Typically, people who sell services go for an hourly rate. They use a process called “reverse competition” to determine what their rate should be. This is where you take a look at what your geographical competitors are charging, and you decide where in the range you want to fit on the spectrum of hourly rates. Inevitably, we choose a rate somewhere in the middle, so we can say that we’re not the most expensive, but neither are we the cheapest!

What kind of message are we sending out to our clients with this approach?

We’re showing absolutely no differentiation from any other company - just sticking ourselves straight down the line. In other words, we compete with everyone! Not a very prudent marketing decision.

So pricing simply using an hourly rate that sits in the middle of the spectrum is, in my view, a wasted opportunity to create a point of difference. Let’s think more broadly for a minute about what we are actually offering to our clients:

Regardless of what our specific service is, we all offer some combination of:

Quality
Price and
Service
QUALITY
Quality has become an expectation - the minimum you need to be in the game. It is similar to a high school degree - no one cares if you have one, but watch out if you do not. Quality is no longer an effective differentiator. So if you are going on about the exceptional quality of your service in your promotional material and sales pitch, just realize that in your customers eyes, you are not differentiating yourself in any way.
After all, no sane company is going to advertise the fact that the work they do is of average or low quality. It’s all high, isn’t it?

PRICE
There is absolutely nothing positive about competing on price, unless you specifically position yourself as a low-cost provider. Certainly, there is a market for the discount provider, but I believe this only works if you have a very high volume of transactions. As a service provider, the only sensible route is to obtain premium prices for your services.

No matter what you charge, there is always someone, somewhere, willing to perform the work you do for less money. Customers are value conscious, not price conscious. They look to do business with people they feel give them more than they are paying for. So the goal for the service provider is to make sure the customer perceives the full value of the service, not simply the price component.

Its accepted fact that many customers will equate high price with high value - especially when there is very little else to judge your value on.

Wise consultants know that if they price their services at the low end of the market, customers do not take their advice seriously. On the other hand, if you charge rates on the upper end of the spectrum, the customer will hang on every word you say and has a higher probability of implementing your suggestions. This of course has a proviso that you are offering a great service, rather than a mediocre one.

Sometimes the biggest hurdle to get over when considering charging premium pricing is our own attitude. Do any of these sound familiar?

‘I can’t charge those prices - my customers will all walk away!’

‘My service isn’t worth that much’

As long as you stay in that mindset, you’ll never make the transition to high end pricing. You must truly believe the value of what you offer - after all if you don’t, why should your customers?

If you are selling good advice, and your customers listen carefully and implement it - they will be more successful and thus will value you that much more. It is a cycle that spirals upward: The more you charge, the more people follow your suggestions, the more profitable they become, the more valuable you are to them. This is a vicious circle that you definitely want to be part of.

SERVICE
The third component of your offering is service. In today’s world, service is the ultimate differentiator and separates successful companies from mediocre companies. People will pay a premium for excellent service, and want to do business with companies who provide it. They want to build up personal relationships, know that their needs are understood, and connect with people who demonstrate integrity and value long term associations.

Successful businesses are in the relationship building game. Everything they do is aimed at strengthening connections and affiliations with potential and existing clients. This is where each of us can be different. No one can imitate our personal style and success at building and maintaining relationships.

In the long run, excellent service providers will prevail over mediocre “competitors.”

GETTING AWAY FROM HOURLY RATES
Before you do business with a new customer, you hold all the leverage in the relationship. After the services have been performed, the customer possesses the leverage. The lesson is that you want to set all of your prices when you possess the leverage - that is, before the engagement begins. This requires quoting fixed prices and removing yourself from the Almighty Hour mentality.

The minute you quote an hourly rate, you put a fixed limit on your earning potential. It’s hard to increase an hourly rate once it has been set. The most successful service providers charge for the job as a whole, and don’t reveal how many hours it will take to complete it.

