John R. Aberle
John R. Aberle is a consultant, coach, and speaker on for small business owners and sales teams. He writes on both generating the income through sales and marketing as well as on how to make a profit through managing the income and controlling both costs and expenses. His goal is to see small business owners and management team members develop the knowledge and skills needed for building profits through strong relationships. Aberle Enterprises' sales style, called Help Customers Buy, fits naturally into the social networking approach to marketing. He uses Internet marketing as the major component of his sales and marketing plan because of its ability to develop stronger relationships with customers and prospects.
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- 9,846
- Content
- 92
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- 14
- Contributor since
- 6/14/2011
Education/Experience
Bachelor of Science, USAF AcademyInterests
Small business, business finance, sales & marketing, management, self-improvement, travel, restaurants, consulting, blogging, internet marketing, social networking, making a profit, business organizationMotto
Building Your Profits Through Strong RelationshipsAffiliations
Building Your Profits Through Strong Relationships, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Upcoming.Yahoo, Flickr
Displaying Results 1 - 92 (of 92) for All Content
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First Person: 5 Steps to Accounts Receivable SuccessMost small business clients have limited capital and tight profit margins so it is critical to that they collect their accounts receivable promptly to be able to pay their own employees and vendors without needing to borrow money to do so.
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To Get Sales, Focus on Problems Customers Know They HaveWhy don’t customers buy when it’s obvious to you that they will benefit from your products and services? Usually it is because they haven’t yet recognized that they have a problem important enough that they need and want your solution to it.
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How Can Interviewing Skills Improve Your Sales?Small business salespeople will find that interviewing skills makes it easier to build the strong relationships needed for success in sales. One of the key reasons is that a good interviewer remembers that it’s all about the guest.
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First Person: 7 Ways to Inspire Innovation in Your Small BusinessThese seven tips are meant to get you thinking of all the ways you can use innovation to improve your profits and increase your sales. Most important is to keep in mind your job is to solve a problem customers know they need and want fixed.
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First Person: Does Location Still Matter for Small Business?While consumer businesses generally still benefit from expensive rents to be in primo shopping malls or on highly trafficked streets, business-to-business small businesses can greatly reduce their physical rents by being smarter about their ‘location.’
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First Person: Controlling Unnecessary Labor CostsWhen you look at the impact labor burden has on your small business’ payroll, you will more easily appreciate how unnecessary labor costs chew up your profits. Pay a fair wage, but be sure it is for needed work not unnecessary hours.
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First Person: How Checklists Improve Quality, Customer Satisfaction and ProfitsAs long as I have been in sales and marketing, I have used checklists. I train clients to use them also to cut down mistakes and forgotten steps. By reducing mistakes, we keep customers happier while we protect profits from waste.
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First Person: When Doing Sales Prospecting, Right Size Your ProspectsSmall business owners and sales people both are inclined to think that everyone is a prospect. Interestingly, even when you have an obvious niche, like credit unions, that alone doesn’t mean it fits your ideal customer profile.
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First Person: The Financial Wisdom of DelegatingThere are different costs to forcing yourself to do jobs you don’t like and aren’t skilled at. There is also the opportunity cost of your doing something someone else could for less money freeing you to do things to make the company more money.
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First Person: Enlightened Self-Interest and Small Business ManagementBusiness success comes from learning when to forego an immediate gain for the benefit of developing long term mutually beneficial relationships, especially with your employees.
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First Person: Marginal Utility Value and Motivating EmployeesMy college Econ 101 introduced me to the concept of marginal utility value. Interestingly, it helps to explain why money alone fails to motivate everyone to greater effort. This means you need to be more attentive and creative.
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Piercing the Corporate Veil of Your Small BusinessSome small business owners think that being incorporated protects their personal assets from liability if their corporation gets sued. It is true, provided they did not get clever, and do something that pierces their corporate veil.
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First Person: As a Small Business Owner, How Do You Value Your Time?As a small business owner, I knew my time was valuable. I just never calculated it out or thought deeply about it until I became a small business consultant. Then I learned how to calculate labor burden and, more importantly, opportunity cost.
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First Person: Skip the Manipulation, Prospects Love to BuyProspects love to buy. Still, they may not want or need what you sell so find prospects for your small business whose problems and desires best fit what your products and services can fix. Then focus on helping them buy what they want and feel they need.
