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Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) refers to the average number of days that a company takes to collect payment on an invoice after a sale. Why is this number important to small and mid-sized businesses?

Because a low DSO number means that it takes a company fewer days to collect its accounts receivable, while a high DSO number shows that a company is selling its product or services to customers on credit – essentially a free loan – and taking longer to collect money.

On average, it takes companies over 60 days to get paid for these goods and services. This means that their working capital is tied up in outstanding invoices for months when they may really need the funds now, whether it will be to add new resources, get a discount on raw materials or take advantage of growth opportunities that arise.

Through an innovative finance solution, small and mid-sized firms can quickly access the funds they need and significantly reduce their DSO at the same time – without taking on additional debt.

This working capital finance solution is a type of invoice financing. Using an online auction marketplace, small and mid-sized companies can post their commercial accounts receivable and sell to the highest bidder.

The seller sets all the terms, the minimum advance amount they want, maximum discount fee they are willing to pay and the length of the auction. Registered and approved, accredited institutional investors from around the world have access to these auctions 24/7 and can bid in real-time on the invoices that meet their investment criteria.

A seller can choose an auction length between 3 and 10 days. In some cases, small and mid-sized companies can access much-needed working capital in as little as 24 hours, if they set a -Buyout Price-. Similar to eBay’s -Buy It Now-, if selected by a Buyer, the auction would close immediately, regardless of the auction length.

Once the auction closes, the advance amount minus a small transaction fee is electronically deposited to the seller the next day. This means businesses can expedite improvements and take advantage of growth opportunities when and how they choose.

For small and mid-sized businesses, one of the largest assets is its accounts receivable. Typically about 60% of potential funds is tied up in outstanding invoices. When the average DSO is 60+ days, that is a long time to wait for finances that a business can use for sustainable long-term growth.

In today’s economy where unemployment is up and bank lending is down, small to mid-sized business owners are seeing this average grow even more as their debtors request extensions on payment. Tapping into outstanding accounts receivable for much-needed funds by using this efficient online working capital finance solution means they can use their outstanding invoices to significantly reduce their DSO.

In this online receivables marketplace, the seller chooses how many and which invoices to sell depending on what his financial need is at the time. With each invoice that is listed in auction and sold, his average DSO drastically decreases. Growth potential for a small and mid-sized business relies on ingenuity, but very little can be accomplished without quick access to funds.

When an opportunity arises, small and mid-sized businesses need to act fast. This innovative type of invoice financing gives them the freedom and flexibility to do just that. A falling DSO means greater fluidity of working capital, better overall financial performance and greater growth potential for small and mid-sized businesses.

With account factoring, working capital financing is no longer a concern for small businesses as now they can auction their receivables at online marketplace and get cash against the same to meet their working capital needs. To know more, visit http://www.receivablesxchange.com

To many business people, the belief is that honesty pays, but not enough. To survive in the cut throat world of business and sales, many feel that they need to lie or bend the truth to get anywhere in business.

But is that the case? Does being deceitful, dishonest and untruthful in sales and business really the answer to gaining success? In this article I am not just referring to small amounts of dishonesty or bending the truth, I am talking about all types and degrees of dishonesty no matter how big or small they are.

There is no such thing as a white lie. A lie is a lie.

Any type of dishonesty is created by greed for dishonest gain. Greed leads many business owners and sales people to lie. But you may justify by reasoning that “its business” and “business is business”. Many sales people even put the responsibility back on to the customer, saying that its the customers end decision and “let the buyer beware”.

But, can a theif justify his robbery by saying “let the victims beware”? Of course not! Same with in sales. If a salesperson is dishonest and makes a sale, they are just as bad as that theif. Both the thief and the salesperson have been dishonest.

The theif is dishonest by taking someones possessions without their permission and not telling them. The salesperson is dishonest because they sold the customer a product and not told them the truth about the product. The salesperson sold the product knowing all too well that if the customer knew the truth, they would not have bought the product in the first place.

Yes, honesty in business and sales may require greater time and hard work, but the satisfaction and joy from honesty and truthfullness far outweigh that from dishonesty!

But is this view realistic? Can salespeople who need to meet weekly targets follow it? Well yes they can! To illustrate, lets use an example of an employment placement coach whose job it is to place all types of people into employment, even those who are not the most preferred people to employ.

