RESOURCE CENTRE

Your EnterQuest Bulletin - 27 January 2005

In this week's issue:

• six common sales mistakes made by small business owners
• increasing inbound links with free articles
• licensing law - applying for a new licence
• storing information from the web
  

Weekly stir

Six common sales mistakes made by small business owners

Selling and prospecting for sales is something that every small business owner has to do - sometimes, it's the majority of what they do. But even when it's not, this is still one of the most important activities a business owner will get involved in.

Unfortunately selling doesn't come naturally to many people running their own business. But generating sales is something we all have to do, and mistakes, sometimes fatal ones, are commonplace. However, these mistakes can be avoided with a little bit of direction, coaching, and a liberal smattering of common sense.

Here are six of the most frequent sales or selling mistakes and tips on how to avoid them.

1) Neglecting the need for prospecting

Prospecting for sales is the first and most vital stage in the process of building your customer base. Yet most people fail to see this and even avoid doing it altogether. "Cold calling isn't my style" is a typical response, along with "We don't need more customers - we've got enough already, and they keep coming back for more".

Such complacency is commonplace, but this type of approach can quickly backfire when your existing customers move away, try buying from someone else, or stop buying altogether.

While it's important to keep your existing customers loyal, you can never do enough prospecting for new business, and this is a habit that, if developed properly, is most likely to ensure successful sales.

2) Not listening to your customers (and prospects)

One of the easiest ways to see the difference between people who are good at selling and those who aren't is by watching how they interact with their prospects and customers and respond to their needs. The business owners most likely to fail are the ones who do all the talking and don't listen to what their customers are saying, or just don't let them talk at all.

Listening to what your customers are saying is the most important factor for a small business to work out how to target, adapt and focus its service or product on a particular market need.

This really just boils down to recognising that selling is all about helping customers get what they want. If you listen closely to what they're saying, you will achieve exactly that, gaining their trust and their business in the process.

3) Allowing yourself to be distracted

Once you've cracked the all-important knack of listening to your customers, your next job is to give them your undivided attention. However, too many people don't seem to be able to do this effectively enough. It's often too easy to be distracted by either another customer or something else affecting your business, when you should be concentrating on the process of negotiating or trying to complete a sale.

If you're guilty of this, it's inevitable that your potential customers will notice that you aren't giving them the attention they expect. And before you know it, the prospect will have gone cold, or will be talking to your competitors.

It's vital when selling to remind yourself continually that your prospects and customers feel you are giving them your undivided attention, and that you view them as the most important person to your business. By doing this, you'll dramatically increase your chances of winning the sale and building loyalty for the future.

4) Failing to take notes

Erm...is this real? Unfortunately yes, and it's the most common, basic and ultimately fatal sales error we come across.

Taking notes following discussions, negotiations and presentations to prospective clients is an essential part of the selling process. Yet mysteriously, too many people fail to do it.

Don't, just don't let this happen to you. Did you hear what we just said?

5) Failing to follow up

Following up with a phone call, e-mail or letter immediately after a sales meeting or discussion is one of the most valuable tactics you can use to gain credibility and trust from your prospects.

Even a simple thank-you note after a meeting can be very effective and help cement a relationship for the future. And backing this up with brief bulleted notes covering issues discussed, action points agreed and next steps to be taken will not only help develop the relationship, but may also ensure that the sales process will move closer to a successful conclusion.

Failing to use this simple tactic could easily result in you missing out on great opportunities.

6) Not having a competitive spirit

This is something that many people struggle with. But not being competitive enough is a big disadvantage. Running a small business is often described as being like battling it out in the trenches, and it's certainly true that it requires sound battlefield strategies and tactics.

This is especially so when selling. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't be playing fair and legal, but it does mean that you should be prepared to play it hard. Everyone else you are competing against in your sector will be doing so, that's guaranteed.

Some people may find this type of talk over the top, but it's essential that you develop a strong competitive spirit. Here are a few easy tips to help you do this.

• Keep your eyes and ears open at all times to find out what your competitors are doing.
• If you employ staff, even just one or two people, make sure you create a very strong team mentality.
• Set yourself challenging but achievable goals, and bust your guts trying to reach them.

You probably won't need to use all of the tactics mentioned above all of the time. But if you try these suggestions a little bit here and a little bit there, your general effectiveness at selling will improve, and you'll eventually develop an edge that will ensure you win sales many more times than you lose.