One of my clients - a management consultant - bemoaned the fact that he always underestimated the hours required to complete a job, even when he added in extra time. When all the extra hours were added in, his hourly rate worked out to less than $50 per hour. At my suggestion, he began quoting prices by the job. After three months he conceded that on average, he was able to charge more for the whole job than when he quoted by the hour. His customers - it seems - perceived greater value when he outlined what the job consisted of, than when he simply quoted an hourly rate for his time.

PRICE RESISTANCE
If you are in business, at some stage you will encounter resistance to the price you are charging. Your best option here is to help the customer understand the full value of your service, and the value or benefit they will get by implementing it. If you cannot conquer price resistance through educating the customer, then I would seriously suggest you not take the engagement.

Never decrease your price to get business from a customer suffering from price resistance. That cheats your best customers - those who value what you provide - and subsidizes your worst customers - those drawn to you by price considerations alone. Those will be the first customers to defect once they find - and they will - a service provider willing to do the work for less. You do not want to work for people who do not understand, or refuse to pay for, the value you provide.

Stay true and stick to your guns. In today’s world it is no longer relevant to talk in terms of hourly rates when positioning the price of your services. It’s all about value you provide, and the perception of value in your customers’ mind.

© 2003-2005 Megan Tough
Megan Tough - coach, facilitator & published writer - works with people to create outstandingly satisfying and truly successful professional lives. Make more money - have more fun! To learn more and to sign up for more FREE tips and articles like these, visit www.megantough.com

I think what makes the Home Business owners unique is their drive and desire. For any of us, there are certain things we need to evaluate prior to undertaking such an endeavor as home based business ownership. What do I want to accomplish, how will I accomplish this goal, what are the demands I need to make upon my time to help me realize the goals I’m laying down, and the list goes on and on, but you get the idea.

Something as basic as why do I want to go into business for myself needs to be addressed well in advance of any other considerations. In my life experience, I have never been one to cater to clichés or warm fuzzy catch-phrases so I won’t wow you with any of them here.. I stick to simple, real truths.

The truths are; know that you will fail but, also know enough to learn a lesson from it and chalk it up in the win column as adding to your education. Success and failure are on the EXACT same road – success is just a little farther down that same road!

Seriously, can you imagine where we would be if someone such as Bill Gates gave up after what had to be more than a few attempts! More seriously than that is where Bill Gates would be without the contribution made by Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Edison! See how this comes full circle? Each thing dependent upon the others successes AND failures.

A rock solid work ethic does not go unnoticed or unrewarded. There are dividends here that will provide for you many times over. Believe it or not but this is probably the only business on the planet where we can all compete on a level playing field. That should be as exciting to you as it is to me! Truly it can be an overwhelming prospect literally having the world at your fingertips.

With each failure our knowledge grows, defeats are turned into victories; your self confidence grows as does your business and it goes on and on. There is no stopping that kind of momentum. When things do arise from time to time as they will, you will definitely be in a better position to handle these and they won’t seem so insurmountable as they once did.

Never ever give up, if you fall down, pick yourself up and start over. We are fortunate to have some of the best and brightest in the industry to assist us. Listen to your teachers carefully - do not try to re-invent the wheel. Those who have come before you have paid their dues in both time and money so make sure you’re a good follower.

Follow these simple examples and watch both yourself and your business grow. Both will need to change and evolve continually in order to stay fresh, up to date and ready to compete. Network as much as possible. Talk to your respective team members and find what works and what doesn’t. Valuable lessons if you’re working on limited funds!

Lastly, remember that no one will be harder on you than you so be sure to give yourself a break once in a while! It will come just don’t force it. Sure some people get lucky every once so often and hit the lottery but my friend, you stand a better chance starting your own e-business and the time has never been better.

For me, I love the diversity of working with a variety of people. I get to talk with, tutor and impart my message to people from the United States, India, Germany and even Greece! The cultures are great, there’s no barriers just plain people wanting something better. That doesn’t seem too difficult and the tools to accomplish this lowering of barriers have never been more readily available. We all have something to bring to the table – find out what your offering is and contribute to the common good. You will find that in time this type of generosity will be repaid to you ten fold both in supportive business associates and fiercely loyal customers.

