Even those who do not feel nervous can make crucial mistakes. Read through the following tips on how to improve your presentation skills. Put them into practice, and you’ll start to feel more comfortable, leading to increased success in selling.

Make Eye Contact

Eye contact is crucial. Do not look at any one person for too long, or you may cause them to feel uncomfortable. At the same time, make sure that you look at them for a short amount of time so that they feel a connection to you. Start at one side of the audience and scan your eyes across the group.

Speak With Emotion

No one likes to listen to a presentation given by a monotonous speaker. Work on speaking with emotion and changing your tone depending on the subject matter. This also shows that you care about the topic.

Involve The Audience

You need to keep the audience engaged so that they listen. One way to do this is to involve them by asking questions or having them participate. This will help them to get more out of the things that you are saying.

Make People Laugh

People always like to laugh. You may want to open with a joke and then tell a few more as the presentation continues. This will help keep people’s attention and it will make your entire presentation more enjoyable, regardless of the subject matter.

Use Props and Visual Aids

Another way to keep people’s attention is to use interesting visual aids. This also helps people to grasp what you are really saying with each point. Remember that some people learn more when they are able to see something than when they are simply told about it.

Simplify Everything

Do not make things overly complicated. For this, you have to consider your audience. Things that seem simple to you may be complicated to them if they are not coming into contact with these things every day.

Have A Strong Conclusion

The conclusion is what people will remember the most when they leave. You should sum up all of your main points. If you have a strong conclusion, you can be sure that they will come away from the presentation with new knowledge.

If you work on these specific presentation skills, you will quickly become better at talking in front of groups and will increase your sales. People will find you memorable and engaging. They will be interested in what you have to say and they will be willing to talk with you more about what you are selling after your presentation. Even if you are already doing a good job giving presentations, this does not mean that there is no room for improvement. You should always be working on your presentation skills so that you can have even more success.

About the Author
Written by Amy Henderson, a career and business blogger currently writing articles on presentation skills and leadership on behalf of QA.

What sets these social media platforms apart from other marketing methods is that they provide a space for a two way conversation between customer and product. Print and broadcast are completely one directional, permitting the conversation to only be from the product to the consumer.

With social media, consumers can reach out to the product marketers and voice their opinions. Of course, this can be a beneficial thing and a destructive thing. Open communication between business and customer allows for a more personal relationship to be forged. However, in an open communication forum, businesses must also be prepared for potentially negative criticism of a product or company. The first step in managing negative feedback in the social media world is being able to distinguish what type of feedback you’re receiving.

Genuine Problems

Sometimes the negative remarks made about your company, product, or service on social media are useful. Obviously, negative remarks are a problem, but if someone has laid out a genuine problem and explained the problem evenly and coolly, you are able to respond for the better.

This type of remark is negative in that it says something negative about your business. However, you can use this opportunity to respond to their problem and try to solve it. Other consumers will see your genuine concern with your customer’s problem and will admire that. Negative feedback like this exposes real issues that need to be addressed.

Warranted Attack

This type of negative feedback can be some of the most difficult to manage. These attacks are tricky because they are usually more enraged or upset than they need to be, but they are also typically warranted. The attack itself may be overkill or unnecessary, but the complaint is typically founded on genuine grounds.

The issues that are at the foundation of these types of attacks are things that need to be addressed by the company. In this way, these criticisms can be constructive. However, comments that are angry and loud have to be dealt with carefully.

Reputation is an important aspect of managing a business in today’s society (especially with social media). Respond to these comments reasonably and quickly. Try to address the real problem at hand without displaying any emotion.

Spam/Trolling

These are the least productive and most obnoxious types of feedback companies get through their social media marketing campaign. The difference between troll posts and warranted attacks is that trolls have no reasonable or valid reason for being upset.

For the most part, these types of posts won’t cause too much of an issue because most readers will recognize it as a false claim. However, it is important that you address trolls or spammers. Try to bury the post or establish that it has no grounds, but do not pay it too much attention. You don’t want to fuel the fire.

