Do You Bring Real Value to Your List?

When I first started marketing online, one of the things that I was taught by my mentor at the time, Ann Sieg, was that one of the best marketing techniques and online relationship building techniques was to give away valuable information? What? Did you read that right? Yes, it is the value that you bring to your customers, or potential customer that will open up more opportunities for you to build your list and grow your business.

Here is an example that I heard early on in my sales career that I think illustrates this best. Let’s imagine a typical sales call where you go out and meet with a potential client to learn more about them and to give them a chance to learn more about you. At the end of the first call, you find out that they are definitely going to be buying your product or service, but they are in the early stages of their process and it will be at least a year before they make any buying decisions.

Now, if you were a typical sales person, you would have noticed the big fish on the wall just to the right when you walked into the owner’s office. Being the master sales person that you were taught to be, you would say, "Wow, that's a beauty, did you catch that?" And the owner would tell you that he did, and that it was a long time ago, and that he keeps meaning to take that thing down.

Now if you were a not so typical sales rep, you would have found out how the owner got into this business, what some of his biggest problems were, who some of his strategic partners were, and what some of his long term goals for the business are.

One of the key factors in getting this account would be in building a relationship in the follow up over the next year. The typical sales rep would call every two weeks and say, "Hey mister business owner, how's it going? You still have that big fish on your wall? How are things moving forward with your decision making process? Good, good, you don't mind if I continue to check in with you do you, just doing my job you know?" And the owner would say that would be fine and you would get off of the phone. Now imagine getting this exact same call 24 times over the next year. How much would you look forward to this call, and how fast would you get back to this person if they left you a message?

Let's take a look at what the not so typical sales rep did for that same year. He read a lot of business journals and did regular research online learning more about the company, their partners and there competition. As he ran across something that was particularly interesting, he would cut it out, or write down the URL and send it to the business owner and follow up a week later asking if the owner received it and ask him if had heard that, or what he thought about it, or he might ask him if that has any impact on his business? Now imagine getting this information and call 20 or so times over the next year.

At the end of the year, who do you think got the business? Why? If you answered the typical sales rep, then I would not quite my day job if I were you. If you see that by bringing real value to the business owner you build both a professional and personal relationship and you see how that would build trust, you are well on your way in building your business. Remember, people only do business with people they feel they can trust, and if a person show a real interest in you, your business, it’s future, and supplies valuable information in the process, he wins.

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Dan Iverson can show you how to take a big first step in starting your home based business. Having closely documented and written about all that I have learned and what has worked and what hasn't, I can show you how you can start where it took me two years to get to. Let me show you how make your first steps building your business as productive and effective as possible. Come check out my ezine at http://daniverson.blogspot.com/ and my website at http://bigfirststep.biz/. Dan Iverson, Financial Certainty, Inc. 678.851.8284
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