Last October we turned to business coach Leanne Hoagland-Smith who offered her advice on Avoiding The 7 Mistakes Most Entrepreneurs Make – Entrepreneur University. Leanne Hoagland-Smith works with individuals just like you who want improved results personally or organizationally. She works to improve human capital for sustainable transformational change by developing results driven leadership in people, teams and organizations.

Today we turn to Leanne again to get her advice on why potential customers so no in the sales process:

“Business people do not buy for many reasons. Usually the resistance also called stalls and objections to buying something begins with the simple word of No. However, behind this no are numerous reasons. These No’s are not in a ranking order as individuals are unique as our their reasons for not buying.

No time – Time is a precious commodity. Many people simply lack the time to go out and make good buying decisions. Just think how many times you had to call your prospect before you even schedule your first meeting?

No relationship – People buy from people they know. If the relationship has not been established, then the hope for a sales strategy takes over. And we all now that hope is not the best sales strategy.

No budget – People in business just as in their own personal lives want a lot of stuff from products to services. However a business runs on a budget and sometimes the dollars are not available at that moment in time.

No desire – The old age goes No one wants to be sold, but everyone loves to buy. If there is no desire, then why would I want to buy anything?

No reason – People buy for a reason or a need. If there is no reason to buy services, there is potentially no sale unless the salesperson can find a reason.

No faith – Even with an established relationship, faith must be present within that relationship. We know many people and like the, but would we do business with all of them? I think not.

No Knowledge – Knowledge is critical to understanding the value of the product or service specific to the buyer. Also, the seller’s knowledge must be credible to ensure his or her expertise to the buyer.

There are probably several more Nos that could be added to this list. However from my experience as a business coach helping struggling businesses to increase sales, these are the main ones that I have heard.

If you wish to increase sales, then make sure you can overcome most of these Nos if not all of them. Even if there is no budget, are you sure and if so, if the client has enough value, then stay in contact with him or her. Do not let the Nos keep you from business success.”

Launching a business is like going all in with Texas Hold ‘Em – you do it only when you know for sure you’ll win the hand. If you’re not sure, if you’re worried you might lose, you can call to see what happens for a minimal risk, or fold and hang on to your chips. But you can’t go all in. And you can’t launch a business until you are absolutely certain it will succeed.

Uncertainty is the death of great ideas and big plans. If you’re even the slightest bit wary of staying in, chances are you’re going to lose. Call it instinct, call it inexperience, something in you knows you might not win. Whether it’s based in realty or insecurity, your feeling is right. Once you open up the possibility of a different, losing outcome, odds are you’ll end up a loser.

In order to succeed in business – and in poker – you’ve got to be willing to bet the farm. When you go all in, you hold nothing back. No hedging. No waffling. No plan B. When you know you will win, there can be no retreat. So you better be sure you can pull it off.

Does this mean you need a fancy business plan and a room full of angel benefactors kissing your ass in order to launch with confidence? Nope. In fact, your chances of succeeding in business are much greater without them. Would you need an office, a staff, and a stack of embossed business cards in order to feel ready to go in to start-up mode? Heck, no. The trappings of “playing office” are distractions – expensive distractions – that have little to do with getting your business off the ground.

What you need, what you must have in order to win in poker, in business, and in life, is the unwavering belief that you will make it. Yes, you will also have to do some recon to make sure your idea is as innovative as you think it is, the timing is right, and your methodology is spot on. But none of that will make a bit of difference if you’re not totally convinced you will pull it off.

If you know for sure, go all in. The entrepreneurial world is high-stakes game and you’ve got to play to win.

Mike Michalowicz is the author of The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur.

I had an interesting meeting last night with a few Toronto based entrepreneurs. Most of the people around the table were looking at how to grow their sales and one of the members commented that most entrepreneurs who make it big started by being the primary salesperson in the business.

You can create the greatest product in the world but if you’re not out there selling and promoting it, the chances of your company’s success are pretty slim.

It’s easy to get caught up in day to day activities and drown yourself in admin work which you convince yourself is important to the company but at the end of the day, nothing happens until somebody sells something. If your business is not bringing in enough sales the problem is likely looking back at you in the mirror. It’s time to step out of your comfort zone and get some new customers in the door.

“But I’m not a salesperson!”

You are always selling your company, whether its getting a loan from a banker, convincing an employee to come on board, satisfying a disgruntled customer, getting people to pay your invoice, etc. The ability to sell your ideas is one of the most important roles that you can have as a company founder.

Sales guru Jeffrey Gitomer recently outlined 7.5 reasons why business owners sell better than any employee ever can:

“1. The responsibility for success of the business is yours. You won’t let your business fail due to lack of sales – so it’s your job to sell until it’s successful.