About the Author:
This is a guest post from Jacelyn Thomas. Jacelyn writes about identity theft prevention for IdentityTheft.net. She can be reached at: jacelyn.thomas @ gmail.com.

During the course of the day, I mentioned several products that the speakers were discussing.

I had no experience with these products nor did I necessarily need their services at the time.

Two companies followed up with me based on my tweets. They offer prime examples of how to follow up with your customers and prospects when they mention you on twitter.

Bad Example of Responding on Twitter

The first company didn’t reply to my tweet through twitter. They hunted me down, emailed me at both my personal and work email addresses. They followed that up with a sales person calling me at work to discuss their product.

I was completely turned off by this immediate attack by their sales force. I had not said anything about buying or wanting their product. Nevertheless, I was immediately in the cross hairs of their regional sales person.

This company failed because they didn’t respond on twitter. They used twitter to mine for sales leads and then released the hounds.

Good Example of Responding on Twitter

Contrast this first experience with my interactions with the good folks at ClueApp.com. I mentioned them too. How did I hear back from them? They responded to my tweet with a tweet of their own.

This is exactly the type of response that is expected on twitter.

Their response was casual and friendly:

I responded and we had a brief conversation — all through twitter:

There was no pushy sales person. No intrusive prying into all my Internet footprints to track me down and thrust a sales person upon me.

No, the folks at clueapp.com engaged in conversation through the very medium where I originally mentioned them.

I left that brief exchange with a very positive impression of the company and product even though I haven’t even tried the service yet.

When your customers mention you on twitter, you must respond as is typical with the medium: just respond to their tweet.

Take the conversation offline if you need to get more details or solve an immediate problem. However, only go offline if the customer agrees to it. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself in the creepy situation I had with the first company.

As more customer acquisition and retention moves to digital channels, it’s important to take care to nurture customers digitally, just as you would in person.

A good place to start is with your email campaigns. A welcome message improves customer experience and can lead to better response rates, more referrals and higher customer retention. No wonder nearly two-thirds of businesses employ a welcome message, according to MarketingSherpa’s 2012 email marketing benchmark report.

An effective welcome message can do many things. Here are 3 that you can incorporate today to improve your email program.

1. Set Expectations

Ever had that experience where you start getting marketing emails from a company out of the blue?

You may or may not remember signing up for them in the first place, and you sure didn’t expect them to start arriving now and with this kind of content. Even if the content is decent, it’s unexpected, which often translates to unwelcome.

A welcome message can properly set customer expectations by explaining:

• What customers will receive from you by email.
• How often they can expect to hear from you.
• Who your emails will come from (name/address) and what they will look like.

2. Answer Common Questions

How often do you find yourself answering the same questions, especially to newer customers?

These touchpoints are great for building your authority and earning the trust of your customers, so why limit yourself to having them only with customers who come forward and overtly ask those questions?

A welcome message can answer FAQs in a proactive manner, while encouraging customers whose questions remain unanswered to contact you (you are easy to contact, right?).

3. Reward Your Customers With a Bonus

Your first email to new subscribers sets the tone for the experience they’re going to have with the rest of the emails you send them.

If you send a message that provides value and makes subscribers happy, they’ll be more likely to read and take action on your other messages.

Setting expectations and answering questions are a great foundation for making subscribers happy, but adding a little something extra can really lock in a solid first experience with your email program.

This bonus could take many forms. Two common ones are:

• Discount or coupon codes to be used on their next purchase.
• A free report, whitepaper or other content they will find useful.

How Do You Roll Out The Welcome Mat?

What do you send to customers when they join your email list?

I’d love to hear your ideas and results. Please share them in the comments.

About The Author
As Director of Education Marketing for AWeber, the leading provider of small business email marketing tools, Justin Premick teaches businesses how to build profitable customer relationships. Visit the AWeber blog for more of Justin’s email marketing tips.

The last time I used my accounting software, I encountered a cryptic and unintelligible error message. This message had some English but it didn’t explain much. It did present a series of apparently random letters and numbers.

I searched online for help on the error message and eventually discovered the problem. My software had been de-supported and the feature I wanted to use was no longer available.

