Hey All, Today’s post is going to be a little different, we are going to take a step out of the online world and dive into actual retail sales (person to person selling).

I am not sure if any of you knew but I have been working at Best Buy and now Geek Squad for the past several months. There are a few things I have learned by doing this and it has helped me in my online ventures.

Instead of telling you all to get into retail sales to learn all of this I am just going to cut-to-the-chase and give you the down-low scoop on being a salesman and how to be more successful online.

Honestly going into the job I had doubts if I would be able to sell computers to consumers one on one. Little did I know that people (my managers and co-workers) were watching to see how I was doing and as my new Supervisor the other day said and I quote:

“I heard you were a pretty kick ass salesman when you were on the pcho floor”

Just so you all know PCHO is what we call our computer dept at Best Buy.

Anyways, selling for me was not all that difficult, see the thing about selling is that you don’t have to be the smartest, the prettiest or even the best sales-man. What it takes is the knowledge to sell and then simply doing it. The first step is the hardest but once you get going it becomes second nature and is easy!

At Best Buy we are really big on helping you find the best solution not just selling you the most expensive model. The approach of selling to make money first off a product never works, that’s why certain other un-named companies went out of business while we are still growing!

With all this said there are a few key things we as employees at Best Buy have been taught will help us sell more. These tips n techniques will help anyone no matter what you are selling. What I am going to do is compare two things the retail technique and then also how to accomplish it online with your blog / website (considering your website is the sales-man online, this should be good).

Be Friendly – Relay A Message

The first technique that was shared with us was to be friendly. Its a well known fact that people relate better to someone on there level. Someone who is nice, polite and friendly will sell more. I have personally found this out. On the days I am happy and cheerful customers just seem to be attracted to my sales pitch more then the days I am a little down.

How can you apply this online? Simple, all you need to do is write a good post or a good title that relays the ease of use for your product or service, how it will help them and not hinder, these are all ways of being friendly and definitely something worth taking advantage of online.

Look professional

The second thing we were told about was looking professional. If you haven’t noticed every Best Buy employee is dressed the same with the standard blue Best Buy shirt and either black or tan khakis with solid black or brown shoes (don’t forget your matching belt). We were told that consistency in how employees dress keeps us looking professional and ready to serve our customers needs.

This technique is probably something I have talked a lot about here on IBB. Your blog or website design is virtually your dress code so make sure its up to snuff and keep it clean and professional. Checkout my blog post about my new design (told you I talk about it a lot).

Offer Services For The Complete Solution – Wheres Your Email List

Next up is our services we can offer to the customer. Most people come into Best Buy knowing roughly what they want. Most don’t have time nor do they want to take time to understand what Best Buy has to offer them. That is until they break they’re new toy and want to know if they purchased the Accidental Protection Plan so we can replace or fix the item for them.

As salesmen its our jobs to ensure the customers realize what they need services for. Best Buy has made it easy and cost-effective so its really not all that difficult, the way this translates online is your Email List. See the thing is the only way you can offer other GOODIES to your readers is if you have some way of contacting them. The best and most used method for this is creating an email opt-in list that people can come back to regularly.

Know Your Product – List Important Info, Leave Out The Fluff

One of the best ways to sell something is to know the products. What I would do is when the store was slow I would go around and read all the tags on our computers so I knew exactly what each model had to offer. I would then research the difference between components so i could give my customers the best solution they needed. What I realized is that most people were spending more money they did not need to spend, so I sell them what they need along with a protection plan and I have made the customer happy and made Best Buy money (my job).

How can you apply this online you may ask? All you really have to do is list the important reasons or factors about your product and or services. List them clearly and list why its better then the next guy who is offering the same exact thing. Like me when I do design work for a client and give them the option to tell me what they want instead of just suggesting everything I think they need. This allows me to connect and create a loyal customer for life (everyone likes to be right). Just leave out all the fluff and get to the meat of this thing! Its your best option if you want to sell the most.

