In the good, old summertime, prepare for the fall sales season, because that’s where the money’s at.

Posted on July 19, 2011

July 19, 2011 | Author: Jeffrey Lant | Posted in Dr. Jeffrey Lant’s Article Archive

 

By Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. In 1949, America’s darling, Judy Garland, starred in a big budget MGM musical called “In the Good Old Summertime”. It was all twirling parasols, Sunday at the gazebo in the park with the grandly uniformed band playing Sousa marches, and, of course, innocent romances. The word “tootsie-wootsie” was coined… and we all wanted to know one we could take to the church ice-cream social.
But before you get all gussied up in your best bib and tucker, there’s work to do, very important work… making headway on the most important task of all: preparing for that absolutely crucial fall sales season, relentlessly on its way; the season starting just after Labor Day in early September… and concluding the minute you lock up and go home to celebrate Christmas with your family.
Successfully handling the fall sales season, the highlight of your business, is a must… for, after all, you’re going to need a lot of extra cash this year… “tootsie-wootsie’s” (of either the female or male variety) are never cheap. So, don’t stint on the planning…
To help you get into the mood, go to any search engine. Find Judy Garland’s tune and play it a couple of times. Then, while the lilt of the music washes over you, begin what needs to be done for the most successful fall of your life. And don’t dilly-dally either, or all the lemon sorbet will be gone before you put on your straw boater and head for that social where you, known to be an up-and-coming business wiz, will make. such a good impression…
Here’s a helpful check-list to get you on your way:
1) Start today.
As I write (July 19, 2011) a blistering heat wave is causing large parts of America to swoon. You need to rise above the shimmering heat and FOCUS. He (or she) who hesitates is lost. Remember, you plan in the summer… and implement your plan in the fall. If you don’t plan until fall, you will find yourself in the impossible situation of planning and executing your plan at the same time. And that’s a killer.
2) Conclude all training programs as soon as possible.
Summer is and always has been a superb time to learn new business skills. But learning them means exactly that; not a time for dawdling and procrastinating, which you can easily do if the course is self-paced, as so many are these days. Put yourself on a strict deadline for completion… and stick to it.
3) Set up your blog and begin to stockpile articles for it. Summer’s a great time to bulk-up on articles so that you’re not scrambling for copy, when you need to be circulating it.
You should always have at least half a dozen such articles readily at hand, punchy, well-written articles that will get your customers to stop what they’re doing and read your latest effusion.
4) Work on creating and testing offers that pull the best.
You need offers that pull in maximum business, and the summer is the perfect time to create — and test — them. This testing is a must. The worst thing you can do is amble into the fall without knowing you’ve got offers that sell on hand and ready to go.
Review the top offers you’ve already made this year. Can you reprise any, editing, tweaking, improving for the best possible results? And be sure to check the offers you made last fall. You did keep good statistics on results, didn’t you? That’s crucial, so you invest your always limited ad budget where it’ll do you the most good.
5) Work on increasing your traffic.
For years I have said “The list is the business, the business is the list.” On the Internet, the operative word for list is “traffic”. With it, you’re lord of all you survey; without it, you’re just a schlepper without a prayer.
Every successful Internet entrepreneur I know (and few people in the world know more) has a daily traffic plan, which they are rightly obsessed with creating, improving and implementing. These people know how to create the solid-gold lists that deliver ever improving results and how to present offers so that the people on these lists just cannot resist responding — and buying.
Still more tips!
6) Review your website. Are you happy with the way it looks, or is it time for some refurbishment and remodeling?
The website that looked so good and eye-catching yesterday may well be in need of some overdue improvements today. If you can make them, fine; if you can’t contact your web designer at once. Remember, as the fall approaches these talented folks are very in demand. Book your time as soon as possible.
7) Add new products to your website.
Every business in the world adds new products to its line in time for the fall sales season, and you must do the same.
Now’s the moment to review your product line and add the hot new products you’ve found.
Don’t have any such products? Then you’ve got to shake a leg and get down to the important business of finding them… and making the necessary arrangements with their suppliers. And don’t wait to do this… you should spend a part of every day discovering, reviewing and adding new products to your website.
Check all your business supplies.
Have you got toner and paper aplenty for your printer? What about business cards, stationery, envelopes, checks, pens and file folders? (I am always running out of these).
Review everything you need. You don’t want to be caught short, scrambling to re-up when you should be focusing, always focusing, on SALES.
9) Let your customers know your fall availability is dwindling.
If you provide a specialized service where you can only handle so many customers at a time, notify your prospects and established customers at once that your availability is shrinking and that they need to book time for your service now.
Send a reminder to these folks every other week or so until you have no further appointments left and are in waiting list mode. Always make it clear just how little time remains; scarcity motivates even the worst procrastinators to act.
10) Review your personnel requirements. Remember you can’t do everything yourself… too much to do, way too little time in which to do it. Make sure you have the help you need and that you and they are both clear on what needs to be done and whether your help will be available to assist.
Remember, if you need extra help, advertise early to find and train it, so everything moves smoothly when you need it to do so.
Last words.
Every successful person I know is a planning fanatic. I’m one myself. Planning (and this includes reviewing and updating your plan as necessary) is a must… especially before the crucial fall sales season.
After you’ve advanced your plan today, by all means spruce yourself up, put on that poplin jacket and the eye-catching chapeau and white duck trousers or navy blue skirt and blouse with mutton sleeves. It’s time for you to mix and mingle for you have places to go and people to meet… After all, everyone wants to make the acquaintance of a likely comer like you, always so organized, efficient, and productive. And that’s a very good sign…. in the good old summertime… or any other time!
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About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc. providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell <a http://HomeProfitCoach.com Check out Instant Traffic Robot ->  http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=ep6SGTie

Another look inside the millionaire mind-set… how millionaires look at the Internet… very different from you… and far more lucrative.