A useful method of generating more traffic to your website is to increase the number of sites that have links to yours. The more incoming links you have, the higher your site will be ranked in the search engines, and the more visitors it will attract.

An excellent way to increase your incoming links at little or no cost is to write a series of free articles on topics relevant to your sector or area of expertise, and distribute these to as many other websites as you can find.

Here are a few tips and ideas for writing free articles, along with suggestions for places to submit them:

1) It's all about the headline

It's been said that 80% of the success of a direct mail letter is attributed to its headline. It's no different with articles. You want to inspire people to read them, and the trick is to use dynamic, attention-getting headlines and sub-headlines.

The sole purpose of your headline should be to make your visitor want to continue reading the text below it. Throughout your article you should continue to use sub-headlines as a way to break up your copy and to allow readers to 'skim' the content.

2) Be specific

Focus your article on one clear topic, rather than attempting to cover several different issues in one article. This well help you keep it short and to the point, and will make the article easier for readers to follow.

'How to...' articles have been shown to work well on the web, because they instantly make it clear that the reader is going to learn something practical by taking the time to read the piece. Again, keep yours focused on specific topics you know something about - an article on 'How to grow delicious tomatoes' will have more appeal than a general, vague piece such as 'How to be successful'.

3) Brush up your writing skills

Learn as much as you can about writing for the web by browsing your favourite search engine for free tutorials. There are plenty of tips out there on writing well - check out Useit and Web Reference as examples. And be sure to read as many existing online articles as you can and critique them for readability, length, focus and interest.

Don't forget to include a short, snappy blurb about your business and a link to your website with every article you produce - and include the © copyright symbol and the date to protect your work from being reused without your permission.

4) Where should you submit the articles?

Try submitting your free articles to one or more of the following:

• Webmasters of non-competing sites that have some relevance to your business.
• E-zines - search Freezineweb, My Favourite E-zines and E-zine Locater to find publishers who work in related fields, and ask about submitting articles to their publication.
• To find e-zines specific to your sector, type "your sector name + publications" (include the inverted commas for more specific results) into any search engine. This may also identify existing trade or consumer magazines for your sector which have online versions and may accept articles.
• Online directories and repositories for articles directories.
• Check out this handy list from Wilson Web, which gives ten suggestions for places to submit your free articles.

5) Don't forget to publish articles on your own site

You can also publish the articles on your own site for people to download. This gives you an instant way to freshen up your site and make it more interesting to users, as well as making it more content-rich and therefore more likely to do well in search engines.

Self-publishing your free articles also provides newsletter editors on the lookout for fresh content with a regularly updated repository that they can return to again and again.

Read more about online promotion tactics for your small business in Chapter 31 of the UK Small Business Marketing Bible, where you can also find hundreds of ideas, tips and techniques for increasing sales.

Legal tip

Licensing law - applying for a new licence

A couple of weeks ago, we mentioned the Licensing Act 2003 and looked at the two main types of licence available - the personal licence and the premises licence.

The application process is an important part of setting up a restaurant, a bar, or a takeaway, and it will be useful to look into it in the early stages of your business planning. Here's how to go about it:

• Firstly, have a look at the Government's guidelines on the Licensing Act. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is in charge of implementing the Act, and its website has general information, information about personal licences and an explanation of premises licences.
  
  
• One of the provisions of the Act requires local authorities to publish a licensing policy. For the most part, the policy is standard everywhere in the UK, but your local authority will probably have certain areas or occasions covered by a special policy. This means that particular attention will be paid to licence applications in those areas, sometimes because of objections from local residents. The local policies should be explained on your authority's website, but you can also look at them by writing to the licensing department. Visit Direct.gov to find your local authority's contact details.
  
  
• At this stage, it's a good idea to contact a solicitor with experience of licensing applications. He or she will be able to look at the history of recent applications for the area you want to start your business, and suggest a good strategy for successfully negotiating the period of scrutiny. Most licences are granted without a lot of complication, but a solicitor can help smooth the path.
  
  
• Again, your local authority should be able to point you in the direction of solicitors who frequently deal with licence applications, or you can contact your local law society via the Law Society or its Scottish or Northern Irish counterparts.

If you're not an existing licence holder, but want to become a personal licence holder after 7 February when the new application process is introduced, you will need to obtain a relevant qualification, such as the British Institute of Innkeeping's Licensee Certificate. The Government has announced it will publicise other certificates and qualifications as they become accredited.

