Have you washed your hands? Good, then let us begin:

Armed with 500 toilet tissues and two new Uzi automatic rifles you rushed out and bought from Walmart, you are ready to stay at home and fend off the Zombie plague on our doorstop.

Or maybe you have just switched off the television and carried on like normal people with the HG Wells attitude that we humans have fought these viruses since the beginning of time and now have earned our right to walk freely on Earth’s green grass.

Whatever your attitude, the economy must go on if we are to survive. If we subsequently defeat the zombies but have absolutely nothing to go back to, well that is worse. So more and more people are finding themselves in unfamiliar territory:

Finding new business working from home

Being sent home to work autonomously is very alien to many people and takes some getting used to. The most important thing is finding self-motivation as many people need a boss or senior employees to make you do what you need to do.

There are a few other aspects that you need to get your head around. How many of you are staring at a blank screen wondering what to do next? If your work is purely administrative then you can just get on with it whilst stroking your cat, or dealing with the kids sent home from school who are climbing the walls. But, if you have a business like the 6,000 user added members of leads2biz.net ,well you guys have got to sell stuff, and this blog post is for you!

I know right, the horror of the sale! The sordid subject of coin! Can we just make something and leave sleazy sales people to do this?

See our blog on effective sales skills

Er… no!  Let us start with some effective strategies, even though everyone you know has tried them and failed:

Email marketing

Here is where people who are in business for the longer term will tell you the money is in your list. The list you fought so hard to get, the subscribers to your weekly ramblings that brand you as the thought leader in your business genre sharing all your knowledge to your community, pouring out your heart and passion in your commercial field with tips and tricks each week that educate your subscriber to what works and what does not. This is reciprocal marketing and is quite effective, but only in the long run. So you need time.

Time to create a newsletter subscribe box on your website and at the bottom of your posts, offering free e-books and other free items to garner a list of targeted potential buyers you can correspond with who eventually, when they are ready to buy, automatically think of you.

The math never lies! Let’s say you sell Insurance and your commission of a whole of life policy is $1000

Let us say you have 1,000 people who are double opted in (as is the law) and get your newsletters direct into their inboxes each time and never go to spam.

Industry averages tell us that 20% will open the newsletter (Any standard platform can tell you this.)

So, from 200, 3% will click links you created leading back to what you sell. 

Which means that 6 people have now been redirected to your landing page on your website that is dynamic and sells well. Then if 1/3 buy, you have 2 sales!

Multiply this by one newsletter a week= 8 sales a month

8,000 USD from newsletters! Not bad.

But, here is the kicker:

It takes years to develop a list.

The only other work around is buying a list in, and these can be effective if you know the law and how to use lists.

You send an introduction email to the whole list being upfront about who you are and what you want to send to them and ask them to subscribe or unsubscribe. The industry averages again are dependent on how good and relevant the emails are and how old the list is you should see around 8% sign up rate.

Say from a database of 20,000 CEO’s and Executives, that can be around 1600 people whom you could not reach before, and by using traditional website subscriber boxes and free teasers to get sign ups could take up to 5 years!

I have such an up to date list of decision makers by the way. Well I am not a charity! Just contact me (top right tab on this page) for samples and it’s not the leads4biz.net members before you ask!!

Phone calls v emails or messages

Now I am a great believer of messages over phone calls, because you can actually get a lot more done in a quicker time. I often have 20 message boxes open chatting to 20 people at the same time; you cannot get that done over the phone! This method is also a lot cheaper.

Some of the top business gurus now are actually putting a price on a physical meeting between you and a potential client, going to the extreme of, “If it is not going to earn me sufficient cash, then I am not going to attend”. This harks back to my sales training when I had to learn to be tough and ask the question before any meeting:

“Mr. Jones, your time and mine is our most valuable asset, so may I ask you, “if you see a product that fits your purposes and the price is acceptable do you see any reason why we cannot fill in the order paperwork on the day?”

It is basically asking them is it worth me coming. What is the worst they can say? Yes or no!  Both ways is a result and you can get on with your life as there’s nothing worse in sales than a hung client who you do not know what is happening and they start avoiding your messages.

Any salesperson will tell you yes or no to the sale (closing questions,- remember ABC), that is the hardest answer to get out of any potential client. You have to get that answer out of them whilst you are there, or it loses its power the second you capitulate and walk out their office.

So a physical meeting should always be only to get business, never a chit chat! Messages and emails can cut out so much small talk that I particularly hate, as it is so disingenuous.

There are many who love the phone and that 45 minute call often gets nothing done for you but let’s your caller tell you all about their tortoise that died over the weekend, or how the wife is never coming back. You are in business you are not a psychiatrist! And shrinks get paid a lot to listen to other people’s problems, not you!

I was taught to develop rapport and find common ground, but as sales people what we misunderstood so often is that the buyer feels the same; they know you are just being nice to get the order. Keep rapport down to common ground as in sharing business grievances, commercial pain, the traffic etc.

Message selling needs to be done well, and there is a whole science of what works and what does not. For example straight after a LinkedIn connection approves you don’t hit them with a sales pitch that is akin to cold calls and even less effective. You can however sell subliminally though.

It is about choice. Always offer a few alternatives, and ask them for advice or ask which the best is in their eyes. Great for an eye care business to show the same glasses on a model in different colours but you are not selling; if they decide to buy it was their choice! Giving a choice takes away the ‘I need a sale’ aspect.

Blogging

You are reading this right? Have I sold to you yet? Did you miss the subliminal close?

Blogging is reciprocal marketing, as in give first and the world will love you. 

When my first babies were born in hospital in the mid 1990’s it was such a blessed affair, and a little thing that businesses did that made it that bit more special for us new parents was that you were given a FREE baby bag full of taster products.

I still remember the Sudocreme, (nappy rash cream) the Nappies (Diapers) and a variety of little samples donated by the businesses in the baby products arena. Well, I still use many of those products today. What a genius move; give first!

So through blog posts you can give away tips and tricks that endear you to your target market.

It again takes time (bet you hate me now!) and if you are just starting your website you may have written a dynamite blog article with the succinct answers to the universe but no one is going to see it because everyone (well the 2% of us blog consistently and effectively to wide audiences) is doing it now, and Google loves them first and unless they die and stop writing you have a snowballs’ chance in hell of your blog posts being worthwhile unless:

Do you know someone with a website that has good traffic and a decent social media reach to share your blog to? For example, publish post a blog on leads4biz.net and be in front of 30,000 mainly B2B people and then a further 300,000 on social media at the minimal cost of 2,000 THB. It is time v. money and is a valuable tool in your sales and marketing arsenal, especially during the tough climate of 2020.

I am also available for digital marketing consultancy click contact us on the site.

Here is to keeping your head whilst all others are losing theirs and work from home effectively!

Alan

See more at my Quora page