My 2¢ Worth

here were no winners of last weeks contest. In fact there were very few entries and those were wrong.

'm rather disappointed with the lack of participation. Am I to assume that no one wants the chance to place their ad in this publication absolutely free? Ok. Not quite free: you do have to provide a correct answer to a question. But really — how difficult is that?

h well. I'm going to try this one more time. The correct answer to this weeks question could win you a free ad in the ad box #2 position. This is a $10 value! The winning entry will be drawn from my hat. Remember — you can't win if you don't play.

his weeks question is What were "they" doing to relieve office stress. Submit you answer here.

y the way: the answer to last weeks question, (What is "The Concept" of a business plan?) was "You will write about what your business is all about. Your products and/or service and how it relates to the marketplace."

Feature Article

Transforming Objections Into Selling Points

by: Charlie Cook charliecook.net

You've been working with a prospect, moving closer and closer to a sale. Just before you clinch the deal, they decide to go with a competitor's product or service. They may say that your firm is too small, or you charge too much or they decided to work with a friend in the business after all, or all of the above. How do you keep this from happening again?

Catherine called from real estate agency in town with a similar problem. Her firm regularly competes against national real estate chains and one of the most common objections prospects give is that Catherine's company is too small. Given that the average sale price of a home is $1 million in town, with some properties selling for over $10 million, losing a listing hurts.

Its natural to want to avoid potential objections and hope a prospect never brings them to light. You hope you can make the sale without your prospect ever balking because your firm is small, expensive, located in an unusual place, or whatever.

Many small businesses are, well, small. You may need to charge substantial fees to make a good living from your work and most people have a friend of a friend in the business. Unfortunately no matter how much you try to avoid them many prospects will bring up objections and you can lose their business. How can you overcome these common objections?

Use prospects' objections to your advantage and transform them into selling points. In the sales process, prospects always have concerns. If you don't discuss them or figuratively leave them under the table they will come back to haunt you later. To move beyond prospects' objections, acknowledge them. Identify their concerns and put them on the table for discussion to resolve them. Here's how:

Over the years that you've been in business, you've heard all of the common objections prospects raise. Take out a piece of paper and fold it in half. In the left column, list all the reasons prospects give for not working with your firm leaving a couple of lines between each reason. Across from each objection, in the right column, jot down reasons each objection is actually a plus for your clients.

When you meet with a prospect, use your list to bring up potential hurdles yourself and address them up front. For example, Catherine's real estate firm is small compared to the national chain firms in town. Catherine might say to a prospect, 'You know we are a small firm with ten employees. Let me tell you about all the resources we have to help you sell your home. In addition to providing you with the same resources you'd find at a larger firm we provide more attention to detail, more local knowledge, etc.'

Then Catherine can go on to explain how her firm sells a higher dollar volume of homes per employee than the national firms. She could also talk about her highly motivated brokers who earn higher commissions in large part because they aren't part of a national chain. She could mention the $100 million in homes sold last year. After explaining the many advantages of working with her unique firm Catherine could ask her prospect, 'Are you interested in having a small firm of highly motivated experts help you sell your home?'

With your experience in the business you know the most common objections prospects raise but what about others you haven't considered. How can you keep these from getting in the way?

To make sure you've covered all of a prospect's concerns, ask them. Jot down a question or two to use to uncover any hidden or lingering concerns they have. Address them and move on. After they've explained their concern, restate it clearly to make sure you have it right and then counter it. For example if they are hung up on price, explain the value and benefits of your services and expertise.

Don't know why prospects aren't using your services? You gave it your best shot, but they still selected another firm. Its time to do a post-mortem and find out what went wrong. Call up that lost prospect and ask them why they picked another service provider. Write these reasons down and tack them above your desk. The next time you meet with a new prospect, bring them up.

Early on in the sales process, bring up possible objections and get prospects talking about their concerns. When these are on the table you can address each one and show how each is an advantage. When you put prospects' objections on the table and transform them into selling points, you'll see your sales and your business soar.

