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Web News & Tips - Issue #227 To unsubscribe, please follow the instructions at the end of this newsletter Web News & Tips Published by MateMedia, Inc. Your Partner on the Web Providing quality Web services at affordable prices since 1995 MateMedia provides the following services: Small Business Web Hosting (Shared & Managed Dedicated Servers) Web Design & Development - Custom Web Applications Database Development & Hosting Website Maintenance & Webmaster Services Search Engine Promotion (Optimization & Submission) E-Commerce - Shopping Carts - Sample Shopping Cart Domain Name Registration Domain Name Affiliate Program Web Hosting Affiliate Program For more information about our services email sales@matemediainc.com or call us at 877-309-7521 - Read what our clients have to say about us IN THIS ISSUE: Become a MateMedia Domain Name Affiliate Become a MateMedia Web Hosting Affiliate Free Webmaster Tools Understanding The Corporate Buyer Web News A Step by Step Guide to Getting Started on the Web Recommend this newsletter to a friend Advertise in Web News & Tips Understanding The Corporate Buyer By C.J. Hayden, MCC Selling your services to corporations is an attractive proposition. The contracts are larger than with small businesses and individuals, and often longer-term. There's the possibility of repeat business worth many billable hours at respectable rates. But the best clients are not always the easiest to get. If you don't grasp the realities of the corporate environment, you may sabotage even a hot lead. Here are five important keys to working with the corporate buyer. 1. Managers are busy. This is just as true in economic downturns as during a boom. When business is slow, unnecessary employees get laid off. The people left behind have to pick up the slack. Busy people ignore unsolicited email and letters, and will not return your phone calls. Even when you are in the final stages of closing a deal, your contact may not return your calls for weeks. If you accept this as normal behavior instead of obsessing about how you may have caused it, you will sleep better at night and use your daylight hours more productively. 2. Hot buttons open doors. If you want to capture the interest of a busy person, you need to tell them exactly how you can help them. Calling just to introduce yourself will not get their attention. What do the people in your target market perceive to be the greatest problems they face, or the biggest goals they wish to achieve? Ask these questions of the people you serve and the other businesspeople who serve them. Read trade literature or special interest publications and educate yourself on the key issues in your marketplace. Then tell your prospects in every communication how you can help address these needs. 3. Every choice must be justified. When you sell to the owner of a small business or to an individual for his or her own use, your buyer is free to make purchasing decisions based on instinct, whim, or gut feeling. But every corporate sale must be justified to someone else in the organization. A supervisor must justify choices to a manager, the manager to an executive, the executive to the CEO, the CEO to the board, the board to the shareholders. Each one of these people wants to look good to the next link up the chain, and dreads making a public mistake. If you want your sale to go through, you need to provide your contact with EVIDENCE why you and your solution are the best choice. 4. The bottom line rules. When you provide your evidence, it had better include dollars and cents. If you are more expensive than your competition, what added value will you provide? If hiring you will cost more than solving the company's problem in some other way, what tangible benefits will they receive that make the added expense worthwhile? Individuals and small businesses buy services in the category of nice-to-have, often to improve their quality of life or that of their employees. Corporations, especially in lean times, don't. You must sell them something they actually NEED and prove how it will enhance their bottom line. Real-life examples of results at other companies can speak volumes. Illustrations with charts and graphs are more convincing than any brochure. 5. No budget; no project. Even when the company needs what you have and thinks you're the best one for the job, the deal won't go through if there's no money in the budget. You can ask your contact to try for a budget variance, but no budget usually means your project will be deferred until the next fiscal year. Always ask if the client has a budget at the first meeting. Don't necessarily expect them to tell you how much it is -- price negotiations will come later. But if your contact can't answer budget questions, it's also a strong clue you are not talking to the decision-maker. Increase your rank in the search engines! Check out our new search engine optimization plans Become a MateMedia Small Business Web Hosting Affiliate Web News Internet advertising trends toward larger unit sizes and more rich media are continuing to develop, according to DoubleClick's 2003 second quarter ad serving report. The ad technology company said that nearly a third of the ads it served in the quarter used rich media, up 14 percent from the previous quarter. DoubleClick defines rich media as any ad using Flash, pop-ups, interstitials, or Unicast and Eyeblaster formats. Cable modem broadband service is expected to grow at high speeds. In-Stat/MDR reports that total worldwide cable modem subscribers reached 27 million in mid- 2003, and is expected to hit 34 million by the end of the year. By 2007, In-Stat/MDR projects that there will be 68 million worldwide cable modem subscribers. By geographic region, North America has the most cable modem subscribers with over 14.6 million. Comparatively, Leichtman Research Group (LRG) estimates that DSL only accounted for roughly 6.8 million U.S. subscribers at the end of the first quarter of 2003. The blog revolution is well underway, giving every Internet user the opportunity to become an online journalist. While it is difficult to calculate exactly how many individuals are using Web sites as journals, Blogcount estimates that there are roughly 2.4 million to 2.9 million active Weblogs as of June 2003. Of this figure, Blogcount attributes more than 1.6 million active users to the top three centrally hosted services. Smaller hosts, intranet blogs, and standalone tools account for the remainder. Atlanta, Los Angeles and Washington, DC were the fastest growing top wired cities at home over the last year, according to data from Nielsen/NetRatings. Atlanta grew 19 percent among U.S. cities with more than 2.1 million Internet surfers while Los Angeles and Washington showed a growth rate of 14 percent. In comparison, the number of Web users in the U.S. grew 7 percent during the past year. Copyright 2000-2003 MateMedia, Inc. |
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