About The Author

Chas is a Home Based Business Owner, Motivational Writer, and an Independent SFI Marketing Representative and may be reached at: http://work-from-home-make-extra-income.com or brothec@msn.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

Placing your ezine in a Blog or a RSS Feed only takes
minutes to do. It’s easy, fast and free. There’s no reason
why you shouldn’t take advantage of this new technology.

Here are 5 solid reasons why you should publish your
ezine in a blog:

1. To Syndicate Your Ezine. Place your ‘content’
and ‘links’ on hundreds of sites. As you probably know by
now, the internet is a numbers game - the more links, the
more content you have ‘out there’ - the more traffic you
will receive.

Syndicating your ezine in a RSS Feed will also make it more
readily available to those who don’t check their email or
for those who get their email blocked by Spam Filters or
Overzealous ISPs.

2. Get Feedback From Your Readers. In my opinion this
is the most important reason to publish your ezine in your
blog. It allows for instant reader feedback.

Communication with your subscribers is essential for building
trust. Instant contact also adds creditability - you are
a real human being - ready to answer any questions a
subscriber might have.

As an extra bonus - your readers also get a chance to add
links to their site. Great for reciprocal linking.

3. Add to MyYahoo! By getting your subscribers to add
your blog to their ‘MyYahoo’ - your readers have immediate
access to your ezine. You don’t even need e-mail. The Spam
Filters can’t touch you!

By getting your subscribers to bookmark or Add your ezine/RSS
Feed to their MyYahoo - you’re building a large targeted
contact list. A great way to connect instantly with your
subscribers.

4. Blogs Will Help Index Your Ezine Quickly. Get your
ezine indexed in all the search engines. More exposure, more
sales, more subscribers. Using ‘MyYahoo’ will get your ezine
indexed very quickly.

The search engines are constantly looking for fresh content
on your site. By publishing your ezine thru your blog adds
fresh content to your site. You can add new content in a
matter of seconds - without dealing with ‘html’ or ‘xml’.
Because it’s so fast and easy - you will be publishing more
often or developing other blogs to match the content on your
site.

More links - higher PR rankings.

5. To Monetize Your Blog/Ezine. Many blogs such as
eBlogger encourages you to add the ‘adsense code’ to your
blog. If you have a large subscriber base you can earn extra
money from your ezine and blog for months; if not years to come.

This is in addition to all those affiliate links and product
promotions you have in your ezine. Get these links indexed
and earning you money for years to come!

In addition, as an extra bonus, by actually using RSS or a
blog you will become familiar with this new technology.
Maybe all the hype about RSS is somewhat overblown but in the
near future every web site will have it. Where’s there’s
hype - there’s interest!

Gear up now to take advantage of this interest. Put RSS on
your site right now.

No one can afford not to use this opportunity to get their
content ‘out there’ - syndicated on the web. RSS is just
another way of passing along information. You should
take advantage of it.

If you’re still wondering how to publish your ezine thru
your blog or how to put RSS on your site. Just download my
simple RSS Report and Guide from the link in the resource
box below.

Putting RSS Feed on your site only takes a couple of minutes.
Publishing your ezine in your RSS Feed can be done in
seconds!

Give RSS a try - the rewards are worth it.

——————————————

To add RSS to your Site within minutes - download this
simple RSS Report and Guide.
Copyright © 2005 Titus Hoskins of bizwaremagic.com.
This article may be freely distributed if this resource
box stays attached. Visit http://www.bizwaremagic.com
for more simple solutions to your online marketing tasks.

—————————————–

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

Just another trend or something else?

Trends happen overnight! Some catch on fast and explode very quickly into our every day use.

Most of these trends you can ignore as silly folly or at the most fine amusement. Anyone remember pet rocks, Farrah Fawcett hairdos, or last year’s killer fashions?

Others, you have to pay more attention to: cell phones, digital cameras, mini-sites, optin lists, or email.

Right now, there’s another trend you should keep your eye on: ‘tags’.

What are tags? And why should you care about them?

Tags are a way of sorting and linking all that information in blogs and RSS Feeds. It groups together all the information on one particular subject.

