Our guest today thinks online marketers are taking businesses off on a wrong path. And we discuss how you can correct your course. It’s never too late.
Today’s guest is Bill Troy. He is soon releasing a book called, Click Sand: How the Pitchmen of Online Marketing Suck You In and Ruin Your Business.
Bill is an Inc 500 CEO and running a business is his expertise, especially when it comes to marketing.
Are Tools Good or Bad?
The tools are neither good nor evil. They are just tools. The problem is the people selling them to you. They sell them as though it solves every problem you have.
Problem is that most people doing online marketing start with a tool, instead of starting what you need to accomplish. Then you are led astray. You start to change your business to fit the tool instead of making sure you pick the tool after you know how your business works.
3 Top Things that Work in Online Marketing
1. Understand what the other person on the other side needs from you. The more this leans toward the relationship side of things, and not just an anonymous transaction, that where you have to be careful with a lot of this online stuff. Think about what they need. Then build it around that.
2. Rather than using LinkedIn to strip mine titles and get a list of 3,000 people to send to, use LinkedIn to figure out what that prospect is into, what non profits they support, their education, etc.
3. Define what exactly the relationship is. A relationship is when they respond to you and you interact. Then build a process to fit that and do it regularly and consistently.
What Do You Do When You Want to Scale Your Business?
1. Scale up by getting bigger customers versus smaller customers.
Either do more and more of the same activity efficiently or try to get bigger customers you can invest in. Most businesses look at smaller deals where they could go faster. And the techniques they use blow off large customers. They end up chasing small clients all the time.
2. Have both selling process and relationship process.
Sometimes, it’s not the right time to sell because it’s time to build a relationship. And if you have a client that needs that, put a process in place to build those relationships. And when it’s time to sell, then sell. These two things are not the same thing.
How to Become More Effective as a Seller:
1. Think of relationships in terms of people, not just companies.
- Sellers tend to think of companies or brands, not individual people.
- Sellers often forget there are people involved behind their client companies.
2.Follow up with your clients.
When you look at what really works, sometimes it’s not the thing that’s the most efficient, but it’s the thing that’s most effective.
3. Have a process and test it if it works for your industry.
- Just start with some system or process that is repeatable and consistent.
- A process could be as simple as remembering to do something nice for someone on a day that’s important to them.
- So just put something in your CRM to remind you why you’re doing it and to keep track of those activities.
- A system basically involves repeating it and consistently doing it.
Bill’s Major Takeaway:
Start watching what people do with you, what kind of emails come into your inbox today, and what kinds of messages do you see that make you want to buy from them. Now that you see what works for you, are you doing this for other people?
There is this sense of denial in the sales world. We hate it when we get it ourselves but somehow we think our junk’s going to get noticed. Start looking at what other people do that delight you. Start using yourself as a guinea pig. Then do what you like to other people.
Episode Resources:
Check out Bill’s book Click Sand on www.clicksand.net/salesevan. Bill has put Chapter 5 up discussing the psychology of how online marketing can damage businesses.
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