This error message was a golden opportunity for the vendor to sell me on an upgrade. However, the experience was far from perfect and I left frustrated, vowing not to upgrade as long as I could help it.

When you show error messages to your customers, you need to follow these two golden rules:

Tell Them What Happened – In Plain English

Your customers don’t speak the same language as the programmers that built your software or website. Your error message should never talk gibberish to the customer. Explain what happened in a clear, concise manner.

When your customers get an error message, they don’t know if it’s because they did something wrong or because the world is ending. Help customers understand the situation and why they got an error message.

Sometimes you can’t tell why an error occurred. In that case you definitely need the next element in place.

Tell Them What to Do Next

Don’t just tell people what happened, tell them what to do about it. Tell them how to proceed. In the case of an error, help them start over or complete the task they were in the middle of when your error so rudely interrupted them.

What is the natural next step your customer would need to take after they got an error? The natural, next step should be what your error message points people towards and helps them do.

Error messages should never be dead ends for your customers. You want their last interaction with you to be positive and leave on a good note.

Nevertheless, if your current employment requires you to handle customers with the utmost respect, then there are numerous steps and precautions you will need to take when handling a customer who is irate and frustrated.

If you find yourself struggling to deal with difficult customers on a regular basis, here are four tips to keep in mind the next time you have a conflict with a customer:

Listen

This point may seem fairly obvious, but it can’t be stressed enough. You have two ears and one mouth for a reason, so whenever a customer goes on a tirade about an issue, try to smile and nod politely and don’t interject on them. Sometimes even apologizing or saying “I understand” over and over again may frustrate the customer even more, so try to keep your mouth shut and listen to what they are trying to say (even if it doesn’t make any sense).

Ask the Customer What They Want

If you are in a rush and you don’t have time to politely listen to a customer complain for hours on end, sometimes the best way to deal with an angry customer is to wait until they take a breath, then politely ask them what it is they want you to do. If their demands are reasonable, then chances are the problem will get solved much quicker than you think.

Repeat What the Customer Says

One of the best ways to deal with customer conflict, or any other kind of conflict for that matter, is to repeat word for word what the customer has just said. This way it shows the customer that you truly understand the points that they are trying to get across, and it forces them to discuss the issue with you instead of shifting their complaints to another employee or even worse, another customer.

Focus on a Solution

And last, but certainly not least, if the customer shows no signs of slowing down while explaining to you what he/she is upset about, then try to steer the conversation away from the problem and focus on a solution instead. This will not only help solve any issues the customer is having, it also speeds up the complaint process as well.

About the Author
Maria Rainier is a freelance writer and recent graduate of Elon University. She is currently a resident blogger at online degrees, where recently she’s been researching different online theology programs and blogging about student life. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

How you apologize to customers will determine how those customers view you and your company for a long time.

Here is an email I saw from Backcountry.com after they made a mistake. Note the sincerity of the wording as you read:

We messed up. Yesterday, as the people of Alabama dealt with the devastating aftermath of an intensely damaging and life-taking tornado, we neglected to put a stop to the distribution of an email with the header: “Mother Nature hates you. Deal with it.” This was extremely insensitive and offensive, and we are so sorry.

Please accept our sincerest apologies for this mistake. What was intended to be witty marketing copy may have been when we wrote these words two weeks ago, but in light of current events and the suffering of people affected by Mother Nature’s wrath, it is not only not witty, it is completely unacceptable.

We at Backcountry.com send our deepest condolences to the families of those who lost their lives and to everyone now faced with rebuilding their homes and their communities. And again, we extend our sincerest apologies for our lack of foresight and our complete insensitivity in sending yesterday’s email.

Sincerely, Jill Layfield CEO Backcountry.com

What can you learn from this apology for the time you need to apologize to customers?

The Boss Apologizes

This email came from the CEO. Your apologies should likewise come from the top. Did this CEO write the original offensive email? Probably not. However, she took responsibility and apologized for the company’s mistake.

