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Follow Up With Your Clients

A follow-up tool such as a post card, HTML newsletter, or note card is essential to make sure that your services stay “top-of-mind” with the people that you meet. It’s said that a prospect needs to hear from you seven times before they will make a purchase. So it’s important to create tools and a system to enable you to followup with your prospects once you’ve made that initial connection.

Steps to planning your follow-up method and system:

1. Determine how your customers prefer to receive information from you. Communicating with them in the method of their choice makes them more receptive to your messages and more likely to buy from you. Consider whether your ideal clients are “computer people” or whether they’d be more likely to respond to postal mail.

2. Then, consider which media you’re most comfortable using to follow up. Do you have the technical skills to produce an HTML newsletter or the budget to hire a specialist? And do you have the time to create articles about your area of expertise? Do you have the time to apply addresses and postage to post cards? Or do you prefer giving the personalized touch of a note card, and can you keep up with the time commitment of following up in that way? Knowing your level of comfort and commitment, and understanding the time required, will ensure that you can keep up with your follow-up program.

3. If the previous two considerations are in conflict, find a way to make them congruous. For example, if you have the skills to produce an HTML newsletter and your clients are “computer people”, but you don’t have the time to write articles, you can explore online article banks that offer free articles for you to include in your newsletter, such as the one at ideamarketers.com. If you don’t have time to address and apply postage to post cards, find a high school student who will do it for you at a reasonable rate. Be creative!

4. Once you’ve determined the method of communication to use for your follow-up piece, create a plan for how often you will followup. For example, if you’re doing a post card or handwritten note, quarterly contacts might be enough. If you’re using an online newsletter, monthly or bimonthly issues are probably best to really capture a client’s attention-your clients probably get a lot of email, and it takes regular contact to stand out from the crowd.

5. Creating your follow-up tools. Finally, once you have planned your follow-up system, it’s time to move on to the design and content of your tool: the postcard, newsletter, or note card.

Be sure that your follow-up tool:

- Looks professional and uses elements of your Visual Vocabulary, to reinforce your brand identity.

- Contains content that is both valuable and accessible to your audience. Be sure to give good, quality information in your newsletter or post card, so that people will look forward to receiving it. And write the newsletter with language on your prospect’s level-don’t use technical jargon if you can avoid it, and if you can’t, define the technical terms so that your audience can stay “on the same page” with you.

- Includes a call to action on non-personalized items like the post card and newsletter, and/or an offer such as a discount or special article. These can also be helpful in handwritten follow-up-giving the people that you’re contacting a reason to get back in touch with you.

- Has some personalized information. A handwritten note card is personalized by default. If you’re using a post card or newsletter as your follow-up tool, you can personalize it by using stories from your life, news on your hobbies, or updates on what you’re doing, to make your newsletter more endearing to your potential clients.

- Offers your potential clients a way to get on and off of your mailing list easily-you don’t want to be sending mail or email that’s unwanted.

- Is sent out regularly. In addition to letting prospects know when to expect the follow-up, following-up regularly will also show that you do things professionally and in a timely manner.

4 Steps to Unbeatable Advertising And Still Keep Money

Advertising doesn’t have to wipe out your bank account to be effective. When you learn to negotiate, know when smaller ads are as effective as large ads, ask for discounts, and create an irresistible offer, you’re on your way to skyrocketing profit margins!

1. Negotiate
Have you noticed that some people seem to always get the best deals? Yeah, you pay full price and think you did OK until they show up with the same thing, only they paid several hundred dollars less. It really gets your goat! How do they do it? They’re not afraid to ask for an extra discount.
Yep, don’t sell yourself short because you didn’t ASK the next time your advertising rep makes an appearance! Even if you’re already getting a discount, ask for a bigger one. You have not…because you ask not.
2. Trim
Bigger is always better…or is it? When it comes to advertising, don’t be surprised if some of your short ads meet with more success than larger more expensive ads. Trimming down on the size and cost of advertising doesn’t mean you’ll be trimming the results.
3. Exploit the Freebies
what?s the difference between advertising and publicity? Who?s doing the talking? Yeah, when you sell yourself, it’s advertising. When someone else is selling you, its publicity…and it generates credibility and interest that you don’t want to miss out on.
Think about the different ways you can get your business in the spotlight. Do you have some news write a press release? Write some how to articles with a short byline at the end and release them to ezines, magazines, newspapers, and other publishers. Why not promote the product of a non-competitor in return for them promoting yours…think of the totally different market they affect!
Yep, there are a lot of ways out there to get free advertisement that will benefit your business. Of course you won’t be able to rely solely on the freebies, but hey, you can get a little extra for nothing.
4. Improve Your Offer
Is your deal too good to pass up? If not, you need to improve it. Hey, I’m not talking about cutting prices even more…you’ve still got to make a profit. You can make the deal sweeter just by increasing the reader?s knowledge of the value of the product, or adding bonuses that are perceived as valuable, but cost you little.
Motivate buyers with expirations. Yeah, an open ended offer encourages procrastination…which leads …yep, nowhere. When the customer knows he has until Saturday to purchase an item he’ll pay more for on Sunday, he’ll make it a priority to head for your shop.

