Month: October 2020

Should You Consider Consultancy As An Easy Way To Make Money?

 

There are many that want to supplement their income with their own business and many more who want to give up their day job altogether. It is possible to do this by just continuing to do the same thing for yourself as you were doing for your old boss. By starting a consulting business you are turning your freshest and most used skills into a consulting business. A reaction to this suggestion is often that by doing the same work, your new business is just the same as your previous job. The very reason for wanting to quit your current employment was to get away from the mundane work you were doing. Whatever consultancy experience is used, owning your own business is going to be better than being employed by someone else. No matter what industry or sector, being self employed is the key requirement when wanting to give up a day job and start new business opportunities. Starting with your most familiar skills will assist the start up of your new business. You are aware of what clients want, you have the expertise to help them and might even know a few customers to get you started. This is where you must be initially careful not to upset your old boss by stealing his customers as this might contravene your contract of employment. So how do you choose what skills you have that might be of use and how do you decide whether or not there will be a chance of easy money making selling them to clients? And do not forget that you will be charging much more than you were being paid before on an hourly basis. Can you convince somebody that your services are worth as much? But remember this, you are expected to be charging more particularly as that is what the customer expects, and the extra is the profit and overheads any business should reasonably expect to make. A consultancy can be built from just about any skill or profession. The obvious ones include accountancy, bookkeeping, legal, property surveying, banking, languages and the like. Each one can be the backbone of a service line that can be sold for a lucrative hourly rate. But consultancies can be formed from many other types of jobs which can provide simple and quick ways to make more money. Consider your current employment, even if it is working in a shop or factory. Various areas connected to the safe or efficient running of a business could be the foundation for a consulting company. The areas that you are familiar with need to be identified, or areas that you want to find more about – to polish off your skills. As an illustration, you might have helped your employer to work towards a quality mark accreditation which will have involved you getting to know the process and what is required. Both of these are areas in which you could research deeper. The list of different types of skills that can be sold as consultancy is endless. For a consultant to know just a little bit more than the potential customer is a critical point. The next crucial issue is having the skills to persuade the receptive client that you actually know much more than they do!

Strip-Lining Sales Technique

In our most recent blogs, we’ve been reviewing Negative Reverse Selling and how it is very effective in creating great bonding and rapport with sales prospects. Negative Reverse Selling is a way of saying and doing the opposite of what the prospect expects from a salesperson, disarming them and creating trust with them. One of its more compelling techniques is called strip-lining, a method of using reverse questions to get the prospect talking, and you keep “throwing more line and let them swim”. However, you need to do this step right or it could backfire on you. When you do it correctly, prospects feel like they are in control of the conversation, and you have a better chance of making a sale. Practice this step frequently in low risk situations before using it on your biggest and best prospects.

What should you practice? Getting the fit right means executing as follows:

• Neutral prospects get very hard strip-lines, such as, “It sounds like you’re very happy and I should leave. Before I go, what do you like about who you’re doing business with now?”

• Negative prospects get hard strip-lines, but not as hard as neutral prospects. For example, “Based on what you just said about your current vendor, it makes sense to me why you’re not interested in switching your business to another company. We get great feedback like that from our customers, too, but your vendor sounds really good at what they do. I don’t know if you can do any better than that. There doesn’t seem to be much opportunity for us to work together here, is there?”

• Positive prospects get strip-lines that are just a light tug: “Thanks for reaching out to us. I have to say, your friend Bronwyn gets almost all the credit for having a great experience with us. She was very good about explaining the application problem, and that really helped her have a happy outcome with us. Since I don’t know your application, I’m not sure if I can help you at this point. Could you be nice enough to tell me about it?”

In all three examples, you’ll find three components. Look at each of them, and you’ll see how strip-line responses are structured.

1. The first component is a build-up (a compliment or validation of the prospect’s point of view). In the above, an example of that was, “It sounds like you’re very happy.”

2. The second component is a takeaway (a conclusion that goes in the opposite direction to what the prospect expects). In the above, an example was, “… and I should leave.”

3. The third component is a question (a continuation of the discussion). In the above, an example was, “Before I go, what do you like about who you’re doing business with now?”

Looking at the example above for positive prospects, notice the buildup portion of the response validates how well things went “with Bronwyn” and gives most of the credit to her: “Thanks for reaching out to us. I have to say, your friend Bronwyn gets almost all the credit for having a great experience with us. She was very good about explaining the application problem, and that really helped her have a happy outcome with us.”

