Amazon’s best selling product is Kindle. In 2010, 7 million units were sold. While that’s considerably less than the 15 million iPads that Apple sold… Since 2010, Amazon has sold three times as many e-books as hardcovers. By creating the hardware in the first place, Amazon almost created the entire e-book industry.

It took Wal-Mart 27 years to reach $30 billion in sales. It took Amazon 16 years to hit the same number. As of year end 2010, ecommerce is now 7% of total U.S. retail sales.

Doesn’t Amazon just sell books? No, in 2010, 54% of their total revenue was electronics, gadgets, home goods, apparel, etc. Amazon is on target to surpass Sears, Best Buy and Target in the next four years.

Who Else Wants A Cool URL For Your Social Media Links?

I have obtained a Domain name for each of my major Social Media URL’s. Check out my eMail signature:

Follow Me:
Facebook: www.affordablewebfacebook.com
Twitter: www.affordablewebtwitter.com
LinkedIn: www.affordableweblinkedin.com

These look so much better than the really long ones supplied by Facebook, Twitter, and linked in! They’re easier to remember. They fit nicely on the back of a business card. They’re just downright cool.

Since I provide Domain Name and Hosting services — I can hook you up with these for your company as well. I’ll do each new Social Domain Name for your company for only $25.00 each for the first year. Renewals after the first year are currently $15.00 per Domain Name per year.

Are you Ready? Give me a call at 503-307-0834, or send me an eMail at info@affordablewebtechnology.com… Let’s get started.

I just came across the freeconference.com website. They offer free conference call bridges as well as premium services such as on-demand recording or desktop sharing. It’s extremely easy to get started. I’ve now got a free dedicated number that I can hand out for on-demand or scheduled conferences.

What do you mean “You’re too small to need conference calling”? How about a quick three-way call with your associates discussing latest trends in your industry. Pay for the on-demand recording feature. Now you have a file that can be posted on your corporate blog (You have one, don’t you?) to help drive traffic to your site.

You are working on a last minute presentation and need input from a customer, a vendor, and someone in your secondary location. Viola! A conference call with on-demand desktop sharing to the rescue! You don’t have to worry about what remote desktop software is loaded on their machines. Your conference system handles the details.

These are two quick thoughts. What are yours?

Are your customers satisfied?

Satisfaction is simply the absence of dissatisfaction, not a motivation to become a repeat customer. In the area between a customer being dissatisfied and motivated there is a zone of indifference.

We are all motivated, at a very basic level, by the expectation of gain or the fear of loss. Customers are rational people. If they have a positive buying experience, they will probably come back. If the buying experience is negative, they’ll avoid returning.

The word experience is used because the buying experience is not transactional. It doesn’t start or end with the exchange of money for goods or services. The experience begins at the prospect stage when your customers first find out about you and continues throughout their lifetime with you.

In other words, business is relational. Our customers develop a relationship with you, your company, your employees, and experience of buying from you as perceived  by the only person that matters – your customer. Customers today, aren’t interested in being satisfied. They need to become motivated to enjoy the relational experience your company provides.

How can you develop an environment for motivated customers who are thrilled to do business with you? Some ideas include:

• Under promise and over deliver
• Remind customers of the value you provide
• Ask for feedback – and act on it
• Maintain a positive and cheerful outlook
• Stay in communication with your customer

What are you doing to prevent the absence of dissatisfaction and provide phenomenal buying experiences?

You can set goals or state resolutions for the New Year. But, what did you learn from the past 12 months. Lessons learned will serve you well in the future. What were your five biggest lessons? Mine are:

1. I truly can work on the business in addition to working in the business. So many of us concentrate all of our efforts working in the business. You know, doing the right things. Servicing customers. Answering emails. How many of you have really taken the time to work on the business? To create systems that really help the business become more productive and serve you and your customers better. To spend time really making an aspect of your business much better than it is today.
2. I can run a successful company. No, you can’t do everything alone. so quit trying to. You can become successful in any economy by focusing on your economy – not the economy.
3. I can help others succeed. We all have something beneficial and helpful to offer someone. Do it. Reach your hand out and start really caring about those around you. By focusing your energy on helping your customers be successful, you’ll be surprised at the end of the next year what has happened to you in the process.
4. I am capable of far more than I dreamed of. When you reflect back on a year that has had as much change this this year did… you realize that you are capable of far more than you could have imagined. Now that you know that, set yourself some new goals. Go ahead and stretch a little – or a lot!
5. I am happy. It’s been a good year. I have no clue what the next 12 months will bring – but bring it on.

If you use smart, effective sales techniques, you don’t need a government bailout to bail yourself out. “We must participate in our own rescue by not giving up, by refusing to use the slow economy as an excuse for poor performance, by staying in front of our customers, and by continuing to use proven best practices to reach sales success”.

What were your five biggest lessons from last year?

The Insanity Principle was coined by Albert Einstein and simply says:

You cannot continue to do the same thing many times over and expect a different result.

Are you practicing the insanity principle in your life? To over come this, come up with two questions that are applicable to your activity. Ask yourself these two questions every time you perform the activity and record the answers. If you are making cold calls on businesses, maybe those questions are; 1)What should I have done differently?, and 2)What should I have said differently?