Advertising doesn’t have to wipe out your bank account to be effective. When you learn to negotiate, know when smaller ads are as effective as large ads, ask for discounts, and create an irresistible offer, you’re on your way to skyrocketing profit margins!

clockwyze rocks short handed games at Full Tilt

With the World Series of Poker now a memory, the high stakes poker world is finally back on center stage as players are back to earning their bread and butter money. Naturally, the most popular stories center around Tom Dwan aka durrrr and his Million Dollar Challenge but in the last couple of months, Cole South has been the big winner with over $2.8 Million in winnings.
Many of the usual suspects are among the top 10 in earnings in the last couple of months. Chau Giang has won over $500,000 over the course of 3.600 hands. John Juanda has won over $848,000 since July. Brian Townsend just fell shy of the Million dollar mark winning “only” $949,000.
The top four in earnings in the last couple of months have posted some impressive numbers. Richard Ashby has raked in over $1.8 Million over 42,186 hands since the start of July. Brian Hastings is up over $2 Million in only 4,900 hands. Ashton Griffin is also up over $2 Million over 17,952 hands. Cole South has been the biggest winner since July with $2.849 Million in earnings over 24,976 hands.
For the year, Patrik Antonius is still top dog with over $2.8 Million in earnings. Those that are dropping a ton at the table include Gus Hansen, down over $2 Million and LarsLuzak, who is down a staggering $3.35 Million this year. David “MR B 2 U SON” Benyamine continues his down year at the cash games, so far down $731,000.

A player that isn’t among the top of the leaderboards this year, but is making a splash amongst posters on 2+2 is a player that goes by the screen name “clockwyze” on Full Tilt Poker. A thread was posted about this player and upon looking at his stats, this player has taken down an impressive $1.29 Million in earnings over 319,220 hands. That is an average win of $4 per hand. While that doesn’t sound like much money per hand, as you can see, this really adds up.

His bread and butter appears to be the $25-$50 CAP NL Short-handed games on Full Tilt. He has taken down over $755,000 of his winnings from that game. He has also posted a nice profit of $126,553 in the $50-$100 NL Heads-up games.
Some speculation has went into whom this player is. Some clues as to the identity was revealed on LeggoPoker.com in a blog post that revealed that clockwyze was a player named Andrew from around the Toronto area. Early Friday morning, a poster on 2+2 posted that they suspect that the player is Andrew Pantling from Ontario Canada. If this is indeed the case, players are facing both a strong cash game player and tournament professional. Pantling has a couple APPT Main Event cashes in 2008 and finished 3rd in the Main Event of the 2009 Irish Open in April. He has over $358,000 in live tournament earnings.
From the looks of things, the online high stakes games are bigger and better than ever. There also appears to be a new face beginning to rise through the ranks on Full Tilt. As we head into the later part of the year, expect action to heat up as many of the major tournaments have completed and players are left to grind it out at the tables.

Tags: couple, Dwan, Full, Memory, Million, Pantling, Stake, Tilt, Winner

How Slow is Poker News Today?

It’s one thing when some fluff piece, re-written press release makes its way around the poker press but when you keep seeing it pop up over and over again you have to wonder how damn slow is the poker news biz these days. Case in point is a press release / news article that PKR has signed an agreement making Xhilarate Poker its exclusive massage supplier at all live events in the future. Holy crap! They’ve signed an official massage supplier? Stop the presses.

Really? A massage supplier? A massage supplier that specializes in poker? Why is this news? Why is this appearing on what I normally consider reputable poker news outlets?

Actually, no. That is where his inexperience playing poker comes into play. On most poker sites a first time deposit bonus is either released incrementally as you hit certain milestones (like on Full Tilt Poker) or you have to complete the entire bonus to receive any part of it. Admittedly this is different than for online casinos which often comp you the money up front and then require that you give them so much turnover before any of it will be released to you. In fact, some poker sites even use a similar strategy to get low roller customers to come back to the site. They’ll deposit X dollars into your account and then you just have to play Y number of hands in order to release the money for withdrawal.

But the standard in the online poker industry, especially for first time deposit bonuses, is for the player to either earn off the matching portion incrementally or to completely earn it off before being released. The fact that the “Staff Editor” of a major gaming news site wouldn’t know that is somewhat scary. But even worse is that when he’s later informed that this is all in the terms and conditions when he signed up instead of investigating whether this is a fundamental difference between casino and poker offerings (which it is – and I’ll tell you why in a moment) he repeatedly calls Full Tilt “deceptive” and “deceiving.”

