When making a business sales letter, the primary goal is, obviously, to make a sale. However, focusing on this bottom line is ultimately what causes a lot of business sales letters to fail, simply because customers feel that the letter is all about trying to seperate them from their hard earned money. The best business letters are made by people who believe in their products and know that it is actually to their customer’s benefit to use it over other competing products. Building on this basic rule, there are 7 factors to consider when making a business letter that will let your customers know that, while you ARE out to make a profit, it will be based on THEIR satisfaction with your product.

Target Market Type – consider the demographics of your intended market. Know how they think, how they talk, what they need, how much of a budget they generally have, and what benefits they can find in using your product. This knowledge makes it easier to tailor a sales approach that they can relate to. Using fancy words or “business jargon” when your target market is mostly composed of people who haven’t studied economics, for example, will only serve to overwhelm and confuse them.

Product Details – know your product intimately. This does not mean that you have to blab about the endless hours of research that went into making your product superior to others, or the incredibly high tech materials and construction methods that went into making it. Intimate product knowledge from a consumer point of view boils down to one thing: What can your product do for the buyer?

Product After Sales Support – if your product provider has after-sale support options, be sure to include those as some of the advantages of buying what you have to offer. Customer service lines, extended warranties, and even home service options are things that show the customers that you will still be there for them even AFTER you’ve made a sale. This also imparts a measure of faith in the product that it won’t simply break down a few months or even weeks after purchase.

Selling Approach – the most effective selling approach is to remain customer oriented. By focusing on your buyer’s needs, you increase the likelihood that they will prefer to buy what you have to offer over the competition. However, you also have to consider HOW your target market thinks and communicates; some demopgraphics prefer elaborate statements, others value a sense of humor, still others prefer terse and straight to the point presentations. Know how your customers generally communicate and make your style suit them.

Layouting – a good visual presentation is one of the keys to any good document. Layouting is essential in any letter because it makes the document catch the eye at first glance and makes readers willing to see what you’ve got. Beyond the looks, however, layouting also involves the order and manner in which you present your information. A graphically stunning letter that has poor layouting when it comes to presenting information will still fail. Be precise and orderly in your presentation of facts.

Timed Response Incentives – this is a fairly classic method of getting a quick response from a customer. The most common places you’ll see this will be on shopping channels, with announcers saying something like “order within the next 30 minutes and get a 10% discount”. Timed response incentives in business letters should be similar BUT should offer greater leeway for customer response to special promotional discounts. The failure of shopping channel program’s approach is that customers feel pressured to buy NOW, which makes them think that all the company wants is their money, period. Promos on sales letters should have a much more relaxed time table, like “We’re having a 10% sale all of next week, from 12:00am X date to 12:00pm Y date. Feel free to drop by and look our products over.”

What Should They Do Next? – Lastly, customers HATE being left in a lurch if they wind up liking what a product has to offer but get little or no information on how to actually go about buying the product. Always include extensive contact info on the letter that lets them know the fastest and easiest ways to get in touch with you when they want to ask questions or buy something. If you have several contact numbers, try splitting them off into several types as well and include these in the letter, like a “product inquiry” number, another for making personal purchases, another for bulk purchases and/or potential retailers, etc.

Tip number one. Every business runs on the amount of financial stability that it has. Without it, no company would be able to maintain their level of expertise and precision. There are several ways that a company can increase their sales on a regular basis. The most important tip to increasing business for the company is to have a variety of products and services that are highly needed in that area. By adding new products and services or having trial periods with possible new products, the company will draw in new clients or bring in repeat customers.

Tip number two is to sell a higher quality of products. Customers will feel more secure using the company if they know that the products will last for a longer period of time and will stand up to being tested. Having higher quality products can give one company a lead over others that sell close to the same products.

Tip number three. Having lower prices can also persuade customers into choosing one company over another. Being able to save money, even by a few dollars, can lead a customer to feel that the company in question is giving them a fair deal. Many of us have been over charged on a product and we’ll begin to have harsh feelings towards the store.

Tip number four is to have proper advertising. Advertising can make or break a company. The more a company advertises the larger customer base they will secure. There are several ways to advertise, such as on the internet, in local newspapers, on television or even fliering local neighborhoods. Word of mouth is another great advertisement. Every happy customer is sure to tell a friend or family member about their experience. When that friend goes to find a company who does the same services, they will look towards that company as a possible option.

Tip number five. Having great customer service will make a customer’s experience worth while. A good experience when purchasing a product, especially when the item is expensive, can cause a customer to return to the store for future products or accessories. Making a customer feel that they have all of the support and attention they can, is an important business strategy that can make each customer feel that they are the center of attention.

