Kristie T’s Home Business Blog Fun, mom-geared work-at-home tips and advice on making money on the net.

I’m sure your library is probably as crazy as mine. But sometimes I think I have so many awesome resources, that I forget what I have. Someone once said that the only thing that will be different 10 years from now is the books you read, the people you meet, and the experiences you have.

I have more the enough books that I’ve read - that’s for sure. My goal for next year is to IMPLEMENT what I have read. No more learning (which will be hard - I love learning)

Well, here are the books I have in my library. I have read 80% of them. The others, need to sit down and read.

Is your library as big as this? - And there are LOTS of ebooks and books in the basement haven’t even accounted for here.

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Who lives in a pineapple under the sea? If you know the answer to odds are that you are a Spongebob Squarepants fan (like me!)
I was watching Spongebob with the kids this morning and they had a fun business theme. I wanted to share the story with you.

Spongebob and Patrick were looking at a magazine called “Fancy Living.” In the magazine they showed this guy that was so rich that he had a swimming pool in his swimming pool. And Spongebob wondered “How does anyone get that kind of money?” Then Squidward said it was because they were entreprenuers.

Of course Spongebob asked, “What are entrepreneurs?”

To which Squidward says, “They sell things to people. The kind of things people want to buy.”

So Spongebob and Patrick decided to become entrepreneurs by selling chocolate bars door to door.

In their adventure they encounter a conman who convinces them that they need to buy velvet lined candy bar holding cases to hold their candy bars in. (Kind of reminds you of attending high price events that are sell-a-thons huh? They convince you that you need this product, that coaching, this tool if you are going to succeed as an entrepreneur)

And of course Spongebob and Patrick reply in unison
“We need them, we need them!” So they bought the candy bar holders went on their merry way to sell chocolate bars and get rich. As they skip off they say, “Fancy living, here we come!”

To which the conman replies, “SUCKERS!”

If there is one thing I have learned in my entrepreneurial journey it’s that you don’t need to buy every ebook out there. It is far better to buy one ebook, and APPLY it. Having a whole library of “the latest” education does you no good if you don’t apply it.

My theme this year is, “less input, more output”. Will you join me? Here’s to a year of APPLYING what we learn and getting awesome results for our businesses.

Are you a Spongebob fan? Have you been suckered into buying marketing stuff you wish you hadn’t? Share your stories here.

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One of the easiest ways to increase your income is to boost the size of your customers purchase. Think of it as the “do you want fries with that” mentality that McDonalds uses. Once a customer has said, “YES” to purchasing something, that’s the very best time to offer them additional products they would find helpful.

Bundling and Upselling boosts your customer’s purchase size.

1) Bundle - Put 2 or 3 related products together in a package or kit. For example, I recently bundled 3 of my products together in the Motherload Success Bundle. I also recently helped one of my web clients package a book, tape, and video together for a “therapy in a box” product for their patients.

2) Upsell - When someone buys one product from you, ask them if for an additional fee they would another product. When people buy my I Love My Life: A Mom’s Guide to Working from Home book, I offer them an upsell to get the I Love My Life Toolkit at a reduced price. Click here to see an example of that upsell. My shopping cart makes it really easy to do this with just a few clicks. You can try my shopping cart here for 30 days free.

You could also mention the additional product on your thank you page or thank you autoresponder. Heck, a few days after purchase you can check in with your customers to make sure they are happy with their purchase and THEN mention a related product that you thought they might find helpful.

I even offer an upsell on my FREE product that I giveaway, and 9 times out of 10, people toss the upsell in the shopping cart too. So who says it doesn’t pay to give away things for free?

But what if you don’t have anything else to offer your customers? What if you are a one product shop? Then see what complementary, but non-competing affiliate products and services you could offer them.

So take a look at your current offerings and ask what ELSE you would help your customers solve their problems.

I hope you’ll take advantage of bundling and upselling to offer MORE to your customers and CASH IN on the extra profits.

Are you a queen of the upselling? Do you have a awesome bundle package or kit? What creative ways have you used to up customer order sizes?

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One of the biggest challenges that new businesses face is how to find new customers. If you have ever sat in your home office hitting “refresh” a million times in your email just hoping orders would come in, you may need to think about prospecting for new customers. But how and where?

Here are 5 ways to Get New Customers:

1) Fish in a well stocked pool of customers - If you have friends or someone you know with a big list, offer to do a joint venture with them. You could offer a free ebook to their list or do a free teleseminar for them and offer a commission on sales generated from their efforts.

2) Find fresh leads - Offer to give away something free in exchange for people’s contact information. It could be a free report, article, piece of software, checklist, or audio program. It could even mean buying a list and sending out postcards. Or maybe you want to create a landing page and buy pay per click traffic.

3) Boost your conversion rate - Improve your phone marketing script. Tweak and test your ads. Offer better bonuses. Hire a consultant to review your marketing materials. Find out what it will take to turn a higher percentage of your LEADS into sales. I recently read about an apartment complex that boost their conversion rate and got more renters by giving them a free car wash once as week as a benefit of renting an apartment there.

4) Get more referrals - Ask your existing customers who else they know that could benefit from your product, service etc. Put a tell a friend form on your site. Make this an automated part of your sales process.

5) Make customers so happy they never want to leave - What can you do to improve customer service? How can you make working with you so rewarding they never want to leave? How can you continue to grow and develop your relationship with your customers.

Hope these 5 ideas helps you drive more customers to your doorstep!

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Bookstores are a lousy place to sell books. But who’d have thought that you could sell books at Starbucks while drinking your Mocha Latte?