The takeaway portion includes words to the effect that you’re not yet convinced you can help the prospect. “Since I don’t know your application, I’m not sure if I can help you as well at this point.”

The third part, the question, is pretty obvious; you ask a question to start to understand the application, the problem, and ultimately the prospect’s pain: “Could you be nice enough to tell me about it?”

When you strip-line a prospect using all three components of the technique, you are likeliest to uncover the most meaningful information. You now know what a good fit looks like. What does a bad fit look like? Let’s say a prospect calls your office and says, “I’ve heard really good things about your company. A friend of mine, Bronwyn, told me all about you, and I’m very interested in doing business with you.” Obviously, that’s a positive prospect. It wouldn’t be appropriate for you to do a hard strip-line since the prospect is almost ready to buy. Saying to the prospect, “You must have used some other vendors in our space. Why wouldn’t you want to use them now?” will not only confuse the prospect, but would probably ruin the sale. So that’s a bad fit. Instead, you’d want to use the approach I shared with you above, the one that begins “Thanks for reaching out.”

Sometimes the prospect says something that more or less does the buildup for you. In that case, you don’t need to do it, but you still need to do the takeaway and pose the question. For example if the prospect says, “I heard really good things about your company,” you could strip-line by saying, “That’s nice to hear, but we’re not for everyone. Would you like to tell me why you thought it might have been a good idea to call, and hopefully we find out that we’re a good fit”?

In summary: Strip-line very hard with neutral pros-pects, even sounding like you are getting ready to leave the sales call or implying that you think the sales call is over; strip- line hard with negative prospects; strip-line lightly with positive prospects.

Strip-lining is a great way to uncover pain because it’s extremely disarming and helps build trust. When you do it right, it doesn’t sound like you’re selling. Prospects feel like you truly embrace and care about their goals and pain. (As, of course, you do!) If you don’t uncover pain with strip-lining, then perhaps that particular prospect doesn’t have enough pain to do business with you. Strip-lining combined with other pain-finding Sandler approaches will put you in a different league from all those other salespeople who traditionally start with the hard sell, list off features and benefits, and offer prospects free quotes.

Want to learn more about Negative Reverse Selling, and other Sandler selling techniques? Check out our upcoming workshops and sign-up for one at no cost to you. Here’s a link to our Eventbrite page, where you can find a workshop on a date and at a location convenient for you. Be sure to use the Promotional Code: CrashAClass to attend free of charge.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/10152441

How Live Chat Implementation Offers Benefits to Online Businesses

 

Live chat allows the operators to chat with multiple clients at the same time. While they are doing that they are free to connect to others online or redirect calls to others in the office if they need to. Multitasking is a very big advantage for a company with employees, as it enables maximum output.

Live chat support enables instant leads on a client. It is easy for the operator to develop a strong customer relationship. Customers who usually use the chat solution can easily ask for as much detail as they want for the service they require.

First impressions are important. When a visitor asks a question and receives quick replies he is bound to stay longer, give more business by making more purchases and will show a lot of confidence in your business. This is why many businesses in various industries like the automobile industry are using live chat as a means of contacting potential clients to develop trust and a strong business relationship with customers.

The software will enable you to customize your chat icons, pop-up windows and invite screens with the company logo. It will allow your name to be in lights and will make it catchy and difficult for the visitor to forget your site.

The live chat software is absolutely risk free. It is easy to download and is very user friendly.

Are you catering to clients in different parts of the world? The software allows you to communicate with your clients in their own native language. This creates a high level of comfort between the chat operator and the customer. Also the customer will develop a strong level of trust. The system itself supports all the special characters including right to left direction languages that allow all the windows and graphics to be translated into the appropriate language.

A post chat survey can be created in order to receive feedback from the customers. It is just a way to evaluate a visitor’s experience and enables him to ask any questions he may have or leave any comments he would wish to share. Customer feedback is all about improving customer care.

As a business expands, you can add as many chat operators, as you need to cater to your customers’ needs. Hence, it is scalable.

Real time stats are given which let you quickly evaluate your clients by being able to find out their referring URL, IP address and location that will help you understand them better.

In conclusion, adding live chat software to website can prove to be very advantageous for business. Businesses that have not already availed this featured product are missing out.