The Content Blender

As a movie lover myself I discovered that the best way to rent DVD movies and games in this day and age of the modern computer is by using one of the Online DVD and Game Rental Services. If you love watching movies or playing video games you should seriously consider one of these rental services as a time savings convenience and value.

The two largest DVD Online Rental companies which are very well known by their 3 Million plus members is NetFlix and Blockbutster. Both services are very similar, however, NetFlix seems to be top dog as of this writing.

Some of the great benefits of Online DVD Rental includes:

- 40,000 + movie titles

- New releases

- No late fees

- Free shipping, both to you and the return shipping

- Affordable monthly plans

- No long term contracts

- Cancel membership anytime

I am confident that you will find either of these services a great resource for your own DVD and Gaming needs.

Both DVD rental services, NetFlix and Blockbuter, have done a wonderful job of keeping their service simple and easy to use. By providing your basic information and then adding your favorite movies to a list or queue you can begin receiving movies right to your mailbox postage free. It’s just so crazy simple!

One of the best advantages to renting your DVDs online is direct delivery to your door. Not only do you receive free shipping, you’ll also get fast delivery of your DVD movies and game rentals. I always receive movies in 1-2 days and return shipping via a pre-paid envelope back to the company is delivered in a timely manner as well. This makes the DVD turnaround time very quick and your more than likely to always have a DVD movie on hand.

You may keep each DVD or Game as long as you like. Remember, there are no late fees so you are free to watch movies at your leisure. No need to feel rushed in watching your movie because the DVD does not have a required due date for return. This one feature alone is money in the bank from saved late fees. I don’t know about you, but our family has paid many late fees over the years for movies that were not watched by the 1, 2 or 3 day return due date. We actually paid more in late fees than we did for the movie!

No more late fees for us! We do all of our DVD movie rental online now. It not only saves us the hassle and time from running back and forth to the nearest DVD rental store, we love the anticipation of our next DVD in the mailbox! –It’s almost like Christmas…

Online DVD rental is definitely the superior choice for renting DVD movies. As long as the DVD Rental services continue to keep the process simple and easy I see Online DVD Rental as the wave of the future.

About the Author:
Ashley Watson has been a movie lover for years and
has turned her passion for movies into a dedicated web
site for movie fans. You can find more articles and info
at: http://www.dvd-movies-fan.com.

Copyright 2005 Ashley Watson dvd movie lover
This article may be freely distributed as long as this
resource box is included and all links are live.

How a business presents itself to its customers has to be the
single most important factor in its potential success. In days
gone by usually your first contact with new customers would have
been through your storefront or through word of mouth, passed on
by other satisfied customers. In today’s modern world,
telecommunication plays an ever increasing role in reaching
potential new customers.

In the last few years the rate at which computing and
telecommunication technology has advanced is simply astounding.
With this increased rate of technological development comes
falling prices for products that were once extremely expensive.
This allows smaller companies to take advantage of features and
services that were once only available to much larger and richer
organisations.

Once upon a time the telephone was the primary mode of
communication, whereas now existing and new customers are able
to reach you I a variety of different ways. This article will
give a brief overview of what is available and how you can use
it.

Voice: The Telephone When the internet was first becoming
popular, many experts predicted it would kill off the telephone.
Little did they know that in fact the exact opposite would
happen. The massive growth in online shopping has generated
massive amounts of customer phone enquiries, making the
telephone still the most important communication tool throughout
the world.

The internet is undoubtedly an impressive medium for publishing
information, but it is not a person. Some customers would rather
deal with a real life human being rather than with a machine.
There are many situations where a person is much better suited
to talk to customers than a machine is. The internet is not so
good at dealing with higher priced items. Customers enquiring
about these higher priced goods would in most cases prefer to
deal with a person, and that is where the telephone comes in
handy.

Phone Systems The selection and installation of an appropriate
phone system is probably one of the most important purchases a
business will ever make. A bad phone system will repel potential
customers; a good phone system will help them, guide them
through a process, make it appear as though they have a direct
line and most importantly make them feel like their business is
both wanted and appreciated.

Phone systems with advanced features like voice mail, ACD (call
queuing) and auto attendant, used to be extremely overpriced.
Because of the integration between computing and telecom
technology, prices have come down dramatically, although system
performance and features have actually increased. Now a market
that was once largely ignored by the telecoms industry and
vendors alike is a thriving sector with manufacturers constantly
improving and upgrading systems in a bid to attract your
business.

The new phone systems developed for this small office/home
office market sector can be split into three basic categories:
key systems, mini-PBX’s (including PC-based phone systems), and
LAN based phone systems.

Key Systems In the past few years some of the best developments
have been in low cost intercom style systems for small
businesses of typically 12 or fewer users. The biggest market
sector in the telecoms industry is undoubtedly that of small
businesses who have 10 or fewer users. It now seems almost
comical that this market was largely ignored in the past. New
KSU-Less systems allow even the smallest offices to enjoy more
advanced features that used to be only normally associated with
larger more expensive systems. These systems are extremely cost
effective and designed to make use of existing telecoms wiring.

The systems in this category that have benefited most from
development investment are hybrid corded and cordless phone
systems. These systems allow users to integrate cordless as well
as corded phones within intercom systems. Office based employees
would have corded phones whereas mobile employees such as
warehouse operatives could have cordless phones.