2. The business is your child. You sell best because you know your product or service best. You are its most sincere and passionate representative. You are responsible for feeding and nurturing your business.

3. You can make deals no one else can make. People think when they buy from the owner they are getting a special deal, may not have to pay a commission and therefore are getting the best price, or at least the best offer.

4. People like to buy from the owner. Customers know they will get special attention and special appreciation.

5. Customers have a special confidence in you. You sell it because you believe in in your business. Your enthusiasm generates confidence that transforms into sales. Customers also know the owner will go the extra mile to deliver what’s promised.

6. The relationship with the customer is yours to build at first. You get to know the people who are helping you succeed. After your business matures, you choose whom you will continue to handle personally, and whom you can pass on to a salesperson.

7. You are in the best position for direct feedback about your product, service and business. Your customer has all the information you need to succeed. Get close to him or her and listen. Then take action as only the owner can do.

7.5 If you have other salespeople, you must be the leader of your own sales campaign. If you do not lead them, no one will. You must set the example, drive the belief system, and create the atmosphere of success. You must be the best at sales, because that is where the success is.”

Have you handled selling in your company?

I thought it would be a useful experiment to see which days of the week have the highest click through rates.

I looked at the last 1.5 million ad impressions from my site (all from this year) to see if there were any noticeable differences between days of the week and click through rates.

The ad impressions calculated come from both my own ads as well as network ads like Google AdSense so I cannot share the exact numbers without violating their terms of service.

To my surprise, Saturday was the day with the highest click through rate, beating out last place Tuesday by 0.37%.

How to read this number: If click through rate was 1%, for example, on Tuesday, then Saturday would be 1.37%. It doesn’t look like a big a number but that .37% can be a big difference maker on your overall earnings per month.

From my data, the order of best click through rates to worst by day is as follows:

1. Saturday
2. Friday
3. Thursday
4. Wednesday
5. Tuesday
6. Monday
7. Sunday

What’s interesting to note is that if you start a week on a Sunday then the click through rates go up every day you get further into the week. Why do we click through more often on ads later on in the week? Are we bored? Are we less stressed out and more receptive to looking what advertisements are offering?

Have you been watching the Olympics. Athletes have trained for years to be at the top of their games all for the chance to compete on the world stage for that gold medal. What can you learn from today’s Olympic stars? Mashable recently put together a list of seven lessons for entrepreneurs.

Here are the top 3:

1) Great talent means nothing without great teamwork:

The 2004 Olympics were a disaster for Team USA Basketball. Despite having the most talented individuals on the court, the United States lost three times and came home with a disappointing bronze. After that, the leadership’s mentality changed to make sure 2008 was different. Coach Mike Krzyzewski didn’t choose individuals, but chose a team. This group has now played together since 2005 and 2006 in preparation for these Olympics and showed their strength in a 101-70 opening rout of China.

Learn from Team USA’s mistakes – getting great talent is never enough if that talent does not mesh and work well together. You must build a team with members that complement each other and are selfless in achieving company goals. If you ignore that team dynamic, you’re probably going to be stuck with something far more disappointing than a bronze medal.

2) Endorsement deals are great, but don’t let them distract you:

In sports, endorsement deals mean commercials, visibility, new products, and a wad of cash. For Internet entrepreneurs, endorsement deals mean venture capitalists An-Interview-With-Alan-Patricof , networking, new credibility, and of course a wad of cash. But if you get too engrossed in venture capital, it can become something you regret. If you spend too much time finding a deal instead of working on making your product the best it can be, nobody will want to endorse you in the first place, regardless of whether you’re an athlete or an entrepreneur.

3) Finish:

Finishing isn’t always easy and you can get distracted from the end by distractions. Sometimes it’s just painful and the last thing you want to do, but nobody succeeds without finishing. The greats dig deep to summon the strength needed to finish. Just ask Track and Field Gold Medalist Derek Redmond. Even if you do not come out the winner in the end, you can hold your head up high and know you did what most never do: finish what they start.

The other four lessons were:

4) When you are injured, you need to work even harder to reach your goals
5) Know your competition
6) Nothing worth accomplishing comes quick and easy
7) Remember what’s really important

Can you think of any other lessons that you’ve taken home by watching the Olympics?

From a farm boy living in the outskirts of Oklahoma to becoming the richest man in America in the 1980s and revolutionizing the way the country did business, Sam Walton’s legacy continues to live on. By the time he passed away in 1992, Sam Walton had amassed a fortune in excess of $25 billion and today, his brainchild Wal-Mart continues to bring in revenues of over $300 billion, making it the world’s largest retailer.