Explain What Happened

Give the background of what went wrong. Customers are very understanding when you explain the back story and “why” something happened like it did. Customers will realize that they, too, could have made the same mistake and will be more forgiving.

Admit Your Mistake

Don’t dance around the issue. Say you were wrong and that you messed up. The email above is very clear in owning up to the mistake. The wording is very humble and sincere.

Talk Prevention

Although this email is very strong in its wording, it doesn’t speak about the future. The unspoken assumption is that this won’t happen again. When you apologize to customers be sure you are clear how you will prevent this problem from happening again.

How you apologize to customers is vitally important to maintaining your relationship with them. Carefully word your apology and sincerely mean what you say.

Face-to-Face

As a business owner or the representative of a company, you’ll talk to customers in person. Regardless of the topic, you represent the company and will directly impact the customer’s perception of your business. Remember to keep your focus on the customer with a customer-centric approach and you’ll find it much easier to uncover and meet customer needs.

Website

Your website will be the first impression that many of your prospective customers will have of your company. Your site needs to be optimized to do three things: help the customer solve their problem, convince customers to buy from you, and actually be usable. If you haven’t observed a customer using your website in the last month, you need to set up time and start learning. A few minutes with a customer will uncover a mountain of problems with your current website that you can then improve.

Social Media

Your customers are talking to you. You need to include social outlets like Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, etc. in your customer service plan. When customers are talking in a public forum, it is a great opportunity for you to transparently address any questions or concerns and solve their problem.

Call Center

Many customers will call you on the phone to conduct business or get help. How is your phone experience from the customer’s perspective? Whether you hire a call center outsourcing service or answer the phones yourself, you need to avoid the the painpoints that so many customers face on the phone. Enable your representatives to actually solve problems and loosen the scripts so that your employees are empowered to meet the customer’s needs without sounding like a broken record.

Direct Mail

Are your direct mail pieces integrated with your other channels? If your customer acts on your call to action, they will end up calling on the phone, visiting your website, or seeing you at your storefront? If these pieces aren’t integrated, the customer sees a very disjoint experience which can only lead to friction and less than ideal experiences for your customers.

What other ways do customers hear from you or talk with you? What are some problems that you’ve seen at those touch points? What did you do about it?

My boys and I went camping this past weekend. When we pulled up to the ranger station at the state park, the ranger told us to park and come into the office with our license plate number.

We dutifully parked and went into the office to pay our entrance fee. The ranger asked for our car’s license plate number and printed out a permit to put on our windshield.

Imagine if when we pulled up at first that the ranger hadn’t told us to bring in our license plate number. We would have parked the car, walked inside, waited in line, and then would have been frustrated that we hadn’t commited that number to memory.

By simply setting expectations of what would be needed later in the process, a lot of possible frustration was eliminated. Additionally, the rangers were able to more efficienly process visitors to the park.

When you look at your processes that require customers to provide some kind of information, think about how easily accessible that information is.

Is it something that people will know off the top of their head? Or is it something that needs to be retrieved and brought with them to your point-of-sale?

Consider the steps before a customer sees you and help ease the burden by preparing customers before the transaction.

A prepared customer is easier to process and will be more content with your service if they don’t have to retrace their steps or delay their purchase due to missing information.

When you write something that customers have seen before, they start to skip over it. If people see a familiar pattern, they will assume they know what something says or how it works and will skip your instructions, even if they are important.

Likewise, if your wording is unemotional and seen all over the place, it will not engage your customers.

Turbotax, the tax return filing software, helps get people’s attention by using humor.

Before starting the Turbotax tool, you are forced to read the standard license agreement. However, they use wording that isn’t the standard fare:

Instead of a boring “I have read and agree to the terms…” they preface it with a statement that humanizes the process and may even make you smile:

Just one more thing before you get started (our lawyers made us do it).

The makers of Intuit know that you’re about to do your taxes, which isn’t always a pleasurable task. They help lighten the mood and engage you by putting a personal touch on the instructions for a potentially standard and boring task.

How can you spice up your copywriting to give your messages some personality and compel your customers to read what you are writing?