First of all look for all the books around your home that you no longer want. Once you have your books at the ready then register on the Amazon site which will literally take ten minutes or so.
Listing the books on the site is extremely easy as you enter the international book standard number and it will automatically bring up your book. You then can see the market price for your used book.
I would recommend entering your book price at one penny less than the nearest person which ensures you get a low price tag next to your book. You then just click and complete your listing. Amazon will then send you a sold dispatch now email when the book is sold and you mail the book to your customer.
Once you need more stock I recommend looking at the local charity shops and libraries. Also car boot sales and fairs are very good too. I have bought books for 25p and sold them for 20 pound and this happens weekly.
Not every category of book will sell extremely well so it is very important to avoid modern fiction titles. There are literally thousands of used books in this category on amazon and you will not be able to generate income with these types of books.
You should really be looking for older books with a hobby connotation. Good examples of these could be music, religion, self help, military, arts and crafts, sports and poetry to name but a few.
It is very easy to get the hang of and in time you will easily be able to identify what sells and what does not sell. I also personally sell dvd's online too but you must make sure that your dvd works before sending out to a customer because good customer feedback is very important in this business. Having said that dvd's are fast moving items and can easily make you a lot of money.
If you have an amazon library online of about one hundred books or so then you can be expecting to sell about 30 books or so a month. When you reach this level of sales then it makes it worthwhile to become an amazon book seller. This costs 25 pound a month but also cuts the 85p charge that amazon puts on your account every time a book sells. Of course Amazon needs to make some income from the arrangement with yourself but as you can see the 30 book per month and over limit makes it a viable business decision.
Another top tip is to try and keep your books small to medium in size to save on the postage costs. Amazon are quite generous and will give you a good postage allowance when selling your books but on very large books you will actually lose out.
Having said that school textbooks and educational books are very good sellers and can attract prices over 20 pounds or so therefore I would make an exception for those type of books.
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Are You Achieving Sustained Sales Growth Efficiently - Reliably And By Design
In his book “Fundamentals of Selling”, Charles Futrell identifies careful use of selling time as perhaps the distinguishing characteristic of the successful salesperson. Frequently there are two main pitfalls that even experienced salespeople can fall into in terms of activities. First, they simply aren’t doing enough. What’s enough? Enough telephone calls to make appointments, enough face-to-face calls, enough calls that involve or influence the decision-makers. In general, the more focused sales activity salespeople generate, the greater the number of sales opportunities they can create.
Poor Quality Activity:
Second, but equally important, salespeople often aren’t clear about how to identify the prospects most likely to have a genuine need for their product or service. Without an objective way to prioritise which prospects to contact first and/or an efficient strategy for contacting them, salespeople are doomed to waste a large percentage of their time.
Another huge dilemma for many salespeople is how to divide their time between servicing existing clients and generating new business from new prospects. Existing clients frequently make requests for service that could be dealt with by support staff. But salespeople who lack a disciplined, future-orientated plan for generating new contacts and sales often find themselves spending more time attending to “urgent” tasks for existing accounts instead. A common approach among salespeople can be summarised in the saying “If you throw enough mud against the wall, some of it is bound to stick”. This approach is exhausting, demoralising, extremely unproductive, and very expensive in the long term.
Speed Of Relaying Customer Information:
The Sales Director provides another interesting dimension to activity management. Apart from product or service knowledge, salespeople require knowledge about prospects, clients, and market trends. Therefore, if the information those salespeople require isn’t relayed in an efficient manner, their “face-to-face” selling activities are dramatically reduced.
Harder Rather Than Smarter:
In the book Emerson’s Essays, there is a section on “Law of Compensation”, which can be summarised simply as “give more, get more” This is what most salespeople try to do, so they end up working harder when they could be working smarter. This begs the question, are your sales activities deciding your strategy or is your strategy deciding your sales activities?
Poor Quality Activity:
Second, but equally important, salespeople often aren’t clear about how to identify the prospects most likely to have a genuine need for their product or service. Without an objective way to prioritise which prospects to contact first and/or an efficient strategy for contacting them, salespeople are doomed to waste a large percentage of their time.
Another huge dilemma for many salespeople is how to divide their time between servicing existing clients and generating new business from new prospects. Existing clients frequently make requests for service that could be dealt with by support staff. But salespeople who lack a disciplined, future-orientated plan for generating new contacts and sales often find themselves spending more time attending to “urgent” tasks for existing accounts instead. A common approach among salespeople can be summarised in the saying “If you throw enough mud against the wall, some of it is bound to stick”. This approach is exhausting, demoralising, extremely unproductive, and very expensive in the long term.
