Most business owners don’t want to rest on their laurels. Even if they are making profits, they can always make more. Unless everyone in the world is using their product, then they still have work to do. If this is your philosophy, then keep reading to find out how to hook your next big account.

How to Attract A New Client

First, perform some background work. The best presentations begin before you have even put pen to paper. How can you create an effective presentation without knowing who your potential clients are and what they need?

So, find out all that you can about your clients. Any information can be helpful to building a convincing sales pitch. Analyze your customers from all sides to see where you can get a foothold.

Ask questions. What do potential clients want from you? For an online business, set up questionnaires or ask these questions in blog posts and wait for feedback. If you can talk to the potential client before pitching to them, then do so. One, it shows interest in their needs and it also means you are doing your due diligence.

Create a presentation that has your client’s need at heart. It is easy to pitch a product and forget all about the client. But, if you want them to actively listen to you, then you need to integrate them into the equation from the word go.

Here’s an example. If your client is sensitive about animal rights, then don’t give them the hard line kind of presentation. Show that your product is sensitive as well by demonstrating that no animal testing was used in the making of your product. Small things like that can make all the difference to your client.

Command the room when you make a presentation. Arrive early and set up your projector, slideshow or PowerPoint. Now you know that everything works and can just about guarantee that there won’t be any glitches. Also, arrange the furniture so that all eyes focus on you without anyone having to turn or crane their necks.

Choose the optimal time for your presentation. If you have been offered the spot right before lunch or quitting time, reschedule when you can have an early morning slot. The client will be more alert and focused on what you have to say.

Offer practical examples in your presentation. This means tell a story that relates to your product and the ability of said product to meet this client’s needs. A lot of technical jargon won’t convince them to buy. Everyone tries that approach. Make yours stand out.

Are you in need of new clients? Learn how to capture and keep their attention until the deal is closed.

What’s Your Shtick?

A shtick is a Yiddish word that means your gimmick or unique talent. In the business world they call this your USP, Unique Selling Proposition. Essentially, what makes you different from your competition? What do you have to offer that they don’t? For example, a freelance writer might differentiate themselves by delivering any article or blog post project in 24 hours – the 24-Hour Article Service.

Narrow Your Focus

Trying to be all things to all people does one thing – it increases your competition. Specializing, on the other hand, narrows your competition. It also helps you become the best at what you do. For example, instead of offering information products on how to care for your pet, you might specialize in how to care for your aging dog. Or how to care for your aging Pomeranian. Specialization can virtually eliminate your competition.

Become Invaluable

Offer products, information, and resources that make you invaluable to your audience. When planning your business, ask yourself this single question – what can I do to offer more value to my audience? Of course, you have to know your audience well to answer this question.

Be Memorable

You cannot be boring in this competitive market and survive. Now that doesn’t mean you have to be over the top either. Instead, be yourself. Capture the interest of your audience and customers by sharing your personality with them in your content, interactions, and even in your products or services.

Pay Attention to Your Customers

Chances are you already have some very valuable information regarding what your customers respond to. Take a look at what they buy, when they buy, what emails they open and what links they click. This information will help you hone in on how to offer value and how to be memorable. It may also help you specialize.

Build a Community

Connect with your audience and customers on a regular basis. Invite them to get involved through a number of means. For example, invite them to connect with you on Facebook. Ask questions and invite comments.

Repeat Successes

Pay attention to what works for you and repeat it. For example, if you find that checklists are downloaded more than free reports you know that your audience enjoys checklists. If they buy more during the summer than in the winter then offer them more during the summer.

Staying ahead of your competition doesn’t just mean following their actions online and reacting to them. Instead, create a plan to be proactive. Differentiate yourself and focus on your customer. That’s how you’ll survive and thrive long term.

So how do you create this instant credibility? How do you demonstrate to your clients that you can be trusted?

Professional Policies and Procedures

One of the best ways to establish trust and credibility with your prospects instantly is to make sure you represent your company in a professional and credible manner. The simplest way to accomplish this is to publish your policies and procedures on your website. Make sure the page is easy to find and that it covers all the information someone would want to know. For example, what is your privacy policy? What is your return policy? Do you have a guarantee?