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First Person: 5 Ways You Make a First ImpressionWhile you can never please everyone, you want to do your best to impress your ideal prospects and customers. It helps to consciously improve each of the different ways you make a first impression.
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First Person: Improve Your Services for Greater Customer LoyaltyWhen it comes to customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, often it is the little things that matter most. The key to developing customer loyalty is to think about your small business products and services from the viewpoint of your customers.
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First Person: Know the Objectives of Your Sales CallsThere are more purposes for sales calls than closing. When salespeople go on sales calls without knowing in advance what the objectives are for each call, they are asking to waste their time and those prospects.
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Is Win-Win in Your Small Business Relationships a Myth?The way to win as a small business owner or manager is to build strong relationships with customers, employees and vendors. Find out what matters most to them, then structure your relationship to ensure they get it.
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First Person: Prospecting Success Means Thinking Like Your ProspectI love making an ally of people on the inside of the company. Many times I have sold the “screen” on my value to the decision maker. That gatekeeper then pointed me in a better direction or enabled me to talk to the boss.
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First Person: Using Metrics and Your Ideal Customer Profile to Increase SalesSales productivity comes from knowing your numbers throughout each phase of the typical sales cycle to get your average sale. These figures will make it even more obvious how important it is that you target the right prospects, those most likely to buy.
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First Person: Human Resources and the Family Owned Small BusinessAs owner of a family owned small business, you can have the best situation possible or the worst. When some family member chooses to rebel, you need to take action immediately before he or she puts your company at tremendous risk.
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First Person: The Value of Small Business SystemsIn a typical small business, nobody has time to develop systems until some event happens that drives home the point for you. Opening a new office in Monterrey, Mexico three hours from McAllen Texas made it clear that not having systems cost us.
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First Person: Time to Walk Away From That Sales Call?Small business owners sometimes feel a salesperson should get the sale at all costs. Unfortunately, by persisting when the prospect’s mind is drawn elsewhere, you will get shot down. It’s better to reschedule to when they will interact with you.
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First Person: Communicating With Employees, Prospects and VendorsThere are so many reasons that small business people find both delegating and having productive meetings with prospects and vendors challenging. The more rushed someone is the less likely they will communicate successfully.
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First Person: 10 Ways to Recover Profitability After Your Costs IncreaseSudden increases in your costs can throw your small business’ pricing into turmoil. If you continue selling at these prices, you will go in the hole financially. The survival of your small business requires action. These ten ideas give you choices.
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First Person: How Do You Price a Product or Service to Make a Profit?There are many approaches to pricing products. In my small business, I originally used the rule-of-thumb I learned from my previous employer. As a small business consultant, I learned from other consultants a basic approach based on your true costs.
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First Person: Cash Flow Reporting for Small BusinessLots of small business people have a feast or famine mentality, which means when the money comes in, they spend it not thinking about the bills in 60 days. A cash flow report can help them learn to manage that because their cash needs become obvious.
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First Person: When the Cost of a Sale Is Too HighIn my experience as a consultant doing profit and expense control jobs, I found that many small business owners and managers fail to understand their real costs, which include their overhead. Some sales can leave you in a hole.
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First Person: By Selling on Value, Everyone WinsBecause your goal as a small business is to make a profit, learn to find the extra value your customer wants. Training is one way of adding value. Price becomes less of an issue when you provide exactly what they want.
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First Person: Learning to Manage Well Takes Practice, Not TheoryOne needs strong desire to master the leadership skills and management skills needed to successfully lead a small business. While reading can expand your knowledge of what to do, leadership is a matter of emotional intelligence which develops from doing.
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First Person: Not All Lead Sources Are Created EqualOne client saved over $100,000 by eliminating Internet pay-per-click advertising search engines and sites as they produced almost no sales. You need to know your ideal customer profile to find the places that will deliver leads which convert to sales.
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First Person: Relationship Selling Works, Even in Niche MarketsI have firsthand experience following salespeople in a onetime sale niche. I rarely had a problem with delivering services to clients sold using a relationship selling approach. Our jobs blew up quickly when sold using a close at any cost approach.
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First Person: Like It Or Not, Customer Service Is Always the Salesperson's ConcernAs a small business owner, I was head of my sales and marketing department for our service company. I was our ultimate customer service rep. But that was always true in my sales jobs. Customers expected me to ensure customer satisfaction.
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First Person: Having a Customer Service Attitude Ensures Quality TrainingBased on my personal experience, both as a trainer and as a student, I reached a decision some time ago that a customer service attitude makes the difference in receiving as well as in giving quality training.