When you are advocating a candidate for a job, you may find it pays to be honest and upfront with the employer in the beginning. If you hide the negative points about a job seeker and just focus on whats good about them, the employer will be trying to evaluate them and the reasons as to why they are unemployed.

Not only that, but if they actually get the job and their negative side is seen by the employer, it will not only affect the security of their employment but also affect the employers view of you and any other candidate you recommend to the employer in the future.

Retail Sales Coaching should be designed to work on behalf of each individual Salesperson who wants to succeed for them, while being part of an environment that nurtures and speeds their growth.

Retail Sales Training is for each person who cared to show up today to express themselves in a retail sales environment and who demands more of themselves. Retail Sales Training is for people who want to feel they have done their best with what they knew, today.

Retail Sales Coachings purpose is to clarify, in a realistic, truthful and meaningful way, precisely how each person can perform better. It must do this by connecting people with the objectives of the company within the framework of their own need to succeed and be recognized.
Retail Sales Training Software must work by identifying the absolute area of selling skill, the one out of five key performance indicators (KPIs), which if the Salesperson were to focus on exclusively, would become their best performance enhancer their best chance at optimum improvement.

Retail Sales Coaching Software should be about helping your company and its people become richer by revealing the truth about their performance, on an individual basis, so your Salespeople can focus on making their most significant improvements in the shortest period of time.

The result of implementing the right solution is that each Salesperson’s performance is increasing at optimum speed, so you can expect your retail store as a whole to increase sales by anywhere from ten to thirty percent.

Any Retail Sales Training system of appraisal and reporting should make sales people accountable for their time by measuring their performance according to key KPIs, against each other, and against the store average. Unless measurements are taken on a regular basis and compared with the rest of the people on the shift it would be impossible to know the area in which to train.

Today, most POS software programs generate KPIs such as average sale, items per sale, sales per hour. However, they do not allow store managers to set sales goals and divide them up proportionally between salespeople so effectively POS sales reports are useless.

While door counters are useful unless they integrate with an effective Retail Training software program they cannot generate Conversion Rate KPIs one of the fundamental KPIs used in Sales Training.

There are software programs available to compliment your POS that will do the job including breaking down slow and fast periods of the day by weightings.

Here are some things to look for in a Retail Sales Training Software Program:

Store Information Register to record specific information about the store.

Staff Information Register and Coaching Log to record specific information and availability and coaching history of each sales person.

Weekly Sales Goals Planner that automatically divides the store sales goal fairly between the salespeople on duty, including taking into account slow and fast periods of the day.

Weekly Staff Roster to allocate staff to a time and attendance schedule within the framework of the stores wage budgets, warning when over rostering and helping to improve wage to sales ratio efficiency.

Actual Performance Score Card that tracks individual actual sales performance against individual sales goals to identify areas of weakness and strength so that managers can coach behaviors.

Optimally, coaching tips should be integrated so managers can quickly get information about coaching on specific deficient selling skills.

The objectives of Retail Sales Training Software Programs are to:

Increase profits, decrease costs, motivate staff

Bring Retailers in line with industry Best Practice

Filter company sales objectives down to Individual Salespeople on the shop floor

Focus Store Managers on the two operational expenses within their control: Wages and Individual Sales Performance

Make Salespeople accountable for their time

Reduce payroll by Rostering within set wage parameters

Identify each individual Salesperson’s deficient selling skills each week

Show sales trends for each individual salesperson and store

Integrate self-based coaching to give front line store managers’ tips on demand

Motivate employees by instilling a performance based team culture

Identify best performers allowing Store Managers to roster those staff more often – yielding a higher wage to sales ratio or ROI

Reduce attrition rates, retain good staff

Introduce a system of setting standards, tracking, measuring and reporting results, identifying under performance and coaching for success

Integrate with POS to produce instant information at Salespeoples fingertips.

Retail competition is fierce and times are tough. If you want to increase retail sales performance then coaching sales people is vital to success. Successful retailers put into place best practice retail training software programs to help them immediately identify skill areas requiring coaching attention.

Without the help of retail performance metrics you may be wasting valuable training time and missing the point for each individual salesperson.