Speed Of Relaying Customer Information:
The Sales Director provides another interesting dimension to activity management. Apart from product or service knowledge, salespeople require knowledge about prospects, clients, and market trends. Therefore, if the information those salespeople require isn’t relayed in an efficient manner, their “face-to-face” selling activities are dramatically reduced.
Harder Rather Than Smarter:
In the book Emerson’s Essays, there is a section on “Law of Compensation”, which can be summarised simply as “give more, get more” This is what most salespeople try to do, so they end up working harder when they could be working smarter. This begs the question, are your sales activities deciding your strategy or is your strategy deciding your sales activities?
Monday, December 25, 2006
Sales Effectiveness: The Chemistry of Questions
Sales Effectiveness: The chemistry of questions
As most seasoned salespeople can tell you, the first issue is never the real issue.
When you learn to ask better questions, you get in touch with your genuine sense of curiosity. Your goal is to ask questions that will uncover valuable data AND not sound like every other salesperson's “stock” questions!
The answers you get are only going to be as good as the questions you ask.
I was in a sales call one time and this guy asked the client “What would you change if you had 30 days to make a difference and a magic wand you could wave over your business?” The look on the clients face was the famous “my wheels are turning because no one has asked me this before” look!
Now, you’ve left the realm of a routine sales call and you’ve embarked on a real discussion on matters that matter to your prospect.
Here is a list of questions. Go through the list and ask your self- “have I ever asked these before?”
•What are the biggest challenges you are facing right now?
•What one thing would change your business dramatically if you could do it?
•What has been your biggest breakthrough in the last few years?
•What do you want your business to be known for?
•What is important to you?
•What are you looking for that you haven’t found?
One last comment: these are not the best possible questions for you to use.
Why?
Because the best possible questions for you to use will come from... YOU!
Part of my sale effectiveness seminars involve creating customized questions – customized for your industry, your prospects, your personality, your experience, your sales cycle, and your personal preferences.
There is nothing worse than watching someone who leaves a sales course, memorizes 10 questions that the trainer said were the “best” questions to ask, and then watch that hapless salesperson get eaten alive on their next sales call, simply because they’re faking their way through someone else’s “system”!
As most seasoned salespeople can tell you, the first issue is never the real issue.
When you learn to ask better questions, you get in touch with your genuine sense of curiosity. Your goal is to ask questions that will uncover valuable data AND not sound like every other salesperson's “stock” questions!
The answers you get are only going to be as good as the questions you ask.
I was in a sales call one time and this guy asked the client “What would you change if you had 30 days to make a difference and a magic wand you could wave over your business?” The look on the clients face was the famous “my wheels are turning because no one has asked me this before” look!
Now, you’ve left the realm of a routine sales call and you’ve embarked on a real discussion on matters that matter to your prospect.
Here is a list of questions. Go through the list and ask your self- “have I ever asked these before?”
•What are the biggest challenges you are facing right now?
•What one thing would change your business dramatically if you could do it?
•What has been your biggest breakthrough in the last few years?
•What do you want your business to be known for?
•What is important to you?
•What are you looking for that you haven’t found?
One last comment: these are not the best possible questions for you to use.
Why?
Because the best possible questions for you to use will come from... YOU!
Part of my sale effectiveness seminars involve creating customized questions – customized for your industry, your prospects, your personality, your experience, your sales cycle, and your personal preferences.
There is nothing worse than watching someone who leaves a sales course, memorizes 10 questions that the trainer said were the “best” questions to ask, and then watch that hapless salesperson get eaten alive on their next sales call, simply because they’re faking their way through someone else’s “system”!
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Sell More: Having A Defined Sales Process
Some of the salespeople reading this article book may be muttering to themselves “face to face selling... I wish! If I could only get more in-person time with my prospects, I wouldn’t need to be reading this article!”
If that’s your situation – that once you’re with a prospect, you’re home free and you do really well from there on out in your sales process – then pay careful attention to what we’re about to share with you.
Your challenge is linkage. You don’t start each phase of your sales process with a clear picture in your mind of what the next step is going to be.
Perhaps you feel that your selling process should be different with each prospect or that if you had a template or a system you use with everyone, that would be insincere or it would somehow ring false when you put different people through that same process.
Let’s turn away from sales for a moment.
Let’s talk about brain surgery. Or dental work. Or flying an airplane. Or doing someone’s tax return.
These processes all have the following characteristics in common:
•They are executed by a professional
•He/she has had a good deal of training
•This professional has had plenty of opportunity to practice under the supervision of someone more knowledgeable and experienced
•This person is required to continue their professional learning throughout their career
•This person uses a clearly defined, proven, documented system for making incisions, using anesthetic, take offs and landings, or amortizing expenses
•Many of these processes are system-atized to the point of using simple checklists, logs, and computer programs to ensure the proper sequence and completeness of steps
•Any significant variation or omission in these procedures is at the risk of injury, death, lawsuit, bankruptcy, prison time, or all of the above
If that’s your situation – that once you’re with a prospect, you’re home free and you do really well from there on out in your sales process – then pay careful attention to what we’re about to share with you.
