There are three ways to get increased profits from customers.Customers = Profits
1. Get more new customers.
2. Get repeat business from existing customers.
3. Get bigger orders from customers.

Develop and maintain a never-ending source of new customers. This must be a primary focus of your business.

You must learn to gain new prospects on a daily basis. Customers buy your products. Purchases of your products gives you commissions (profit). Profit is why you are in business.

Always work with interested prospects to get more sales and signups. DON'T DO COLD CALLS. Qualify your prospects using the internet to find out the interested ones. Then, contact them.

There are dozens of ways to get new prospects on a daily basis, using the internet. Here are a few to get you thinking.

You can buy leads from established companies. A little expensive but if approached correctly, you will get lots of good prospects. (This is also another good income stream for you; selling lead generation services.)

You can use "Safe Lists" to get new prospects. When done correctly, this is a virtual goldmine of new leads. "Safe Lists" are sort of like email discussion lists with a specific purpose where members join and agree to accept your emails as part of their membership.

You can use FFA pages to get new leads. Years ago, people put up "Free For All" links pages where you could come in and post your URL (link to your website) for people to see, and, hopefully, click on to come to your page. Now, the automated systems do the posting and no one comes to the actual page to look at links! So, why do they work to generate leads? Well, now you have to "Own" an FFA page. Don't worry, they are not expensive! Then, when the automated systems post peoples link on YOUR FFA page, you get to send them a "Confirmation" email. Of course, when you do that, you can offer your own free report, sample, etc. to entice them to get to your lead capture page. That method is a pretty stable source of leads.

You can use banner advertising. You must have a dynamite banner that virtually screams "Click on Me" to get people interested.

You can advertise in Ezines. This is about the best way to get the word out about your offer. There are thousands of ezines with some good directory services to let you sort out which ones wouuld be right for your offer. Many offer free listings for subscribing and have specials on top ads, solo ads and more to get your ad in at a low cost. Use the ROI principle in all advertising to evaluate your results.

You can trade links with other business people. This is a "Win- Win" situation! You find a business that has a similar clientel but a non-competitive product. You promote his service/product on your site and he promotes you on his. Good for both parties!

You can get listed on the major search engines. A little tricky and involved but worth the effort. A spinoff of this is buying "Keywords" on search engines. Like an auction, you can tell the search engine folks how much you want to pay to get listed when someone types in a keyword or words that you specify. Your "bid" competes with all others for top position, lower bids getting lower listings. Go to Overture and look at the links in the little boxes on the right of the screen. Those are paid keyword links. Worked correctly, this can get you tons of hot leads.

You can find discussion forums to be an expert in to get new leads. This is one of the best ways to establish credibility.

You can offer Free or Low Cost items to gather new prospects. Offer something for FREE that has value to the prospect. You can offer low cost items as well. It should be a cornerstone of your marketing efforts.

You can offer product samples to get new prospects. Also known as a gifting idea, giving away free samples is a little expensive but highly lucrative in getting serious, long term customers for your business. How many free samples do you see from major companies every day? Food, long distance, car washes, pizza, candy; almost every business with a tangible product can give away something for free to get more customers.

The Second Critical Step to Business Success: Credibility

You must establish your credibility for prospects who don't know you. How else would they come to trust you? You must establish credibility with your prospects before they will spend money with you.

What can YOU do to establish credibility for you and your business?
NOT establishing credibility for yourself and your business will SINK you faster than you can blink an eye.

You can't just blast out thousands of emails and expect sales. Why? No Credibility.

You can't just send folks to your website and expect them to buy. Why? No Credibility.

You can't just cold call people and expect them to buy something. Why? No Credibility.

So, with all those "You can't..." things...

How DO you establish your credibility?

This comes in two parts: Your Personal Credibility and your Company Credibility.

Personal Credibility:

First of all, be honest. No hype, no lies, no exaggerations. Just honest. While that may seem obvious, a natural tendency of new salespeople is to overblow the benefits of a product or service. Unfortunately, when you know they are not true, that comes through to your prospect in your presentation. And, even if it doesn't, once a prospect gets a product and finds out that your claims are not true, you have LOST your credibility forever with that prospect. And... he may know a LOT of people and let them know of your dishonesty.

Second, establish personal contact. If you can get your prospect ON THE PHONE or IN PERSON, DO IT. ALWAYS. Personal contact is the best thing you can do to establish credibility for yourself. If you can't do that, then contact them via email. Personal contact on the phone or in person is vitally important to your sales career. And, it's not HARD. Just establish contact, get to know the person, find out what interested them in the first place (never do cold calls, ok?)

Third, provide third-party testimonials. Hearing what other people say about you gives you instant credibility with a new prospect. It's just the way your brain works. "If I hear someone else say it, it must be true." Of course, those testimonials can not be hyped up. What do you do if you are just starting? Use testimonials from your mentors and ones that they have collected. Once you get going in business, ASK for testimonials from your customers and keep them on file. You will have a big list once you start doing that!

Company credibility:

There are many facets to look at to establish credibility for a company. Longevity in business. How long has the company been doing business? If you have to put up with poor customer service, you will be losing sales and wasting your time with things that DON'T build your business. Excellent return policy. Guarantees. Free replacement for damaged goods. Not having to return damaged goods. All of these and more lead to a GREAT shipping and handling department.

