There is nothing like playing music for a crowd of people. The rush is incredible, and it gets even better when your crowd of fans grows. I plan to write a series of articles on how to promote your band and grow your fan base.

If you don’t have a band yet, consider Bandmaking.com, where you can meet musicians, find band members and connect with fans.

How do you keep in contact with your fans? How do you find new fans?

Most bands start with a number of fans. Your mom, your friends from school… your co-workers. After that, using “social media” to promote your band is a great start. This allows you to advertise to a larger network of people. Unfortunately some of your fans will not always check your MySpace or Facebook page. They might not find out about your next gig in time, and they might even feel bad about missing it.

The next step your band should take is managing your own fan list. By having direct contact information for all your fans, you can be sure to let them know ahead of time. This is where you can use a website! It can cost as little as $5 or $10 a month to have your own band website. I would recommend choosing a hosting company that supports Wordpress or Joomla. They are pre-built websites that allow you to pick a template, add your own content and images, and even program (or hire a programmer) to add your own applications. Once you have a website, you should put a form on your home page that tells your fans something like “Sign up to find out where and when we are playing our next show” It should ask for a minimum of name and email. I would also recommend some optional fields such as phone number and city where they live.

Now, the next time you have a show booked, you can send out an email to all your fans and even text or phone them. The personal touch of a phone call can make your fans feel great and they will be more inclined to attend your show.

In Part 2 I will explain how you can get your own website up and running.

Feel free to contact me if you are ready to get your own band site, or you need a programmer to add some features to your site.

All the best for the New Year!

Frank Forte
www.bandmaking.com

In the case of connecting to MySQL in a PHP script, usually a fatal error will tell you where you provided invalid connection info (i.e. wrong password), this is the file and line where the mysql_connect() function is called.

This is not useful if you use a php class to deal with the database connection. The error message will show the file and line where the mysql_connect() function is (and it is always the same place, within the database class!)

It turns out that this is not where the wrong password is provided to the class, so it can take some time to find the file and line where you send the credentials to MySQL.

To find the line where you actually provided the wrong password:
1. First, suppress the fatal error with the @ symbol.
2. Then, check if there is an error. If so, store the error and then trigger the error outside of the class.

/* Index.php */
$db = new MySQL($host,$user,$password,$dbName);
if($db->dbError){trigger_error($db->dbError,512);}

/* mysql.class.php */
class MySQL{
var $db;

function __construct($host, $dbUser, $dbPass, $dbName) {

// or the old school constructor: function MySQL($host, $dbUser, $dbPass, $dbName) {
$this->host=$host;
$this->dbUser=$dbUser;
$this->dbPass=$dbPass;
$this->dbName=$dbName;
$this->dbError=FALSE;
$this->connectToDb();

}
// connection method
function connectToDb(){

if (!$this->dbConn = @mysql_connect($this->host, $this->dbUser, $this->dbPass)) {
$this->dbError=’Error connection to database: ‘.mysql_error();
return;
}

// … check if database can be selected in the same way
}

Note 1: this does not work if it is normal for the function to return bool (a value that equates to false)

Note 2: if you use a custom error handler you need to have the following to suppress the error

function errorHandler($errno, $errdetails, $errfile = null, $errline = null, $errcontext = null)
{

// check for error suppression
if(error_reporting()==0){
return;
}
// continue processing the error here

}

With custom functions you can use the following error() function instead of trigger_error()

function error($message, $level=E_USER_NOTICE)
{

$dbk=debug_backtrace();
$caller = next($dbk);
trigger_error($message.’ in ‘.$caller['function'].’.’.$caller['file'].’ ‘.$caller['line'].”\n
error handler”, $level);

}

Example use:

function custom($val)
{

if(!is_array($val)){
error(’You must provide an array to the custom function’);
} else {
// do whatever
}

}

A well designed website is a good investment these days. Anyone that needs to buy a product will first consult their favorite search engine to do their research and then find a good price.

Before spending a(nother) dime on your website, do some research. Here are a few tips:

1) Avoid graphics and video or flash, unless you are selling graphics, video or flash. Unless the focus is placed on the product or service (and not how cool your website looks) you will only distract your customer, possibly making them leave the site without getting your message. (You should still have some elements to make your website look beautiful and professional)

2) Appearing in the first few Google or Bing results can give you a steady stream of leads. SEO (search engine optimization) can help you get there, but careful of people claiming to be SEO experts. At the end of the day you need to know what your customers will type to find your product or service, and make sure your content reflects this.