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First Person: Making Sure My Small Business Profits Aren't Nibbled AwayNumerous things drain off your small business profits. First, become aware of what is causing your losses as well as what the cumulative annual effect is. That number should motivate you to create systems to prevent the losses.
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First Person: Calculating the Cost of Wasted LaborLittle things can really add up when you use your real costs as found in burdened labor. There are many ways for the crews of services to fritter away time that costs your small business far more than you may realize thus eating up your profits.
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First Person: Does Small Business Need an Honor Code?Doctors, lawyers and accountants have their professional ethics standards so people know they can trust them. Lately huge businesses reinforced the image that greed rules all business. To gain trust, small businesses need to live by an honor code.
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First Person: Choosing a Compensation Plan for SalespeopleDespite my efforts to find the ideal compensation plan for salespeople, there is no one best plan. Your plan must attract the right salespeople to fit what you are selling, how you sell, and what the profit is on a typical sale.
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First Person: Brainstorming My Way to Small Business ProfitsAs small business owners, we find both international competitors and the Internet pressure us to develop new and improved products. Though some customers continue to want our products unchanged, others will switch for the new benefits.
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First Person: Choosing a Compensation Plan for Service EmployeesYour compensation plan for service employees or technicians can have a major impact both on their performance and on your profitability. These five types of compensation enable you to design a system that works for your small business.
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First Person: Does Your Small Business Really Need Custom Software?There numerous financial considerations that small business owners and managers should look at before deciding they need custom software. Often an off-the-shelf package will work effectively saving them from the cost of change orders.
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First Person: The Three Cardinal Rules of Sales and MarketingAs a small business owner or salesperson, you can actually have an advantage over larger companies when you apply these six laws to build strong relationships. Big companies are more likely to be self-important. You excel by listening.
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First Person: Are Networking Meetings a Waste of Time?When you are in sales and marketing or a when you are a small business owner, it’s a challenge to not see everyone as a prospect for a sales pitch. You will find networking meetings more effective when instead you use them to connect.
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First Person: Goal Setting for Small BusinessIt is a cliche that if you don’t know where you are going, how will you know when you get there? Nevertheless, most small businesses tend to drift along. By applying these steps to goal setting, you can see the company of your dreams.Also published on:
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Tips for Your Small Business Website – What Makes a Good OneThe internet has cut the time for a first impression from the 20 seconds on a sales call to as little as 1/20th of a second. That means it needs to be visually attractive, appear to speak to your prospects’ concerns and that it will be easy to get around.
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First Person: 10 Small Business Website Gimmicks That Don't WorkWhen you finally get visitors to your site, you want them to stay a while so you can build a relationship then a customer. Don’t drive them away. I warn clients about these points because searchers don’t like them.
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First Person: Getting Over the Dread of Closing a SaleBy using relationship selling techniques, I have found that it is easier to ask closing questions as I have learned what my prospects want and need. When I ask closing questions, they are part of my being able to best serve my prospects.
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First Person: Every Small Business Needs a WebsiteThere are at least 7 reasons small business owners & managers should create a website or blog so they will have a presence on the Internet. While no brick and mortar business should rely only on the Internet, it is where customers look for them.
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First Person: Think Like a Consultant, Make a ProfitAll businesses face challenges that hurt their profits. Small business owners, however, have rarely been trained in the consulting structured approach to evaluate the situation and propose a solution so as to again make a profit.
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First Person: The Value of an Organization Chart TemplateMany small business owners have a poor understanding of how to provide an organizational structure that eliminates frustration and confusion for their employees. An organization chart template can help bring clarity to the company.
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First Person: Customer Service and Your Customers’ Lifetime ValueCustomer service is about looking for ways to serve your customers better. Interestingly, helping them learn how to use and consume your products benefits them while improving your customers’ lifetime value.
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First Person: Jargon Has a Place in Relationship SellingSmall business salespeople have a bigger challenge getting a handle on what jargon to use and what to avoid because they have to master it on their own without a large company’s training. These tips offer ideas for the proper use of jargon when selling.
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First Person: Are Your Labor Costs Higher Than You Think?Small business owners and managers rarely have the business finance training to understand how to calculate their true labor costs. Labor burden, both hard costs and soft costs, need to be added to hourly wages and salaries if you plan to make a profit.