It’s a democratic ’search engine’ for blogs.

Think of a ‘tag’ as a ‘keyword’ to be used in blogging and RSS Feeds (Feed tags are still in the works).

Tags have hit the radar lately because Technorati, which indexes 4.5 million blogs, started sorting blog posts by using tags.

They have created a folksonomy, drawing tags from different sources, mainly Flickr.com which sorts or groups pictures and from del.icio.us – where you create a tag when you bookmark a page.

Or if your blogging software has categories – this will be recognized by Technorati as a tag.

If you want to create a ‘tag’ it’s very simple; just place this code in your blog:

< *a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Computers" rel="tag">Computers< */a> (remove asterisks in actual code)

and you will have created a tag for computers.

A tag makes it easier and faster to find information on your favorite subject. It gives you a cross section of real views and opinions floating in the ether.

There are some inherent problems in this system; will the posts grow so quickly and so large – it’s like ‘finding a needle in a haystack’ or will you have to dig thru a lot of muck to find the scattered diamonds. Or maybe a ranking system will be put in place but this goes against the ‘democratic code’ of blogging.

Regardless, the traffic and marketing potential of ‘tags’ could be very beneficial to those who use it to their advantage.

A marketer with a product to introduce or promote could aggressively target tags as part of their advertising budget. As blogging increases in popularity – it’s something to watch!

As a website owner – tags could be a great source of targeted traffic. And the keyword here is ‘targeted’.

It’s the kind of visitor you want coming to your site or blog. It can only lead to a better quality visitor. Similar to a visitor coming from the major search engines. One that is really searching for your information.

The next big question, how will marketers exploit these tags to make a few bucks? Everyone knows that’s coming!

Will we have a ‘tag search engine’ that can rival the quality of a Google or Yahoo? Or do we need one?

As with any new trend – you never know how it will play out.

Some interesting questions have yet to be answered:

Tags are basically keywords for blogs – but as everyone knows the quality of links to these tags are not all equal. Will someone step in and rank these or will they remain democratic?

Just how will tags work for building content or links to your site? How will the search engines use these tags? How will marketers and advertisers exploit the potential of all this content and the content’s viewers?

Will we have tag-spamming? (Just what we need another form of spamming!) Someone flooding these tags with thousands of links to get traffic or sell a product.

Not to hype it too much but there’s a real ‘we’re entering unknown territory’ feeling with blogging and RSS lately. Heady days for those keeping a close watch on the events unfolding. There are countless applications probably already in the works for tags!

It could be the start of something big or it could just fizzle.

In any case – keep your eyes peeled to that cursor! There’s probably a tag on the end of it!

This trend may just offer more than fine amusement.

—-

To Create a blog within minutes - visit this link:
RSS Report and Create Blog Guide.
Copyright © 2005 Titus Hoskins of bizwaremagic.com.
This article may be freely distributed if this resource
box stays attached. Visit http://www.bizwaremagic.com
for more simple solutions to your online marketing tasks.
—-

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

Lets start with one of the 16 dictionary definitions for the noun form of lead

An indication of potential opportunity (dictionary.com)

In simple every day form a lead is really just the prospect of a potential business partner or a potential customer. It is no different than telling someone that you are in the painting business and they respond “Really, I have a room or a garage that needs painting.” (You just generated a lead.) This person that tells you they are looking for your field of work is a potential client for your painting service. This is a lead that may take a few calls and maybe a live inspection to POSSIBLY get the business.

Some people think that a lead is a golden ticket and that every person on that list is just waiting on the other end with a boat load of money to dump in their hands. I dont know of any lead in the market today for any product or service where this is true. If you happen to find one be sure to let me know.

Now that we understand what a lead is lets talk about how to determine if a lead is good or not.

A common myth with leads buying is the more money you spend on a lead the better it must be. This is true in the broadest form only. Meaning that if you buy a targeted home based business lead it is going to cost more than a cheap co-registration email lead and the home based business lead should give you a much higher percentage of people interested in your home based business than the percentage you will pull from a general consumer co-registration lead.