3) Most importantly, make it as easy as possible for your customer to get information and place an order. Give them step by step instructions so they are comfortable taking the next step.

4) Getting them on the phone and helping them with information is the best way to show you have good customer service and support, and it can get them from the “research” phase to the “placing an order” phase.

Remember, when someone goes to the hardware store, they might want to buy a hole, but come home with a drill. In the end, it is the service that is most important, so make sure you provide the best service and the referrals will come.

These tips are aimed at increasing sales leads for your business.

Note: You can hire me as a consultant and/or programmer for your website. The benefit of hiring me is that you get someone who knows how to program websites, and who has great sales experience. Can you have a better combination when you want a website that sells?

This post is for people that want to increase sales and leads through their company website.

There are many reasons that we would want to engage customers in a conversation rather than just giving them information about our company, products, and/or services. I will leave these reasons for another post. For now I want to show you how to engage customers in a conversation on your website.

When is the last time you filled out a feedback form?  Most of the time, if a website does not meet your needs, you make sure to let the website owner know, right? I’m sure you must either look for a feedback form, or use their contact form or email address to get in touch? Okay, if you didn’t get the sarcasm, I’m sure that you probably don’t provide feedback when a website does not meet your needs or wants.

On the flip side, you probably find it difficult to get feedback from visitors on your website. If you haven’t thought about getting feedback on your website, you should. This would allow you to improve the website, and your service so that you can attract more visitors and convert more of them into paying customers. Please read on before putting a feedback form on your website.

In a conversation, we constantly pause to see if someone is still listening.  A feedback form on your website probably does not give the impression that there is a live human listening and waiting for a response. If you phone someone and ask a question on the other hand, or even send an email and ask a question, the person that is being asked knows that you are waiting for a response. This is a very important difference, and will determine whether you will get feedback from your customer or not.

You need give the visitor/customer the impression that someone is waiting for a response.

You should really consider applying this concept on your website.  Some companies already use a great technique to do this. As soon as the website loads, a pop up will say “We are available for a live chat, what do you want to know?”.  These are a great way to engage customers.  Before they even bother searching your website, they have the opportunity to tell you exactly why they are visiting your site. This saves them time, and allows you to engage in a conversation. You can also have a video of a real person asking the visitor if they need help and directing them to a form on the site where they can type in their question.

Once the customer is engaged, it is much easier to get their contact information, whether it is an email or phone number, so that you take the conversation in the direction that you want and be more effective in satisfying your customers’ needs.  So I encourage you to think of ways to initiate a conversation with customers on your website, in combination with a form that asks for a name, and email or phone number so you can help you customers buy from you.

In a future post, I will discuss the benefits of engaging customers in conversation versus giving them a “pitch”.  I’m sure you can already think of some benefits.

-Frank

How much do you charge to make a healthy profit?

It is difficult to decide on a price, and too easy to lower your price so that your customer will buy your product or service. What you should really consider is “what is valuable to your customer?” and “How valuable is it to your customer?”

If you can show your customer how they will get back more than what they put in, the amount they put in is not as important (as long as they can afford it). This is the best pricing strategy. Always charge as much as you can, while still showing your customer how they are getting a great deal!

Here is an example that will show you how to be profitable. You figure that it will take about two hours making a video advertisement for a customer. It is a very simple idea, and only requires $30 in props. How much do you charge? There are a few things you need to consider:

1) what is the customer’s budget? Ask them! Remind them that they need to save some money for promoting the ad, or buying advertisement space.

2) Take one third of the budget. Does that much money pay for enough time and material that you can complete your work?

3) What does the customer get out of it? Make sure the customer knows this, and gets excited about it. Remember, this is their initiative, If they want a product or service, it is because they want something out of it. For the example we are using, the customer might expect to make 5 sales worth $10,000 in profits from people that visit their website. Can you give them what they expect? If not, that is ok! You just need to manage expectations, and explain the value that they are getting. First ask them “how many people need to visit yourwebsite to make a sale?”  Based on this number, you will know how many people you need to send to get 5 sales.  Even if they do not make 5 sales, as long as you make sure they get the number of visitors they expect, they will feel like you did your job.

