Archives for October 2009

Selling Without Selling

By Christian

David Risley is one of the bloggers I read regularly, and if you’re not completely familiar with his site you should get over there and subscribe right away…if you’re interested in marketing yourself effectively online that is 😉

I run this “make money online” blog from a very different angle than David and most other writers in this space. I’m not a media guy. I’m not a marketing guy, and I’m CERTAINLY not a tech guy. I’m a sales guy.

I’ve spent years in the field selling and training others to make money for themselves. I’ve spent the last three years adapting all that experience to internet marketing, and it’s been a beautiful journey. That’s my angle…direct sales. It’s what I do, and it’s what I teach.

An article David Risley posted a couple days ago speaks to how essential direct sales is to blogging. I highly recommend you check it out. I love seeing a well-known blogger like David Risley talking about this, because it makes me feel like this very important idea is catching on. Unfortunately it has a long way to go before being mainstream though.

Stuff is Changing, but Not the Way You May Think!

I am convinced a fundamental truth is coming out more and more, and it’s essential to pay attention to it…here it is:

The WAY people search for information and buy things is changing. This is a permanent, global change. However, the REASONS people buy things haven’t changed at all…and aren’t going to.

What does this mean to you…the business owner or professional who wants to thrive throughout this economic downturn and all these paradigm shifts that we’re witnessing? It’s simple. It means you need to become a competent sales professional. You’re in sales! You need to become very good at engaging people and selling to them.

Social Media is a Tool, Not an Excuse

As a sales trainer, I’ve trained over a thousand people to go out and make more sales. What do you think is the biggest obstacle I’ve had to overcome?

Lack of sales talent?
Time management?
Teaching others how to “close, close, close”?

It isn’t any of these. Fact is, sales is pretty damn simple. And you know what? It still is. There are absolutely some things to learn, but it’s not rocket science.

The biggest obstacle I’ve had to overcome with my sales training clients is EXCUSES. Here’s the brutal truth: people avoid sales like the plague. Even sales professionals avoid it. It’s called “call reluctance”. They come up with all kinds of creative ways to avoid selling.

In fact, people pride themselves on their aversion to sales! CEO’s talk openly about how they hate to sell. People talk about how they avoid selling as if it’s a good thing. This is such a misplaced mentality, and it shows clearly how misunderstood the art of selling is.

But here’s the rub…more and more people are realizing they HAVE to learn how to sell. Because if you don’t sell, you’re out of business. You have to make sales to stay in business, yet most business people hate sales. See anything wrong with this picture?

Here’s something I hope will offer some comfort: It’s not sales you’re afraid of, it’s BAD sales. Good sales is simple, natural and fun. And high-paying! You have to learn how to do it. It takes training, and it takes practice, but anyone can learn it. People misunderstand what sales is because they’ve spent their whole lives avoiding it…they’ve never learned it.

As Risley mentions in his article (if you haven’t swung out to check it yet, please do), many bloggers out there are still fixated on making money with advertising. Thing is, that works to a certain degree. If you’re getting a lot of traffic (I mean a lotta lot of traffic), you can make some scratch with advertising. But there is SO much more opportunity out there. The bottom line is that not all niches are high traffic niches. So if you’re niche isn’t a high traffic niche, are you S.O.L.? Well, if you aren’t willing to learn direct sales, then yes, you’re S.O.L.

There is No Such Thing as “Selling Without Selling”!

So many gurus and “experts” out there are touting social media as a way to “sell without selling”. Screw that noise. If you don’t sell, you don’t make sales! Let’s call a spade a spade. Sound fair?

“Selling without selling” is another way of saying “making sales on accident”. When it comes to my business, I want to know what the heck I’m doing. I don’t want my success to be accidental, because if it’s accidental, then I can succeed one month and totally suck the next month, and I won’t know why. That’s no way to live.

Here are three steps every business owner or professional needs to make right now:

If you don’t have passion and excitement for what you do, do something else.
Embrace that you’re in sales. Take your excitement and passion for your business and use it to put yourself out there and get good at selling.
Study with a professional who knows how to teach you to sell (ahem), and get good at it. Sales is your lifeblood. Always has been. Always will be.

Highest Paying Hard Work; Lowest Paying Easy Work

We’re entering a new era at full speed, and it’s an era where job security is non-existent, opportunity is huge and risks are high. More and more people are coming online to market their wares. Business is highly competitive. To succeed you have to be good, period.

That’s the world we live in. If you are willing to do the work, you can thrive and live very well here. All you bloggers out there looking for a quick buck or some turnkey “automatic” or “automated” solution to making money…go on and keep looking; let me know how that works out for ya!

Almost 10 years now I’ve been in sales and training/coaching people to make more money. Most people are looking for a way to chillax. Why would you want to kick back and chill when you have a BUSINESS that excites you? You wouldn’t. You’d want to go out a raise hell every single day. That’s why I consider it so vital to absolutely LOVE what you do. Because when you LOVE what you do, you can’t wait to get at it every day. You push hard every day for results, because you just really like what you’re doing. That’s where you want to be. That’s where you have to be!

I read in a book years ago that sales is “the highest paying hard work and the lowest paying easy work”. I’m pretty sure it was Brian Tracy who wrote that, but I’m not positive. But it’s true.

I’ve known sales people (in all different kinds of fields) that are barely getting by, and I’ve known sales people who make an absolute killing. What’s the difference? I know many people are still convinced that successful sales professionals have a particular sleazy charm that just comes naturally to them, and in order to be good at sales you need to be born with the “shyster gene”. But it’s not true. First of all, selling is not sleazy…at all, when it’s done well. Second, sales can be learned. And it can be taught. That’s what I do.

The difference is not some innate talent or ability. The highly-paid, successful sales professionals of the world all employ an ancient and proven technique that works every time. They work their tail off, and they love every minute of it!

There is Stuff to Learn

So, quick recap:

The way people buy things is changing, but the reasons people buy things are NOT changing. You need to learn to engage people and sell to them.
Social media (blogging, Facebook, Twitter, etc) is a tool for selling. Don’t use it as an excuse for avoiding sales. It’s not “selling without selling”. It’s selling.
Embrace that you’re in sales. Study sales. There are a million books. Plus, subscribe to Next Level Blogger.
Make sure you’re in a field you love and that excites you.
Get coaching.
Work hard, every day.

Sales comes naturally to very few people, but it can be learned by anyone. It is the art of engaging people on a personal level and helping them to solve a problem. When done well, it is a invaluable service to others.

Of course when used poorly or maliciously, sales is the same as any other powerful weapon. It can be used for both good and evil. It is the evil use of sales that everyone fears and wants to avoid. The solution is simple. Don’t be evil. If you’re not evil, then learning to sell will not make you evil. It will just enable you to help you customers on a much deeper and more meaningful level. It will also make you rich. Nice secondary benefit, no?

At the end of the day, sales is nothing to be scared of. It is simply a skill set you learn. You learn it through training, study and practice. And when you learn it, it makes your income and livelihood impervious to any changes in the economy. A good thing!

How do you feel about selling? Do you avoid it? Does it scare you? Do you think I’m full of it and that learning to sell is not necessary? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

10 Powerful Tips for Increasing Your Blog’s Performance and Income

By Christian

So I have been wanting to get this report out to you for a while, and it’s finally complete! It’s called “10 Powerful Tips for Increasing Your Blog’s Performance and Income”. Pretty straightforward I think 😉

There are a number of elements that go into creating a successful blog marketing campaign. Your blog design, your offerings, your email subscriber list, your social media activity…these are all links in the chain. And as we know, any chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link.

This report targets what I consider to be some of the most important links in the chain. Especially for anyone beginning in blogging or social media marketing for their small business, this report will get you started off on the right foot.

This report is about getting started off strong. Instead of learning the basics the hard way, this information will break you straight through to the next level…getting actual results!

Want to know something cool? It’s free 🙂
Sign up here and get it now!