Mini-PBX’s Mini PBX systems are ideally suited to companies who
have more than 10 employees, but fewer than 100. Mini PBX’s can
give access to features like voice mail, automated attendant,
intercom, computer integration and call distribution.

There are 2 categories of mini-PBX phone systems, self contained
devices and computer based phone systems. There are a few
companies who make self contained systems. These systems are
easy to install and require very minimal computer and networking
knowledge. These systems provide basic features like voice mail,
auto attendant, intercom and a few others. It must be stressed
though that although these systems will suffice for most small
business applications, they cannot always provide all the
specialist features each individual business may require.
Mini-PBX’s that are computer based are generally speaking for
the more technically advanced users, and can offer a wider range
of features that can be customised to meet a businesses
requirements. A good example of advanced features is advanced
IVR (auto-attendant) scripts. This allows computerised phone
systems to route calls to specific groups based on how the
caller has responded to prompts. These computerised systems
allow even small companies to handle their calls in a way
normally associated with large call centres.

LAN (IP)-based phone systems Companies that have installed a
high speed local area network (LAN) for connecting their
computers can use this same network as the backbone for their
office phone system. Many phone system suppliers are edging
towards this approach, and there are already several LAN-based
phone systems which use a company’s Ethernet data network to
transport phone calls and data.

LAN-based phone systems were a very experimental idea. They had
unpredictable audio quality; neither did they offer features
that users of conventional phone systems take for granted. This
has all changed as phone system vendors have retooled the
business phone systems to use data networks as their backbone.

This month I want to share a success from a friend and customer of mine. You’ll find in this story two important sales tactics for beating your competition.

From Chris Chalmers of Quova Inc:

“We sell a commodity product (geographic data) that is available from a variety of competitors and public sources. Recently, we lost a major account to a competitor, and based on our long-standing relationship with them, they consented to debrief us on what went wrong. Obviously we had an account management issue, and there had been a service problem or two. But the clincher was our competitor was perceived as “more helpful” and “more expert” because they were offering all sorts of unsolicited suggestions about how to use the product.

“That was a real surprise - Shouldn’t the customer already know what they were going to do with the product? Otherwise they wouldn’t have bought it, right? How much advice can you give when your product is a simple commodity?

“So we tried our competitor’s approach in our next sales cycle. When the customer was talking about their perceived needs and uses of the product, we used to sit mildly and take notes. This time, we launched into a barrage of questions about the intended use our product, interspersed with short stories about how other customers were using it.

“What about this application? Have you ever considered this alternative? Here’s how someone else in your situation is using it..” and so on. Instead of going into detail about the functionality of our application, which was simple and undifferentiated, we went into detail about the usage of our product, which was highly differentiated.

“Much to my surprise, it worked! Now WE were perceived as ‘experts’ and ‘adding value’ to the product - even though it was still a commodity that our competitor was selling for a lower price. Our coach really wanted to do business with us, and we were able to defend a higher price point and get our deal closed.”

Thanks for sharing your story with my readers and me Chris. You and your sales team were smart to adopt your competition’s tactics to beat them at their own game.

Sales Tactic - Asking questions

Aggressively asking questions is one of the most effective sales techniques you can use. Asking question uncovers the prospect’s pains, wants and desires.

In Chris’s words:

“we launched into a barrage of questions about the intended use our product”

…instead of sitting mildly and taking notes while the prospect spoke about their needs.

Most salespeople don’t go far enough with their questioning. Its not just about open versus closed questions. You need to take it further. Find out how they want to use your product in detail. Find out what excites them. Find out what they are afraid of. Find out the one or two important things that are driving them to make a purchase.

Asking questions offers the potential to increase rapport and build stronger bonds faster with your prospects. When you ask a person what is important to them, they feel more known and understood by you as they answer. This increases their receptivity giving you more opportunities to communicate in a way most effective for your prospect.

Sales Tactic - Telling Stories

Story telling offers the power to transform your product from a nebulous idea into real vision for your prospects. Features certainly have little selling power. Benefits give you a bit more selling power than features do. It is story telling though that packs the big punch because it wraps the what, why, and how of your product all together into an entertaining package that holds their attention.

Stories don’t have to be long. Very effective sales stories need only be a sentence or two. In Chris’s case, the stories were short:

“interspersed with short stories about how other customers were using it”

…because his sales team wanted to stay on their agenda of asking questions and finding all about the prospect’s proposed use of their product. This was a very smart move because when you tell longer stories, you risk losing control of the sales call if you let the prospect ask you a lot of questions.

Stories position you and your company as capable experts. You imbue yourself with the success of your customers. Your prospect sees what is possible and believes that you can help them get what they want because you are discussing a customer who is getting their desired results.

Learn from Chris Chalmers’ example. Incorporate more stories into your selling and improve your questioning techniques to find out what your prospects want, why they want it, and what they will do with it. Work on these skills and closing gets so easy its almost a nonevent.

© 1999-2004 Shamus Brown, All Rights Reserved.

Shamus Brown is a Professional Sales Coach and former high-tech sales pro who began his career selling for IBM. Shamus has written more than 50 articles on selling and is the creator of the popular Persuasive Selling Skills CD Audio Program. You can read more of Shamus Brown’s sales tips at http://Sales-Tips.industrialEGO.com/ and you can learn more about his persuasive sales skills training at http://www.Persuasive-Sales-Skills.com/