and getting recommendations.

Like this post? Get the rest of the book by clicking Add to cart below

30 Day LinkedIn Challenge - eBook

It's out now!

This is an extract from the 30 Day Sales Challenge by @GaryGorman

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No Cold Calling Zone (Photo credit: markhillary)

Anyone that knows me well will know I’m not a great fan of cold calling. It can be incredibly time consuming unless it’s done well.

I prefer to use the time better by marketing or positioning my business so that customers seek me out. (Refer back to Challenge Five if you need to remind yourself of the difference between prospecting and positioning).

Having said that cold calling certainly should have a place in your sales toolkit as it can often be highly successful.

A few things that might help you when cold calling:

• Acknowledge that you might feel awkward. Everyone does. You are not alone.
• Focus on what you want to achieve and how well it will go.
• Assume that the customer will be interested in your solution to a problem they have.
• Stand up. You’ll feel less tense and you’re voice will sound stronger.
• Get straight to the point. Don’t say ‘How are you today?’ They know you’re not really interested! You will only have 15 to 20 seconds before they lose patience so: Introduce yourself, Check if it’s a good time to speak, tell them the real topline benefit as to why they should listen to you and how long you will need to do this.
• Speak normally. Imagine you’re speaking face to face. Communicate the points you want to make but with your own personality. People buy from people and they prefer to do business with people they like.
• Anticipate any concerns or reservations they might have and have some answers ready just in case.
• Keep your eyes on the prize whether this is an order, a follow up phone call, a meeting or simply permission to send them your ‘ethical bribe’. Whatever the call to action is …..ASK THEM TO TAKE THE NEXT STEP. Thank them for their time and re-confirm what will happen next.

Challenge Twenty

Clearly identify what you want the person to do when you cold call them (agree to meet, give you their e-mail address etc)

Focus on this objective and ask a friend or colleague if they can play the part of the contact while you practice a cold call.

Practice this every day for the remainder of the 30 Day Challenge until it becomes more natural

Set yourself a target of making x number of cold calls each day or week….and stick at it.

You won’t be successful every time…learn from it…dust yourself off…and try again!

To see the other 29 days’ Challenges, get hold of the ebook now, below!

30 Day Sales Challenge - eBook

Billed as the sales guide for the non sales person, this Challenge will: Take you from feeling worried about selling to loving helping people buy Teach you easy ways to get customers to come to you. Help you to find how to close more sales with less effort. Show you how to plan and structure a successful sales meeting. Help you to know how to manage sales objections successfully so the customer wants to buy from you, and more!

This is an extract from the 30 Day SEO Challenge by @NikkiPilkington

A sad face. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Your challenge today is to use your web stats or analytics to find out the pages that AREN’T performing well.

If you know that some of your pages are doing well in the search engines, but your analytics software is showing hardly any visitors, then you’re targeting the wrong keyphrases.

It’s no good being number one if no-one is searching for you!

So make a list of the pages that aren’t getting many visitors, then take a look at them and see whether you could use different keyphrases, or if there is something else you could change.

Not sure about this one? Drop me a line with the page addresses and I’ll take a look

Want to know more? Buy the 30 Day SEO Challenge today:

30 day SEO Challenge - eBook

In this Challenge you’ll learn about: Finding the right keyphrases Making META tags work for you Why Titles matter How to get front page Google listings and keep them Whether link building campaigns are worth it How to get links to your site that really make a difference and more!

This is an extract from the 30 Day PR Challenge, by @Nigel_Morgan

It's a simple picture of a magnifying glass. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Politically speaking when you ride someone’s coattails you achieve your goals without any real effort, instead latching on to someone else. Much is the same with news stories and PR and as such you need to do so with a lightness of touch.

Whether you watch the rolling 24 hour news agenda or that of your weekly newspaper, you will see news stories that strike a chord, that resonate with you. This can be for any number of reasons and the ones to spot are opportunities to promote your experience and your expertise.

Sometimes you will find yourself thrust into the limelight and tomorrow we talk about becoming a citizen journalist; however coattails are much more about leaping on the news bandwagon, preferably before it becomes a bandwagon!

Where this is particularly important is bringing a national news agenda to your local newspapers.

Often they will be looking for a way to bring a story home to boost sales and link to that national agenda and will reward you if you can help them.

Major sporting events are a good path to publicity much like your business being involved in providing a product or service that is suddenly in the limelight, even obliquely.

So look for those local links that involve you and your business – and obviously stick to the good news stories unless you help out those in peril! Take a moment to think about missed opportunities. The transient nature of the news agenda means you probably have, and if you can identify these you will be in a better position to spot future chances to ride news coattails.

Citizen journalist will be brandishing their press credentials tomorrow!

The 30 Day PR Challenge is available now:

30 Day PR Challenge - eBook

This new 30 Day PR Challenge will help you through the minefield of PR and aid you in getting the exposure your company deserves! Written by Nigel Morgan @nigel_morgan of Morgan PR, it's an essential challenge for any business.

Price: £8.00 (USD $12.00)

This is an extract from the 30 Day Sales Challenge by @GaryGorman

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Bird - Seagull enjoying the sunset (Photo credit: blmiers2)

Today I want to tell you a story….

One day two young boys were playing in their back garden and decided to play a game of ‘catch the birds’. The first boy quickly started running around the garden trying to grab the birds that were in the trees and bushes. As you can imagine all this did was scare the birds away, leaving the first boy all hot, sweaty and empty handed.

Meanwhile the second boy had gone to the garden shed where he remembered that his parents kept some bird seed (which, for the purposes of the story, is handy!) Standing in the middle of the garden with his arms out and holding some seed in each hand, the second boy quickly began to have birds settling on his fingers and eating from his hands.

The second boy realised that in order to attract the birds he needed to have something that they wanted. Then it was just a case of waiting until the birds came to him.

This is so much like growing your business. Do you run around everywhere ‘prospecting’ like mad hoping to capture a new customer at some point? Or do you ‘position’ your business, giving your customers what they want and encouraging them to come to you?

One of the basic rules of sales and marketing is to find first of all what the customer needs and then produce a product or service that fills that need.

So my challenge today to you is to write down the following:

• What does your target market need RIGHT NOW?
• What’s a real burning issue for them?
• What is currently keeping them awake at night?
• What do you have or what could you quickly produce that would help customers to solve that burning need RIGHT NOW?
• Write down exactly what needs to happen to bring this solution to the market?
• Who needs to do what and when?

Want to know what comes next? Get the 30 Day Sales Challenge below:

30 Day Sales Challenge - eBook

Billed as the sales guide for the non sales person, this Challenge will: Take you from feeling worried about selling to loving helping people buy Teach you easy ways to get customers to come to you. Help you to find how to close more sales with less effort. Show you how to plan and structure a successful sales meeting. Help you to know how to manage sales objections successfully so the customer wants to buy from you, and more!