BS I SAY!!
I have lately been noticing the biggest crock of crap being foisted on people.
To preface this point, I want everyone to who is trying to make money on the Internet to think a little bit here.
When you started your business on the Internet, why did you do that?
Was it to make extra money?
Replace your job?
Something else?
If you are like everyone else who has started a business, either online or offline, one of the motivators was making money. I hope you have figured out by now that it will not happen overnight or with a push of a button. The bottom line is that there is NO money made until something is SOLD; which means someone has to BUY something you are SELLING.
Let’s talk about selling a minute.
You see people quoting Zig Ziglar quite a bit with his phrase “You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” which is from his book “Secrets of Closing the Sale“. This is probably my most favorite book on sales.
For those who have actually read the book will realize that he is talking about selling the right product to the right people. You, the salesperson, get what you want (money from commissions) and the people get what they want (your product that fills their want or need).
To be a successful salesperson you need to have a few things, 2 of them are:
1. A product that you truly believe will benefit your customers.
2. The firm belief that your product will enhance your customers life and without it they will be worse off.
Zig made his living as a door-to-door pot salesman and he truly believed that his product was the best to be found and would benefit his customers. He also believed that if he didn’t get the customers to buy his product; he was doing them a dis-service.
This is the attitude you must have to be truly successful in the sales game.
Do you have that feeling about your current products?
The fact is that anyone can learn to sell; not everyone will. I have seen it too many times.
There is nothing wrong with being social and you absolutely MUST have a relationship with your customers. This is a fact – people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
People will buy from people they like. People will buy for emotional reasons.
The bottom line is that without people buying and you selling; there is NO money being made. Your customers are being deprived of the benefits of your products.
So, in essence, your ultimate goal is to get the sale. It benefits you and the customer.
This is how sales have been done for years.
So back to the point I originally brought up.
There is a lot of flack about being social lately.
It has being said that being social is more important than making any sales. I even heard that Internet marketers are killing Internet marketing because they are only after the sale.
WHAT CRAP!!
So do you make money chatting and making friends? Possibly. What usually happens is that you will mention what you do in passing. You then get to the point that you feel you will spoil the friendship if you ask them to buy or you spam crap out of the chat. That is the reality.
The truth is being social online is no different than being social offline. If you are a pest in either situation, you will turn people off. Without knowing how to properly sell something, you will be like a bull in a china shop or do nothing more than you are now, just with more people knowing about it.
The biggest problem with the ‘social’ movement is just because you get a Facebook or any of the other social network account and get lots of friends doesn’t mean you will make any money. Just the same as having a lot of friends in the offline world doesn’t mean you will make any money.
Just because everyone knows what you are selling doesn’t mean they will buy it.
The last problem is the facts and figures have not proven these tactics work ‘better’ than the “old ways” (whatever that means) or even at all. People are saying they are making more sales and it is working so much better than what they were doing. These same people have not shown any tracking data or facts to prove this point.
I can quack and say I am a duck – that doesn’t make me a duck does it?
I really encourage you to get “Secrets of Closing the Sale” and really READ it. It will enlighten you about how to sell and what it really means. Look for the story about selling to the old farmer.
I have no problem with being social, I do have a problem with people who are now saying that making money is not important when it has always been the end game for any business.
You have to remember what you got into this business for in the first place. If you don’t want to learn how to sell, that is your decision. If you don’t want to have a product you truly believe in, that is your decision also.
In the end, do you want to look in the mirror next year and wonder why you are doing the same as this year?