Tip number six. Customer appreciation is also very important in increasing sales. A customer is more likely to return when they feel that their needs are being taken care of and the company truly wants to have their business. One of the ways to show a customer that they are appreciated is to offer special deals to repeat customers or offer special percentages off storewide.

The way to increase sales is to make customers happy and to make the company better known in the community. Increasing sales will mean that the company will remain in business for a considerable amount of time and profits will soar.After all, if you don’t have sales you don’t have a business, so anything constructive you can do to increase sales is worthwhile.

A business plan is a management tool. Do you need a business plan? Yes if you:

You Need To Decide Whether To Start A Business.

This plan will help you improve your chances for success and avoid making serious mistakes. You may be the only one who reads this plan, although you should have input from a number of other people with business experience. You need to ask yourself the following questions and incorporate the answers in your business plan:

• What does it take to succeed in this type of company?

• Do you have the skills and background necessary?

• Can you afford to take the risk? What effect would the business’ failure have on you?

• What is the growth potential for the business? Can it meet your financial expectations and requirements?

• Is there a large enough market for your products/services?

• Will you enjoy owning and managing the business?

A business plan is an important ingredient to the success of a start-up business.

You Want to Jump Start Your Business

Whether you’re an entrepreneur doing business on the Internet, a stay-at-home Mom with an arts and crafts company, or a writer trying to break into publishing, a business plan acts as a guide to success. Developing your business plan helps determine your objectives and focuses you on the strategies and action plans necessary to accomplish those objectives.

If you’re looking to boost your business it’s time to answer a few questions in your business plan.

•What are your skill levels and talents?

•What are goals for each month’s sales?

•What are your resources, time available, advertising and promotional budget, website?

•Do you have the necessary equipment? If you don’t, how will you obtain the equipment?

•What barriers do you face?

You Want To Better Organize Your Company or Improve Its Operations.

This is a time and task oriented plan for use internally. It suggests actions that need to be taken and assigns responsibility. Questions that need to be answered:

•How does our company compare to leaders in its industry?

•What are our management weaknesses? How can we make improvements?

•How can we increase sales, serve the customer better, improve manufacturing efficiency, increase the gross margin?

•Do we have the necessary resources to make the above improvements? If not how will we obtain the resources? Do we need a bank loan or line of credit?

You Are Seeking A Bank Loan.

This plan is used to inspire confidence in your banker and convince her/him that your business is a good credit risk. It is written very logically, with an emphasis on the financial projections and presentation of historical financial results. Bankers who make bad loans get fired, so they like to err on the side of caution. A banker is looking for safety and a demonstration that the company can generate sufficient cash flow to pay the interest and the principal. Bankers are not looking for a huge return on their money. They don’t want to take part in the management of your company or sit on the board of directors. Your business plan will need answers to these questions:

• Will the company’s cash flow be stable enough to make the payments on the loan?

• Are the long term prospects of the business favorable?

• Does the company have a reasonably good track record?

You Need An Investor/Partner.

The plan must demonstrate considerable upside potential for the business. The banker was content to get his money back plus, say 10% interest. The investor may want a return of 30% to 50% or more. This plan must be written in an interesting manner and keep the reader’s attention. Your business plan is competing with all the other plans submitted to the investor. Make sure you address the following questions:

• Can the company grow rapidly?

• Are the margins attractive?

• Have you succeeded in other business ventures?

• Is this a market that is emerging, with a large and bright future?

• How much of the company are you willing to give up, both in equity and management control?

You Want To Sell Your Business

You must prove to a potential buyer that your company is worth paying a premium for. Sometimes this can be called a marketing presentation, offering memorandum, or valuation. It is not strictly a valuation, as you are trying to establish your sales price for the business, not determine a value. Usually a valuation is completed by an objective third party. You’re likely to be asked:

• Is there untapped potential for the business that a new owner could take advantage of?

• If the new owner had more capital, could the business grow more rapidly?

• Are there new markets that could be entered?

• Could costs be reduced and therefore profits increased?

Every business should have a business plan. It’s the road map to success. But a well thought out business plan is critical if your company is seeking financing.

I talk to a lot of people who are doing business online everyday (no surprise given my industry). Come to think about it, almost every single one of my conversations are with Internet business owners and 90% of them ask me the same question; “Would you please take a look at my website, and give me any ideas on how to improve it?” Besides helping business owners find products to dropship, I own my own business online and have been where these people are. I love to help in every area that I can, or have time for.

