Prosper Newsletter: May 2007 > Entrepreneurship

You understand that the following information is educational in nature and is not intended to be legal, accounting, or tax advice. You are responsible for your own financial decisions and should consult your own legal, accounting, and tax advisors before making your financial decisions.

Conversion Systems

Unlike the usual sales process where salesmen try to conquer the consumer in order to persuade them to buy their product, conversion systems are about helping someone by giving them the information they need to make an effective decision. It is not about manipulation, it is about converting people to new ideas and products that would be beneficial to them.

The basic conversion system has three steps. First, you would make a presentation explaining your offer. When you make the offer, remember that an offer is nothing more than exchanging one thing for another. The second step would be to follow up to see if the potential customer is interested. By doing this, you gain valuable information on how long it will take them to decide to buy or if you should continue pursuing them as a customer. Third, if the customer was indeed interested, you would close the sale. When you reach the third step, you can then choose whether or not to invest more time in that client or not.

A helpful aid to the conversion system is the Optimal Business Formula. It is the ideal number of clients multiplied by the ideal transaction value multiplied by the frequency of purchase and equals whatever dollar amount you'd like to make.

Say you would like to make $100,000 a year. You check out the market and find a product that gives you a profit of $10 each; $100,000 dollars divided by ten is 10,000. You would then need to find 10,000 customers. If you had a product that a customer would purchase twice a year, you would only need to find 5,000 customers.

Testimonial

A Whole World of Possibilities

First, I will tell you that although I can do many things on the computer, when we started I had no clue as to how to build a website, how to market a website, nor did I understand the unique 'language' that is used. That has all changed. The learning is ongoing (and always will be as new things develop I'm sure)...But we actually have a website in progress. It still needs a lot of tweaking but it should actually be functional in a few more weeks. I can now read items in books or on the internet about Internet marketing and actually 'understand' what they're saying.

With our coach's help and other resource advisors we have learned not only 'how' to build it but 'why' different pages should look a certain way and what their function and appeal were. He has taken me to several other websites to compare and look at how they're done and how we might improve ours. He taught me how to use overture to look at keyword selection and how to compare it to what was already out there.

I have learned a lot about SEO and SMO... it's amazing and fascinating to me how internet marketing works behind the scenes. Our coach has sent me links for webinars to view that have been extremely helpful. He taught me the different sites to go to in order to submit our site to the free directories (something I didn't know existed)

We've learned how to find and work with drop shippers and how to apply for a merchant acct on the internet. Most recently we have been discussing infopreneuring. This is extremely appealing to me and an area that my husband and I were interested in and looking at/for when we first looked into Prosper Learning. We hopefully will be adding some information items to our current website or maybe creating another site linked to this one that concentrates more on the infopreneuring aspect.

We feel that we have now tapped into a whole new world of possibilities for income and a way of life. Right now I'm caring for my 80 year old Mom who has progressive short-term memory loss. She's currently living with us. I work 3 different part time jobs, plus doing home party jewelry sales. We feel that what we are learning through these sessions will change all of that, plus make it possible for my husband to retire early from a job that the Dr. says is having a negative impact on his health. The economy is not good in Michigan but several years ago having the opportunity to do a business like this that doesn't depend on your own state's economy was not feasible except for possibly mail order and the internet has even had an impact on that. Our coach has been so good at putting things into terms that I can understand. These sessions have turned many lights on in our minds where it was very foggy before.

Paula and Les B.

Tip of the Month

Know Your Business

Many new business owners and entrepreneurs often wonder about what they don't know. The argument is, "I am so new that I don't know what I don't know." To all of you out there looking to build and hone your skill sets, but are wondering what skill sets you lack, here is a simple list of ideas and concepts that you should be familiar with, or seeking to become familiar with:

Online Marketing

Offline Marketing

Learn these things and you will be well on your way to mastery of true entrepreneurship. Keep in mind that you don't have to master these skills yourself. Bring someone onto the team with an affinity for these skill sets. Or jump on a conference call. We frequently address many of these issues.

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