I will probably add to this post later… It’s getting kind of late.  See the copyright notice in my last post, it applies to all posts.

Do you have any bad habits when trying to make sales? Do you ever find yourself creating countless revisions of a proposal or quote for a customer?

Sometimes we feel like a customer wasted our time .  Does it frustrate you?  I used to think it was the customer, but after analyzing the parts of a sale, I found that there are some things we miss.  By paying more attention to these things, we can avoid experiencing those customers that can never decide, those ones that love to take up our time without buying a thing.

I developed a cycle that you can follow to save time and increase sales.  I broke it down into parts: 1. Initiate Dialogue. 2. Qualify. 3. Create Value (and the Value Circle*). 4. Close the Deal or Close the Conversation

1. Initiate Dialogue

To increase sales, you need to fill your “funnel”.  By talking to more customers, you can uncover more opportunities.  These will eventually trickle out, or pour out the bottom of the funnel as closed deals.  If you want it to pour, you need to open a conversation with as many potential customers as you can handle. You can find twice as many customers, maybe more, by networking. Simply ask every customer that you encounter if they know any one else that might be able to use your product or service. Are you too busy? Well, the time saving part is knowing how to end these conversations quickly.  This leads to:

2. Qualifying your Customer

Before you do ANY work for someone, you need to qualify them.  Does it make sense to sit down, crunch numbers, put together a proposal, and give it to someone hoping that they will like it and pay you for your product or service?  Well it depends.   Maybe the customer is really interested in your product! Great!  Except after spending time preparing more information for this customer, you might find out that they don’t have any use for it, they just wanted to know more.  Or maybe it is out of their budget.

Again, do NOT do any work until you qualify your customer!

3. Create Value (and Keep Qualifying)

Before you even think about giving a quote or price, you should think about how much your customer expects to pay.  Let’s say that you are selling a widget.  The customer might think it is only worth $5.  But, if you emphasize how it will save one of his or her employees half an hour a day, you can put a dollar amount on that value.  At $20 an hour, they will save $50 a week!  Most customers do not think about the value of a product or service they are considering. They think about how much it probably costs to make such a widget. It is YOUR job as a sales person to find out what is important to your customer, and show how your product or service will create value for them.

There is the Value Circle* that makes this very easy. Step 1 is entering the circle.  Then you rotate around the circle made up of step 2 and step 3. You then exit with Step 4.

1. Enter the circle and ask “If I show you how my product or service will (insert benefit here) will you buy it from me?”

2. If the answer is no, ask “Why?” and try to narrow their reason to be as specific as possible.

3. Ask “If I am able to satisfy that reason, will you buy from me?” or “My product or service can satisfy that reason by (enter feature and benefit here).  Now do you want to buy it?”

The circle is between step 2 and 3.  Repeat step 2 and 3 until you achieve one of two things:

A. The customer commits to buying from you, provided that you can satisfy their “buying needs” (in which case you justify any work that you are going to do such as a proposal) or

B. The customer gives you a reason that they will not buy from you.

There is a snag… people might say they are not ready without reason.  Whatever they tell you, once one of the above conditions is satisfied, you can exit the circle with step 4:

4. Exit the circle by asking “When?“  Here are some more specific examples to help you close the deal:

If they are not ready, ask “ When will you be ready?”

If they say “sure”  ask “Are ready to buy right now? How do you plan to pay?  Do you have a budget for my product/service?  Do you plan to save up for this?  How long do you think it will take to save up enough money?”

The Value Circle* is designed to quickly qualify your customers and create value at the same time.  These is is the most important sales tool.

4. Close the Sale or Close the Conversation

a. No opportunity? Close the conversation.
If you and the customer determine that there is no opportunity, first ask if they might be able to use your product or service in the future. If so, ask if you can follow up in 3 months or 6 months.  Close the conversation by thanking the customer for their time and asking if they know anyone else that might benefit from your product or service, and if they think of anyone to please let you know.

b. Opportunity? Close the Deal.
Great! You found a customer that is willing to buy.  Now you need to keep your side of the deal.  Give the customer the proposal or quote in a timely manner. Remember to include all the points you uncovered when you were in the Value Circle* in the proposal, or along side the quote. You need to remind the customer that you are selling them something of value, and they are getting a deal! It is a good idea to get the customer excited and make them feel like they are getting a deal so they will feel good after the purchase rather than coming back to you with buyer’s remorse.