One of my buddies, Don Paullin of Hiring Firing Experts, just release his hillarious and awesome book “Hire Hotdogs Fire Baloney” about how to hire the best people for your company. And if you can believe this, he is selling books everyday at Starbucks while he is drinking his coffee. He just sits at Starbucks with his laptop and has a few copies of his book laid out on the table. A lot of people stop to ask him about his book. And Don’s such an awesome salesman, they always end up buying a copy of his book from him.

I am meeting Don at Starbucks for coffee today to catch up. I can’t wait to see him “in action” selling books at Starbucks.

Tell me, have you ever sold your books in an interesting non conventional place?

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I signed up for my first Yahoo Sponsored Search listing today. And in watching the tutorials, they talked about the 3 stages of the buying cycle. And while this may seem like common sense, I thought it beared repeating. Here’s how you would approach people differently at each stage of the game.

The 3 Stages of the Buying Cycle are:

1) Research: People are Googling for free articles. They are typing general keywords to learn more about the product or service.

2) Compare: Prospects now know what they want and are comparing you against your competitors. They are in the “smart shopping” phase and comparison shopping based on value, availability, price, features etc. These buyers are searching using more specific keyword phrases.

3) Purchase stage: These red hot leads are ready to pull out the wallet and buy. They know what they want and they are committed to buy now. Ads focused to these buyers will have higher conversion rates. You will use very specific keyword phrases to attract these buyers.

So take a minute to make a mental picture of your buyers at each stage of the game. The better you can get in their head, they better you can appeal to “where they are at” in the buying process, the relavant your marketing pitch and keywords will be.

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So there I am at the breakfast table enjoying my GoLean Instant Hot Cereal (vanilla flavor - yummy!). And to pass the time, I was reading the back box. I smiled when I saw that they had a super call to action right there on the back panel! You see, one of the things I preach about is that every page on your website should have be designed with a call to action. In my product, “Websites that SELL”, I share the the most effective calls to action for your website. It’s part of the Motherload Success Bundle I will be launching next week.

And sure enough, right on the bak of my Kashi cereal box after it shared the benefits of this ultra healthy cereal, it said, “For recipes and special offers, visit us at www.kashi.com.”

Now that’s smart marketing! How many cereal companies do you know that do that? And it offered 2 free gifts (the receipes and special offers) as incentives to entice people to visit their website.

Do you have calls to action on every page of your website? Do you offer people an incentive whent they take action? Take a cue from my cereal box and get more sales. *grin*

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I was paging thru this month’s issue of Revenue Magazine (you DO get this don’t you! Revenue Magazine is a hot new magazine for affiliate marketers!) and Jay Conrad Levinson (here’s a picture of Jay Conrad Levinson and I , he’s such a neat guy!) gave some great tips on how to STAY connected to customers after they buy a product from you.

Guerilla Marketing Followup that Turns that One Time Sale Into a Repeat Buyer!
1) Make the sale
2) Send thank you note immediately
3) send another email or make a phone call 30 days after the sale.
Ask them if everything is going well and if the customer has any questions.
4) Send another note within 90 days letting them know of any new or related products or services.
5) After 6 months, you can announce the preview of an upcoming sale.
6) After 9 months ask for the names of 3 people who might benefit from being included in your mailing list
7) After 1 year, send the customer an anniversary card celebrating 1 year of being your customer
15 months later, send the customer a questionaire to find out more about their challenges, wants, needs so you can better serve them
9) 18 months later send announcement of new products that tie in with original purchase

Great tips huh? And the great thing is that this whole process can be automated. So you can load up these followup messages into your autoresponder sequence with a preset timing. Just set it, forget it, and watch the sales role in.

So, why settle for a one time sale when you can enjoy a lifetime of sales buy building relationships and telling the customer about related products that would help them?

Has a company ever followed up with you in a cool way? Share your customer followup tips and stories here!

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Recently I bought a huge order of shipping envelopes from Uline.com. And yesterday in the mail I got the nicest order from them. It was a thank you card with a twist!

It said,

“Thank You for ordering shipping supplies from Uline. We appreciate you as a customer and look forward to serving you again. We hope you will continue to take advantage of what uline has to offer:
- Uline.com with many features including order history and order tracking
- Quote department to personally assist you with high volume orders and special services
- Expanded locations nationwide to speed service and reduce shipping costs”

And included in it was a sturdy, plastic rolodex card with their phone number and my customer number written on there!

WOW was I impressed. And you know what I did? I ordered 100 more envelopes!

How easy would it be to put a similar message on your thank you page, an autoresponder message, or a thank you card via mail?

In it, you’d just have to thank your customer, then offer them 3 additional related products and services that might be helpful to them!

Treat your customers like gold, let them know you appreciate them, and most importantly, let them know how else you can help them!

What cool ways do you wow your customers? Have you ever had WOW service that knocked your socks off? Share your “over the top” customer service experiences here!

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Want to really boost the effectiveness of your salesletters? Marketer Jim Edwards reveals 5 Bad Words You Should NEVER Say (in sales copy).

Bad word # 1) Buy. It reminds people that they will have to pay money. Intead, use the words claim or invest.

Bad word # 2) Learn. It sounds like work. Instead use the word discover.

Bad word # 3) Tell. When someone is going to tell you what to do, you don’t want to listen. Instead use reveal, it sounds more exciting.

Bad word # 4) Things. Instead use the phrase tips, tricks, and techniques

Bad word # 5) Stuff. Instead use insider secrets.

You aren’t guilty of using those bad words are you? Clean up your copy and cash in on the results! Thanks Jim for these great tips!

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