If you want to sell your own products online, you will need to choose a means for your customers to pay you. Otherwise, you won't be in business very long! If you have regular office hours and employees, or want to hire a service, you can offer to let your customers phone in their orders and/or credit card number.

But most marketers want total automation of their ordering and payment process. They understand that without automation, they can't have time freedom that Internet marketing lifestyle can bring. And many of today's Internet shoppers are used to ordering online, without having to phone anyone. They expect to be able to add their items to a shopping cart, then complete checkout process smoothly. If you don't offer that to them, they may choose to shop at another site that does.

For automated payment systems, there are just two basic choices. You can either get your own merchant account and do all payment processing from your site, or you can choose a third-party processing service. It really is that simple - everything else is detail. Of course, devil's in details, so let's take a look at each.

For high volume or high dollar sales, having a merchant account is almost always best option. There's a certain break even cost point where it makes sense to pay monthly fees and processing charges of a standard merchant account. Not so long ago, it was difficult for online merchants to even get an account, because of extra risk associated with Internet payment processing. And when you could find a bank willing to offer you an Internet merchant account, monthly fees were much higher than for standard accounts, enough to make them out of financial reach of many small businesses.

This sounds simple enough - and it is!

You need to keep this reality on forefront of each marketing and sales activity you undertake and target one or more of these ways to grow revenue in each campaign you undertake to seek more business. Use it as a "litmus test" for each prospective customer interaction and communication.

Get More New Customers Getting more new customers is a result of successfully executing on two broad objectives - increasing your prospective customer's awareness of your offering and communicating with your customer from their perspective of benefits of your product or service. If you can achieve these two things, you can increase your number of new customers.

Increase Your Prospective Customer's Awareness of Your Offering More than just simply creating leads, creating awareness is about establishing a brand. You have to be known for something, you need a message, and you need a "voice" that speaks consistently about your benefits and why customers should want to do business with your company. By consistent, we mean your "voice" should be heard from your web-site, presentations, tag-line, mailers, sales letters, demonstrations, etc.

Communicate From Your Customer's Perspective Put yourself in shoes of your customer for a moment. Looking at your offering from their sole perspective, what exactly does your product or services do for them? Forget products and services you provide, these are just things that enable benefits you provide your customers. Think instead about solutions you are providing, use of your products and services, "things" within their business that you're enabling. These are "things" that your customers are really buying.

A huge mistake many companies make in presentation of their products and services is made in their initial contact and meeting with a customer. The initial contact is encounter whereby customer is first introduced to products and services your company offers. The mistake is most company's introduction of their offering focuses on their products and service, not on benefits they offer their customers. What happens in this case is prospective customer has to interpret everything they are being told about features and functionalities of a product or service into something that is meaningful to them. This interpretation is where many sales opportunities are lost; customer doesn't understand what they gain by employing your offering.

The main point here is that you need to be sure you're presenting your products and services in context your customer is thinking: "What do I get from using your products and services?"

Increase Value of Your Average Sale You can likely sell your current products and services at a greater price than you are today. We've found time and again opportunities to actually increase price of an offering or stay out of a "price-discounting" discussion with a prospective customer, even in a highly competitive sales environment.

"What's secret?" The "secret" is to sell from your customer's perspective and get buying criteria focused on your "orange."

Selling from your customer's perspective means you forget speeds, feeds, features, and functionality of your offering. Instead, you communicate from benefits your customer is most likely to value as a result of using your product or service. This point could never be over stated, you need to communicate from perspective your customer brings to conversation.