If you’d like a peek inside, check this following list. It’s taken directly from the table of contents, so you can see a lot of the topics covered. If anything piques your interest, then clearly this report can be of some value to you:

Live and Die by the Value of Your List
Power Content Tips
How to Get Your Visitors to Comment
How to Get Your Visitors to Subscribe
How to Get Your Visitors to Keep Reading and Stay on Your Site
How to Get Your Visitors to Share Your Content with Their Friends
Consistency is Essential
Internet Business is a People Business
A Balanced Approach to Using Plugins
How Many Plugins is Too Many?
The Value of Coaching

If you want to knock out a big chunk of the learning curve and start getting results with your blogging as quickly as possible, sign up and get this report today for free 🙂

How to Grow Your Blogging Business Exponentially

By Christian

There is a fundamental sales principle that most business owners do not practice. Most of us have heard of it, but few of us actually practice it. I’m honestly not sure why, but it’s true…it’s costly and time consuming to earn new business, yet there’s a very powerful way to grow our business that’s free…that most of us will never use! It’s called asking for referrals.

Are you asking your existing customers to refer their friends, families, coworkers and colleagues to you? If not, you are not alone. Most business owners and sales people fail to do this or even consider it. But why wouldn’t you?

This principle is something I see applied rarely online. The masters do it, but few others even think about it. It’s one thing to make a sale. It’s a whole next level thing to tap into that customer’s entire base of friends as well. Your paying customers should not be on the same list as your prospects (the people who have yet to buy from you). They should be treated differently, because they ARE different!

Prospects and Customers are Not the Same, and They Should Not be Treated the Same!

If someone has purchased from you, they have entered the fold. They are on a new level with you and your business, and they should be treated as such. They are easier to sell to in the future, because they are already warmed up to you, and it is also reasonable for you to ask them to refer you to their friends and coworkers. If they’ve found real value in working with you, many people will gladly tell their friends about you.

Here are two important things to consider:

Deliberately seeking referrals is one of the most cost effective ways of significantly building your business online, and few people even try to do it.
If you have a customer list of even just a few hundred people, you REALLY have a customer list of many thousands…if you know how to work referrals.

Why Referrals Are So Valuable

A contact is a contact, correct? I’d argue no. Not all contacts are created equal. People that come into your database as a result of a referral are much more valuable for a few significant reasons. Consider these:

With a referral customer, there is more trust right from the start, because they have contacted you through a friend. This usually means they are a very qualified potential customer. It usually means they are very close to buying as well.
The cost of getting a referral is zero, which means your net earnings are almost always higher with a referral lead.
A referral provides an opportunity to improve your relationship with your existing customer. It’s valuable when someone buys from you. When someone buys from you, they are deciding to trust you. But consider what it means when someone trusts you enough to refer their friends to you. A referral is MORE valuable than a sale when it comes to the relationship you have with your customer!
Referral leads, when treated like the gold they are, are often more likely to bring you referrals of their own, continuing the cycle of growth.

When your existing customers send their friends and colleagues your way, it’s essential to treat them well, as you would all your customers, but it’s also essential to reward the customer for sending you the business. This will encourage them to send you more business in the future of course, but it will also strengthen the relationship you already have, making it that much more likely you can continue to help that customer in the future.

Here are some steps you can implement to ensure you’re taking advantage of this fundamental principle:

Deliberately ask your existing customers for referrals. “Who do you know that can also benefit from …(whatever it is you’re selling)?”
Make sharing your content easy, and encourage your prospects and customers to spread your emails, ebooks, blog posts, etc around to their peers.
When you get a new prospect, make it a matter of course to find out how they found you. Did they find your site and subscribe through search, through a link, or were they recommended by a friend? It’s good to know where your subscribers and customers came from!
If someone came to you through a friend, make a reasonable attempt to find out who it was that referred you. Send a thank you note or even a special gift to someone who sends you referrals. Of course this just isn’t ever going to be something you can successfully accomplish 100% of the time, but it’s important to do whenever you can. People who send you business should be acknowledged!
Don’t just ask for referrals once. Ask repeatedly, when the time is appropriate. When someone buys something from you. When you answer someone’s question, when you follow up after a consultation, etc…there are a lot of appropriate opportunities to ask your customers for referrals.