Transparency is a key credibility builder. Consider also including an FAQ page on your site. It may cover much of the same material that your policies and procedures page covers, but that’s okay.

Large Networking Presence

More than 400 million people are on Facebook right now. It’s important to have a presence on mainstream social networking sites. It’s also important to integrate your activity and social networking presence on your website. For example, include links to your social networking profile on your site. Allow people to share and follow you.

Social networking is a credibility builder because it’s a personal way to connect with your company. Again, it goes back to transparency and availability. If you’re open and easy to connect with online, it builds trust.

Additionally, if you’re connecting with other notable experts on social networking sites your prospects will notice that. You’ll earn credibility by association.

Great Content

Finally, great content is essential to building credibility. You want to make sure your content positions you as a knowledgeable expert in your industry. You can publish content on your website or blog. You can also publish content on your social networking site.

Each article, blog post, or web page will ideally offer value to your reader. When you offer value, you help build a foundation of trust with your readers. They begin to learn from you and about you. This helps them feel like you’re a company they can count on to continue to solve their problems.

In addition to publishing great content, it’s also helpful to publish content frequently – and on other websites. For example, if you are able to publish content on your site and contribute to other relevant blogs as a guest blogger it helps establish your credibility. If other business owners are turning to you for great content, then you must be an expert!

Building instant credibility isn’t difficult but it does take a plan. Represent your business in a professional manner. Make sure to be completely transparent and to publish content that offers value.

Here are a few of the best tips for achieving eCommerce excellence.

1. Make it Easy for All Buying Levels

Some people want to come to your website and buy right away. They want to land on your page, pull out their credit card and be done with the whole thing in two minutes or less.

Still others will want to come to your page and do a few hours of research.

Your site needs to be able to accommodate both. Amazon for example makes it very easy for people to order right away with its buy button above the fold. However, people can also spend ages researching reviews and related products to find the perfect thing for them.

2. Trust and Security

Trust and security is a big issue online when credit cards are involved.

Make sure you have 128-bit SSL encryption and that you have a secured server certificate. That means that your checkout page should say https:// rather than http://.

Also make sure your site is very well designed. Poor design indicates lack of trustability.

Finally, work on building your brand. That’s not something that can be done overnight, but absolutely plays a big role in conversions. Amazon converts 12% of their visitors into buyers – not because of brilliant copy, but because of a brand that’s built up over years.

3. Simplicity

It shouldn’t feel difficult to order from you. Try to take as many steps out of your checkout process as possible.

People who land on your site should at most have one or two choices. They can browse products or they can search. They can keep shopping or they can check out. They can pay by credit card or by PayPal.

Try not to overload them with choices. Avoid crowding your site with too many features. Make it very, very simple.

4. Return Policy

Make your return policy crystal clear. Try to be as generous as possible.

One place you can see the effect of return policies in action very clearly is eBay.

EBay is often filled with people selling very similar products for very similar prices. The margins are so low that it’s very hard for anyone to undercut anyone.

However, one area where certain sellers get an edge up is their return policies. Sellers with generous return policies will almost always outsell sellers with stingy return policies.

The same is true with eCommerce. If people know that they can get a full refund if they’re not satisfied, they’re a lot more likely to want to order. The risk to them is much reduced.

These are some of the top tips for achieving success in eCommerce. If your produce exceptional customer service, in the long run you’ll achieve exceptional results.

This involves people coming to your website. What you want to count are your unique visitors. These are people who visit for the first time. Repeat visitors are great for sales but to gain interest, the more people who come, the better.

In order for a business to make money it needs traffic. These people will do something for you on your site that will enhance their life and make money for you. There are a variety of ways to do it but for any method you use to be cost effective, you will need traffic.

One way to gain traffic is to have a focus. This is your niche. This will determine which traffic comes your way and if they are going to buy whatever you decide to offer on your site.

Now, turn your attention to your content. That is why your traffic is there in the first place. If you haven’t already, optimize it for a wider readership. This involves targeting certain keywords in your articles, blog posts, headers and picture text. Not only will your content get ranked higher for those keywords, but also your website. If you haven’t done so already, register your website with the major search engines.

Monetizing Your Website

Now that you have made a few tweaks to gain more focused traffic, you are ready to start making money with your website. Here are some ways that you can use to get the job done.

