I was talking to one of my students from my offline mentoring program today, and he was expressing frustration that he had been in touch with several prospective clients who were on the verge of committing to buy from him, and yet he couldn’t seem to nail down the final sale.  He’s shown them everything he could do for them, given them pricing and a timeline, and they are ready to commit – only they haven’t yet.

Understandably, he doesn’t want to bother them by contacting them repeatedly, but he doesn’t want to lose out on what seems like a sure sale because they’ve forgotten about him for whatever reason.

As someone who sells websites and web services for a living, as well as a full-time small business owner, I can see this from both sides.  Business owners have a million things on their plate at once, and there are always fires to put out.  Though we all know that changing a business’ website can have fantastic effects to their bottom line, it’s not exactly an “emergency” to the business owner, so they allow everything else to take precedence over it – and it’s hard to blame them.

What we can do on our end is follow up consistently, politely, and not so frequently that we start to annoy our prospect.  Calling someone once per day (until we are able to get in touch with them) if they have already made it clear that they are interested in working with us isn’t too much, in my opinion.

As I’ve mentioned many times, I’m not a good salesman, and I’m actually terrible at following up.  If I couldn’t get in touch with someone for a few days, I’m the type that would stop calling, and then forget about the prospect altogether.  Of course, this is a terrible way to make sales, but I’m working on getting better.

My initial sales strategy needs more follow-up too.  I contacted prospects via email, and if they didn’t get back to me, that was the end.  Following up with a simple reminder a week later can convert dozens of additional clients, yet I just didn’t make the effort.

Once I changed my strategy, and followed up with clients, in a non-aggressive way, it really made a huge difference to my bottom line.

By the way, if you’re interested in building a local business of your own, with very little risk, check out my mentoring program.  I’ll come to your city, build your website, and find you clients, until you turn a profit!  Guaranteed!

I mentioned a few months ago that I had a new project I was working on called Free PLR Articles.  It started out as a side project, and has (relatively) quickly morphed into quite a profitable venture, despite the fact that I give away everything for free.

Simple Clickbank links and AdSense ads pull in a few hundred dollars a week, and I’ve grown an extremely responsive list of over 5000 people in a short time.

The real beauty of this is that with my list, I can do so many things that I wasn’t able to do before.  I have so many projects that are about to be released, and getting it in front of thousands of eyes is as simple as sending an email.

Marketing Gurus are always talking about how the money is in the list, and though I certainly believed them, I never had the drive to establish a good list for myself.  Now I see the opportunities that are open to me.  I encourage everyone to start a list as soon as possible, and cultivate it in your spare time.  It can pay off in dividends down the road.

…and if you need any free PLR articles, look no further than my site.

Cheers,

Robert

I’m heading to bed, but I wanted to share something quickly.

I’ve had a membership site, the Online Marketing Toolbox, for several months now.  I promoted it through various advertising, and to my customers who bought websites from me, and though I had occasional signups, membership was very low.  With the economy in trouble, and revenue dropping, I made a commitment to make the Online Marketing Toolbox a site that every serious online marketer would want to be a member of!

One of the main changes I made was to the layout.  I had hastily designed a quick layout when I started the site, and though it looked pretty nice, it didn’t make customers say “Wow, I want to get more sites from this guy!”.  At least, I would imagine it didn’t.

Anyway, after discarding over a dozen potential designs, I finally came out with one I was exceedingly happy with.  Of all the website designs I’ve ever created, it’s by far my favorite.

What I found over the next month, is that potential customers like the new design too – enough to increase my conversion rate by over 400%!

It was hard for me to believe at first too.  Not only did my signups increase, but the biggest increase was from my website customers.  These customers saw my work firsthand, and yet only a handful were interested in joining before.  Now, five times as many were eager to signup.  It was truly amazing!

As a web designer, I’ve always felt like a good design can really change the perception of a potential customer, and now I have living proof!

Goodnight, and God Bless!

Robert