It’s not news that everyone in the world is separated by only a few levels of contact. Referrals are your quickest, most effective, most powerful and most personal way of growing your business. Do right by just one person, and you have done right by that person’s entire network. Tactfully tap into that network over time, and you have a shot at doing right by the whole world.

Trust me, there’s more business out there than you could possibly ever handle! It’s just a matter of reaching out and grabbing it. Should you hammer all your prospects and customers everyday? Of course not. But as you know, I’m focused on the human element of marketing online. Keeping a personal dialog going with your customers, as you should, naturally leads to you getting referral business from them over time.

Here’s the thing, if you’re good at what you do, you’re going to get referral business whether you’re aware of it or not. As with all things in business, I’m a big fan of intentionally harnessing these things and deliberately addressing them. Instead of just hoping your business works out and grows simply because you’re so good, be aware of the fact that referral business is a huge factor in the success of most any business. And with that in mind, take steps to deliberately encourage it! Don’t just leave it up to chance 🙂

Selling on Your Blog Ain’t Hard (The Art of Asking for the Order)

By Christian

Asking for the order is a key sales principle. In fact, it’s a key life principle! If you don’t ask, you don’t get! This can often come off as a “duh” kind of statement. If you want someone to buy from you, you should probably ASK them to buy from you! Agreed?

But year after year, study after study show that salespeople will often perform an entire sales presentation and fail to ask for the order at the end. Bottom line: it’s scary for many of us to ask people to buy something. So we leave them to figure it out for themselves. We do this in the name of politeness, but really we do it out of fear. As I probably don’t even need to tell you…it rarely produces the desired result.

Internet marketers and bloggers are big culprits of this as well, not just sales people in a classic, traditional sense. Most often, as much as I hate to say it, bloggers. So many bloggers want to make money yet fail to ever ask for it. They don’t want to be pushy. It’s understandable. But the sentiment is misplaced. I’ll explain in a sec…

First, it’s important to understand that asking for the order goes for making sales but also for many other things as well.

Do you want your readers to comment your posts?
Do you want people to tweet out your articles…
Link to your site?
Download your free ebook?

Tell your readers what you want. Ask for the order. If you don’t, you’re expecting them to telepathically figure out what you want, and well frankly…why should they go through the trouble? If you want to get good results as often as possible…make it easy for them!

Where to Get Confidence to Ask for the Order

Asking for what you want requires confidence. Confidence comes from three places:

Genuine Value
Technique
Practice

I’ve trained over a thousand sales people, and I can report that very few people are good at sales starting out. I sure wasn’t. Selling simply does not come naturally to most people. It is a skill set you acquire through hard work and practice. One thing about sales is very cool. If you follow the rules, you get the results, period.

Employ these three principles, and you’ll get the results you’re looking for!

Genuine Value

Genuine value is the element I mention first, because it’s the foundation. If you don’t create genuine value for your readers, everything else is a farce. There’s a difference between selling via confidence and simply trying to make money.

Selling is not the act of extracting money from people’s wallets. Selling is the act of freely and voluntarily exchanging real value. Give your reader something very valuable, and then they reciprocate. It’s a win-win. It all starts with value. If you skip this part, the exchange is empty, and you won’t be in this business for long.

This is why I mentioned earlier that the fear of being pushy is misplaced. It’s pushy to try to get something for nothing. It’s pushy to expect someone to pay for something they don’t need. It’s pushy to pressure someone to do something that’s not in their best interest. You’re not doing anything of this sort.

What you’re doing is providing highly valuable information to people who have specifically sought you out, because they want what you’re offering. And as it happens, you’re good at what you do, and you’d like to be able to keep doing it. In order for that to happen, you simply need to get results. It’s fair and necessary to ask for what you want. And your readers aren’t going to know unless you tell them what that is.

How do you create genuine value for your readers? Be good at what you do! Study your business like a mad man. Write quality, helpful content, put out good stuff. That’s the first step.

It’s important to understand that this step doesn’t work all by itself. It’s just step one of three. Many bloggers put out awesome content and still fail to make money or get results. It’s not just about genuine value, but it’s a necessary first step.

Technique

Technique is simply a matter of making sure you’re very clear on what results you need and expect from your blog, and then systematically going through to make sure every element of your site, from the opt in boxes you use to the way you manage your email marketing, is arranged in such a way that it is clear to your readers what you’re offering and what you want them to do.

There are a number of ways to ask for what you want when it comes to managing a blog. As I mentioned before, it’s not just a matter of selling products when it comes to blogging. You want people to comment on your posts, subscribe to your email list, buy your affiliate products, etc. There are likely a number of actions you want your readers to take. It’s important to ask! Try these specific steps. They are all ways of asking, and getting:

Put a line in your theme so it displays at the end of every post, asking visitors to comment.
Make sure you have 2-3 opt in boxes per page. Your opt in box should be visible from anywhere on your site.
Use a pop-up to build email subscriptions as well
Use a free gift to further entice people to subscribe
Your outgoing email messages should give valuable information and offer interaction with your subscribers, but they should also regularly offer something for sale

Use a plugin like TweetThis that makes it easy for people to share your content with others, and make sure to remind people on occasion…”Hey, if you like this post, please retweet it…” you get the idea.

Clearly, different blogs have different goals, but this list is a start. The idea is to have your goals in order, and then simply make sure your site and the way you manage it is conducive to getting the results you want.

Practice

This element is crucial as well. The fact is that when it comes to business blogging, turning your readers into advocates, customers and clients is an ongoing process. The more you practice the better you get.

I’m surprised sometimes at how often someone will ask me why they’re not making money from their blog when, with all due respect, all they’ve done is put up a dozen posts or so and install an Adsense module. Maybe a couple affiliate links. That will make you some cash…if you’re getting several thousand visitors a day. Short of that, you’re going to need to be more aggressive and tactful in your approach.

Think of your blog as a small retail shop. You’re not WalMart. WalMart puts a bunch of stuff up on it’s shelves, sells everything really cheap and then brings in massive amounts of people through. That creates sales. You’re not WalMart, so don’t follow their business model!

What happens in a small retail shop? There are fewer items for sale, and the prices are higher. But things are also very clean. There is character, and when you walk in, a friendly person walks up, smiles and warmly says “Hi! How can I help you?” Personal service. One-on-one engagement. Details…these things matter. And they also add up to you being able to make a fine living off any niche you want. But you gotta ask for the order 🙂

The Breakdown

Here’s the bottom line: sales is simple. It’s hard work getting results on a day-to-day basis. But the process is not hard to understand. It’s just a lot of work 🙂 It’s why you’ve got guys like Gary Vaynerchuk yelling at us to get our hustle on. You have to believe in what you’re doing. And you have to LOVE what you’re doing, because to build a small business that makes bank…is a lot of hard work. No magical web design, no plugin, no kick ass turnkey business opportunity is going to save you from that reality.

That said, if you’re willing to really work it, there is massive opportunity out there! And the fundamentals of sales are steadfast. They are simple, and they remain simple.

If you’re not getting results from your site…there is something broken in your implementation of the steps I just outlined. You’re either not asking for what you want, you’re not asking often enough or *gasp* you’re not creating genuine value for your readers. One way or another, your fortune lies locked behind door one, two or three! All you gotta do is go figure out which one and smash down the door!

How to Obtain World Domination in 5 Simple Steps

By Christian

If world domination is your goal, as it is mine, you need to be on track. You need to be a machine. You need to be a champion. Being a champion is a struggle for everyone, even champions! There is no easy victory when you’re at the top of the mount.

It’s a long way to the top, if you want to rock n roll. –Bon Scott

But is it worth it? Is success worth the effort and sacrifice? Most people decide that it is not.

If you decide not to decide, you still have made a choice. –Geddy Lee

I get points for gratuitous rock references, right? 🙂

A Word on What Success is, and What it is Not

Success is not a state, nor is it an achievement. It is not an acquisition. And it certainly is not a Ferrari or a Cribs house. It is a decision. This is what makes success deceptively simple, yet elusive. It is a decision made daily, hourly, by the minute. By the second. The perception of success, importantly, is relative.

The people we perceive to be successful are simply those people who have made the decision to succeed more often than most. We ALL have the power; some of us just choose to exercise that power more often.

A Word on Failure

Successful people fail as much or more often than anyone else. But they choose to blow right through their failures and not slow down. They succeed because they decide to do so, despite what happens. Decisions have the ability to do that. They give us focus. The decisions we make come about in an instant. And we have thousands of opportunities daily…to be a success.

Success and How it Relates to Achieving World Domination

When you make the decision to be successful…the world and any obstacle it can throw at you becomes nothing but a din…mere background noise. At that moment, everything in the world serves only to either advance your mission or your education. Every single thing that happens to you, fuels you onward. You no longer have to worry about success, because it is yours…the world works for you. In that moment, the world is officially your bitch.

That, my friends, is world domination!

A word of caution: do not mistake half-hearted wishes as decisions. If you say something like “Yeah, that would be pretty cool if I could make my blog successful” this is NOT a decision to succeed. It is merely a wish. A wish is not a decision. It is not even related. A wish is not even a distant cousin of the decision. A decision is when you say “I’m going to do this, period” End of sentence. That’s it. Notice how committed it is. There are no conditions. There are no ifs ands or buts. Say it with me now…“I’m going to do this, period.” There is power in there you cannot measure. The good news is that you don’t HAVE to measure it…all you need to do is ride the wave!

Failure is Not the Opposite of Success

Do you fear failure? You needn’t. Failure is merely a result. It is a static event. It is an outcome. Successful people are not concerned with any result or event or outcome that is not in alignment with their goals. That focus comes about as the result of a decision that is made over and over again. Daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. Success is decision. Remember when you said “I’m going to do this, period”? You can’t just say it once…you have to KEEP saying it. And you have to mean it. You have to stay on task. Failure and success are simply not related to each other.

How to Obtain World Domination in 5 Simple Steps

5 questions, when asked of yourself consistently throughout each day, can transform your business and enable you to grow to any level!

Take your business, your blog, your sales, your income to the next level by asking yourself these 5 simple questions. Introspection, brutal honesty and follow through are required! Obviously, you cannot just ask the questions. You need to answer them and work aggressively to improve.

Running through these questions will keep you on task. Remember, success is a decision you make moment by moment. And you do not just want one moment of success! You want an uninterrupted succession of them! You want to stay on the wave. Most people have ridden the wave for a moment or two before, but they allowed themselves to get distracted, and they wiped out. They let their power get away from them. This doesn’t mean they weren’t successful. They were. They simply got off the wave…and failed to get back on.

In the moment you decide to succeed, success is yours…wholly and completely. But if in 5 minutes you steer in a different direction, you get off course. Use these questions to stay on course.

What am I doing right now?
If I do what I am doing right now repeatedly, daily, with intensity, for 5 years, what will be the net result?
Is the net result in alignment with my goals?
What can I do instead that will create a better or larger net result?
Who can do this better than me?

The Fantastically Simple Principles of Achieving World Domination

There are fantastically simple principles hidden here. The first is that in order to start accomplishing things on a larger scale, you need to make larger decisions. Base fewer of your decisions on immediate concerns and more of your decisions on long term results.

Instead of asking yourself “How can I get through this day?” or “How can I get this problem off my plate right now?” (these are decisions that get you off course), put things in a long term framework. “How is this consequential to my long term plan?” You’ll be amazed at how much time we spend on things that literally have little or no long term consequence at all!

If we spend our lives tending to details that don’t ultimately matter, what do you think the net result will be? World domination? I don’t think so!

The second principle is simple. Letting go of the details empowers you to take things to the next level. #5 speaks to this directly. As business owners, we often try to do everything because we think no one can do it as well as us. The fact is that there are likely a LOT of people who can do things as well as you, and there are likely a few people who can do things BETTER than you. An ego check is essential now and then. Letting go of the need to do everything is mandatory if you hope to be able to focus on anything of consequence.

When you tend to every single detail yourself, there is no time to step back and focus. Staying on task, staying focused is impossible, and that is when success takes a back seat to the minutia of the day. That’s when you lose your power.

Step back, focus, let go, and take over the world!