Finally, and most importantly, you must ASK FOR THE BUSINESS!! Make sure you include an order form or contract or a template purchase order with your quote or proposal.  Ask them”how long will it take you to get a payment ready?”. This will get the customer in the mind set that they are committed to buying and they have a method to pay you.  Make your customer aware that you are waiting for payment by including a form with payment options when you give a quote or proposal.

If you make it this easy for your customer, I guarantee they will not look for your competitors. Everything is in front of them and they will think “chances are other companies will charge around the same price”, so they might be too busy or lazy to do the extra work of looking at the competition, giving you a higher rate of closing.

*Value Circle is a trade mark of Frank Forte. If you want to reproduce any content written by Frank Forte, please contact him, he is a really nice guy and would be happy to share, but only with his written permission.  If you do not have written permission from Frank Forte, be prepared for his team of lawyers and the legal costs you will incur by either defending yourself and/or (more likely “and”) settling by paying him and his lawyers a substantial amount of money. He has a highly trained robot named LawBot** constantly searching the internet at light speed to protect his work.

**LawBot is also a trademark of Frank Forte.

Notice:  Following advice you find on the internet has a high amount of risk. If anything bad happens to you as a result of comments or advice posted on this blog or website, even if it is my fault for telling you something or providing you with information or links to other websites, I assume no liability. You are responsible for your own actions.

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There is an important thing that you can do to improve your website that is so easy. Last month I achieved a 0% bounce rate on my employers website by using this strategy (from visitors that found the website through a Google search).  “Bounce rate” is the percentage of visitors that leave your website right away.  A high bounce rate is bad, because visitors quickly decided your website is not worth their time. I want to share this advise with you because I want you to be able to get a 0% bounce rate too!

How did I get a 0% bounce rate?  I can summarize it in one line:

Always have a follow through link at the end of any web page.

This will keep visitors browsing through your website, and it will direct them straight to the content you want them to see. Without it, visitors have no where to go. Unless they know that they can find exactly what they want in your menu and don’t have to scroll back up too far to find it, they will probably leave your website using the trusty “back” button and continue their Google search.

Is this the only thing you need to do?  The short answer is “no”.  You need to get their attention before you can ask them to go to the next page.  There are some other strategies that come into play (which I will describe in future posts…  subscribe to my RSS feed), but just like in many sports the “follow through” is probably the most important. Based on my research, putting a link at the bottom of any content is a winning strategy, especially if you ask the visitor for action or endorse the page where the link leads. I would call this a “trial close”.  In sales the “close” is when you get commitment from a customer to buy (signing a contract, giving you a cheque, etc.). The “trial close” is a call to action to find out if visitors are interested in your product or service. By clicking a link (i.e. “click here to find out more” or “click here to buy this product”)  they have committed more time on your website. They have committed to learning more, or have an interest in buying.  The “trial close” will tell you if the customer is ready to buy into your product/service. This is also the ideal place to ask for customer information. If they are commmitted to learning more or buying the product, they will probably give you their contact information so they can get the information or product from you.

I hope this information helps you develop your online business skills, specifically online sales.
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Frank Forte

I’m sure you have found yourself  reading over a simple email that you just wrote, and then decided that you don’t like it.  You probably tried a number of versions, hoping that your message will be clear.  You probably worried that you would have to write two or three more emails to clear up the message if the recipient(s) did not get the right idea.

I was consciously thinking about the efficiency of email, and realized “What a waste of time!”.

I found on a number of occasions that a simple email could easily take up to an hour of my time, and I am sure you have been in this position. Sure this would be great if you were (are?) a lawyer and charged by the hour. But I am not a lawyer and don’t get paid to spend more time writing emails.

Let us look at the reasons we like email so much:

1. Getting things in writing
2. Avoid phone tag
3. It’s “fast”
4. You can “proof read” it, so you give the right message
5. It is in your “comfort zone” and you can take time to get your message right.

We agree that email can take more time than expected. In fact a simple message can take a lot longer because we want to make sure the person receiving the email does not misunderstand what we are trying to say.

Marshall McLuhan said “The medium is the Message”.

I am going to dissect each reason above, and make some points about why email might not be the right choice when communicating.  There are some amazing reasons we should not default to sending messages by email or “texting”, and think about all the other methods of sending a message. Remember, you are not limited to one medium. Your message can be more effective by using more than one medium, and more efficient by using the available media in a specific order. Choose wisely and you can complete tasks faster, avoid extra stress, and communicate more effectively.

1. Getting things in writing

Yes, there are people that will throw you under the bus. How often does this happen? How often do you need to go back in your email and send a copy to convince people that things are different. For me, this is not often. In fact, when you are in a rush to send that email out quickly, you might make a mistake, and it is hard to back-track. It is in writing. Permanent. On the other hand, speaking to a person (in person or over the phone) you can back-track and correct yourself.
Point: Decide if you need it in writing before choosing email as your method of communication.

2. Write an email to avoid phone tag

Sure, you can send your message when you are ready, and wait for a reply. Unfortunately some people are too busy and might not read your entire email.  The subject line that you write might not even get their attention. This happens to me quite often when I send an email to my boss. Ever happen to you?

Well the good news is that you are not limited to one medium. There are actually three mediums that we are considering in this point.  Email, voice (over telephone)… and voice mail.

I believe the best order to try and get your message across is: 1) telephone, 2) voice mail, 3) email.

If they pick up, you get your message across quickly, get your answers quickly, and continue without waiting for a reply.  If not, you might still get the message across quickly by leaving a voice mail.  Worried your voice mail will be too long? You can still avoid phone tag if you are prepared to use voice mail as a medium.   I have not been prepared for voice mail in the past and fell back on the line “It’s Frank, please call me back when you get a chance”.  What do you usually say when you expect someone to pick up and hear their voice mail.  I bet you just hang up half the time and go straight to email.  If you’ve read this far, now you will know better. You will remember to prepare an effective voice message. Example:

“Hello Boss, I am going to send you an email about why we should consider using a phone when calling a customer before or instead of writing an email and the reason is we can be more efficient and productive at work”.

Note that an effective voice mail will include the subject and the reason.

Your message will be more effective because:

a) If they get the voice mail first, they will pay more attention to your email or
b) If they get your email first, the voice mail will ensure that they read it, and remind them of the message that you are trying to get across.

Point:  Call first so your message can get across faster and more effectively. Make sure you are prepared to use more than one medium (prepare to use voice mail and email together if someone doesn’t pick up).

3. It’s fast

Yes.  when you compare email with snail mail, it is fast. It’s electronic, it can be sent at light speed!  But it is still mail and not a live conversation.  There are faster ways to get your message across. Even “texting” wins here since you and the recipient do not need to be at a computer (not really applicable to blackberry users). Still, voice is faster, and may be more appropriate in professional communications.

Point: Email is not fast

4. You can “proof read” it, so you give the right message

Does it make sense to “proof read” a conversation?  If you are sending a report, then point number 4  is a good reason to use email (although it might be better to create a document and attach it to an email). If you are asking a question or replying to a message, then you are wasting time proof reading extra content.  This is part of the reason this post is labeled “Email Versus Productivity”.  You do not need to proof read a voice mail or phone conversation.  I want to emphasize a point I made above: prepare an effective voice message. This will allow you to ask a question and get a reply without really playing “phone tag”.

Point: don’t create content that needs proof reading unless it is necessary

5. It is in your “comfort zone” and you can take time to get your message right

Communicating in person or over the phone allows an interactive conversation.  You can spend a small amount of time answering one question the other person may have about your message, rather than explaining everything in your message, and having a long email that people might not even read. Getting your message right does not mean it will be effective.

As for “comfort zone”  I will direct you to an article by Drew Laughlin that explains why reason number 5 is not a good reason to use email: Are You Gutsy, or Wimpy?

Point: Try to think about the goal of your communication. Consider stepping out of your comfort zone to communicate more effectively. You don’t need email to get your message right.

Note: The content in this WebLog (blog) is copyright © Frank Forte
You may not reproduce this content without written permission by Frank Forte.
I would be happy to let you use my content, just ask! But don’t use it without my permission or I will release my lawyers. It will be just like when Mr. Burns releases his hounds, only the hounds will be lawyers, and you can’t run from my lawyers.

