Wednesday, November 22, 2006

ArticleBlaster Is Your Business Making These Mistakes When Customers Contact You?


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

Message delivered directly to members of the group:
internet_marketing_articleblaster@yahoogroups.com

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

Please consider this free-reprint article written by:
Peter Geisheker

==================
IMPORTANT - Publication/Reprint Terms

- You have permission to publish this article electronically in
free-only publications such as a website or an ezine as long as
the bylines are included.

- You are not allowed to use this article for commercial
purposes. The article should only be reprinted in a publicly
accessible website and not in a members-only commercial site.

- You are not allowed to post/reprint this article in any
sites/publications that contains or supports hate, violence,
porn and warez or any indecent and illegal sites/publications.

- You are not allowed to use this article in UCE (Unsolicited
Commercial Email) or SPAM. This article MUST be distributed in
an opt-in email list only.

- If you distribute this article in an ezine or newsletter, we
ask that you send a copy of the newsletter or ezine that
contains the article to peter[at]geisheker.com (replace [at]
with @)

- If you post this article in a website/forum/blog, ALL links
MUST be set to hyperlinks and we ask that you send a copy of
the URL where the article is posted to peter[at]geisheker.com
(replace [at] with @)

- We request that you ask permission from the author if you
want to publish this article in print.

The role of iSnare.com is only to distribute this article as
part of its Article Distribution feature (
http://www.isnare.com/distribution.php ). iSnare.com does NOT
own this article, please respect the author's copyright and
this publication/reprint terms. If you do not agree to any of
these terms, please do not reprint or publish this article.
==================

Article Title: Is Your Business Making These Mistakes When
Customers Contact You?
Author: Peter Geisheker
Word Count: 558
Article URL: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=9733&ca=Marketing
Format: 64cpl
Author's Email Address: peter[at]geisheker.com (replace [at]
with @)

Easy Publish Tool: http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=9733

================== ARTICLE START ==================
In this marketing article I would like to discuss the
importance of presenting your business in a professional manner
when customers and sales prospects contact you.

The first thing I want you to do is think to yourself, "If I
were a customer contacting my business, what would I think of
this business? Would I think this is a friendly and
professional business with great service or would I think it
was unprofessional and a bit of a joke?"

I ask you to go through this exercise because from my
experience of working with clients on improving their sales and
marketing programs, many businesses are presenting themselves in
a very unprofessional manner and they are losing sales because
of it.

Here are some guidelines for providing your customers and sales
prospects with a professional experience when they contact you:

1. Answer your phone in a friendly and professional manner and
say the name of your company. Don�t answer your phone by
saying, "This is Mike." Instead, say, "Hello, this is Mike with
XYZ Corp. How may I help you today?"

2. Do everything possible to make sure your phone is answered
by a live person. In today�s fast-paced world, people want
instant gratification. If a prospect is ready to buy and calls
your business and nobody answers the phone, your prospect will
probably go to your competition and buy from them. How many
times have you gone through the phone book to purchase a
product or service and kept calling different companies until
you got a live person on the phone? I do it all the time. If
you are not answering your phone, you are losing sales.

3. If you are unable to answer your telephone, you better have
voice mail. Nothing is more unprofessional and irritating than
calling a business and the phone just rings and rings and there
is no voice mail. If you do not have voice mail, shame on you!
Immediately stop reading this article and call your phone
company and get voice mail.

4. Check your voice mail often and return phone calls quickly.
If you want to make more sales, do everything you can to return
phone calls quickly. And by quickly I mean in under 2-hours. If
you wait a day or two to return a prospect�s call, you have
probably lost that sale and the only one to blame is YOU.

5. Have a fax machine. It makes your business look very
unprofessional when a customer wants to send you a fax and you
have to tell them to send it to your local copy shop (or not to
send it at all) because you don�t have a fax machine.

6. If you have a website, use your website�s domain name for
all employee email addresses. Businesses that are using
hotmail, yahoo or aol email addresses look unprofessional. If
you do not have a website and you are forced to use a yahoo,
hotmail or aol email address, at least use something that looks
professional. Using "hotgirl28" at http://email.com is horribly
unprofessional. You may laugh and say nobody would do that but
I see it all the time.

About The Author: Peter Geisheker is CEO of
http://www.marketing-consulting-company.com. The Geisheker
Group specializes in developing strategic marketing programs
for small businesses.

Please use the HTML version of this article at:
http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=9733
================== ARTICLE END ==================

For more free-reprint articles by Peter Geisheker please visit:
http://www.isnare.com/?s=author&a=Peter+Geisheker


Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/internet_marketing_articleblaster/

<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/internet_marketing_articleblaster/join
(Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:internet_marketing_articleblaster-digest@yahoogroups.com
mailto:internet_marketing_articleblaster-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
internet_marketing_articleblaster-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

No comments: