Making Your Online Testimonials More BelievableWritten by Dan Brown
Here's ten POWERFUL ideas to use as a guide when dealing with testimonials.1. PICTURES Ask people if they would e-mail a picture with their testimonial. If they don't have one scanned you could have them send their picture by mail and you could scan it. This technique will give your testimonials more credibility. 2. ELECTRONIC SIGNATURES Most online testimonials you see have text signatures. You could have people mail their written signature, scan it, and upload it with their testimonial. People will feel testimonial is more official. 3. ONLINE AUDIO You could record people's testimonials with a mini tape recorder over phone, on your answering machine, or voice mail. Then you could convert recording into a online audio file and upload it to your web site. You can find more information about converting audio recording's by typing "real audio" at a search engine. 4. POSTCARDS Have people mail you their testimonial on a postcard, scan it and upload it to your web site. This will give people proof that testimonial isn't fake because it will have a post mark on it. 5. PROFILES Ask people to include a profile of themselves with their testimonial. You could just have them answer some questions like age, occupation, hobbies, favorite quote, etc. This will make your testimonials more entertaining to read.
| | Motivation ABC’s: Tune Up Your Booth Staff Written by Susan Friedmann
Are your sales people burnt out? You may want to check. Have they clocked too many twelve hour days? Do they have enough frequent flier miles to charter a jet to Mars? Are their faces permanently skewed into perpetual smiles from chatting with hundreds of thousands of trade show attendees? Answer yes to any one of these questions – or even chuckle at a situation a little too close to home – and you’ve got a problem. Working a trade show is hard. Keeping your team motivated can be even harder, especially during a busy exhibit season. However, it is vitally important that your sales team is not only at show, but excited about being there. Enthusiasm is contagious – and absolutely central in creating positive word of mouth about your products and services. When your sales staff are fired up and genuinely motivated to share what they know about your products with buying public, they are more effective salespeople. Luckily, creating this enthusiasm is as easy as ABC! Address Individual Selecting proper people for your booth staff is first step toward a great show. These people are your company’s ambassadors. Pick employees who are helpful, courteous, and professional. Make sure they have excellent product knowledge and customer service skills. They must also have a positive attitude about working trade show. Attitude is everything – and it manifests on an individual level. Walk around a trade show floor, and study people staffing a number of booths. Body language alone will show you which employees don’t want to be there. Simmering resentment plays out in tense posture, negative facial expressions, and sour attitudes – none of which help generate sales. Why might your staff be averse to attending show? It may come down to cold, hard cash. Sales staff frequently feel that working a trade show interferes with their normal selling routine. Commission-based employees may actually be losing money by attending show. Address these concerns proactively, resolving scheduling and compensation issues so your staff are free to concentrate on show. Give each staff member an individual goal. This could be generating a number of quality leads, a target number of new contacts, or something similar. Having a goal increases accountability, forces unproductive habits out of picture, increases productivity, and builds motivation. Bring In Brass Do whatever it takes to involve your management team in trade show activities. You may have to pry them out of their corner offices, but it’ll be worth it. Having upper management participating in training programs, pre & post show activities, and actual show validates trade show’s worth. It also generates an in-house enthusiasm which will carry over onto sales floor.
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