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First Person: The Value of a Small Business Filing SystemAs a small business consultant, I quickly learned that one common place to find savings is in wasted labor and overtime. If we identified the waste as being related to their filing, we would structure a systematic approach to organizing their files.
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First Person: Small Business and the Challenge of DelegatingIn both business and my personal life, I have found it too easy to assume the other person heard me and is going to fulfill my request. Unfortunately, my clients too find themselves rushed so they assign a task on the fly only to find it doesn’t get done.
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Our Marketing Success With a Chamber of Commerce Display TableAs a small business owner, I hated sending an employee home when I had no billable on-site work to be done. The incremental business from our table at Chamber of Commerce events brought enough walk-in business to keep our techs busy.
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First Person: What Small Business Customers Really WantOver the years I have come to appreciate that knowing what customers want done and why it’s important to them is essential to providing the benefits they want and feel they need.
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First Person: Brainstorming and Small Business GrowthWhen the world is changing faster than the mind can adapt, you want a tool that is positive and creative to reconnect you to the world of possibilities. Brainstorming takes advantage of your team members' knowledge about your customers’ wants and needs.
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How I Plugged Inventory Leaks in One Small Business’ ProfitsManaging and growing a profitable small business is a challenging task. I enjoyed providing outside expertise to look at how my clients are doing things to find what isn’t even on their radar because that’s just how they do it here.
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First Person: To Increase Sales, Grow Your Customers' Lifetime ValueOf the three ways to increase your sales revenue, the easiest is to get your existing customers to consume or use what they already bought. In sales of services or information products, this means they use and apply what they bought.
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First Person: Do You Motivate or Inspire Your Sales Team?For many people, more money or prizes alone won’t inspire extra effort. They are internally motivated. To inspire them to greater effort, find out what they care about and offer them that. -
First Person: The Easy Way to Increase Sales? Increase Your Existing Customers’ Average SaleBecause you already have a relationship with them, provided, of course, that it is a good relationship, it is normally easier to sell existing customers again than it is to find a new customer and get them to know, like and trust you. -
First Person: How Empowered Employees Can Improve Customer ServiceAlthough this example of bad customer service is from a major corporation, small businesses do the same thing every day of the week. Simple procedures and customer centered training could have ensured good customer service to everyone’s benefit.
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First Person: The Power of the' Business Compliment'With 30 years in sales and marketing and in management with everything from major corporations to small businesses, I have found knowing how to give a sincere compliment strengthens my relationships.
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First Person: A Tale of Two Customer Service StandardsWhat a contrast between these two businesses. The store manager with terrible customer service was probably technically right. Nevertheless, I felt lied to and offended by his attitude. The Outback manager, on the other hand, waived the coupon limitation.
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First Person: The Easiest Sale I Ever MadeWe reached the point where he finally realized I was there to help him get what he wanted, not to pressure him into something that wouldn’t work for him. From there on, we became partners in getting him what he wanted and needed.
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First Person: Outstanding Customer Service Leaves a Lasting ImpressionHow outstanding customer service leaves a lasting impression, which produces strong, positive word of mouth publicity and repeat sales.
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First Person: When 'Quality' Means Different Things to Different PeopleOften small business relationships seem to be doing well then they fall apart. I found that it can happen when our words lead us to different expectations.
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First Person: Focusing on What My Clients Wanted Turned Into More SalesClients always know they have a problem with their profits or their business' effectiveness. The task for me as a consultant was they might really need something else. I had to learn to deliver what they wanted and help them understand what they need.
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The Four Types of Content on a WebsiteThere are four types of content on a website important to search engine ranking. These different types of content are increasingly important because the search engines want the Internet accessible to everyone and they want great user experiences.
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First Person: The Value of 'No Charge' InvoicesThe invoice is basic to all business and finance activities. Often, if you just give something away, it has the same value to your customer as what you charged, zero. I bill them what they are already paying for an extra service, but as a no charge item.
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First Person: When Your Prospect Is Ready to Buy, Will They Look for You?I have called on small business prospects who wanted my products but not been able to immediately. I found doing my best to find their needs, show the benefits, ask for the order but allow them to buy when the timing was right worked best.
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First Person: Hire People to Fit Your Business Culture and Your Management StyleIn the 1980s a book on corporate culture became a bestseller. It is important to this day. People thrive in different environments. From the viewpoint of my management style, I find that some people make my work a pleasure; others make it a living hell.
