Last night at dinner, I was telling my wife about one of my mentoring students, “Tom”, who  received an angry email from a prospect he had contacted.  Apparently, the prospect was offended because Tom asked if he would be interested in a new web design for his local business.  He had designed the site himself, and took offense to the idea that it could possibly be improved.

Tom responded with a polite email, apologized for causing offense, and mentioned a few things that he thought could be improved, and explaining that those were the basis for his contacting the business owner.  Soon after, the business owner called him on the phone, wanting to know more about Tom’s ideas for his site.  After a 30-minute conversation, the business owner had requested some renovation work to be done on his site, and a possible contract for a new design for his wife’s business.

When my wife heard this story, she said “Hasn’t that happened to you before too”, and she’s absolutely right.  I’ve turned angry customers into buyers on several occasions, and all it took was a polite and genuine response to an angry email.

When people are being sold to, especially online, they put up a lot of barriers.  I know I’m a nice guy who would always work as hard as I can to please my clients, but potential prospects have no way of knowing that at first.  Simply showing a genuine interest in them and their business is enough to break down much of the skepticism they have towards me and my business.

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!

For months, I’ve been planning how best to tackle the local market, and I’ve finally made some good progress with recruiting local clients. I’ve realized for years that local markets are virtually untapped, and not nearly as competitive as the online world. The biggest hurdle for me is that I’m the world’s worst salesman.

For me, working online means communicating by email, receiving payments online, and never having to sit in traffic.  It also means little or no rejection.  I do all my marketing online for a low cost, and customers come to me from all over the world.  The local market involves actually meeting face to face with potential clients, talking on the phone, and sitting in traffic occasionally.  It also involves a much higher chance of rejection.

It’s working pretty well so far though.  I’m already pulling in several hundred dollars a month from local businesses, and since I bill monthly, every new client I recruit adds to that total.  I have some marketing ideas that I’ll put into place next week, and I hope to triple my client base in the next several weeks.  With some luck, I’ll have a large enough client base by next Spring that I can hold off on recruiting new clients, and simply maintain my business in a few hours a day while I travel around Europe again with my family.  Now that would be great! 

I’ve read a lot on the Warrior Forum and other places about local marketing, but I haven’t come across any good information about exactly what I’m doing.  I’m sort of winging it so far, but through trial and error, I’m learning a lot, and I’m growing the local part of my business.

I have a lot of other projects going on right now as well.  I’ll post more about them soon.

–Robert

p.s. – For a preview, check this out – Free PLR Articles – It’s a concept I’ve been testing with pretty good success so far.