Recommended Suppliers
Please note that the only suppliers listed here are those that we have personally tested and used. We may not use them all currently because some are more appropriate than others at different stages of business growth, but you can be assured that we are familiar and can personally vouch for all of them. We have gone through a lot of trial and error before finalizing this list — so feel free to benefit from our mistakes.
Click on any of the images or links below for more information about each company.
Pipedrive is by far the best sales tool we’ve tried. It helps us open the doors to more deals, and track our progress each step of the way until they close. We’d even say that Pipedrive makes sales fun! It was developed by the business development team in a training company, so they really, really understand the way that trainers, consultants, speakers, coaches and other service professionals need to work in order to build sales. And build sales it does… try it.
Professional Cart Solutions (also known as 1shoppingcart), is a comprehensive shopping cart with autoresponders, newsletter capability and ad tracking. Frankly, it’s the industry standard used by almost everyone I know in this industry. We used to mess with separate service providers for newsletters, merchant gateways and autoresponders, but this makes the whole e-commerce thing much, much easier (and more profitable).
We use merchants-accounts.ca for all our credit card processing. They are much, much more affordable than any other service we have looked at — and believe me, we have looked at a lot! Don’t let the .ca fool you. They work with companies worldwide who are interested in credit card processing in any currency, and in any country, through PSIGate.
PayPal for Business is an excellent starting point if you are new to ecommerce. This is by far the lowest cost option if you are new to ecommerce and set-up is incredibly easy. We started with PayPal for Business and it served our needs well for our first year. Once we upgraded to a more professional shopping cart, we continued to offer PayPal to those customers who prefer to pay with it.
ICD Soft is one place we recommend for domain registration and website/email hosting. This is where we have our sites, and we’re very happy with them. With server locations in the US and Hong Kong, they offer extremely good reliability and superb support. Oh, and the prices are unbelievably low!
GoDaddy is our other choice for domain registration. Great prices, easy to use.
HostGator is another host that we recommend, particularly because their cpanel (control panel) makes working with WordPress quick and easy.
We use eSpeakers to help us with almost all of our back-office administration. Even our online assistant who handles initial contacts for keynote bookings comes courtesy of eSpeakers. Admittedly, we are raving fans of this service. eSpeakers is the first complete business management system designed for professional speakers by professional speakers. Find out how eSpeakers can manage every aspect of your speaking business—and make you look as competent and polished behind the scenes as you do standing in front of an audience.
Customer testimonials are highly influential with prospects making buying decisions. In fact, they are by far your prospect’s most trusted source of information. Unfortunately, collecting and using testimonials is time consuming and complex, so most don’t tap the full potential of this critical sales tool! Testimonial Director eliminates these barriers, allowing you to take full advantage of your satisfied customers – your secret sales force. Dramatically increase your sales while freeing your time with automatic collection, management and publication of targeted testimonials!
Tungle.Me gives our members the capability to set and schedule their ‘consoaching’ sessions. This completely eliminates the hassle of coordinating timeslots and availabilities. No phone calls, no missed appointments, no worries. In other words, the value of this little service is huge — and their basic plan is completely free!
WishList Member is a powerful membership script that can turn any WordPress blog into a full blown membership site. The best part is, it’s easy to use. Just unzip, upload and within minutes you can have your own membership site up and running.
Mini FAQ
Q. Do you earn a commission if I use any of these services?
A. In most cases, we earn an affiliate fee for referring you to one of these people and businesses. The affiliate fee is small enough not to cloud our judgment or recommendation, yet significant enough for us to encourage you to use these services by clicking on the links we provide here.
Q. I have a question not answered here — what should I do?
A. We welcome all questions, no matter how frequently or infrequently they get asked. Simply contact us and we’ll get back to you right away!