I have narrowed down what I think are the top 6 ideas to improving a dropshipping website -

1. Site Structure – Make sure your site loads fast, and that the code is clean. If you built the website yourself, or had someone else build it, did you make sure (you or) they used CSS, and that it validates. When using CSS you make sure that everything on the site is uniform. The font size, style of font, colors used etc. You will lose more customers then you realize by having a site that looks like it was designed by a 6th grader in a computer class. I know you have seen them. Text that is a rainbow of colors. First paragraph green, second paragraph red, next yellow and so on (just repeat any color you can think of and you get the point). Creating a site like this is very unprofessional and you will not be taken serious.

2. Images, graphics and banners – Make sure that you are using the cleanest looking, fastest loading and most optimized images you can. There are several programs out there that will help you optimize your images for the web. You may even have some software on your computer and not even know it. Most programs like Photo Shop, or Paint Shop Pro (even the basic operating system photo programs) have image optimization programs that can help speed up the load time and clarity of the photo. The more images that can help describe the product you are selling, the better. Remember the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words.

3. Site Navigation – If your potential customers can’t browse through your site easily, or feel they are lost, you will lose them 80% of the time from my experience and website analytics tracking. I try to follow the “3 click rule”, meaning that it will not take people more then 3 clicks to get to your shopping cart. Also make sure you add an html site map and a universal search engine site map so the search engines can know about the pages you are offering and when they are updated. Doing this will help you have the freshest content from your site on the search engines.

4. Amazing Unique Keyword Rich Content – The more information you can provide the better. People get on search engines to look for what? Information. If you are not providing information that is at the very least better then your competition, then you might as well give up. For example, if you are working with a supplier, and so are 1000 other people, how many of those people do you think are just copy and pasting the product descriptions and not doing anything they can to make it their own using the keywords they want to target? Most of those people are not doing anything to make their content better (from my experience) so even just changing things around a little and making the content better by being more descriptive and using more keywords will put you ahead of the competition 100%.

5. Make Me Feel Safe – If you do not have any kind of SSL certificate, BBL logo, or “hacker safe” logo on your site, then you need to research these out and do whatever you can to get at least one of these added to your site where visitors can clearly see. With all of the talk going on about identity theft people are very weary these days about giving credit card info online. So, anything you can do to help people feel safer on your site (even a little bit) will help increase sales.

6. Contact Info – People are curious by nature, and the thing that runs through my mind more then anything when I am visiting a site is – “Who is the person behind this?” I want to know that I can talk to a human if needed and that someone will be there to actually answer my email or return my call. Make sure you have a phone number where people can contact you, email address and mailing address. When people know they can contact you they feel safer and will be less hesitant to purchase from you.

I have blogged a lot about these topics in the past, but i wanted to do a new post and talk about what I believe are the most important things you can be doing right now to improve how things are going on your website. These are not hard or costly steps, but will take some time and planning. If you get started implementing them now it will pay off in the long run.

Like most online marketing methods, there’s always more than one right way to get the job done. Article marketing is quickly being adopted as the preferred choice for gathering up targeted website traffic.

Use the following ideas to reach a wider and more diverse visitor base with your articles.

1) Submit to the top 10 article directories

How do you know which directories should be in your top 10 list? You have to research and rank them. You may wish to post to general as well as niche article directories depending on your topic.

Use a common set of criteria to rank each directory. A few important criteria that I use are site age, pagerank, friendly approval process, and ease of use.

I submit to several article directories which get spidered by search engines every few hours. These are the types of directories that search engines love and rank higher as a result.

2) Compile your 10 articles and create an ebook

After you’ve completed and submitted your articles to directories, compile your articles into a single ebook.

Add a cover page, title page, and resource section. Then submit your book to ebook directories. This will get you more exposure than submitting to article directories alone.

Be sure to include a link to your website on your ebook’s title page and resource page.

3) Offer exclusive content to webmasters – for free

You won’t be able to use your submitted articles, but you can write 5 to 10 additional articles. Offer them to a single webmaster for exclusive use.

Make sure you get a link back to your site from the bottom of each article. Check out each site using Alexa to gauge how many visitors the site received.

4) Use your blog to submit the articles

Take each of your 10 articles you wrote initially, break them into smaller chunks. Post your article “chunks” on your blog.

The key to this technique is to put more personality into the articles. Spin the articles a little to make sure you catch your voice. This should be fairly easy if you keep each post to 200 words or less.

You should also change the title enough so it can get picked up by different syndication services and social networking sites.

5) Repeat steps 1-4 above

Article marketing should be repeated every month. It’s the “feeding” of the search engines with fresh, new content that gets the search engines to love your site.

As you finish a batch of 10 articles, add it to your ebook. What would happen if you had an ebook that was 100+ pages long? Would you, as a site visitor, be willing to give out your name and email address if someone offered you a free resource that was over 100 pages? I would.

As you seek out more creative ways to market your site, don’t neglect the methods you may already be applying. Make the most of each marketing technique to diversify your traffic and increase your sales.