Cold Calling Mistakes

 Last time I called a prospect and start selling immediately, but I didn't inform my name and my company name. So this prospect told me introduce myself first before start selling.

Lack of product knowledge. Client asked me a question and I give them a wrong figure. You don't have the confidence to talk if don't know your product very well.

Try to close the sales to fast.

The first question I asked on my second call is “Do you want to proceed”. He just told me that he is still considering and hung up the phone. I couldn't even have a chit chat with him. It is important to have cordial conversation with your prospect. So, that they will pick your phone next time you call. I will be calling him back after one week.

You get the chill feeling in your heart after stop calling for a while. I stop for one month and after that my cold calling tactic just got freeze. I need to warm myself back. Then only back on track.

Called the client at the wrong time. He was in a meeting and he got irritated. I should ask him whether he is free or not.

It is not easy to catch your prospect, they could busy and you need to try call them few time 3-5 times then only most probably you get your opportunity to talk with your prospect.

Frequently contact your prospect to keep the progress on their side, most probably they might be interested with your product only that they still need their boss approval.

I lost my sales, when I didn't contact my prospect for 2 month and they bought the same product from another salesman. His luck and effort.

Out of 50 prospect that I have call only 4 bought the solution. So it depends on numbers of leads you are working on plus your destiny, luck or karma.

For one prospect, first I call him and told him that I will send my proposal and after one week I will call.

So, after one week, I called him and asked him whether he went through the proposal.

He still has not went through the proposal. So, told him I will call back within a week. After a week the GM still has not go through the details. Then only my mind start working and I start selling to him the key benefits of the product and how we can improve his business.

Finally, he accepted the proposal.

Actually for the first call you just describe briefly about your products and on the second call afterwards you could start selling to your prospect immediately. Even if they didn't go through your emails or brochures.

Last time, I always contact lower management staff to sell my product and hope that they will convince that upper management people to buy the solution.

So, you can expect my failure rate to be very high.

Nowadays, I will try to talk to the GM and middle management people to close the sales. Much more faster, whether they want the solution or not. Much faster and less headache.

That is all I can think of my mistakes. If I have done any other mistakes, I will update you here.

Good Day !

Virtual keyboard to secure your online transaction

 Do you think hackers cannot capture your username & password which you use to access your online banking easily?

Think again, once your pc has been infected with trojan or worm with capability to capture your keystrokes then you would be most probably sending your financial data to the crooks.

Five types of keylogger software program that can capture your keystrokes.

1. Hypervisor based. It's is malware operating system that work underneath your operating system.
2. Kernel based. It resides at the kernel level of the os, very hard to write and combat. It has permission to access to any information typed on the keyboard.
3. Hook based. It is triggered by keyboard events which the os notifies it and the keylogger just record the keystrokes.
4. Passive methods. This is done by using APIs like GetAsyncKeyState(), GetForegroundWindow(), etc. to poll the state of the keyboard or to subscribe to keyboard events. Slows your pc.
5. Form Grabber based. It logs web form submissions by recording the web browsing onSubmit event functions. Data is recorded before submission over the internet and bypasses https encryption.

Money is the Main Reason

The main reason cyber criminals target this information is for money.

Interesting email conversation between two hackers, Farid Essebar (codename : Diabl0 ) and Atilla Ekici (codename : Coder )

"They can't find me," wrote Atilla Ekici, a 23-year-old Turk, in an email to his accomplice, a 19-year-old Moroccan called Farid Essebar. "Ha, ha, ha," replied Mr. Essebar. Source : Cassell Bryan-Low, The Wall Street Journal

Zotob virus / trojan enables other malicious software to be installed. For example, it enables malicious key logging programs to record credit card information.

Police found about 1600 the numbers of stolen credit cards with them.

Virtual KeyBoard

To protect your information next time when you access your paypal account or bank account is to use virtual keyboard provided by anti-virus software.

I am using Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 and it has this feature to protect us from this kind of malicious program.

Virtual keyboard is a special service embedded into Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 that prevents data interception entered from the keyboard.

To use Kaspersky Virtual keyboard.

1. Open your Kaspersky Internet Security Program.
2. Click Online Security
3. Click Virtual KeyBoard.

Now, you can enter your username and password safely in the login the form of your bank website.

Please remember that virtual keyboard cannot protect your data if you are entering your data to phishing sites or has been hacked.

Please check the authenticity of the website before entering your username and password to the website

Create A Better Bundle to make your customers coming back

 Create A Better Bundle to make your customers coming back.

Bundling is to combined your products and service into a total package. By bundling you give added value to your customers and they will coming back to you.

The best example of bundling products is done by Microsoft which sells different applications in a bundle. You can buy home office suite that includes word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software or for more advance application, you could go for Microsoft Office Profesional. They have bundle their Internet Explorer & Windows operating system to have better advantage against their competitor and this got them in trouble with the regulators.

So, Bundle carefully .

Facebook Advertising versus Google Adword

 After trying for few days to start my campaign in Adword and with still no impressions in it , I have decided to stop the campaign in Adword. I have run few of my campaigns in Adword and manage to get impression and clicks, so I am not a newbie using Adword.For the adword campaign, I started my daily budget with RM 1, then I increase to 2 RM and still no impression. After increasing the budget to RM 40 / day with still no impression decided to pull the plug. I assume that other advertisers are spending higher bids for the keywords and this is unaffordable for me.Then only, I decided to use Facebook advertising. The steps to create the ads are very simple. I am promoting my homestay portal, to increase awareness about Carihomestay.net portal. The ad is shown below.By using Facebook, you could pay based on click or based on impression. I am using based on impression, the cost for 1000 impression is 0.02 USD. The system suggest higher amount, but by just using 0.02 USD I am still getting the impressions and clicks, I assume Facebook is not yet crowded like Adword, that why I manage to get impressions for my ads.Facebook informs you how many people you targeting. Once you have created your advertisement you need to Place Order. Facebook needs your credit card info or paypal to complete the order. I use Paypal for the payment method. Facebook will direct the transaction to Paypal, there you need to agree and pay. Once done, Facebook advertising team will review the campaign and once approved the campaign will run. The minimum daily budget is 1.00 USD and they will not charge you for more than your budget. Facebook will charge you once per Facebook billable day. My campaign is already running for 5 days and it cost about 4.25 USD for 23 clicks.Overall, Facebook advertising is much easier and cheaper than Adword. 

Business Idea ? Setup A Groupon Clone in Your Country

 Want a business idea? If your country still doesn’t have a clone version of groupon.com, then it’s the right time to start one.I am bit late in this, since in Malaysia there are almost 20 sites with the same type of concept like Groupon have pop up in the last few months. So, it’s not much worthwhile to stick my head in this business.To setup your own groupon.com clone, it is very easy. Don’t waste your time developing the website yourself. You could easily setup your clone site within days, by buying the script from Group Script. They will customize your site for you.By using Group Script solution, you could easily post new deals, plus the system could be integrated with Paypal or Authorized.Net. Just like groupon.com you could share the deals with your friends and family via Twitter and Facebook.It’s has newsletters feature to keep your subscribers up to date with the latest deals in town. Plus, lot’s of interesting features.Setting up your site is the easy part. The challenging part in this business is to pull the crowd to your site.So, this is where you need to be creative. You could kick start your project by using Google Adword, do some internet marketing stuff. And if you have thick skin, do some pr job by introducing your site in the newspapers and television stations. This will create the mass that you need to have a successful business.