I finally came up with a script that will properly check if an email is valida against any RFC specification.

This includes:

Quoted pairs
(special characters that are not normally allowed, but escaped with a backslash.)
example:
this\@email@thenetgen.com
Quoted pairs are technically valid. Even though they are obsolete, if someone has an email like the one above, this validator will let them use it!

Quoted special characters
(any special characters that are not normally allowed, but are between quotes, like a space)
Example:
this+”is @ test: wow;”+em\@ail@the-net-gen8.com
This is also allowed.  as long as the “weird” characters are within double quotes. Note that a valid email will escape any double quote that is to be taken literally.

Example 1 : this\”quote@the-net-gen8.ca is valid because the double quote is a “quoted pair”
Example 2: this”quote \”within @ wierd “@the-net-gen8.ca is also valid.  The second quote does not end the quoted string since it is escaped with a back slash.

The only thing that it does not cover is ip addresses instead of domain names (usually used by spammers) such as email@[123.234.212.112]. Call me lazy or biased, but adding this to the regular expression pattern would be a breeze. I already did the hard work for you.

Notice:

This is copyright © 2009 Frank Forte

Reproduction without written permission is prohibited.

I assume NO liability for the use of this code, even if it is through my own negligence. It is meant for informational purposes only, and if you want to use this code, you must have written permission from Frank Forte first.

Please contact me if you want to use any content from TheNetGen.com. I would be more than happy to let you use it and provide support, but only if you get my written permission first.

Validating Email according to RFC specification

1. An e-mail address consists of “local part” and “domain” separated by an at sign (@) character (RFC 2822 3.4.1). Further the domain is split into the “label” and the dot separator (difficult to distinguish with subdomains), so we will split the pattern into two parts $local and $domain.

2. Matching local part

3. Local Allowed Characters: any 7-bit ascii character, excluding control characters (char codes 32 to 126)a-zA-Z0-9!#%&/=_`~^$*+?{|}’-(a list of all 7 bit ASCII characters can be found here: http://www.tutorialspoint.com/html/html_ascii_codes.htm)
4. The local part may consist of a quoted string, in other words, anything within quotes (”), including spaces (RFC 2822 3.2.5)The following special characters *must* be in quotes:SPACE ()<>[]:;@,.\
5. Quoted pairs (”escaped” special characaters such as \@) are valid components of a local part, though an obsolete form from RFC 822 (RFC 2822 4.4).
6. The maximum length of a local part is 64 characters (RFC 2821 4.5.3.1).
7. A domain consists of labels separated by dot separators (RFC1035 2.3.1).
8. Domain labels can contain alphanumeric characters and the hyphen (-). They must start with an alphabetic character and end with a alphanumeric character (RFC 1035 2.3.1).[a-zA-Z] [a-zA-Z0-9-] [a-zA-Z0-9]
9. The maximum length of a label is 63 characters (RFC 1035 2.3.1).
10. The maximum length of a domain is 255 characters (RFC 2821 4.5.3.1).
11. The domain must be fully qualified and resolvable to a type A or type MX DNS address record (RFC 2821 3.6).

function CheckEmail($email){
// local characters that do not need to be quoted
// a-zA-Z0-9!#%&/=_`~^$*+?{|}’-
$locChars=‘\.a-zA-Z0-9!#%&=_`~\/\’\^\$\*\+\?\{\|\}\-’;

// local characters that need to be quoted
// ()<>[]:;@,.\
$locSpeChars=‘\(\)><\[\]:;@,\.\\ ‘;
$locSpeQuotedPairChars=‘\\\\|\ |\(|\)|\>|\<|\[|\]|\:|\;|\@|\,|\.’; // no longer supported

// local pattern
$local=‘(['.$locChars.$locSpeQuotedPairChars.']*|”['.$locChars.$locSpeChars.']*”)*’;

// domain characters
$domainChars=‘\.a-zA-Z0-9-’;

// domain pattern
$domain=‘['.$domainChars.']+’; // minimum domain:  a.a

// validation: if this statement is true, the email is not valid.
$pattern=’/^(‘.$local.’)@(‘.$domain.’)$/‘;