When your livelihood is writing sales copy for online and offline businesses, it’s absolutely crucial that your copy converts, or your clients simply won’t come back! A huge proportion of my work is repeat business, and a big reason for that is because over the last 7 years or so, I’ve developed a formula that works over and over again, for any product I’m asked to sell.

So if you can’t afford to hire a sales letter copywriter like myself, then here’s my formula for writing a profit-pulling, high-converting sales letter-

STEP #1 – The Headline

Sure, it’s a pretty obvious one, but it’s arguably the most important part of any sales letter, so neglect it at your peril! The fact is, if you want your prospect to remain on your sales page once they’ve landed on it, then your headline needs to grab their attention straightaway, and keep them reading down to-

STEP #2 – The Sub-Headline

As well as the headline, it’s also a good idea to include a sub-headline, too. This allows you to expand on the main benefit of your product offer, or even include another major benefit as well. A sub-headline essentially gives you room to include powerful pulls, without making the headline waffle on too long!

STEP #3 – Address The Prospect’s Problems

At the beginning of the main body copy, you need to address the BIG PROBLEM (the reason why the prospect is on your page in the first place), and then make it crystal clear that you’ll be providing a SOLUTION to this problem very soon. A popular method of doing this is to ask a few questions, like -do you wish that you could lose 10 lbs?- (for a fat loss product), or -are you fed up with always being broke?- (for a business opportunity or make money online type of product).

STEP #4 – Talk About The Benefits Of Your Product

After you’ve addressed the prospect’s main problem(s), then you need to make it clear that YOUR product will offer the solution they’ve been looking for, and if they stick around for a little while longer, you’ll reveal precisely what it is! This is the perfect place to list some of the main benefits of the product, in order to whet their appetite a little and keep them reading.

STEP #5 – Reveal Who You Are And Why You’re Qualified To Help

Naturally, If you’re reading a piece of sales copy and thinking about buying the product in question, then you’ll want to know who the product creator is, and whether or not they’re actually qualified to help you. So at this point you need to introduce yourself to the reader, and reveal your qualifications and experience. Only by doing this will you be able to build trust and credibility in the minds of your readers – a crucial thing to consider when it comes to selling anything online.

STEP #6 – Reveal The Product!

After you’ve addressed the prospect’s problems, listed some of the main benefits of your offer, and introduced yourself, the reader should now be very keen on finding out exactly what the product is. And this is the point at which you should reveal the product, and explain exactly how it’s going to help provide a solution to their problem.

STEP #7 – Build Value

Once you introduce the product, you should then be working on building value. This can be done by splitting up the product package into individual components, and assigning a value to each one of them, which when added together, far exceed the actual price. By the time the prospect reaches the order button, your product should represent a huge bargain.

STEP #8 – Include Bonus Products

Another great way to increase perceived value is to add free bonuses to the product package, which of course, must be strongly related to the main product. Including a bonus or two is a great way to convince -fence-sitters- to take the plunge and click on the buy button!

STEP #9 – The Price

After you’ve revealed exactly what the prospect will receive with their product package, it’s time to hit them with the price! And as I said, the price you list must appear very cheap at this stage, which it will (if you’ve done a good job of adding perceived value)!

STEP #10 – Include A Money-Back Guarantee

These days, it’s absolutely crucial that you include a money-back guarantee with your product, because it demonstrates that you have absolute faith in what you’re selling. More importantly though, it reduces the risk of buying, and therefore, makes it far more likely that the customer will go ahead with the purchase.

STEP #11 – Include A Post-Script Or Three!

At the end of the sales letter, it’s vital that you add a post-script, because studies have shown that after the headline, this is the most read section of any piece of sales copy! Therefore, you need to include the main selling points and benefits of the product. In short, if a prospect were to ONLY read the post-script, it needs to be strong enough to convince them to go back and read more!

And there you have it-

My 11-point sales letter copywriting formula!

Now, of course, this isn’t the ONLY sales letter formula that you can use, but it’s certainly a good one to go with if you’re not sure how to go about writing sales copy. And hey, if you want to sidestep all of the hard work and just get a professional direct response copywriter to do it for you, then feel free to get in touch!

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