Use Free Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft Directories to Bring Your Business Front and Center on Local Web Searches (Guest post by WordPress fanatic and small business web consultant Don Campbell ) If your business is an "offline" business with a physical storefront, the most effective way to improve your search rankings in Google is to list your business in the free local business directories from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.

Moreover, your blog becomes more important as you keep adding more and more content that is relevant to your prospective customers. Your blog has the opportunity to reach those prospective customers earlier in the process. As the subset of blog readers who qualified as prospects engaged with his content, they came to trust Wendel as the expert who could solve their problems about starting, buying or building a bank. Influence them with information well before they are ready to buy from you. I

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Best of all, it demonstrates to me and to every prospective client how she thinks and what she does. Phillywordsmith, Emily Sheetz, puts Google Docs to work with a simple, but engaging online slide show for her small business. There’s plenty that I love about the web. Discovering new people from whom I can learn is one of the most rewarding.

It’s possible to have more than one address but when prospects google you, they’ll most likely be directed to all your social profiles. One group of prospects for me, for instance, is meeting professionals. Prospecting with social media really is the same as prospecting has always been. Cold calling. Even the name is, well, cold.

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Prospecting ideas and more When prospecting, ask the question that matters: If it has to break through the clutter of your prospect’s inbox and be compelling enough so she’ll voluntarily interrupt her work to see what you have to say , consider these ideas. (Almost Tags: Email Etiquette & Productivity Selling Skills email etiquette prospecting sales mastery sales skills subject lines that sel Have you looked through your trash file lately? It’s an easy way to determine which subject lines sell and which smell like a phish.

Hate prospecting? Most professionals I talk to dislike prospecting because it often involves “techniques” - techniques that are manipulative, inauthentic and devised to trick the prospect into saying yes. Here’s another reason I hear about why folks hate prospecting: Prospects have so often been tricked (or others have tried to trick and/or manipulate them) that they expect every cold caller to be devious. Most sales people do. Rejection isn’t something that most of us actively seek.

And keep your prospects around until they take the action that you desire. Recently, I decided to take most of the social media logos off of my website. You see, I don’t want to drive people away from my site (over to Facebook, LinkedIn, etc) I want to keep them with me until they take the desired action. In an effort to be deemed current, I think we all jumped on the social media bandwagon.

Prospecting Tips for a Slow Economy Frequently I am asked, “How can I prospect for more business?”   My favorite Frippicisim: It is not your clients' and prospects' job to remember you. Go through your address book, data base, Christmas card list and confirm everybody you know is familiar with your profession, what your specialty is, and who is the perfect prospect for you to best serve. It is your obligation and responsibility to make sure they don’t forget you. Here is some practical advice that works for any industry.