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Alan writes articles on the corporate gifts industry for The Corporate Gifts Company

‘Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now’.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When asked WHY!!!!!! He replied:

1. The elastic band reminds me to ABC – ALWAYS BE CLOSING

2. The cheque books represents all the money I have from my sales

3. The hose pipe represents my healthy pipeline of sales coming in

1. Let money talk. Cash can be the best incentive when there’s aggressive competition in your niche market or where it has been historically difficult to motivate prospects to take action. For example, a study by Harris Interactive released in May revealed that 80 percent of adults say cash would be their top incentive for responding to mobile advertising–something for which a significant percentage have expressed dislike. Right now, individual savings promotions and coupons, not across-the-board price cutting, are smart choices.

2. Make “value-added” your motto. If price-cutting specials aren’t for you, add value by bundling products and services to create a unique and hard-to-resist offer that you can price favorably. Another way to add value is by allowing customers to learn or do more. You can offer consumers an opportunity to earn more reward points or receive VIP treatment, while business customers may find superior value in an e-book or white paper.

3. Ensure that it rings true. Everyone knows that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Customers will evaluate your offer with a skeptical eye. Beware of using too much hyperbole or adding enough conditions to warrant an asterisk following your offer. This can raise a red flag that causes consumers to dismiss your offer as just hype. Even when you believe your offer rings true, it’s helpful to build trust by displaying testimonials, guarantees, and trade or professional affiliations wherever appropriate.

4. Be specific and clear. Have you ever gotten excited by an offer only to discover it had expired or you had to jump through hoops to qualify? Frustrated or angry customers rarely buy and are likely to spread the word about their dissatisfaction. It’s essential to specifically communicate what’s being offered and how to obtain it. If the offer you’re developing requires too much explanation, then it must be clarified and refined before it’s introduced.

5. Give a reason to act now. With so many competing messages clamoring for attention, it’s essential to compel customers to act on your offer before it’s forgotten. Present your offer with a strong call to action that conveys urgency. Here are several examples of ways to inspire prospects to act now. 

* Register by Nov. 15 and receive a complimentary DVD.

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* Visit our website before midnight to register for your chance to win.

* Buy this item before Dec. 25, and we will donate a portion of the proceeds to your favorite charity.

For top results this season, test multiple offers, keeping all other advertising elements the same, until you find your best performer.

Happy New Year readers! As a little gift to my most loyal of readers I am giving away a great read, my best read of 2008, the book Sex.com. If you want a chance at winning this, simply leave a comment on this post about what you think about UKpreneur!  

Ok so this book was brought out some time ago, doesn’t matter, the story is awesome!

On the face of it, Kieren McCarthy’s Sex.com was a book that could have written itself: a notorious, well-publicised feud over the most valuable domain name in existence, between two charismatic men—one a serial entrepreneur with a weakness for hard drugs (Gary Kremen), the other a gifted con-man with delusions of grandeur (Stephen Cohen). It’s a story replete with vicious acrimony, multi-million dollar lawsuits, and rumours of gunfights between bounty hunters in the streets of Tijuana.

Thankfully, McCarthy wasn’t content to just bundle together all the articles he’s written about Sex.com over the years and slap a cover on the front: the level of detail in his book, and the range of people interviewed, demonstrate that a great deal of painstaking research went into its writing. The result is that Sex.com is the best book on the subject of “internet history” (for that is surely what this story will become) since Where Wizards Stay Up Late, and certainly the best book about the Domain Name system that I’ve ever read. The narrative is compelling, well-informed and highly readable.

McCarthy is not afraid to tackle the quasi-political implications of the Sex.com story, in particular the stranglehold that the old Network Solutions (now VeriSign) had – and continues to have—over the domain name system, and how some of its then employees treated the suspected hijacking of Sex.com with pure contempt—allegedly, even up to the point of threatening physical violence against an expert witness. We’re probably lucky that this book was actually written last year—given his current occupation (as ICANN’s general manager of public participation) it seems unlikely that McCarthy would have produced such a no-holds-barred version of events as he has, had it been written during his current employment.

Apart from all the legal to-and-fro, ultimately this is a story about two men—both intelligent, ruthless and driven – and McCarthy does an engaging job of telling this story from both points of view. Ultimately, Cohen is the villain of the piece, but he’s no cookie-cutter bad guy, and Kremen is by no means an innocent. This book could easily have been a hatchet-job on Cohen, but McCarthy doesn’t make that mistake, and the book is better for it.

A couple of remarkable coincidences are worth mentioning: first, Stephen Cohen attended the Van Nuys High School in Los Angeles at around the same time as Internet pioneers Jon Postel, Vint Cerf and Steve Crocker. Second, one of the reasons that Cohen was sucessful in hijacking Sex.com was that Gary Kremen’s registered e-mail address had been broken into by Kevin Mitnick, the notorious hacker who has himself been the subject of several books.

One final remark: Gary Kremen recently sold Sex.com for twelve million dollars, the largest sum ever paid for a domain name!