**************

The author, Marketing Coach, Charlie Cook, helps independent professionals and small business owners attract more clients and increase their earnings with the 5 Principles of Highly Effective Marketing. Sign up to receive the Free Marketing Guide and the 'More Business' newsletter, full of practical tips you can use at www.charliecook.net

Auto copy from a form

You can have visitors automatically copy text from a form just by clicking a button. This is handy for affiliate codes, banners links and such.

Try it.

If this is highlighted, then it has been copied.

The first step is to add the following JavaScript code to the <head> of your document

<script language="JavaScript"> <!-- Begin function copyit(theField) { var tempval=eval("document."+theField) tempval.focus() tempval.select() therange=tempval.createTextRange() therange.execCommand("Copy") } // End --> </script>

Now copy the form below into the <body> of your document where you wish the form to appear. You may customize the fields in red for your button text, the size of your form and the text you wish to have copied.

<form name="it"> <div align="center"> <input onclick="copyit('it.select1')" type="button" value="Press to Copy the Text" name="copy"> <p> <textarea name="select1" rows="3" cols="25"> If this is highlighted, then it has been copied. </textarea> </div> </form>

* Get these syndicated tip feeds for yourweb site, free. *

Second Article

How to defrag faster and safer

by: Emil Malmberg LIUtilities

Are you trying to run Defrag on your Win95/98/ME/2000 system? Is it taking too long? Then you've come to the right place! Give me 5 minutes and I'll tell you how to speed up your defrags considerably.

Why do we need Defrag anyway? When Windows creates a new file on your harddrive, it will search for some empty space, and save the file at that location. When a file is deleted, you will get a hole at that location which is later filled by a new file and so on. The problem is, not all files are of the same size. The solution is to split the files into smaller equally sized parts. This way, when you delete one file and save another one, the parts of the new file will fit into the holes of free space. This works very well, but, after a while your files will be scattered all over your harddrive. When you try to read a particular file, your computer will have to search your harddrive for all the small parts. This will obviously take a lot of time. (Imagine trying to read a book with the pages in random order.) When you run Defrag, all the small file-pieces on your hardrive will be reorganized so that all the parts of a particular file are stored sequentially, in one place. This can increase the speed of your system considerably! (Especially if it has been running for a long time without defragging.)

Why does Defrag take so long? When Defrag is reorganizing your harddrive, it is very important that no other programs are using the harddrive. If some program decides to save a file while you are defragging, the defragmentation process will often be interrupted and start all over again. Because of this, defragmentation may take a lot of time.

So, what's the solution? To make sure that the defragmentation is not interrupted, here are a few things you should do before starting defrag:

1. Terminate all processes not critical to the system. Use WinTasks to find out which processes to terminate. (Leave system processes (red) and anything related to defragging.) Anti-virus programs should be stopped from within that program. (there is usually an option to temporarily disable virus scanning.) Read the process descriptions to decide if a process needs to be running while defragging (WinTasks 4 has built-in descriptions for most system processes and many other processes as well). After you have terminated all unnecessary processes, save the current process configuration to a preset (In WinTasks 4, press the small "key" button next to a preset button to save the current process list), so that you can easily restore the defragging configuration later.



2. Disable screensavers or other programs starting after a few minutes.



3. Disable any scheduled programs like virus checks.



4. Increase the priority of the Defrag program. You raise the priority from normal to high by clicking the "inc" button once in WinTasks 4. After increasing the priority, the icon to the left of the process name will change, and the priority column should tell you that the selected process(es) are now running at "high" priority. You can also save priorities to a preset, to make it easier to restore the correct settings the next time you need to defrag your harddrive. (Presets are available in WinTasks 4.00 or later)



5. Don't use your computer while Defragging!

WinTasks can be found at www.liutilities.com

**************

Emil Malmberg is senior software developer for LIUtilities.

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