* PPC – This basically means that you are posting ads that people will click on. Whenever someone clicks on that ad, you get paid. Depending on who you are using for your service, there are other ways to do this besides just the click-through rate. One you can start with is Google AdSense.

* Banner Advertising – This is a way to get noticed. If you have a good fan base and have networked with others in your business niche, this can work for you. Sell advertising space on the top of your website. You can also sell on the sides, but keep in mind that the top half of your web page is where people’s eyes tend to gravitate.

* Affiliate Marketing – You not only advertise for others and sponsor their products, but you also get access to lots of helpful tools so you can do just that. Earn commissions on your click rate as well as sale rate depending on how the affiliate program is set up.

* Paid surveys – Companies will pay you to offer surveys to your visitors. Each time one of them takes the survey you get paid.

There are many other ways to monetize your website but this is just the beginning. Once you have started, try other ways to make your expertise work for you.

Without further ado, let’s get started.

The Getting Things Done (GTD) System

Note: The GTD system is a gigantic methodology in and of itself. To really understand the ins and outs of the system, get a copy of Getting Things Done by David Allen.

The GTD system involves basically making sure that there is nothing on your mind that isn’t written down somewhere.

Anytime you have a thought that entails a task or action you need to take, you write it down. At the end of the day, everything you’ve written down is put into some sort of task-tracking device.

This eliminates the “vague sense that there’s something I’m supposed to be doing” because you know exactly what’s on your plate at any given time.

You sit down once a week with all your tasks, actions and projects and sort out all your tasks into categories, divided by where you can accomplish the task. For example, you might sort your categories into At Office, At Home, At Store, Online and At Phone.

Anytime you’re at the office, you can just open your At Office list and do any one of the tasks that you’ve sorted into that task file.

This is a grossly simplified version of a very complex and powerful system. Again, to learn the ins and outs, either purchase the original book or Google Getting Things Done for a more in-depth explanation.

The Pomodoro System

The Pomodoro system seeks to eliminate time wasting that often comes with checking email, wandering online and other such activities that aren’t actually productive.

A Pomodoro is a time unit of 20 minutes. Once you start a Pomodoro, you cannot stop. A Pomodoro is pure work, with no email or bathroom breaks in between.

In short, once you start a Pomodoro, you’re working for 20 minutes straight. Start a timer and don’t stop actually doing your work for 20 minutes.

Track how many Pomodoros you accomplished during the day. That’s a better gauge of your efficiency than the amount of hours you spent in front of a computer.

The Steven Covey System

The Steven Covey system ranks tasks by two scales: Whether the task is important or not important, and whether the task is urgent or not urgent.

A task that’s urgent but not important might be answering a ringing phone from a friend. It feels like you must do it now, but it’s probably not that important.

A task that’s important but not urgent might be finding your life purpose, spending time with your kids or managing your finances. They’re important, but there seems to be no immediate pressure to perform the task.

Steven Covey asserts that we tend to spend too much time on things that are urgent but not important and not enough time on things that are important but not urgent.

To remedy this, rank your task list by how important asks are and how urgent they appear to be. Put an emphasis on getting important tasks done, even at the expense of tasks that seem urgent right now.

These are three very different systems for managing your time as an entrepreneur. Each system has avid followers that swear by it. Which system will work for you? Do a bit more research into each system and try them out for yourself. The improvements can be dramatic.

How can you use smart brand-building techniques to improve your brand with social media? Here’s how.

Define Your Brand First

Before you post anything – before you even sign up for a social network, define your brand.

What does your brand stand for? What’s the “vibe” of your brand? What are your primary spoken and unspoken messages? Who are you targeting?

Answer these questions. Everything else moving forward needs to fall in line with the brand you define. Your profile photos, the color of your pages, the content you post and everything else should all match up to the brand you want to create.

Choosing Your Social Networks

There are dozens of social networks you can join, many of them specific to your industry or topic. Unfortunately, usually it just doesn’t make sense to join them all. Depending on your time and resources, you’ll usually only want to establish a presence in one or two social networks.

Pick the social networks that make the most sense for your audience. If you’re in a corporate setting, you might choose Facebook and LinkedIn. If you’re in a tech-savvy industry, you might choose Twitter and Facebook. If you’re primarily targeting music fans, you might choose just MySpace.

