INCREASE SALES WITH REFERRAL PROSPECTING

1. Ask for specific referrals to narrow the customer’s focus.
2. Gather as much information about the referral as possible.
3. Ask your customer for permission to use his or her name.
4. Ask your customer for help in obtaining an appointment with the referral.
5. Contact the referral as soon as possible.
6. Inform your customer about the outcome of the contact.
7. Build referral alliances (this can be through sources such as tip clubs, centres of influence, key people in the industry).
8. Prospect for referrals just like you prospect for sales leads.
9. Rank your referrals as you do your customers:

• A for hot (you know a lot about the referral and the referrer introduces you)
• B for warm (you know little about the referral and you can use the referrer’s name).
• C for cold (you know nothing about the referral, and you can’t use the referrer’s name).

10. Seek internal referrals (other departments, locations, divisions, branches and subsidiaries).

Also, Take a listen to our 5CD and DVD package ‘Finding New Clients and Business’, filled with tips, techniques and ideas to increase productivity

The Importance of Video Marketing

The Importance of Video Marketing

Video is an extremely powerful marketing tool, and one that you can’t afford to ignore. It can significantly improve the ability of people to find you on the Web, and it’s also a very effective and memorable way to tell a story.

Tell your Story. There’s nothing like the raw power of visual and audio to make a story memorable. We are all  are visual learners, and nothing grabs and holds our attention as much as a narrative told in moving images. In fact, this is the best way to convey complex ideas. Video can be used to tell the story of your brand, provide information that helps clients solve a problem, or explain trends.

YouTube offers a search advantage. There are other video sites, but my preference is YouTube. It’s the second most popular search engine, which means that if someone is looking for instructions on how to complete a task, that’s where they’re heading. But, more importantly, Google owns YouTube and gives it some preference in its search algorithm. 

This improves the odds that your video will end up on the first page of search results. I have 500 videos on YouTube and find it one of the best free advertising mediums.

How Long. The top 10 videos that are shared most often have an average run time of 4 minutes, but try for about two minutes as this is the attention span of most people.

Look and Feel. Aim to create videos that fit your brand. Take a look at the great success of Will it Blend and the EvianBabies

Viral subjects. While funny and surprising videos have a greater success rate at going viral, there are many other approaches that can be very successful for your brand.

• How to
• Interviews
• Testimonials
• Technical explanations
• Product demonstrations
• Staff training
• Meet the team

What makes a great website | Sales Technology Speaker

How to Create Great Headlines | Technology Marketing Tips

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Frank Furness Testimonials | Patrick Knowles Designs

FaceBook Strategies for Health & Fitness Clubs

What are you doing today that is better and different to your competitors? How do you find and attract new members? If you are not doing anything that differentiates you from the competition, you could be losing out on a huge amount of potential business.

One of the easiest methods to differentiate your club is to embrace technology and social media. It is easy and can save you time, money and headaches.

One of my favorite social media sites is Facebook and here are some tips, strategies and applications that can help your club immediately:

Today, there are thousands of applications on Facebook that can help your club in marketing.

BizGreet

BizGreet is the only application on Facebook that can offer a personalization greeting.

It goes beyond just greeting your members and potential members with their first name. Since Facebook offers plenty of information about your prospects (whether they’re married, their interests, etc.), you could also use such information to your advantage and personalize the greeting.

Menutab

This application is a MUST-HAVE if your club has a food and beverage area. It’s free, easy to use and most importantly, it is what your members are looking for before they plan their after tennis dinner.

Calliflower

With Calliflower, you can organize business meetings anytime, anywhere with an internet access. The interface is user-friendly can you can set up a meeting with your team in minutes.

SlideShare

Create a PowerPoint presentation showcasing all the benefits and features of your club and then upload it to www.slideshare.com

If you’re already using SlideShare to share your presentations online then you can connect the account to your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles.

Promotions

Developed by Wildfire Interactive Inc, this application will enable you to easily create and launch promotions and marketing campaigns over Facebook for a budget of less than $50.

Leveraging on an application like this for your Facebook marketing activities will skyrocket your branding success mainly because you will have a unique promotion activity that is built around your club’s brand or product.

Polls

This is another great application to have on your Facebook Page. By having regular polls, your customers will constantly find your Page interactive and fun.

Plus, it’s a great way to find out what your prospects are looking for, and you as the club owner or marketer can easily deliver to their desires.