Your challenge is linkage. You don’t start each phase of your sales process with a clear picture in your mind of what the next step is going to be.
Perhaps you feel that your selling process should be different with each prospect or that if you had a template or a system you use with everyone, that would be insincere or it would somehow ring false when you put different people through that same process.
Let’s turn away from sales for a moment.
Let’s talk about brain surgery. Or dental work. Or flying an airplane. Or doing someone’s tax return.
These processes all have the following characteristics in common:
•They are executed by a professional
•He/she has had a good deal of training
•This professional has had plenty of opportunity to practice under the supervision of someone more knowledgeable and experienced
•This person is required to continue their professional learning throughout their career
•This person uses a clearly defined, proven, documented system for making incisions, using anesthetic, take offs and landings, or amortizing expenses
•Many of these processes are system-atized to the point of using simple checklists, logs, and computer programs to ensure the proper sequence and completeness of steps
•Any significant variation or omission in these procedures is at the risk of injury, death, lawsuit, bankruptcy, prison time, or all of the above
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Sell More Using Sales Psychology
True sales pros use psychology to sell more, the psychology of urgency, time, choice and stories. Let’s look at each.
The psychology of urgency
Another typical sales scenario involves the salesperson doing everything right – until after the first appointment. Then, suddenly, the emails stop, messages don’t get returned, and the lead runs cold, leaving you scratching your head wondering how that nice, friendly, responsive, involved prospect dropped off the face of the earth.
Does that ever happen to you?
What you’ve just experienced is a good sales process gone bad for the lack of a key ingredient: urgency.
As Stephen Covey says, there is a big difference between the “urgent” and the “important.”
In everyday business, the urgent category includes soothing angry clients, “putting out fires,” production stoppages, surprise inspections or audits by regulators, labor problems, media blowups, and things of that nature.
The important category includes things like making employees feel appreciated, upgrading to new office technology, listening to someone’s ideas, increasing your industry knowledge, developing good corporate citizenship (charitable, environmental, etc) and so on.
Guess which category is at the top of every executive’s agenda each morning when they walk in the door?
If you’ve positioned the product or service you’re selling as a “nice to have” instead of a “have to have,” – or even better a “have to have now” – your leads will run cold. Simply put, buying from you (even if it’s important) takes a backseat to the urgent matters of the day.
If you as a salesperson haven’t identified the pain, then you will get a less than urgent response. If you walk up to someone on the street and they have a nail sticking out of their knee- they would have a high sense of urgency to have the nail removed. This is the same with the prospect. When you can identify their “nail” they will want to move on it quickly.
The psychology of urgency
Another typical sales scenario involves the salesperson doing everything right – until after the first appointment. Then, suddenly, the emails stop, messages don’t get returned, and the lead runs cold, leaving you scratching your head wondering how that nice, friendly, responsive, involved prospect dropped off the face of the earth.
Does that ever happen to you?
What you’ve just experienced is a good sales process gone bad for the lack of a key ingredient: urgency.
As Stephen Covey says, there is a big difference between the “urgent” and the “important.”
In everyday business, the urgent category includes soothing angry clients, “putting out fires,” production stoppages, surprise inspections or audits by regulators, labor problems, media blowups, and things of that nature.
The important category includes things like making employees feel appreciated, upgrading to new office technology, listening to someone’s ideas, increasing your industry knowledge, developing good corporate citizenship (charitable, environmental, etc) and so on.
Guess which category is at the top of every executive’s agenda each morning when they walk in the door?
If you’ve positioned the product or service you’re selling as a “nice to have” instead of a “have to have,” – or even better a “have to have now” – your leads will run cold. Simply put, buying from you (even if it’s important) takes a backseat to the urgent matters of the day.
If you as a salesperson haven’t identified the pain, then you will get a less than urgent response. If you walk up to someone on the street and they have a nail sticking out of their knee- they would have a high sense of urgency to have the nail removed. This is the same with the prospect. When you can identify their “nail” they will want to move on it quickly.
Friday, December 22, 2006
Cheap Mortgage Leads Equal Bad Leads
"You get what you pay for," the saying goes, and that's the real problem in the mortgage industry. A lot of mortgage lead companies sell leads to other mortgage lead companies which results in recycling leads within the mortgage lead industry before it even gets to the average mortgage loan officer or broker. The aftermath is not pretty, 20-40 calls a day for the prospective borrower just within the first 4 days if the lead being generated.