The network you choose depends entirely on where your audience is. Figure out what networks your audience uses the most and be on those networks.

Post Brand Relevant, Value-Added Content Regularly

If you don’t stay in contact with people regularly, they’ll forget you exist pretty quickly. Make sure they’re continually aware of your brand by posting regularly. Build up brand loyalty by posting content that your audience will really love. And what they will love really depends on who your audience is.

If you’re targeting a corporate or professional audience, they might love a daily three-minute video giving powerful tips on public speaking.

If you’re targeting a college-age crowd, they might be more interested in shocking or humorous pictures and/or videos.

If you’re targeting a political audience, they might appreciate links to news stories not covered by American media.

Know your audience. Post the type of content that your specific audience will love. Focus on providing value rather than trying to get people to buy or pass on your profile. Build up real loyalty rather than going for the quick sale.

Building a strong brand using social media involves first clearly defining your brand, then choosing the right social networks to be on and finally posting content that your audience loves. If you do this on a consistent basis while being true to your brand, your brand will become stronger and stronger both in your customer’s mind and in your market in general.

If you’re not interested in selling your e-book, then consider these fantastic benefits you gain whether you sell it or give it away.

A Credibility and Authority Boost

We give authors our confidence. Writing and publishing an e-book will give you and your business a credibility boost. It essentially establishes you as an expert in your industry. When you write a book that helps your customers and prospects solve their problems, people consider you a credible authority on your subject. They’ll turn to you for advice and assistance. Additionally, credibility and authority are both buying triggers. You’ll earn customers when you write a book.

Branding, Exposure and Awareness

When you write an e-book your business brand is enhanced. You’re going to reach more people through publication so your exposure and awareness will also be increased. Branding, exposure and awareness all help you grow your business. Through your book marketing efforts, press and publicity and through word of mouth, it’s not unheard of to triple your audience. You just have to write a book.

More Opportunities

Through both the press you receive for your book and through increased credibility, awareness and exposure, you’re going to catch the eye of the public. Some of the people who read or learn about your book are going to be interested in working with you. You’ll receive new opportunities. Through these opportunities you can grow your business.

For example, you may have an opportunity to be interviewed for your local newspaper. A fellow business owner may contact you through this press and offer you a partnership opportunity. There’s no telling what opportunities are in store for you when you write a book.

Finally, writing a book provides you with an entry into your sales funnel if you give it away for free. If you sell the book then you have another product to market and profit from. There really is no downside to writing an e-book. They’re easy to create and even easier to distribute. All you need is a sales page and a download link. A little marketing and you have yourself an amazing business-building tool.

Many people hesitate to write an e-book. They think it’s going to be a lot of work, or they’re afraid they’re not qualified to write a book. Writing a book is much like writing copy for your website. With a plan, passion for your topic, and the ability to write conversationally, you can write a book.

The book is a great read for anyone involved in sales or putting together pricing structures, because it touches on one very interesting piece of information that can have a drastic effect on sales figures, if put into practice properly. We’ll examine that phenomenon, which we’ll call pricing relativity, or perhaps better, value relativity.

The book details a set of studies done at academic institutes in the United States in which test subjects were given sets of offers and asked which they would be most likely to buy. The results showed an incredibly interesting trend which demonstrated that people do not make buying decisions based on absolute value, they make buying decisions based on relative value.

Essentially, it’s not the perceived value of the particular item that counts, what matters is the perceived value of that item in relation to other similar items.

For instance, one example used in the book is a magazine subscription ad in which the available subscription options are a) online only for $59  b) print only for $125 or c) print and online for $125. When confronted with this set of options, the vast majority of subjects chose option c, print and online, while some chose option a, and almost none chose option b.

The test was then run again, but this time, option b was removed. If people were making their buying decisions logically, in theory the results should be the same. After all, the absolute value of option c has not changed, and the only option removed was the one that no one chose anyways.

However, the actual results showed that in the second test, the majority of subjects chose option a, the cheaper online only subscription, while only some choosing the higher priced option. What had changed?