Also remember that you can also use polls on LinkedIn

YouTube Video Box

YouTube Video Box is an application which you can add as a tab to your Page if you constantly produce videos as part of your entire social media marketing campaign.

Just imagine all videos that can be showcasing your club: facilities, training tips, meet the team, expert advice, health tips, tennis tips and plenty more.

I guarantee that your competition will not have this….

StoreFront Social

If you have a shop at the club and want to increase online sales, this application is guaranteed to increase your sales revenue for you because it provides another avenue for your customers to see your latest range of products.

Frank Furness CSP CFP is a professional speaker specialising in sales and social media. He has educated, entertained and inspired audiences in 52 countries. His publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. For more information or to sign up for the free ‘Sales Tips & Ideas’ newsletter, email frank@frankfurness.com or telephone+ 44 (0) 1923 248200. http://www.frankfurness.com

NOTE: You're welcome to "reprint" this article online as long as it remains complete and unaltered (including the "about the author" info at the end), and you send a copy of your reprint to frank@frankfurness.com Take a look at other articles, free software and e-Books at http://www.frankfurness.com/

YouTube Strategies for Business

What are you doing today that is better and different to your competitors? How do you find and attract new clients?

If you are not doing anything that differentiates you from the competition, you could be losing out on a huge amount of potential business.

One of the easiest methods to differentiate your company is to embrace technology and social media. It is easy and can save you time, money and headaches.

One of my favorite social media sites is YouTube and here are some tips, strategies and ideas that can help your business immediately:

·         Have your own YouTube Channel and base the channel name on keywords e.g. Health and Fitness London – IT Security New York

·         Make sure the sound on your videos is clear and mixed and edited well so users can clearly hear it. One of the best inexpensive cameras with great sound is the Zoom Q3 HD.

·         Create well thought out, professional style videos that are edited properly.

o   Use edit suites like Adobe VC3, Techsmith Camtasia and Sony Vegas for PCs and IMovie, Screenflow and Camtasia for Mac.

·         Keep your content funny, engaging, and informative so that it will keep viewers watching until the end of the video.

·         Embed your logo and website into the video. Take a look at http://youtube.com/salestips

·         Keep the resolution of the video as high as possible, at a minimum 800 by 600.

·         Be yourself. Don’t lose sight of the purpose and mission of the video. Think of yourself speaking to a friend in a pub or coffee shop and use the same tone and expressions.

·         Practice before posting the final video. Do a few dry runs before taping and publishing and remember if you are boring, the video will be boring to viewers.

·         Do more than just talk. People don’t want to sit and watch a person just talking to the camera. Make it exciting and interesting as well as fun.

·         Limit your video length to two minutes maximum, most viewers lose interest after this. Take a look at any move, the scenes change around every minute.

·         Use the ‘problem, solution and action’ method of filming. E.g. Have you been trying diets and still can’t move that fat (problem) – here are 3 exercises to help you right now (solution) and sign up for our free newsletter or call us to find out about our gym membership (solution)

·         At the end of each video, ask your viewers to ‘like’ the video and comment, this helps with your rankings.

·         If you are going to use music, use copyright free music, get some at www.frankfurnessresources.com/copyrightfreemusic

·         Grab viewers by integrating important keywords into the title. This will help to boost the search engine results.

·         Use keywords in the tags that will lead potential clients to your videos and make the first line of your description is your website address as that is what viewers will see immediately below the video.

·         Choose the most relevant category

·         Make the videos are  viral, and spread them  to as many websites as possible. Once you have uploaded the video, click on the ‘share’ button and then share the video with Twitter, Facebook your Blog and any other social media sites that your business uses.

Remember to use the videos in different ways

·         Videos on the website

·         Meet the team

·         Video testimonials

·         Staff training

·         Expert advice

·         Tip of the week

Frank Furness CSP CFP is a professional speaker specialising in sales and social media. He has educated, entertained and inspired audiences in 52 countries. Take a look at his latest resource, http://www.technologytoolsforbusiness.com  or to book Frank to speak at your next conference email frank@frankfurness.com or telephone+ 44 (0) 1923 248200. http://www.frankfurness.com

NOTE: You are  welcome to "reprint" this article online as long as it remains complete and unaltered (including the "about the author" info at the end), and you send a copy of your reprint to frank@frankfurness.com