Sales Weakness

In the past week, I have tried to pin point weaknesses that would cause me to fail at succeeding with my own company. I think my biggest weakness will be sales, or rather being a sales person. Even though I have more than enough experience in it; I have never liked it. Let alone liked it enough to rely on it for income.

For this post, I will evaluate this weakness and make a plan to overcome it.

Let's start with my selling experiences and what I learned from each:

• Telemarketing, booking appointments for time shares. This was horrible. I sat in a 1x1 cubicle and was required to make at least 200 calls a day. The good news is that I learned a valuable lesson - Cold calling blows.
  
• Telemarketing, offering online marketing services to realtors. This I was not bad at, I actually was the #2 sales person. However, I hated it. In this position I was still on the phone all day. It was all about being on the phone, no personal touches and all business. Lesson learned: It is a lot harder to get people to buy when they have no idea who you are. Second lesson learned: you can't be #2 without having your heart in it.
  
• Cold called businesses, offering traditional marketing services. This was harder than calling regular people. Many roadblocks to get to the right people. The snag here was my employer wanted me to book his appointments for him. I was doing HIS sales calls. Lesson learned here: If you aren't going to take the time to call your prospects for an appointment, they won't take the time to meet you.
  
• Sold face to face, booking appointments via phone, email, and networking to meet in person with the goal of selling knives (don't ask). This was fun at times but HARD work. At this company I worked entirely on referrals though. At the end of each appointment I asked for at least 5 referenence I could meet with. The next day I called and said, "Susan wanted me to give you a call about...when can we meet?". It worked like a charm. Lesson learned: Always ask for referrals, even if they don't buy.
  

It turns out I actually am not a horrible sales person. In fact, I might actually be able to get really good at it. I just need a little training and a lot of practice. So I took a trip to the book store and picked up the words of experts to help me out. The first book I am reading is "The Sales Bible" by Jeffrey Gitomer. It has all of the basics, and so far is motivational. I bought two other books, which I will post about once I start reading. I've realized that working on this weakness now is going to help me in many other areas as well. For example, thinking from a sales perspective when wrtiting my website copy will cause my website to work better for me.

Here is what I know about Sales so far:

• Cold calling blows.
  
• Get to know your prospects because it is a lot harder for people to buy when they dont know you.
  
• If you aren't going to take the time to call your prospects for an appointment, they won't take the time to meet you.
• Always ask for referrals, even if they don't buy.
  

Day 19: Ideas for Marketing

I have been working on ideas for marketing my consulting services for the last week. Since there are a lot of options I have to narrow down the list to the most cost effective solutions. The great part is, I can do a lot of it myself. That will eliminate a lot of the costs. Here are my ideas so far:

Main Tasks

1. Pay Per Click. I have about $750 saved up to launch a PPC campaign. I'm going to mainly focus on the less expensive keywords and build a custom landing page to go with it. I will run this during the first month I am on my own and see what happens. I don't want to run this just yet because I don't want to get in an awkward situation where I am getting leads and not following up with them because of my regular job. Another problem would be that I land a few deals but not enough to sustain me but too much to hold my regular job. So this is going to launch June 1st.

2. SEO. This is already in play. I took a lot of these factors in while I was building the site. So, out of the box it is already SEO Friendly, now I just need to optimize with keywords. The space is pretty compeitive so I will have to really focus my efforts here.

3. Listing potential targets. I've decided to focus specifically on small business to start. So I am going to start out by finding local businesses who do not have a website or internet presence.This is one task that I am not really good at in any sense. I am also still thinking about how I should approach them once I know that they have a need.

4. Enlisting a sales force. This is an idea that I think will work better once I have obtained a short list of clients. This person can work on a commission basis to bring in new deals.

Other Tasks
These are still important but will be for the longer term.

1. Email Marketing. I have a lot of calls to action that entice visitors to sign up for email newsletter. I think this will be monthly and aside from useful info it will also have calls to action.

2. Blogging. Having an informative blog on the topic will help draw in clients in the long term. I plan to update the blog 2-4 times per month.

3. Word of Mouth/referrals. Doing a good job for clients will bring me more. Simple idea but it goes a long way in this business.

More to come soon.

Day 7: Income Goal

Today is day 7 of my journey to wealth. Aside from launching and tweaking...and tweaking...and tweaking...the consulting site, I have devoted most of my free time to thought and planning. Thought about business, goals, mission statements, forecasting, etc.

Sales Forecasting has been the hardest part of the business plan, by far. My obstacle is, how do you forecast sales when you have never been in business before, are unsure what clients you will have, and what their marketing budgets will be like. It is a game of unknowns and I am the key player.

I talked to Ally son about it. She had some good advice. To sum up and paraphrase: Don't stress the forecasting during the first year. Just set realistic personal goals and jump in. Things will happen, things will work out. For my business model, this is good advice.

My sales goals are to generate at least $2,000 a month in profit. This will feed us and meet our basic (and I mean only basic) living expenses. Anything on top of that would be lovely.

4 months until May!!!

An Army Of One

A huge realization in starting a business from scratch hit me today. You have to not only be an expert at your service/trade/offering, but you also have to be decent at every other aspect of business (accounting, sales, leadership, etc). Maintaining a business of one is even harder, as these are qualities you have to maintain on a long term time line. Of course, I knew this - or rather I knew what it meant on the surface. The problem is that I never really understood it and all the implications of it.

To be great at sales, you have to be able to communicate, to persuade, to show people value, etc. To be a great at accounting, you have to know numbers, know the laws, and know billing. The list goes on...So my realization was, when you say you own and run your own business - an army of one so to speak - you are really saying that you are a multitasking, multifaceted undertaker of all things business.

Consulting Site Live

So I've launched my second site, this one is for consulting and contract jobs. No, I am not fast enough to build and write content for an entire high quality site in just one day. I have been working on both of these sites simultaneously for the past few months. I am just now getting the balls to put them into action.

The consulting site is exciting because it is actually going to be a solid and reliable way to generate income while I am working on monetizing the other websites. I am going to be consulting/contracting internet marketing services such as PPC management, SEO, media buying, affiliate management, and web development, etc.

I have manged to also work out the 12 month sales/expense forecast for the overall business, which includes both the websites and consulting business. I am planning to continue at my day job until the end of May. In the meantime, I will be working evenings and weekends to get things set up for myself, client-wise. My goal is to have at least two clients by June, preferably for PPC as that would be an ongoing monthly commitment. With start up savings and income through May, I will be able to survive until August on my own without any clientele. While it is only 3 months (June to August), I am confident that things will work out. After all, between June and August I will be able to devote a full time schedule to generating leads and pitching prospects.

The only problem I am having at the moment is figuring out how to forecast sales (for the business plan). How do you guessimate that for a service industry? I have a friend who works with business plans, so I will ask.

Day Two: Motivation from PlentyofFish

I have just read the article in INC magazine about the owner of PlentyofFish.com and how he makes $10mil a year from his website at 50% profit. The revenue is generated from advertising. The concept which made him this type of money is: Take something that you have to pay for and offer it for free. Then pay for it via advertising. You will notice this theme with several successful web companies, including Google. In fact, Google is probably an expert at this practice. For example, they recently released Ad Manager which is a free ad serving platform. Not only are they drawing in a large number of users from the free aspect, but there is a feature within the web based application which allows publishers to automatically offer adsense ads. This instantly increasing their content network and thus generates additional revenue from pay per click.

Now, the question is - what is something paid which I can offer for free?

However, I think my avenue may be slightly different than that of PlentyofFish, being that I am not a programmer but a marketer at heart. While I am able to develop my own website, I have limitations in terms of programming features or complex algorithums. My strength is in driving traffic. Therefore, a content based website may be sufficient verses a website which offers a service.

With that said I have finished the design and build for the first website to be used for revenue purposes. The question now becomes content - how can I generate a large amount of unique content for my topic with limited time/resources? I think the answer lies in user generated content. Essentially having users create pages on the site 24 hours a day. So my next initiative is adding these interactive features to the site.

A Slight Change of Topic

Over one year since the last post...It is nice to rediscover old treasures. It always happens right when you need them the most. Reading past posts ignites a fire under my ass brighter than the one that was there this morning.

This morning, I was thinking about starting a blog detailing the long,rocky road to becoming a extremely wealthy web entrepreneur. I know what you are thinking. First, I've read so many blogs drumming to that tune. Well, stop being selfish. Afterall, this isn't your blog. Second, you are thinking: you can't just make money online. Well, stop being pessimistic. If you are going to read about my journey, then you have to support the cause.

So, here it goes: Day One.

Who: I am currently employed as a the Marketing Director for a small agency in Southern California. I have years of extensive experience in SEO, PPC, Affliate Marketing, Display Advertising/Ad Serving. You name it in the relam of online marketing and I probably know how to make money doing it.

What: My goal: Make at least $4,000 per month minimum, online, within 12 months.

How: $500 to start, and all of the willpower a human could possibly possess.

When: I have given myself 12 months to reach my goal, 6 months to quit my day job.

Why: On a daily basis, I earn hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue for my clients and by working for an agency I am not compensated to my full potential. It is time to put my knowledge to good use and start making it work for me.