The difference in the two tests is that in the second test, option b, the “decoy” had been removed. In the first test, option b was $125 for print only, and option c was also $125 for both print and internet. Therefor, while the absolute value of option c had not changed, the relative value of option c was significantly higher in the first test because it was sitting beside an option of equal price, but less perceived value.

After all, if print only is $125 and print and online is also $125, then seemingly if we choose option c, we’re getting the online subscription free of charge! In the second test, with the decoy removed, people now no longer have that comparison to make, and with the relative value of option C now diminished, many opt to go for the cheaper option.

Understanding this pattern in buying behavior can help you in setting your pricing and in boosting sales for slow moving products. For instance, if you have only one product for sale, and you’ve found that it isn’t selling the way you’d like it to, consider introducing a more expensive version of that item.

While you may sell some of the higher end version, the real effect will be that people will now have a comparison to make, and in relation to the more expensive option, the original item will seem of greater value, and sales may increase substantially.  This very scenario has been tested and proven to work in the past.

This concept of relative value driving people’s buying decisions is an exceptionally important one for any entrepreneur to understand and I’d highly recommend you read into it in depth. The book is called Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely and as well as this topic, it covers many other areas of human decision making that can be applied to help your business succeed.

The idea that the cyclical nature of the economy makes recessions a great time for entrepreneurs goes as follows; the economy runs in ups and downs. Right now it’s down, but it won’t be forever. It will recover, likely to a point even stronger than it once was. Why is this good for entrepreneurs? Because starting a business now, while the economy is down, means that your business will be established when the economy recovers, making the timing perfect for explosive growth or even better, to sell!

In theory, this is actually a fairly valid point. After all, if you start a business in a boom and your growth is strong, when the next recession hits, you’ll have to hold on to that struggling business and deal with all the problems established business deal with in recession, and hope for the best. If you want to sell, you’ll either have sell in a buyers market like no other, or you’ll just have to wait! However, if you start your business in a recession, it’s the opposite.

Your costs are low because you’re still small. You won’t have to worry about layoffs and massive cost cutting, because you’re haven’t incurred enough major operating costs or enough staff to make it necessary. If you can grow your business a bit and establish yourself in the hard times, when the good times roll out again (and most people decide to launch start-ups), you’ll be in good shape to take advantage of all the associated opportunities. If you decide to sell, you’ll be selling an established business in a time when money is flowing and the market is in your favor as a seller.

The unfortunate part is that it’s not as easy to launch a successful start-up when the collective chips are down. Capital is hard enough to come by when the economy is doing alright, let alone when people are being squeezed. Angels and VC firms won’t be investing as much as they would be in good times, and sources of funding closer to home like friends and relatives will probably be even more dried up.

Boot-strapping will be an absolute necessity, and money will be extremely tight. It won’t be easy to get off the ground and get going, but it’s far from impossible. So if you’ve got an idea on the shelf that you thought you’d leave for a sunnier time, dust off and seriously analyze whether or not you could get it going, even in a limited form, with the means available to you now. If the answer is yes, it could result in a serious advantage down the road.

The second argument the author of the article made in favor of our current situation was related to hiring and the amount of talent available. So it goes, and logically so, the massive amounts of layoffs that have been going on have freed up a lot of very talented people from the jobs that once made them inaccessible to you. Likewise, the lack of jobs out there right now due to companies restricting hiring have lowered the compensation expectations of this newly available talent to levels far below the salaries they’d demand in prosperous times.

What does this add up to? Talented, cheap, available professionals who may very well now be in your price range, which they weren’t four years ago, and probably won’t be four years from now. So hunt them down. Best case scenario, your business takes off and when times get good, you’ll be able to afford their inflated expectations. Worst case scenario, you won’t be able to afford them, they’ll leave, but you’ll still have had a top notch professional working for your business for as long as they’re around, and the impact they may have could be substantial.

Again, it’s a little easier said than done. Hiring the right people is always difficult regardless of the economic situation businesses face, but the fact remains, the level of talent available at a certain compensation level will always be higher during recessionary times than it will in prosperous times. A top notch pro who demands $150,000 a year when things are good may very well accept $85,000 a year to come work for you after their old company is forced to cut them loose. So if by some form of magic you have money to spare in your hiring budget, do NOT horde it. Spend it. It may be the best money you spend during the entire recession.