Obviously this creates a headache for the potential borrower who is being bombarded with endless phone calls, and unnecessary competition for already frustrated loan officers.
The Solution:
* A. Real-Time Leads
* B. Exclusive Leads
* C. Timestamped Leads
* D. Origin-stamped Leads
A. Real-time Mortgage leads are received within seconds of the borrower completing a short online form. These are perfect leads since the prospect is usually able to be contacted within 2 minutes of them filling out the form. The prospect takes the time to fill out a form so are not cold calls nor recycled. Just Fresh Leads. Also the prospect loves the fact that a loan officer got back to them so fast.
B. Exclusive Leads are leads that not only are designated for you but cannot be resold as a semi-exclusive or non-exclusive lead. Make sure the lead company you deal with is a reputable company has timestamped and origin-stamped the lead.
C. Timestamped leads are the only leads that should be bought. If a lead is not timestamped then there is no proof of when the lead actually was submitted. This is the problem that allows crooked lead companies to sell you recycled leads and waste your hard earned money.
D. Origin-stamped leads are leads that are stamped with the website that originated the actual lead. You should look for lead companies that obtain their leads through websites they own and operate themselves. If they won't tell you their website or don't have them posted then it's time to look else where. Otherwise they are obtaining them from third party companies and recycling them.
Obviously this creates a headache for the potential borrower who is being bombarded with endless phone calls, and unnecessary competition for already frustrated loan officers.
The Solution:
* A. Real-Time Leads
* B. Exclusive Leads
* C. Timestamped Leads
* D. Origin-stamped Leads
A. Real-time Mortgage leads are received within seconds of the borrower completing a short online form. These are perfect leads since the prospect is usually able to be contacted within 2 minutes of them filling out the form. The prospect takes the time to fill out a form so are not cold calls nor recycled. Just Fresh Leads. Also the prospect loves the fact that a loan officer got back to them so fast.
B. Exclusive Leads are leads that not only are designated for you but cannot be resold as a semi-exclusive or non-exclusive lead. Make sure the lead company you deal with is a reputable company has timestamped and origin-stamped the lead.
C. Timestamped leads are the only leads that should be bought. If a lead is not timestamped then there is no proof of when the lead actually was submitted. This is the problem that allows crooked lead companies to sell you recycled leads and waste your hard earned money.
D. Origin-stamped leads are leads that are stamped with the website that originated the actual lead. You should look for lead companies that obtain their leads through websites they own and operate themselves. If they won't tell you their website or don't have them posted then it's time to look else where. Otherwise they are obtaining them from third party companies and recycling them.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
How To Deliver A Professional Sales Presentation
All professional salespeople have to be involved in a presentation at some time in their sales career and Top 5 % players present their proposals every time.
Presentations allow us to : -
• Influence a group of important people.
• Gain consensus and commitment.
• Find out who the real players are and the real status.
• Set ground rules for a major sale.
• Make a lasting impression of professionalism.
When it comes to the enthusiasm that sales professionals have for making a presentation, they broadly fall into four categories, (as I highlighted in a previous article - :”When It Comes To Making Presentations, The Very Best Salespeople Are Seekers”)
The Avoider:
An Avoider does everything possible to escape from having to stand in front of an audience; in some drastic cases salespeople may seek positions that do not involve making presentations.
The Register:
A Register is also extremely hesitant of speaking in public, however Registers may not be able to avoid speaking as part of their job but they never encourage it. When they do speak they do so very reluctantly.
The Acceptor:
The Acceptor will give presentations as part of their job but does not seek opportunities to do so. Acceptors occasionally give a presentation and feel they did a good job. They even find that once in a while they are quite persuasive and enjoy the experience.
Presentations allow us to : -
• Influence a group of important people.
• Gain consensus and commitment.
• Find out who the real players are and the real status.
• Set ground rules for a major sale.
• Make a lasting impression of professionalism.
When it comes to the enthusiasm that sales professionals have for making a presentation, they broadly fall into four categories, (as I highlighted in a previous article - :”When It Comes To Making Presentations, The Very Best Salespeople Are Seekers”)
The Avoider:
An Avoider does everything possible to escape from having to stand in front of an audience; in some drastic cases salespeople may seek positions that do not involve making presentations.
The Register:
A Register is also extremely hesitant of speaking in public, however Registers may not be able to avoid speaking as part of their job but they never encourage it. When they do speak they do so very reluctantly.
The Acceptor:
The Acceptor will give presentations as part of their job but does not seek opportunities to do so. Acceptors occasionally give a presentation and feel they did a good job. They even find that once in a while they are quite persuasive and enjoy the experience.
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