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Archive for January, 2012

There are many ways to market a product or a service and providing the potential clients and customers with testimonials is one of the best ways to market.

The power of testimonials can never be underestimated. People, especially nowadays, will only purchase products or avail services which have been referred to them by people whom they know. But most of the times, this is not an option that is in the hands of the business owner, he has to do the next best thing, which is to get testimonials from his past clients.

Testimonials are living statements from past customers or clients which states that they were satisfied by the product/ service. Every business must have testimonials to be able to stand out in the ever crowded markets.

There are many benefits of having testimonials. Here are some of them.

Testimonials appease the target market

Testimonials usually lessen the doubts of the target market. There are a lot of scammers and con artists nowadays, and this has turned the market into a fearsome one. Credible testimonials provide security to the people who are eyeing at a certain product or service. The provision of testimonials gives people a much more relaxed attitude towards a product or service.

Testimonials assure quality

Aside from confirming the existence of a business and lessening doubts, testimonials provide assurance to potential customers and clients of the quality of the product or service. The fact that they took time out to be able to write testimonials about the product reflect their levels of satisfaction towards the product/service.

Testimonials give advantage

Credible testimonials provide a competitive advantage for the product/service. There are many products and services out there and one of the ways to stand out from the rest is the use of credible testimonials.

There are many types of testimonials. Testimonials are usually categorized according to the source. Here are a few examples:

a) Testimonials from satisfied customers

This is probably the most effective type of testimonial. Nothing beats a testimonial from a satisfied customer because it is a picture of what the product/service is all about.

b) Testimonials from experts

Experts can be credible sources of testimonials. If a renowned dermatologist writes a testimonial for a beauty soap, it will surely help in boosting its sales, wouldn’t it?

c) Testimonials from celebrities

In a world that is run by mass media, celebrities have become powerful sources of testimonials. Today, even infomercials are infested by testimonials from celebrities.
People may think that getting testimonials from celebrities will cost a lot, but if it’s a real testimonial, celebrities may even waive their talent fees.

There is much more to making a testimonial an effective tool for marketing than gathering them. Good testimonials are the ones which can be compressed into a few catchy words. “I lost 20 pounds in two weeks time!” is an example of an eye-catching testimonial. However, one must never rephrase or edit what the client had said. How to get the right kinds of testimonials will be discussed later.

Credible testimonials should also contain the complete attributes of the people who gave them. Their titles, location and age should be included whenever possible.
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Lots of Americans are trying to get involved in forex currency tradingbut before you join it, it is necessary for you to get sound forex trading education. Because, without good quality forex trading education, you can never get into the secrets of currency trading and you can never able to make a tidy profit in currency trading.

The very first thing that a forex trader should do is to understand what forex currency trading actually is. Well, forex or FX is the term used for foreign exchange market and the forex trading means the concurrent exchange of one foreign currency for another at the same time. Traders can gain a sizeable profit if they exchange currencies at the right time and in right market conditions. The basic purpose of forex education is to provide necessary skills to a forex trader so that he can perform this exchange of forex currency quiet easily and can also earn profit from it as well.

The first and foremost part of forex trading educationis to carefully learn and understand the currency trading market background. The forex currency trading market is ever changing and with good forex trading education, a trader will learn to find out some solid ways to monitor the forex trading market and all those changes that can increase profit for you in forex exchange.

The second important part of your currency trading education is to get knowledge about forex trading strategy, risk management and risk control strategy. With the learning of risk management strategy, a trader will learn to control his actions and he would never try to over invest himself at the thrill of making more profit in forex currency trading. A forex trader should also learn how to efficiently cut his losses in forex trade. This part of learning is extremely critical for a forex trader because with effective risk management strategy, a trader can make his earnings huge or he can either ruin up his entire trading capital.

Speculate on stock exchange requires using various trading platforms, offered by the brokerage companies and dealing centers. MetaTrader 4 belongs to Forex trading terminals, successfully used by the traders all over the globe. This software allows you to conclude deals on the Forex market. Moreover, you can do it just at home. So, nobody, except you, controls your work and time, which you must spend for it. MetaTrader 4 is a powerful instrument for both professional Forex participants and newcomers. But they must have computer or phone and the Internet.

For a start, it’s necessary to download and launch the mentioned program on your personal computer. There are a lot of websites, offering their visitors to download Forex software and just in a few minutes you can start launching MetaTrader 4. The process of installation is not difficult even for inexperienced user, as it’s completely computer-managed. But it’s recommended to learn the characteristics of the trading terminal before starting to work with it. The additional trading platforms or any other applications are not necessary if you already use MetaTrader 4. So it’s a great advantage of this program. Self-contained operating on the financial market is guaranteed by MetaTrader 4. This terminal is very widespread among the traders. That’s why the majority of Forex brokers provide their customers with this trading software. It allows the traders to trade effectively.