You can read more about all aspects of setting up a food or drink business in the UK on the Red Tape BUSTER, which includes hundreds of scenarios and factsheets for all small business owners.

IT tip

Storing information from the web

Sometimes you come across something on the web that's really worth keeping - some research, a good article, a web page, or maybe just the postal address of a business you should get in touch with.

Fortunately, there are all sorts of ways of grabbing that information and saving it for later. Here is a breakdown of some of the main ones:

• The 'Save as...' approach. Internet Explorer offers you four different ways of saving a whole web page when you click the drop-down 'File' menu in the top left-hand corner:
  
  Saving as 'Web page complete' will store the whole page, graphics and all.
  
  Saving as 'Web page HTML only' will keep the text and leave out the graphics.
  
  Saving as 'Web archive' will make a single file of the whole page, and can be useful if you want to e-mail it to somebody.
  
  Saving as 'Text file' will grab the text only and leave you with a simple black and white text file.
  
  
• Copying snippets. If you only want to store a paragraph of text, say a telephone number or news item, you can highlight it by dragging your cursor across the words, then right clicking once on the highlighted section and selecting 'Copy'. You can then open up a word processing application such as Word and paste the information into a document. To get rid of the formatting, simply click 'Edit', then 'Paste Special', and finally 'Unformatted text'.
  
  
• Saving information from other file formats. When Internet Explorer opens a Word document, you can save that in the normal way. But saving text from an Adobe PDF file is a little trickier. Adobe have some useful tools though, where you can either e-mail a PDF file and have it automatically converted, or fill in a short form showing the URL of a PDF file you want converted. Note that both these services can take time, depending on how many other people are using the same facility.
  
  
• Finally, if all else fails, the traditional methods always come in handy. Clicking on 'Favourites', then 'Add to favourites' will allow you to come back to the same page whenever you need.

New business idea

Here is this week's idea:

• Feng Shui Consultant

Just one word

Regularly improving your vocabulary is not just about learning a new word and its meaning. It will improve your general knowledge and make you feel and act smarter in all sorts of personal and business situations.

How much do you really know about grammar? Can you match the following words to their correct meanings?

a) synonym
b) antonym
c) hypernym
d) meronym

1) a word that is more generic than a given word, for example, animal instead of dog
2) a word that has the same meaning as another word, for example traditional has the same meaning as conventional
3) a word that names part of a larger whole, for example, a room is a part of a house
4) a word that is the opposite of another word, for example light is the opposite of dark

Answer at the end of the Bulletin.

Did you know?

Waiter...there's red tape in my soup

A new law came into force this month that affects all businesses dealing with food, whether they make it, cook it, sell it, package it or distribute it in any way. The law is called the General Food Regulations 2004, and basically they compel all food businesses to establish a system that allows all their food products to be traced back to whoever supplied them. Sounds complicated, doesn't it?

Business representatives like the Forum of Private Business (FPB) have been up in arms about the new Regulations, suggesting that they could cost an extra £800 million in red tape. The EnterQuest team was concerned that such an important change in the law hasn't been very well publicised, so we contacted the Food Standards Agency (FSA) for an explanation. A spokesman pointed us towards the guidance on the FSA's website, and explained that a simple paper-based record system would be sufficient in most cases.

Worth a visit

Use Any Browser to check how your website appears in different browsers. This will help you ensure that it's accessible to all users, not just people using the same browser as you. The service also has a Search Engine View function which enables you to see how your website appears to different search engines.

A treasure trove of words and language

Everything you ever wanted to know about language and words is explained on the fascinating Your Dictionary, whether it's the meaning of a techy acronym, a translation of a foreign word, or the perfect synonym that you need to put your finger on. There's a word of the day in several different languages, plus plenty of games, crosswords and quizzes to test your knowledge. You'll never be stuck for the right word again!

Currency converter

Billed as the universal currency converter, this clever tool quite simply converts just about any given currency, from US dollars to Vietnam dong, into whichever currency you specify. It really is that easy - and it's a great resource, whether you want to know how much that eBay bargain costs in pounds or make an offer in the correct currency to an international customer.

Worth a read

We've recommended this book's groundbreaking predecessor, E-myth Revisited, to you before for its refreshing guidance on avoiding small business failure. In this new publication, the author builds on the ideas he introduced in the earlier title, explaining why the personalities of entrepreneurs are so critical to the success of their businesses. The book adopts the same practical 'how-to' approach as its older sibling, looking at developing skills in seven key areas, including customer service and managing money. Check out: