Authority Business

How to get more done, be more productive, more profitable, and make your projects successful.

  • Attracting Customers Without Selling

    I just realized that even though I have made my living from customers buying my services for a while, I have never actually had to sell. This seems to me quite an achievement.

    What got me thinking about this was I was just interviewed for an article for WordTracker by Rachelle Money. She asked how I got into this blogging lark, and during me waffling on I told her about how customers would come to me with their problems.

    Back when I started out, the problems people would come to me with were programming related, now they are more likely to be online marketing or blogging issues, but still people come to me rather than me calling them. I think this is a nice place to be!

    Cold calling has never been something I even wanted to try. Some people can do it very well, but all through my career I have avoided it. I am not the most forward person, especially on the telephone with someone who doesn’t want to hear from me. For me making a cold-call would be more a punishment than a useful sales tactic.

    How to Attract Customers

    The secret to attracting customers so you don’t need to approach them is based on the following factors:

    1. Awareness – People need to know you exist, and remember you in the correct context as someone who might be useful
    2. Belief, Credibility and Trust – You might be the best expert in the world but people need to know they can rely on you
    3. Evidence – Why should someone believe that you can do the things you say you can?
    4. Solutions – Have you got appropriate services and answers for their problems?
    5. Approachability/Personality – Very often the sale comes down to you being the right person as much on personality as skills. We want to work with people we like and feel we can talk to.

    Of course now I call the solution Authority Blogging and I teach people how to grow their profile and engage audiences, but these factors worked in my favor long before I had a name for it or was even doing this consciously.

    Creating the Opportunity for Opportunities

    What I started out doing was answering programming questions on email discussion lists. People got to know me through my answers and discussions. To avoid repeating myself, and so I could write more in detail, I would write articles. After a while I wrote for the top ASP site, ASPAlliance, which made me more visible, brought me programming contracts, and eventually led to me doing speaking, teaching .NET programming, which led to me being awarded Microsoft’s “MVP” award, and book deals.

    This same pattern has repeated in all the phases of my career, from programmer to project management, to webmaster, SEO, online marketing to blogging. Each stage I joined the niche community and got stuck in which led to opportunities.

    It comes down to making yourself useful, creating the environment for opportunities and taking the opportunities that further your cause.

    Making Sales

    Many times I would go pitch some work with the marketing agencies I worked for and I would get a sense the winner had already been all but selected, the customer just wanted reassurance they had made the right choice.  The same happens now, I talk through what I can help with, the options, and I leave it to the customer to decide to go with me.

    When people do approach you with work, you could say that you have to “close” the sale, but personally I see it more as answering any questions and explaining how you can help. If you have done your content  right then the customer will already be “sold”, you just have to clear up any missing information and take the order.

    Improve Your Process

    Every time you get approached, ask

    • where the customer heard about you,
    • what attracted them,
    • do they have any preconceptions
    • if they have any questions that are not answered in the content,
    • and if anything worries them or puts them off.

    … then next time your job will be even easier. Knowing why you don’t get this sale and fixing your approach will make it more likely you get the next one.
    In fact, being aware and listening really is half the battle. For example, for ages I didn’t have my service for creating flagship content as I assumed my ebook would tell people what they needed to know.  Then I found out companies were hiring others to do the writing but using my ebook as part of the spec. By accident I had been creating work for others that I could do myself!

    Summary

    I hope that I have shown that you do not need to be a pushy sales type to get work, your blog can do most of the work for you. If you get out, get known and show your expertise through helping people, then customers will be more inclined to approach you. Most of the effort is in showing you are the right person for the job, this means writing content that solves problems and having your services on display.

    Is this something you do? Have you got any tips? Are you planning to take this approach or one like it? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments …

  • That Magic Ingredient

    Diving InWhenever I achieve something in my life, two things often occur. One, the first, is I have to silence that small voice in my head that says “If I managed it then it can’t have been all that hard”. The second is I seem to attract people who say to me “I could have done that if only I _____” or “You see it’s easy for you, because ______”.

    It seems if I am not going to pull down my achievements I will attract someone into my life to do it for me.