Here’s an interesting notion: Do you realize that there are mistakes you can make at various stages of your business’ growth that can be slowly killing it for months or even years if you don’t watch for them?

Well, these mistakes do exist and they are not just reserved for the rookie companies. Many working businesses, including those you might think are “successful” because they’ve been around for 10+ years, are often still making them… and are possibly losing a lot of money and/or wasting a lot of time in the process.

Although some of these big and sneaky mistakes seem aimed more at service type companies, they really do fit the bill for almost any type of industry. I’ve done my best with the listings below to give examples to prove it.

Underestimating Project/Service Time- This is a big one and it pertains to service companies as well as companies that sell a product. This is a service company’s bread and butter. If you don’t estimate your time to perform each and every service in your repertoire, you will get burned and there is little you can do about it but bite the bullet and learn from it. The best way to estimate time is to do it once yourself or watch your best employee do the task and then throw in a little fudge factor on top of it. For product companies, time becomes an issue with logistics so be aware!

Not Knowing YOUR Company Numbers/Incorrectly Setting Prices- Notice I emphasized the word “your”. It’s a common mistake to use a competitor’s as your pricing gauge without actually knowing why they use those numbers. Think about the nightmare you will get yourself into if you take a competitor’s price, cut it by 10% and then start selling. What if the competition has a bad pricing structure and is barely making money or even losing money?!?! What if your costs are more than theirs?!?! You can use competitor as a starting point but you can’t base your whole strategy on it.

Different industries have their own variables as far as costs go and you need to be aware of them for your project or product pricing. What you pay for a product you are going to sell is not the only cost to have in your head when you are pricing products. How much your labor and materials cost for a service is only a piece of an hourly rate. Employees cost more than just salary and not every employee is part of your labor cost. Every company has insurance to pay for. There are tons of overhead expenditures that need to be part of your price. Oh, by the way, the big one that many people forget about in their price is the quality factor. What you include as “standard services” or “standard product features” as well as job site etiquette or in store service or warranties all need to go into your pricing. I’ll get to more on why in the next segment.

Not Charging for All of Your Time & Costs- This seems like a stupid statement to some but I bet most business owners will admit that they have given away a little too much of the farm at times. Hey, there is nothing wrong with giving a little extra here and there to show you care. But either way, that’s not what I’m talking about here. What concerns me are those that put a lot of quality into their work or products or stores and do not cover the cost for it. As an example, say you run a service company and your competitors don’t do a certain standard service that you do. You can’t just undercut their price to steal a job; you need to have that cost covered in your rate and advertise the fact that it comes with the price upfront. Stores undermine themselves, for example, when they put more people on the floor for customer service but don’t charge for it. These things cost you money and when your competitors don’t do them it costs them less money. Put out better service and then under price them, and your competition just has to wait a little bit for you to fall on your face so they can swoop back in.

As a business owner you need to believe that you are providing your clients worthwhile wares that deserve to be paid for. If you get the chance to explain why your prices are higher, then take that opportunity and do it. If they don’t like the fact that you include things that others charge extra for later or that you treat them better, then they are most likely completely price shoppers. You don’t want them as regular customers anyway. Trust me.

Not Getting Paid Fast Enough- That’s right, the old cash flow issue. As long as you are actually making enough money to pay the bills, this problem can be solved, prevented or at least made to be not as bad as it could be. Here’s the deal:

First off all, bill customers very promptly. It is very common for a small business to not have the procedures or systems in place to get invoices generated and out the door in a timely fashion (see the next segment for more). Again, this would seem unlikely since that’s the reason why we are doing the work- to get paid. But it is very easy for the people responsible for getting this info to the billing people to be too busy to get it there or not have enough organization to give it to them the right way.

The second part to slowing down or stopping a regular cash flow crunch is to make the quickest payment deals possible with customers and the slowest possible with vendors and employees. If there is any way not to pay employees any more than twice a month, you better do it. Contractors always have an issue with this. If you must pay weekly, then tell them before they are hired that they will be getting the first week held back, essentially buying you a week. It will help, I promise.

Part three involves credit. If your company can get a credit card, then get it. This allows for certain important things to be bought (that you can afford) that might come up during a cash flow crunch. Better yet, especially if you have no choice but to deal with 45+ day customer payments, do your best to get a company line of credit. This is a must if you plan on selling to the government or doing commercial service work. These clients often have 60 to 90 day wait periods.
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