THE
IRONIES OF SELLING
by: Cary Christian
Do you ever spend any time thinking about the ironies of life? You know,
situations like the following:
A man goes to the bank to get a loan. However, his credit has been damaged
due to some unfortunate circumstances so the bank turns him down. He could
put his life back in order and clean up his credit if he got the loan, and
without it, he might find himself ruined. If he didn't need the money, the
bank would give him the loan. Because he needs it, he can't get it.
Marketing on the Internet represents a similar type of irony. Quite often,
the more you try to sell, the less you sell. Now this is not true in all
cases because you have to sell at some point in the process. But if you try
to sell too early, it won't happen!
THE ART OF PRESELLING
If your business consists of selling as an affiliate you may be facing this
marketing irony on a daily basis. In a typical affiliate relationship, you
have a website to promote. Normally it is a sales oriented website and all
affiliates are directing traffic to this same site.
This works well for the company that owns the affiliate program. They get
the traffic, they get the customer information, if a mailing list is built,
it is built to their benefit, and of course, they're getting large profits
as a result of all the affiliate activity.
It does not work so well for you. You become just another fish in a very
large ocean. Carving out your fair share of sales is a tough proposition at
best, and at worst, a totally lost cause.
The answer for you is preselling. It is the only way to set yourself apart
from the crowd and gain some control over your end of the business. How do
you presell?
First of all, you must have your own website. I don't know how many of you
have one, but if you're serious about making any money online, you simply
cannot do without it. If you're still struggling to try to make it without a
site, give it up and get over to
http://buildit.sitesell.com/peaksbc.html where you can get the
whole package, including your site, your domain name, search engine
positioning, and everything else you need for one very reasonable price.
Now, use your new site to to presell your opportunities. Don't send visitors
to the affiliate site. Send them to yours. Tell them about your opportunity
in your own words. Sweeten the deal for them if they buy through you. Sign
them up to YOUR mailing list, not the affiliate site's list. Take
control of the sales process.
Make your site interesting enough for your visitors to bookmark your site
and come back to you. Incorporate an autoresponder so you can market to them
after the visit. When they're ready to buy you'll pass them through to the
affiliate site, but not before you've made them YOUR customer.
This is not a difficult process to put in place and run. But surprisingly,
few affiliates follow through and do it. If you will commit to this process
and work at it to do it right, you will eventually find yourself in that
five percent of affiliates who actually make a living online. It's as simple
as that.
Copyright (c) 2002 |