Sam Walton passed away in 1992 but his legacy lives on. It is estimated that if the Wal-Mart chain was its own economy, it would rank 30th in the world, behind Saudi Arabia. The company’s revenues continue to grow at roughly 10% a year, likely surpassing half a trillion dollars in sales within the next decade. The international division of Wal-Mart is also its fastest-growing division, which indicates that the company is continuing to increase its presence around the world. If Sam Walton were alive today, he would be the richest person in the world, with twice the fortune of Bill Gates. How did a farm boy from Oklahoma accomplish all of this?

“If you love your work, you’ll be out there every day trying to do it the best you possibly can, and pretty soon everybody around will catch the passion from you – like a fever. I think I overcame every single one of my personal shortcomings by the sheer passion I brought to my work. I don’t know if you’re born with this kind of passion, or if you can learn it. But I do know you need it.

Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find your niche by going in exactly the opposite direction. Commit to your business. Believe in it more than anybody else. Capital isn’t scarce. Vision is.

Don’t take yourself so seriously. Loosen up, and everybody around you will loosen up. Have fun. My feeling is that just because we work so hard, we don’t have to go around with long faces all the time. While we’re doing all of this work, we like to have a good time. When all else fails, put on a costume and sing a silly song. Then make everybody else sing with you.

Celebrate your successes. Find some humor in your failures. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Loosen up, and everybody around you will loosen up. Have fun. Show enthusiasm – always. When all else fails, put on a costume and sing a silly song. Then make everybody else sing with you. Don’t do a hula on Wall Street. It’s been done. Think up your own stunt. All of this is more important, and more fun, than you think, and it really fools the competition. “Why should we take those cornballs at Wal-Mart seriously?” 

Money and ownership alone aren’t enough. Set high goals, encourage competition, and then keep score. Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They’re absolutely free – and worth a fortune. We’re all working together; that’s the secret.

The folks on the front lines – the ones who actually talk to the customer – are the only ones who really know what’s going on out there. The two most important words I ever wrote were on that first Wal-Mart sign, ‘Satisfaction Guaranteed’. They’re still up there, and they have made all the difference. Each Wal-Mart store should reflect the values of its customers and support the vision they hold for their community.

There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.“

More on Sam Walton.

For this edition of Entrepreneur University we turn to Business and Management trainer Martin Haworth. From managers of small, developing businesses and their teams, through to one-on-one work with senior executives, Martin enables a new generation of managers – and their businesses – to meet their potential – and deliver performance they only dream about. We last connected with Martin in January where he shared his tips on How To Network Differently.

Today Martin shares with us his 5 best tips to help you manage your time:

“There’s only one thing you can’t buy more of in life and that’s time. Yet many of us complain that we just don’t have enough. So it’s vital to maximise what we do have and make the most of our time management with absolute effectiveness and efficiency.

Yet it comes down to personal habits and changes you can start to make, right away. Here are five ideas to get you started.

Get Organised

Whatever you do in your business, it won’t work well if you are disorganized. Truth is many business-people are, so they solve it by surrounding themselves with people who are very capable. They get people in to manage them! If your business isn’t that big, then there are always great team members who might have time management skills you’re a bit short on. Learning to be organized can be achieved to greater or lesser extents, but you have to have things in the right places at the right times, or things will start to go wrong.

Do What’s Important

By focusing on where you personally add the best value, you leverage the excellent skills you bring to your business. Using delegating skills to empower, develop and get the best from others is vital. Great bosses do what they are good at and lose the rest. Building team resources is one of the best places to start and to do so it’s critical that you recognize the areas where you add less value yourself. Letting go as a business grows is one of the biggest challenges.

Manage E-mail and Phone Calls

Now for some tactical steps. There are always demands on your time. Yet that is so precious. By analyzing where your time goes, you can easily find out whether it is the best use of your contributions. Impositions from others, often unexpected, like e-mail and phone calls, can not only be managed, but trained, even though it is sometimes tough to say ‘no’. So that’s a start in getting your time management effective. Follow this by making time-slots for fixed periods of time throughout the day for these communication processes and you will find that you don’t let yourself slide.

Make Time to Think

Once you get some control back, take some of it back by slackening off. If you create spaces for yourself to think in your day, you will find you are released from tactical day-to-day fire-fighting and start to get creative with problem-solving, planning and development. Which is what you must have to progress. Every time you solve a problem, ask yourself, ‘What would it take to make this problem not happen ever again’?, ‘What could I use the time for’? And provide solutions that fix sources of problems, not sticking-plaster one-off short-cuts.

Closed Door/Open Door

It’s great to be there for your people. Building relationships is one of the most valuable activities you can undertake in your business. On your own terms. Whilst having an open-door policy help make you approachable, it isn’t good time management to have that all the time. So open your door when you are ready to be interrupted – and close it the rest of the time when you need to do your own work. People get to realize what you are doing and understand – even take the tactic into the way they run their own work practices. That works!

