The bottom line is that in any business a sale has to be made and for that sale to be made we need to have people to sell to. Sorry for being all obvious but being online we can get caught in the trap of ‘build it and they will come’, so let me give you some tips on how you can generate more sales by developing the prospecting attitude online.
1. Develope a prospecting mind.
In sales training speak it is called the ‘ABPs’ (Always Be Prospecting). This doesn’t mean boring everyone on the face on the planet about what you do, but it means taking every opportunity to introduce your products or services. These are some ideas, some obvious, some no so.
-Email signature - does it carry your web address and a brief ‘lift pitch’ of what you do?
-Forum signatures – basic but missing in a lot of cases I have seen.
-Do you have business cards? Sooooo ‘old fashioned’ right? Wrong.. It amuses me how many people introduce themselves by saying ‘I work online’ and then never give me a card or something to allow me to follow up.
-URL on your car – personal preference and I don’t do this anymore, but I used to have it on the back of a Lotus Esprit… it gained a lot of prospects.
2. Have a real interest in others
I mean a genuine interest. On the blog I try to respond to every email, and every comment. I look at every site and if it is something I am interested in or would like to know more about I get in touch. It has become more difficult as the blog’s popularity has grown, but I do make the effort. I really do enjoy hearing from people who read the blog. Some of the most successful bloggers I follow, like Yaro Starak, Tyrone Shum and Michael Dunlop are highly successful, hugely busy but still manage to maintain that personal feel in their communications with their readers…. Coincidence or is that why they earn the big bucks?
3. Keep a look out for opportunities at all times.
Obvioulsy I blog on sales and being an entrepreneur. I cannot help but look at billboards, at adverts, at newspaper articles and wonder how I could introduce my blog or my services to the people who placed those ads. Don’t switch off just because you are not surfing the web.
-Network with other blogger contacts. I know, I know, this is soooo obvious, but lots of people want to get the top bloggers to network with, and trying does no harm, but you are more likely to get a yes from someone who is at your level.. (hint, hint.. to anyone who would like to network with this blog)
-Try something different than just online businesses. What about your Chamber of Commerce, what about the professional body that oversees the kind of things you blog about (if there is one), what about contacting offline sales people who visit the kind of clients you sell to… is there some kind of reciprocal deal you could, what about your local community, anything you can do there? The idea is to try and think out of the box.
-Cross polenate. Right now (I probably shouldn’t say this but what the Hell, you took the time to read this post, right?) I am looking at a cross polenation drive. For example, I write about entrepeneurship and sales, makes sense for me to contact sites writing about starting up a new business, or financing or business, or business, sales etc.. the list is almost endless. I am not looking for advertising deals, more joint ventures, cross posts etc… My blog is not in competition with these sites, it is complimentary so the hit rate should be fairly high. I am sure that whatever you blog about there are some cross polenation opportunities.
-What can you do to help? Think about this… what way does your blog or service do to help others? That is the fundemental question. Zig Ziglar famously says “You can get everything in life you want, if you just help enough other people get what they want”. I have been focusing on this phrase to sharpen up this blog.
4. Refferals
I am working on this one. When I was in offline sales I did quite well from refferals. I had a whole picth worked out at the end of my presentation when I had made a sale about referring me to others. There is no better lead.. ever.. than a refferal. Take a look at you blog or online business and see how you can work this into your systems so that when you make a sale it is just the start of the traffic, I know I am.
The four above are the basics if we are talking about prospecting. It would be a natural thing for an offline sales person to do but sometimes when looking at our online businesses we do not pay any heed to these kind of basic systems.
A lot of the people I talk to are not really interested if it is not commenting on blogs, SEO, some new system that ‘guarantees loads of traffic’ etc.. Closing your mind to different ways of marketing is like the salesman who only cold calls… they will have some success but you can’t really build a long term business on it.
Let me know if you have any additions to this list in the comments.
Regards
David
@OneLifeNoFear
Davids Blog