Make SURE you are with a company with high credibility. I'm not saying that startups are bad but they have to overcome that initial "No Credibility" hurdle. This is a hard thing to do and just gets in the way of your marketing efforts. Try to team up with established companies that have been around for a while and weathered the initial start-up woes.

The Third Critical Step to Business Success: Followup

Over 80% of all sales are made between the 8th and 12th contact from you. You must followup continually with your prospects.

Over 80% of all sales are made between the 8th and 12th contact from you. Why do I repeat that? Because it is one of those vitally IMPORTANT FACTS that you HAVE to understand. If you DON'T followup that much, you will not make many sales.

The Fourth Critical Step to Business Success: System

You must have an internet system that does the majority of the "Hard Work" for you.

What should a "System" do for you?

1. Present your product or service
2. Provide followup information to the prospect
3. Followup continually
4. Capture the prospects contact information and send it to you so you can personally contact the prospect.
5. Take the order and ship the product... without you having to lift a finger.

Automated systems are essential to your success. If you have to do this "Busy Work", you will not be putting your time toward the things that make you money... Finding new customers.

Automated systems are very simple to set up. Especially when you know someone who has done it before and can lead you to the same system. Once you see how efficient and effective these automated systems are, your mind will come up with all kinds of ideas about how to use them for many purposes.

The Fifth Critical Step to Business Success: ROI

You must continually evaluate your Return On Investment (ROI).

ROI is a way to measure your profitability. Let's say you buy some leads of prospects who might want your product. The 1000 leads cost you $50. You plug those leads into your system and 3 days later you see you have 2 sales. For this example, let's say you make $30 profit per sale. Your ROI is 2 x $30 = $60 minus the cost of the leads, $60 - $50 = $10 in profit. Your ROI is $10 on a $50 investment.

Is that a good ROI? YOU BET! You can run that campaign all day long 365 days a year! Why? You are in profit in only 3 days.

What else is ROI good for? Well, let's say you would like to improve your ROI, i.e. make more money from those 1000 leads. So you change the subject line of your email. You buy another 1000 leads and put them in your system with the new subject line. This time you get 5 sales. $30 x 5 = $150 - $50 = $100 ROI! You are on a roll! You just multiplied your ROI by a factor of 10 by changing one thing; your subject line (not unusual!)

ROI lets you measure your success and adjust accordingly. I gave you a positive example. What if your ROI was negative? You lost $20 on the campaign. Same thing. Use that data point to move from with a change. And test again. Calculate your ROI. Compare results. Keep testing and using your ROI to measure your success.

You should keep track of your ROI on EVERY investment in your business. It will keep you on your toes for minimizing expenses and also help you tweak your campaign to make the most profit from them that you possibly can.

If you don't track your ROI, you will lose money and make bad decisions.

The Sixth Critical Step to Business Success: Concentrate

You must spend your time on what you do best and leave the rest to other experts.

Don't try to do everything yourself. You can't. And, it will not be cost effective to do for the long run. There are reasonably priced experts that can handle web hosting, website design, copywriting, flyer design, postcard design, and more. If you are not an expert at it, don't try to learn a new skill to save some money. Not right away anyway. Stay in your own area of expertise and hire out to others for their expertise. It is well worth your while to do so.

Focus on the most important parts of your business, new customer acquisition.

The Seventh Critical Step to Business Success: Goals

You must set lofty goals and a ladder of smaller goals to reach that end. You must continually evaluate your progress against your goals and adjust accordingly.

I can't stress enough the importance of setting goals. How will you know where you are going if you don't know your destination?

This is not a task to take haphazardly. I recommend you use a professional approach to setting your goals.

First, set your "Vision". A VISION is your BIG goal, bigger than you, not related to money or "stuff". Something you would give up your life for. A "Lofty" goal is a term I hear that seems appropriate.

Second, figure out WHAT it will take to let you reach your VISION. This might be in terms of money, free time, "stuff" or many other items. But it should be specific. ("I need to pay off my mortgage, pay off my credit cards and tell my boss where to go" To reach that I will need $250,000.)

Third, figure out WHEN you want to reach your goal. Now your goal to reach your vision reads: "I will have $250,000 by December 2006 that will let me reach financial freedom"

Fourth, figure out how many sales or business recruits or whatever it takes in your business that you need to make to reach that goal by that date. ("I need to make 2500 sales")

Fifth, figure out how to break down your goals into "BiteSize" steps. ("To make 2500 sales, I need to make 3 per week and find 2 other business builders to find 3 per week for a period of 12 months to reach my goal")

Sixth, figure out how to make the BiteSize steps a REALITY!

Business is just a numbers "game" where your success is doing a lot of small successful things while avoiding the failures. And, since you are more than likely going to MAKE ERRORS, you have to EXPECT that you will make them and get over the ERRORS fast and on to your next success. The road to success is paved with the stones of failure. Don't ever forget that.

The Eighth Critical Step to Business Success: Targeted Leads

Leads you buy have litte chance of being screened about your product. Most are just looking for a home business. Yours might be right for them but who knows! A lot to learn since they have not been screened for your business.

There is much more to generating targeted leads that I can write about here. If you would like to learn that... and more about marketing... just send me an email.

I hope you have enjoyed this free report. Keep track of your notes, questions and comments and let's get your system set up to build your business quickly and solidly for a long-lasting residual income stream.