However when you are examining leads that contain largely the same information and are comparable in age it wont make a difference that you paid $10 for that lead when you could have bought the same kind of lead for $2.50.

Yes an $80,000 Mercedes Benz is arguably better than a $10,000 KIA because there is a higher cost of production to equip the Mercedes with all that luxury. In the lead business cost of production is more likely the reason for the price of a lead rather than the quality. If Joe leads generator has found a more efficient method to generate a 6 question surveyed lead and Gerry leads generator has a higher cost of production they will sell the same lead but Gerry will require a higher price. Although unlike the Mercedes / Kia example you are getting close to, if not exactly, the same thing.

There is one question that you should always ask about a lead regardless of price. That question is: “Are these leads incentivize generated?” In other words was there some exchange as a trade off for that prospect? If the answer is yes unless you are getting a very cheap email lead I would NOT try these leads. The reason being is if there is any kind of incentive for the prospect to fill out the form they probably were just doing it for the incentive and not because they are genuinely interested in the target market. (IE: Starting a home based business.)

You now know that price is not always a good indicator of quality and incentive leads should be avoided. You are probably still wondering how to know if a lead is good.

Due diligence on a lead is a good start such as asking about how it is generated, how old it is and if the vendor has references or testimonials. However there is only one way to know for sure if a lead is good. Give the lead a fair trail run. Then based on your average response rate of the lead calculate return on investment. (A good test will depend on the specific type of lead and how targeted it is supposed to be. It could be as few as 5 leads and as many as 50 thousand.)

For example lets say that Im a car salesman and I buy “highly targeted, premium, ultra, super seller, mega” leads. These are supposed to be top notch and allow me to close a lot of business. Lets say I make $500 on each car I actually sell. My leads cost $100/each. It may be that these are very good leads and it may be that I couldn’t find a higher close ratio anywhere. However because I only make $500 on the sale of a car I need to sell a car to at least 1/5 people whose name I buy as a lead. Otherwise this is NOT a good lead for me! The reason being if it took an average of more than 5 of these $100 leads for me to generate one sale Im actually going to lose money on my purchase of leads. So unless my business model allows for the leads I buy to be at least breakeven they are not good leads for me to use. Also you should notice, in this example, that unless I close an overall percentage higher than 20% my leads buy is only a break even proposition. However if you do not have leads that can be profitable right away breakeven is ok to use. The idea behind breaking even is that you are not losing money so you dont have to worry about getting over your head or going out of business. Your resulting customers should become a good source of referrals and do repeat business themselves. This will actually make your breakeven leads profitable.

Now you know what a lead is and how to determine if it is good for you. This is not to say that once youve found a good lead you cant find better. In fact you should be looking until youve found something that works consistently and you are satisfied with your return on investment over the long-run. You should be open to trying new possibilities as it may lead to even more profits and business for you.

===================
This article (What is a lead? What makes it good?) was authored and copyright 2005 by Richard Tarjeft. It may be distributed and published so long as this full credit and notice is included with the document. No other authorized uses of this article is implied without full written permission of the author:

You can make your own fortune giving away ~free~advertising. I know it is hard to believe that you make more~money off your free~members than you do off your paid~ones but it’s true.

Here is why. This is a ~product~ that everyone wants and it is ~free~.
Most people sign up as a paid~affiliate because they see the income~ potential from just signing up free~members. You see free~members don’t get paid they only get one level of free~advertising. As a paid member I get 7 levels of ~advertising~. So for every ~free~ member I get, I receive 6 levels of ~advertising~ with and every paid member that they bring in down to infinity. Only 10% of my people are ~free~ members yet I make more of them then all the rest combined.

My ~free~ members can upgrade when they see how much ~money~ they are loosing but I keep all the people they brought in before that.

Free~members also bring in more ~free~ members who also become mine and all of their paid~members. The funny thing is it is actually hard to get someone to join for ~free~. It is the most amazing thing I have ever seen. I still make money off the paid~members but it is less than what I get off the ~free~ ones.

Check it out. ~Free~ or ~paid~ I know you will love it.

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