By Dr. Jeffrey Lant
The Internet is divided into two quite distinct parts: people who make money every single day… and those who not only do not but can not.
I am firmly in the first category. Sadly, you are most probably in the second. If you are serious about profiting online this candid, detailed report is not only useful; it’s an absolute must. Don’t just read it once, either, and expect to get everything out of it. Study it as if your online life and prosperity depend upon it… for they do. It is part of a series of such articles you can find on my blog, details below. Each article in the series takes up a different, crucial aspect of the Internet millionaire’s mind… resolved to put you in that mind-set as soon as possible, the faster to generate the profits you desire.
Energy
I shall commence today with a problem every person online has who is not a millionaire: sloth, laziness, endless vistas of wealth and prosperity… but torpid, meandering, a poster boy or girl for lassitude, indolence, intolerable sluggishness.
I have been on the Internet profitably now since 1994… and among other things have been teaching the essentials of online business success. The degree of inertia and just plain lack of consistent effort and dogged perseverance is staggering.
Let’s be clear with each other. You cannot succeed online if you exhibit consistently poor and inadequate business habits. Good habits are the foundation for Internet success. Treating your online business differently from your offline business will ensure its complete and total failure.
To establish the best possible habits and make the best possible use of the time at your disposal, you need to understand when your energy is at peek… and when, therefore, to do the essential tasks which require the most energy. I am writing this article at 4:25 a.m. Eastern time. I have learned over time that this is the best time of the day to write the 1,500 words of publishable prose I write each day and post on my website and blog. Millionaires, online and off, are expert at reviewing all their assets and deciding just when they should be used for maximum advantage.
Now, I’ve gotten off my chest something I’ve been meaning to write for some time; success comes to those who understand what they have available… then using these assets to generate other assets, maximum energy being an absolute necessity.
Stop Buying, Start Selling.
One of the Internet’s wisest entrepreneurs, George Kosch, has been reviewing and analyzing online wealth seekers for decades. It is both vocation and avocation and his knowledge of such people is encyclopedic, insightful, and often extremely funny. He has identified one group as online business wannabees with the “Shiny New Package Syndrome”.
These folks are engaged in the never-ending, completely futile, and drainingly expensive task of buying every new thing that appears online, the better to ensure that they have the latest, best, cutting-edge do-dad which, immediately upon purchase, is hastily reviewed, then cast on top of the gigantic, only just balanced, stack of dozens, even hundreds of once “must have” items, enticing, purchased, discarded, forgotten.
This syndrome is a killer for building wealth and misses the essential point for how you can use these glittery products with the breathless descriptions to profit. There is a way, an easy way, but it involves changing your thinking from buyer to seller, for one essential and irrefutable reason: product sellers make money… product buyers do not.
You say you are online to make money, right? This being the case tell me when you last reviewed all the product descriptions and purchase opportunities and offers you receive hour by hour online? If you are reaching for an answer that doesn’t come, let me refresh your memory: you never do this, not today, yesterday, or ever. You do what the overwhelming majority of so-called online entrepreneurs do: you trash these advertisements, irritated that you receive them, fast into the dumpster, so there.
This conclusively proves you are not, just yet, millionaire material, since you are ignoring, overlooking and destroying just what can help you succeed.
Product review never stops… but, sadly, with you has probably never started.
Every company determined to grow, even in times of strenuous economic challenge like ours, sets about reviewing products to augment, extend and make more profitable their line. Day in, day out such entrepreneurs make a point of searching out new products that their all-important customer base and lists can monetize for them. Each day is a day for adding new products. The question before the house is: why aren’t you doing this, you with the big dreams and great desires?
Thanks to the Internet, it has never been easier to discover products worldwide and build worldwide business relationships, all from the comfort of your at-home PC and Internet connection. How Christopher Columbus and all the great European explorers would envy you… for at your fingertips this very minute, you have the means of building one or more huge customer lists and of reviewing and adding new products every single day.
Product review and product selling hints.
First, what I’ve written above obviously necessitates a sea change in how you regard your email. New product details and offers must no longer be considered as “junk”; rather, look upon them as helpful information sent by people who desire you to get as rich as possible as soon as possible. When such materials arise (minute by minute online), either review at once… or transfer to an online file so you can review later. Make it a point to review this file regularly, transferring the data you want to another file, while discarding items which seem unlikely to excite the folks on your lists.
Develop and send a stationery letter to the prime source/developer/owner of each product. Advise them you wish to add their product to your catalog/website/list. Indicate your traffic statistics and how you can sell their products. Then ask for the discount terms, name, email address, telephone number of the person handling this product. Be sure to include all your follow-up details.
Note: if this message is not answered within 48 hours, re-email and place “second attempt” at the top; you’re a serious player and the company you’re contacting needs to know it. Efficiency always helps.
Your desire for success, your ability to achieve it online is determined by how many of these letters you send… and how many new products you email to your lists.
Remember, doing so is not the work of an hour, a day or a week. If you want to do what you say you want to do, namely make money online, you must understand that you will do this until you wrap up your online enterprises for good. In my case, that will only take place when I’m six-feet under… and you should have a similar date.
Just one more thing. The products that you used to pay for, emptying your wallet… you’ll get them free from the companies producing them as soon as you show them just what a crackerjack sales machine you are. That starts now!
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About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell http://HomeProfitCoach.com Check out Instant Traffic Robot ->  http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=ep6SGTie