So if you fancy a chance at winning this book, which was my best read of 2008 then simply leave a comment on this post about what you think about UKpreneur! Its that easy!

“Why climb the corporate ladder, when you can own the ladder?”

One of the reasons so many people don’t become entrepreneurs is because they’re afraid of failing. They’re afraid of making mistakes. They’re afraid of losing money. But if people can’t overcome these psychological fears, they’d be better off keeping their day jobs.

In the early 1980s, when my first major business failed, I thought I was the stupidest person in the world. Being flat broke and getting calls from creditors made me wish I had never wanted to be an entrepreneur. I even wanted my old job back.

But instead of condemning me for failing, my rich dad gave me one of life’s most important lessons: “You’re fortunate to have failed. You now have the opportunity to learn how to turn bad luck into good luck. If you can do that, you’ll have a life of more and more good luck.”

Here are three key points for turning bad luck into good luck:

1. Don’t blame. When my rich dad asked me what went wrong, the first thing I did was blame my partners and the economy. He immediately said, “Never blame anyone for your failures.”"But it was their fault,” I replied.

   Shaking his head, my rich dad said, “If you blame someone else, you’ll never learn from your mistake. If you blame, you give your power away.” Remember, there are no victims–only volunteers. And you volunteered to become an entrepreneur.

2. Meet new partners. My rich dad said, “In every bad deal, I have always met good people. Some became new partners.” Still hating two of my partners, it was hard for me to understand this statement, yet I took my rich dad’s advice and began sifting through the wreckage.

   Today, one of my best friends came from that business fiasco. In the ruins of other business failures, I met my current partner in real estate and another partner in my franchise business. If not for the failures, I wouldn’t have met those fellow entrepreneurs and gone on to make millions of dollars with them.

3. Study your mistakes. “Mistakes are priceless,” my rich dad told me. “Study them, learn and profit from them.”

   Again, this lesson was hard to hear. Being angry and broke, I wanted to run from my mistakes. But rather than run from my failure, I went back to my factory, studied my mistakes and resurrected the business.

   This is how I turn bad luck into good luck. Remember, making mistakes and becoming smarter is the job of an entrepreneur; not making mistakes is the job of an employee.

Here is a whisper I heard from a multi-millionaire today:

“I would spread the money on a few different projects. I’d start by investing £100,000 in property in Ajman, Dubai, as there is a lot of development taking place there. I would wait three years and expect to see a return of around 35 per cent.

I’d then put £200,000 in the Bombay Stock Exchange, because in the past three years it’s more than trebled in value. I’d expect to see a 50 per cent return from a short-term investment of one to two years.

Despite the bad news in the US, I believe the dollar also represents a safe investment. I would spend £200,000 on buying dollars, wait for the exchange rate to go down and for the dollar to strengthen, so my original investment would be worth more.”

 

A few days ago, I spoke at a luncheon with approximately 500 local business leaders. I began with these words: “I have good news and bad news. The good news is you will have fewer competitors next year because many of your competitors will be out of business. The bad news is you might be one of those out of business.”I then showed them my local newspaper, pointing to the headline “Businesses Are Struggling.” I opened the newspaper and said, “I can tell you who will be in business.” I pointed to a full-page ad for a local appliance store. “I’ll bet money that this business will be here next year. Why? Because this business is advertising more aggressively than its competition.”

In previous issues of Entrepreneur, I’ve written about the importance of advertising and promotion. I’ve shared my rich dad’s lesson that when business drops off, many entrepreneurs listen to their accountant’s advice and cut back on advertising and promotion. That’s the worst thing you can do. When times get tough, your job is to promote more, not less.

Promotion is a six-week cycle. That means if I promote today, business increases six weeks later. Many businesses violate the six-week cycle. They promote for, say, four weeks, and because nothing happens, they stop. Two weeks later, there’s a sudden increase in business. For four weeks, business remains strong. Then, just as suddenly, business drops off, because six weeks earlier, the entrepreneur had stopped promoting.

My rich dad’s lesson was to never stop promoting: Promote whether the economy is strong or weak; promote even when you may not have the money. If you have no money, stand on a street corner at lunchtime with a sign hanging around your neck promoting your product or service. Not only will you meet new customers, but you might also save money on lunch, lose some weight and get a suntan.

Obviously, it takes more than just promotion to do well. To be successful, a business also requires strong fundamentals and a desirable product or service. During tough economic times, though, even some good businesses fail; some businesses shrink and others grow. When a business closes, its customers migrate to the business that fights hard and stays open. Businesses that promote while others cut their ad budgets have a better chance of getting bigger . . . even if the economy is shrinking.

A niche tender and lead notification service has just launched in the UK. TelcoTenders.co.uk provides daily leads via email of any telecommunication tender or lead for an annual fee of £129.99 (£99.99 special offer for Sept 08).

Its finally good to see a niche tender notification service focusing on a particular sector. The UK market is flooded with tender notification services and some can charge up-to £800 per year!

If you are a telecoms company offering any type of telecommunications services, then the £99.99 is worth it!

Visit TelcoTenders.co.uk for more information