    I feel sad when people diminish what I have done, but I feel just as sad when I hear people say they would like to do this or that but never make a commitment to their self. People get stuck in ruts doing all the same things and wondering why they have the same results in their lives.

    My brother was stuck in a life and basically nuked it. He went from an office job and mortgage to enrolling in a music school and renting in London. We all feared for him but it was the best thing he ever did with his life. He has gone from existing to thriving. It took an amazing amount of courage to face all the people who thought they knew what was best for him.

    The fact is when we have a goal we want to accomplish, it is far easier to find reasons to not do the the thing. When you look at someone else’s accomplishments we think it is obvious they would do such a thing. Of course they did. You can see everything that lead up to that moment as clear as if stepping stones were laid out for them. For our selves these things are much harder to achieve. (In our heads).

    Hindsight makes things look that way but everything we do of any importance has one vital ingredient. One thing separates “dream” from “ambition”.

    The decision to take decisive action.

    “the moment one definitely commits oneself then divine providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred and which no man could have dreamed would have come their way.” — William Hutchinson Murray

    Sounds mystical but it is true. Once you make that mental shift in your head, once you actually put yourself in gear and decide, things move to help you. It’s almost like while you are thinking over plan B and C you are causing a jam in the universe.

    Dream and the way will be clear
    Pray and the angels will hear
    Leap and the net will appear

    These are lyrics from a song by Christine Kane. That line “Leap and the net will appear” is a fantastic phrase that sums up this whole thought.

    If you are considering, deliberating, or planning something without having made that real decision to do, think on it. Nothing good will come from planning alone, you have to make it happen.

    Decide what you want to happen then put your whole self behind that decision. Your future self will be grateful you did!

  • How Can Bloggers Sell Services?

    You might already have seen these videos from Michael Stelzner, maybe on another blog or you might have seen me tweet (about four times, heh) how good they are. If not, go take a look now.

    Why am I pushing you to go look at videos on White Papers?

    Very simple reason really. It’s because this approach to attracting business is exactly in line with what I have been telling people with Authority Blogging. You give away unique and useful information, you set out a compelling argument or approach, this builds trust and credibility. What I call flagship content could easily be a white paper.

    The trick is, of course, to give away ideas and tactics, and sell the specific step by step and implementation. “If you would like advice on implementing everything you learned about here contact 800-…”. No hard sell, no cold-calls. You build your list and create sales leads purely through people being drawn to what you offer, not through pushing for deals.

    This is a perfect approach for bloggers. We give valuable information away all the time.

    Of course Mike is hoping that through his videos you will become intrigued enough to sign up to his list so you can receive them all. You really should. There is some great stuff there, especially if you have never written a white paper.

    How do I know to trust Michael? You might remember back when I was writing over at Copyblogger, he was writing there too. He certainly impressed me with his depth of knowledge and most importantly his results.

    White papers do bring in business. I know because they have worked for me when working for marketing agencies, and my free ebook has brought back leads from people I didn’t even know had seen it. I might call it a report, an ebook, a briefing or an article, but the ideas and approaches are always similar. Give info, get them hooked, reel them in.

    Go watch the free videos, then if you already have a free ebook, take a look at the closing pages. Do you have a call to action there? If not, get one. If you don’t have a free ebook, consider writing one. You can achieve a lot with only 8 or so pages.

    Of course if you are really stuck you could always hire me to create your flagship content for you ;) (see what I did there?)

  • Do You Block Ads?

    I was chatting to a couple of bloggers over the weekend and I thought the discussion was divided and interesting enough to open up to you guys. As we often do we got around to talking about cool sites we have seen recently. I mentioned “Why Digg is Blocked” and almost immediately regretted it. One…

  • Why?

    Why? “Why?” might be the most important question you can ask. Why should someone visit my blog? Why would someone buy from me rather than anyone else? Why ought someone choose this product? Why advertise with me? Why do readers like this over that? Why am I doing this? Why are we in this situation?…

  • What Do You Want?

    Well? What do you want? Sometimes when I work with my coaching clients, one of the things we have to do is really discuss what their actual goals are. Not what they think their goals are, what they really are. It’s important because once you get going on a project you don’t want to be…