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First Person: Not Firing an Employee Cost Me SalesBeware trusting someone you know will lie and do illegal things because they will do the same thing to you no matter how well you treat them. There is always another solution, even though not as convenient.
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First Person: The Value of Customer Satisfaction InterviewsWhile customer satisfaction surveys can provide useful information when done properly, I found actually interviewing customers at this diner gave me suggestions that needed to be applied.
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How Rotary Helped Me Feel like a Business OwnerSometimes the shift into a new level of small business owner consciousness comes from what you do outside the business. For me, the biggest boost in self-esteem and feeling like a small business owner came from my membership in Rotary International.
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First Person: Sales Success Means Focusing on Your Ideal Customer ProfileFor customers to buy and for sales to happen, three things need to be in place. The first of these is the right audience. It is defined by your ideal customer profile. Once you are clear on the ideal customer profile, the smart marketer narrows his focus.
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First Person: Firing Employees With Kindness and CompassionNot every employee hired for a job has the right skills, attitude or interest in doing that particular job. No small business can long survive if anyone chooses to be a drain on your energy and resources.
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First Person: When Hiring, Don't Trust a First ImpressionIt's too easy for me to be swayed by a good first impression into hiring a new employee then live to regret it. When I followed a good business practice by actually digging into his background, I saved us a long of money and frustration.
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First Person: Developing Customer Loyalty By Adding ValueI found that services to create added value in our printer maintenance contracts worked very effectively to strengthen customer loyalty. Although there would be changes in the contracts due to changes in their needs, they still renewed year after year.
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What is the Effect of Simple Interest Versus Compound Interest?If you are like most small business owners and managers, your strengths lie in your more technical skills areas, not in the financial arena. Thus, you may underestimate the potential effect of the difference between simple and compound interest.
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The 3 Keys to a Successful Small Business Sales StrategyPeople often think that sales success is a matter of personality or closing technique. In reality it's a matter of relationships. Nevertheless, you need the right audience, the right product or right service and the right timing.
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What I Learned as a Customer About How to Avoid Blowing Your SaleAs a small business owner or manager, you invest a lot of time, effort and money to attract prospects to your business. It can be extremely expensive then when you have a prospect walk because your sales representatives' techniques or, worse, lies.
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How I Learned Not to Trust Profit and Loss StatementsIf you are like most small business owners and managers I know, you probably do not understand your financial statements well enough to realize why your net profit fails to tell the whole story. It is important to also know what the balance sheet says.
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How I Use Commenting on Other People's Blogs to Improve My Search Engine RankingOne of the most interesting tools I've found to improve my search engine rankings by generating backlinks is commenting on other people's blogs. I find it exciting to engage in a discussion with people. Sometimes they visit my blog. At the least, the sear
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Customer Loyalty: How a Restaurant Won Me BackLoyal customers give a small business the best chance of survival. But customer loyalty doesn't just happen. You have to earn it. This restaurant earned my loyalty by fixing a problem when I was going to blow it off, and then I was going to blow them off.
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First Person: Earning My Customers' LoyaltyDeveloping customer loyalty is often seen as creating a customer loyalty program, like a frequent traveler card. Sometimes instead it comes from refusing to make a sale. I had to learn that the hard way.
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Success in Selling Comes from Listening, Not TellingFor decades, traditional sales training has relied upon techniques and presentations to close the sale. Today, more than ever before, prospects don't care about your story until they feel you care about them and are going to provide what they want.
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How I Learned to Handle Burnout and Recover My MotivationIn my sideline business as a freelance restaurant reviewer, I rediscovered what it is like to go through burnout. This time I avoided walking away from a business I loved and found a way to recover my motivation.
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Can You Create Your Own Small Business Website Without a Website Designer?It took me months in 2001 to create my first static website. Today, using blogging software, I can create a vastly more exciting website than I ever imagined possible. Best of all, I can install it in a few minutes and customize it in a couple hours.
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How Has the Amazon Affiliate Program Just Made a Big Mistake?June 29th, Amazon cut thousands of us small Internet marketers in California off as affiliates because Governor Jerry Brown signed the Internet sales tax bill. My concern isn't with who's right. It's with the impact on customer loyalty & affiliate trust.
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What I Learned from Starting an Undercapitalized Small BusinessWhen I was turned down for that $200,000 loan to start a small business, it actually ended up being a good thing, even though it meant that I started as an undercapitalized small business. I had some things to learn about what to spend limited capital on.