Go back and read through the answers from your last 5 or 10 attempts on a regular basis. Doing this will help you learn how to learn to do things differently in the future. That’s what real progress is all about.

An interesting article by Verne Harnish recently appeared in Fortune magazine, listing five ways to cut your endless to-do list and get your business life in order. Here, I present that list along with some of my thoughts:

1. Stop paying attention to the bad news. I have been an advocate for focusing on “my economy” rather than “the economy” for some time now. Take the time you would normally put into watching the news or reading the paper and do something positive for your business instead.
2. End a contentious relationship. Do you have any clients that just put a drag on things? Would you rather replace this client, or a few of your best employees? Pull the plug on the relationship with this client and find someone easier to work with. You’ll be happy that you did.
3. Quit selling some of your products or services. Are you being pulled in too many different directions? Are some of those less profitable than others? Lighten your load and focus on what you do best. Give your attention to the products and services that you can really make a difference with.
4. Don’t answer your own email. Some executives are handing their email off to assistants, freeing their time up to actually spend face to face time with members of their team! Other ideas range from using folders to really organize your in box, to closing your mail application and only opening it once every two hours – during the business day. It is far to easy to get distracted by the “You’ve got mail!” chime going off.
5. Stop eating alone. Scrimp on business lunches – as so many companies are doing – and you’ll lose vital business leads. One business owner interviewed has broken bread with professional contacts and employees every workday since 1984. Imagine the the exchange of ideas, comrade, and contacts that have occurred for him!

Use this list as your catalyst to find the activities that are draining the productive energy from your business. Stop!

Business owners have always recognized “word of mouth” as a critical component of success. With social media, email, blogs and our overall exposure on the Internet – word of mouth becomes a game changer for many businesses. Consumers now have the ability to broadcast sentiment to literally thousands of people in an instant. It’s becoming increasingly important for businesses to not only listen, but to engage their customers digitally (especially their most loyal customers). Turn them into your evangelists.

Look up “marketing” on Wikipedia and you get:

Marketing is the process of performing market research, selling products and/or services to customers and promoting them via advertising to further enhance sales. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments. It is an integrated process through which companies build strong customer relationships and creates value for their customers and for themselves.

Your best customers are becoming your marketing department. Loyal customers have the power to generate new business, craft a brand image, inspire loyalty and counter negative sentiment through tweeting, blogging, reviewing, following, liking, and so on.

If you are listening to your customers, they are your market research. Your loyal customers can promote your products and services to their social network as well. Business communication now occurs in small chunks hundreds of times a day for some companies. By educating our customers with a constant flow of useful information, we are building stronger relationships that truly create value.

As business owners, we too are someone else’s best and loyal customer. This isn’t a one way street. We can, and should be helping to promote and support those who have helped us achieve our goals and successes. As business owners — we are also valued consumers.

The onus is on the marketing industry to provide simple, effective, and affordable digital tools to help us listen to, engage with and mobilize customers wherever they may be in the digital landscape.

Take your presentation skills to the next level and beyond using what you’ll learn from this informative book.

The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs should be read and acted upon by everybody who gives presentations to any size group. There are nine elements of great presentations:
1. Headline
2. Passion statement
3. Three key messages
4. Metaphors and analogies
5. Demonstrations
6. Customer evidence and third party endorsements
7. Video clips
8. Flip charts, props, and show and tell
9. Partners

If you changed one or two of these on your next presentation, that one would be significantly better than your last. If you absorb this book and adopt as many elements as you can, your presentations will never be the same. Ever.

Carmine Gallo has done a superb job of capturing these essence of Steve jobs in this entertaining and totally informative book. Whether you’re an Apple of Steve Jobs fan or not – you owe it to yourself as well as your future audiences to study and apply these principles.

Your future presentations will come alive while speaking directly to your audience in their language, not yours. You’ll learn to simplify what you say so that the necessary part of your message may speak. Your eye contact, body posture, and hand gestures will improve.

Keep your listeners engaged. Buy the book today!

Years ago, shopping was an in-store event. Today many people are going online to research products and pre-shop before they even step foot in a store. In fact, according to BIG Research, 89% of consumers making in-store purchases in key retail categories have conducted online research prior to purchase.

This pre-shopping behavior, while relatively new, has become a common activity prior to a variety of purchases – both large and small. According to the study, when pre-shopping consumers are exposed to online advertising (search listings or display ads or both) they engage at a deeper level with your web site, viewing an average of 6 more pages than those not  exposed, a 53% increase.

In the study, these more highly engaged, online advertising exposed consumers demonstrated a much stronger propensity to make a purchase, resulting in a 43% lift in total revenue, of which   88% of the sales revenue generated from the online advertising budget was from consumers that purchased in the physical store.

Additionally, this online advertising exposed consumer may be your most valuable consumer, as a Forrester Research study noted that 45% of consumers who research online buy additional products in-store when they buy the product they researched online.

The results of this study demonstrate that those exposed to online advertising spend an average of 29% more on their in-store purchase than those who are not exposed.