Ask for the sale

The last thing I want to talk about in this section of the post is asking for the sale. See what most salesman fail to do is simply ask the customer something like (Can I get all this rung out for you?). A lot of times customers want what your offering but they need to be asked for the final sale to make the leap and buy it! This technique is easy to apply online, its called your BUY NOW Button! Make that thing big and prominent and start making your money!

Has your blog gotten so big that you are able to allow guest posts or employ a small writing staff? Good for you! However, the downside is that the bigger your blog gets the more responsibility that is associated with it.

Instead of you just being able to hack away at posts at midnight, and answering emails and responding to comments whenever you feel like it, you now have to maintain a schedule and work with others. Although you have numerous office associated responsibilities now, a physical office space probably isn’t what you need either. Blogging can be entirely virtual so an office space would just be overkill. To effectively manage all your writers and business operations in one convenient place consider building a virtual office.

Virtual offices are usually used by professionals who don’t want to pay for premium office space all the time. These types of offices comes with great features such as virtual assistant, phone answering services, high end professional addresses, and virtual receptionist, which are great services for professionals and home-based businesses, but not always necessary for bloggers.

How the virtual office does benefit the blogger is through its cloud services. Using a virtual office as a blogger will free up your bandwidth and resources – especially storage. With a virtual office there is no need to bog down your computer with all the different articles being given to you, and you can manage and assign articles and blog posts online through office interfaces.

In blogging, we rely entirely on our computers and the internet. Although both could fail, there is a higher likelihood that your computer will crash before the internet does. With a virtual office, you can store all your files safely online so if your computer does crash you don’t lose all your blogging ideas, contacts, and any other information. A virtual office is also highly protected by using cloud technology so your likelihood of being attacked or having your network destroyed is reduced.

As your blog continues to grow, having a virtual office can also provide you with meeting space on-demand if you choose to meet with your writing team, and with a professional address so that you can further protect your privacy and security.

Although as bloggers we have all enjoyed working at home in our pajamas, there is an occasional time and place in which giving the impression of being professional may be a must – especially if you ever hope to make blogging your career. Having a virtual office is a great to blend the benefits of both a professional work space and a home office by providing you with a more professional image at a relatively inexpensive rate than a traditional office would. They are also more green, require no daily commute, no long-term commitments, and users can pick and choose services and fees.

Hello All, Today we are going to get busy and talk about seo, some link building and ppc advantages to compliment your seo plan, come along and learn!

Here on IBB we have talked about search engine optimisation many times but there is always something to be said for a good refresher course. SEO is always changing and always becoming more difficult to do because the engines are changing daily as well. Things like the new Panda update have completely changed the SEO game.

I haven’t even posted about the panda update (mostly because their is no need to, there is tons of info out there on the update) but also because I don’t know that much about the update myself and I wouldn’t want to mis-lead my readers in any way. With that said I have picked up on a few ranking factors that will help you rank better now that this update has happened.

1. Blog structure. The actual structure and design of your blog now matters, make sure its clean, concise and to the point. Ensure everything is laid out in a professional manner and it should look just right (that’s why I put up my new design).

2. Content Matters. Content is still king, make sure all your content is relevant, to the point and on topic. Do not place random content places and such, instead be concise here as well and create valuable resources people naturally want to link to!

3. Ads never win. Advertisements will hurt your rankings, not just Text Link Ads either but also banner ads because they deflect your contents value. Be careful where you place your ads so you don’t lose ranking position.

As always its still important to build links to your sites, however It is no longer as important its still important to link build for better results. At the very least doing quality link building with relative links will still help you.

The nice thing about the internet is their is literally hundreds and hundreds of links no matter what niche your in that you can get. So many people create websites that there is literally no way you couldn’t get links. Even in tough industries there is still link building potential. But remember, links will only do so much.

Seo is about doing lots of things right, not just 1.

One thing about SEO and marketing a website in general that people seem to tally ignore or maybe they just forget is performing ppc services along side your seo efforts. While PPC is not the best cost effective answer it can and will help with your over-all traffic numbers and remember word of mouth is the most powerful and PPC is a good way to get that traffic strategy going!