Now, Mr. Rutherford, should you read this, allow me to school you on why poker rooms and casinos offer different types of bonuses. When you play casino games you play against the house. That means if you lose your entire stake the casino still wins. Let’s look at the math:

Tags: Full Tilt Poker, industry, message supplier, News, Poker, poker industry, Poker Rules, slow, specialize, supplier

t1ger heat FTOPS XIII Event #10

Event #10 of the Full Tilt Poker Online Poker Series (FTOPS) kicked off Sunday with a $322 NL Holdem Event. 5,660 players turned out for the event to make a prize pool of $1.698 Million, eclipsing the guarantee by almost $200k. 720 players received a payday in the event. First place for this event received $290,358 and the FTOPS Champion’s Jersey.

Full Tilt’s team of red pros turned out in force to take their shot at this event. Among the names in the field were Allen Cunningham, Andy Bloch, Berry Johnston, Eli Elezra, Huck Seed, Lee Watkinson, and Scott Clements. November Nine participant James Akenhead finished in 182nd, Jon Turner finished 62nd, and Andy Bloch, fresh off of his 2nd place finish in the FTOPS Stud Event, finished in 42nd place. Bryan Micon made a deep run in this event but took a horrific bad beat to end his tournament. He raised pre-flop and received a call from another player. On a jack high flop with two hearts, Micon snap-called an all-in shove with pocket jacks. His opponent held two 7h-6h for a flush draw. The turn fell the Kh to complete his opponent’s flush and the river failed to fill up Micon.

HevvyDevvy was the first player eliminated from the final table. BacoPride raised to 300,000 pre-flop and HevvyDevvy moved all-in for 955,992 from the cutoff. BacoPride made the call and showed Kh-Qh. HevvyDevvy had him dominated with Ah-Qc. The flop fell K-J-6 rainbow to give BacoPride the lead, but HevvyDevvy picked up a broadway draw. A ten did not come on the turn or river and HevvyDevvy finished in 9th.

Mike Daciuk 8th

Mike Daciuk moved all-in from middle position for 403,138 and action folded to CWTREFEREE04 in the small blind. He then shoved all-in for 3.19 Million and BacoPride folded. Mike Daciuk had Ah-Ks and CWTREFEREE04 held pocket jacks. CWTREEFEREE flopped a set of jacks and Mike Daciuk a broadway draw. As with HevvyDevvy, a ten did not come for Mike Daciuk on the turn or river and he finished in 8th.

CWTREFEREE04 crippled

Playing K-Q is dicey at best and CWTREFEREE04 found out about that the hard way. He raised pre-flop and was called by BacoPride. On a flop of Qh-3d-7s, CWTREFEREE04 bet out 480,000 and was called. Then he bet the same amount on the turn 3s. When the river fell the 4d, he moved all-in for 2.549 Million and BacoPride snap-called. CWTREFEREE04 showed Kc-Qd for two pair and BacoPride showed pocket sevens for sevens-full and left CWTREFEREE04 with only 195,982.

CWTREFEREE04 Eliminated in 7th

The very next hand, t1ger heat raised to 312,222 and CWTREFEREE04 called all-in for less. BacoPride called as did POSITIV_NEGITIV. The flop fell 4c-9c-7c and POSITIV_NEGITIV bet out 600,000. Everyone folded and CWTREFEREE04 found out the bad news. His Ks-10d was against Ac-Kc for the nut flush and he was drawing dead. CWTREFEREE04 went from chip leader at the start of the final table to 7th place finisher.

mrob00 6th

Mrob00 moved all-in from the button and was called by POSITIV_NEGITIV and conslice in the blinds. The board of Ac-6d-Qc-6h-10h was checked down and at showdown, mrob00 showed Qs-10s for two pair, but POSITIV_NEGITIV showed Ah-8h for a better two pair. Mrob00 finished in 6th place.

After a bit of coaxing that really sounded more like begging, a deal was looked at briefly and rejected. From the chat reactions, it appeared BacoPride did not like the deal.

tiltslowplayer eliminated 5th

On the first hand after the deal was discussed, BacoPride raised to 340,000 and tiltslowplayer moved all-in for 1.39 Million total. BacoPride snap-called with pocket aces. Tiltslowplayer was far behind with pocket eights. The board failed to produce an eight and tiltslowplayer finished in 5th.

Deal Struck

A deal was looked at for a 2nd time and this time, the four remaining players came to terms. The following four will be paid out as follows:

conslice $206,218.51

t1ger heat $169,842.50

Baco Pride $168,711.48

POSITIV_NEGITIV $150,649.51

$50,000 was left in the prize pool to play for with $19,476.08 going to the eventual winner.

After the deal was struck, play loosened somewhat with chips mostly going to BacoPride. Conslice had held the chip lead when the deal was struck, but a series of pots moved BacoPride over 10 Million in chips. T1ger heat held 7.2 Million and both conslice and POSITIV_NEGITIV hovered around 5 Million.

Tags: Dollar, Eli Elezra, Eliminate, Event, FTOPS, Full Tilt Poker Online Poker Series, Huck Seed, Kick Off, Micon