Five little time management steps that can make a huge difference when you make a start. And there’s no time like the present!”

Have you tried any of these techniques? What do you to effectively manage your time?

Our 22nd Review our Blog entry comes thanks to Anthony B. Mallgren from Novorum Consulting. You can read what he had to say about us in his blog post: Young Entrepreneur Blog Source For Gen-Y Networking/Advice.

Novorum Consulting Inc. was founded June 13th, 2008 by Anthony Mallgren and Cory J. Geesaman – seeing an immediate opening within the business technology infrastructure market. Novorum Consulting Inc could be considered a hedge software development company, as they seek out higher risk projects for higher returns. They have established a reputation for coming into clutch situations and bringing motivation, organization and excitement, then delivering a showcase solution. In most cases, they are more likely to work 5-9 rather than the other way around. Their “value add” is really bringing an equal mix of business acumen and technical know-how to deliver truly innovative and effective solutions.

Thanks for the review Anthony!

If you are interested in doing a review, check out our Review Our Blog initiative for instructions.

We’ve asked you what the most useful tools are to your business to build a valuable list for young entrepreneurs to be able to refer to. So far the top results are:

#1: Pencil /Pen and Paper

#1: Websites
(Young Entrepreneur Forums, Interactive Business Planner, valuebasedmanagement.net, Docstoc.com, Huddle.net, Scanr.com)

#3: RSS Reader / Google Reader

#3: Books
(Redstone Sumner’s, Thomas Friedman’s last edition of “The World is Flat”, Rich Dad Poor Dad, How to Win Friends and Influence People (Dale Carnegie), A New Earth (Earkhart Tolle), Loosing my Virginity (Richard Branson)

The other ideas that have been submitted so far are:

• A virtual assistant
• Twitter
• Your own blog
• iPhone3G
• Business cards
• Your network
• A personal computer
• Mentors
• Independent and major media news
• Your peers
• An internet connection

So far it has been an impressive list of suggestions! Is the pen / paper combination the most useful tool for entrepreneurs or are various online tools more helpful? Do you find RSS readers or business books to have been more valuable to you or perhaps another one of the suggestions listed?

Have your say in our Entrepreneur Forum post here.

It’s time for another SEO Advice post! Last week, I offered free SEO advice to All You Need Business Services. I’m going to continue my SEO Advice series today by helping out another YoungEntrepreneur.com blog reader Judy Cheung, from SkinB5. We are going to focus today on increasing conversions instead of the usual SEO, however.

SkinB5 – www.skinb5.com

Dear Evan,

I have a seriously burning question! We have been doing many different things to improve rate of conversion with no success. What can I do, I am pulling my hair out and running out of ideas, HELP !!

Just sharing below stats with you. (Judy shared some stats showing that many people hit her home page but don’t end up going beyond the home page to the order page or any other inside page) Does it mean most people don’t visit beyond our home page???? If so why? I look forward to your expert advice!

warm regards,

Judy Cheung

My Recommendations

1) Where is your traffic coming from?

Not all traffic is created equally. What are the sources of your traffic? Are they coming from search engines or social media sites, for example. I’ve always had the best conversions from search engine traffic because people are specifically looking for something so they are more interested in finding a solution. Traffic from partner websites generally do not convert as well because people come more out of curiosity then looking for a specific answer. Social media sites generally generate the least number of conversions. If you’re not getting enough traffic from search engines, consider improving your SEO efforts to rank in Google.

2) Use Better Pictures

Personal health products like acne cures and weight loss solutions are sold most often due to the pictures and testimonials. On the homepage you have two pictures (before and after) of Nick Bell. The concept is great but the pictures are hard to see. It’s difficult to tell that there has been a big improvement and the second picture looks blurry and photoshopped. If people question the authenticity of the photos then they won’t click through to buy your product. It’s also of Nick Bell, who is the co-founder of the company. I would look at using ordinary people who have great stories and great pictures instead of the company’s co-founder. I would also suggest putting more pictures on the homepage instead of just Nick’s. The stories and the testimonials will help sell the product and encourage click throughs.

3) Change Order’ to ‘Learn More’

For each product you show one paragraph of text and a list of benefits. Because you’re not yet a household name it’s going to take more information to convince someone to order your product. I wouldn’t order a product which I’ve never heard of based on the information you’ve provided. Try changing the Order button to Learn More which drives people to another page that explains more about the product, shows how and why it works, and includes testimonials and success stories. People will be more willing to click through on a learn more page than an order page.

Good luck Judy!

Readers, what do you think about SkinB5.com?