CountrySmart CountrySmart
Presented by Chantelle Mader National Award Winning Business Advisor And Profit Strategist
BU S I N E S S N E W S Volume 3 Issue 11
Creating Financial And Lifestyle Freedom For Country Business Owners
What Pepe Le Pew Taught Me About Business
In This Issue
What Pepe Le Pew Taught Me About Business: It’s not that you stink! (Page 1)
Pepe’s antics to try and get his girl sure are funny… and, as it turns out, very educational!
Are You Suffering From Website Shame? Here’s how to get the best from your website developer.
So, what has Pepe Le Pew got to do with building a successful country business? Plenty, when you know business is about building relationships.
(Page 2 & 3)
Here’s what I learnt from Pepe Le Pew: 1) Stop chasing inappropriate prospects. Poor Pepe didn’t know that his romantic intentions were inappropriate. He thought she was a skunk, like him… But alas it was never going to be as she is really a cat. In business we often wear ourselves out chasing prospects that are never going to buy because we don’t have a simple “qualifying questionnaire” in place. For example, a fencing company may like to make sure that who they are talking to is the owner of the home, rather than the tenant. A renter is never going to spend money on fencing a home they don’t own.
Making sure you are building a relationship with the right person will save you a small fortune in time, effort and money.
FREE Bunbury Business Training Event: Retail Riches - From Survival To Revival. Only 50 places available. Register at: www.RetailRiches.com.au (Page 4)
2) Don’t take No for an answer! Perseverance wins the day. No, always means, not now. But stalking will get you in trouble! Building relationships means sharing useful, timely information and knowledge. Using language like “Where would you like to go from here?” Lets them set the pace of the relationship. Coming on too strong is always a relationship killer!
Pass It On Our Business Grows By Referral. If you like the content of our newsletter, please pass it onto other friends in business you know
Country Smart Business Solutions | Newsletter
Are You Suffering From Website Shame? There has been some major fashion shifts in websites over the last few months. The release of the major update of the iPhone’s operating system to a new “flatter” look has had a fashion transfer over to websites. Leaving many feeling a little website shame as they now feel their website looks dated. (Myself included, website update on the cards!) While having a modern good looking website is very important in terms of giving visitors a “good first impression” having a good looking website must not over shadow the purpose of your website as tool to generate sales and leads for your business. Many of the websites that I review for business owners are very beautiful but are not optimised for lead generation. The main reason for this is because business owners generally judge a good website by how much they personally like it. Instead of by how many more leads, or sales, it generates compared their old website. Most website developers are great at code and design, but they are not trained marketers. I’m not suggesting you should go out and learn how to build your own website but what you do need to learn is to how to direct your website developer and learn how to pick the good ones from the bad.
Here’s what to look for… 1) Does the website have a link to a “privacy policy” and “terms of use” at the bottom of every page of the website? Many will just have a copyright notice and a link to the website developers own website. Do you really want to leave yourself legally exposed? 2) Too many links across the top? It’s recommended that you have no more than 5-7 links in your navigation bar at the top of your website. Here’s a few links you will want to include: •
About Us (Your story/vision)
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Contact Us
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Latest News or Home Page (blog)
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What Others Say / Case Studies / Success Stories (Testimonials)
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Products / Services / Programs
3) Does it have a blog? Having a blog as your home page, or as a separate latest news page, adds valuable content that both human visitors and search engines love. 4) Is it built on Wordpress? If you want to be able to easily up date your website yourself without having to go back to your website developer and pay for every little change, best you make sure it’s built on this easy to use content management system (CMS). I would also make sure they
Country Smart Business Solutions | Newsletter
are using more than one Wordpress security plugin and ask what other plug-ins they will be using and why. 5) Bait? What are you going to give away as bait to get people to give you their name and email address? Make sure your bait is placed top right hand corner of EVERY page on your website. Under the banner. This is because you won’t know what page a visitor will entre your website, or on what page they will make the decision that they want to connect with you. Even a simple “Request A Quote” form is better than nothing! 6) Phone number in banner? Many people will hit your website just to get your phone number so they can call you. Make is super easy for them to find by putting it on the right hand side in your banner, appearing on every page of your website. Preferably get a dedicated 1300 number so you can track how many calls you are getting from your website. 7) Social media links? If you aren’t all over social media, you should be! Add
the links to your social media pages under your “bait” on every page of your website. If you can’t get them to give up their name and email the next best thing is for them to connect with you via social media. Here’s a few other tips: Make sure you host your website at a separate company to which you purchased your domain name. Imagine that your website host decides that you have some content on your website that it doesn’t like and shuts it down… If you also brought your domain name with them you may find yourself locked out of your account and be unable to change where you host it. Don’t use the “click to build” easy website builders that they will offer you as an upsell when you purchase your domain name! Yes, you can quickly build a website but it comes at a cost. For it to be that easy to use it creates a lot of excess code behind your website that search engines hate. So you will end up with a lovely website with no visitors!
You can learn a lot from a dog... Don’t be scared to show your soft underbelly, more people want to rub it than kick it!
Lets Stay Connected Social media is a great tool for building relationships and an easy way to keep in touch. I regularly share valuable tips, tools and strategies on my social media pages so make sure you don’t miss out. Here’s how to look me up and connect.
Inspirational Quotes By Bill Gates “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.” “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” “Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.” “If your culture doesn’t like geeks, you are in real trouble.” “I know there’s a farmer out there somewhere who never wants a PC and that’s fine with me.” “Well private money can take risks in a way that government money often isn’t willing to.” “Although I don’t have a prescription for what others should do, I know I have been very fortunate and feel a responsibility to give back to society in a very significant way.” “I’m a geek.”
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Retail Riches: From Survival To Revival Make this Christmas your best yet! With the Australian dollar being high many retailers are worried about how many of their customers will choose to shop on-line. In this fast changing world, it’s time to learn new strategies to ensure they shop with you this Christmas and beyond. BEC Bunbury-Wellington has joined forces with Country Smart’s national award winning business advisor and profit strangest, Chantelle Mader, to bring you this FREE ½ day seminar.
Retail Riches – From Survival To Revival Date:
Wednesday 27th of November
Time:
9am to 12noon
Venue:
Lord Forrest Hotel 20 Symmons St, Bunbury WA 6230.
Only 50 places available! To register go to:
www.RetailRiches.com.au Here’s what you will learn
Here’s what you will learn: •
How to prevent price shopping and discounting.
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Discover how to generate leads and not pay for them until they are in your hot little hand.
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Stop your customers from straying by appreciation. Learn how to spoil your customers with gifts and get someone else to pay for them!
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How to attract and keep staff.
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How to build your list of customers.
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How to prepare your business for sale and get top dollar in a tough business sales market.
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How to buy marketing bait at huge discounts.
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How to compete, and beat, the retail “big boys” at their game.
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Time poor? Get back your sanity with just one simple strategy.
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Learn how the old way of doing business is costing you dearly and how to fix it by building real lasting relationships.
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Revealed: Super apps that drive your effectiveness and set you free!
This seminar will be jam packed with cheap, practical and fast ways to grow your retail business! Just one gem shared at this event will add thousands of dollars to your bottom line! The presenter is our very own, Chantelle Mader, nationally awarded and well know as a creative business problem solver to rural, regional and remote Australian businesses!
Phone:
1300 667 153
Fax:
1300 667 154
Email:
Info@CountrySmartBusiness.com.au
FREE
Bunbury B usiness Training Ev en (Valued at $ t 297!)
Address: PO Box 4001, BUNBURY EAST WA 6230
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