// validation: if this statement is true, the email is not valid.
if(!preg_match($pattern,$email,$matches) // does not exactly match allowed characters
||  strlen($matches[1]) > 64 // local part too long
||  strlen($matches[4]) > 255 // domain part too long
||  strpos($matches[1],’..’) // local part has two consecutive dots
||  preg_match(‘/^\./’,$matches[1]) //  local part starts with dot
||  preg_match(‘/\.$/’,$matches[1]) // local part ends with dot
|| !preg_match(‘/^[a-zA-Z]/’,$matches[4]) // domain part does not start with letter
|| !preg_match(‘/[a-zA-Z0-9]$/’,$matches[4]) // domain part does not end with letter or number
){
return FALSE;
} else {
return TRUE;
}
}

Sales is one of the most important business skills. It is showing a customer that you have something of value, and asking them to buy it from you.

Always Be Closing

The the most important part of any sales transaction, whether you are at a job interview or selling a product or service, is asking the customer to buy from you. Sales people call this the "close". If you want to sell, make sure you ask the them to hire you, or buy your product or service. There are so many ways to ask, just make it clear. Doesn’t it make sense that you will get something only if you ask? Most people only think about how they buy things. They see something they want or need, then they pay, and the transaction is complete. They expect the same when they try to sell something. What they don’t see is the behind the scenes things that people or businesses do to sell that product or service to you. They put a cash register right up front and center. This makes it clear that this is not a museum with nice things on display, but a store where you can buy those nice things. This is one of countless ways to ask a customer to buy your product.

Be careful not to "unsell"! Each time you explain a benefit, or other reasons the product you are selling is valuable to a customer, you should ask “is this reason good enough for you to buy my product/hire me?”. If not, ask why! You will be much more successful if you find out why the customer does not want your product… yet. Maybe they don’t have money, in which case you are wasting time. Maybe they just want to know if it has one specific feature, but after telling them about 100 other features you forget that very one they want to know about. When you ask your customer what they want, it is a lot easier to give it to them and get paid.

You probably heard that you will need to sell at some point in your life, whether it is selling products, or selling yourself to potential employers. Improving your sales skills is probably the fastest way to make more money. Your boss wants to keep costs down. Do you think he or she wants to give you a raise? If you just got a raise, then there is small chance the answer is yes. Most likely the reason is that it is part of your contract or they are trying to be a competitive so you don’t leave for another company. Maybe you were smart enough to show them how you are valuable and then asked for the raise. If you did not just get a raise, then that last point is what you should be doing.

I will be compiling information I write on business skills on my website, TheNetGen.com.

I was trying to think of something catchy that you could enjoy every time you came back to read posts on my blog.

I decided that I am going to include one application or cool programming trick in each post.  I will be back soon to edit this post and add my first cool programming trick.

update:

This is a small script I came up with so that a webpage can load ultra fast (no waiting for extra http requests and loading time for images), then you choose which images to display:

show image

-Frank Forte

About  a year ago, I came up with the idea of Signup7.com, where a simple ajax script would fill out forms for you, using the information you maintain on the one website. This is how it would work:

1) You register on Signup7.com

2) you keep your info up to date

3) any website that has the Signup7 script allows you to simply enter your username and password, and your information would automatically fill out their registration form. Those websites can also get up to date information from Signup7 automatically so you don’t have to worry about outdated information on those websites.

After reading Chris Sukornyk’s post about OpenId I started thinking about the idea of using one login across multiple websites again. This idea is backwards!  With websites like twitter, you no longer need to log into multiple websites to send your information across the internet. You post it once, and let those websites do the work of coming to get your information. Twitter allows you to tell people what you are doing. People can track what you are doing from their mobile devices, computers, and probably some other obscure places because twitter makes it easy for programmers to get that information and put it practically anywhere. (Why would you want everyone to know what you are doing??  There’s a lot of reasons, but I’ll save those for a future post. ) Where does RSS come in?  It is a method of presenting content so other programs can grab it and use it. This is the technology that will allow websites like twitter to flourish in the coming years.

Among other ideas I am working on, including www.bandmaking.com to find band members, savemymoney.ca, and countless others, I think I have a new idea that might hit the top of my priority list.  I’ll tell you about it in future posts.

-Frank