I have a confession to make… I REALLY suck at sales.
It has just never really been my thing. I remember one of the first (and still worst) jobs I ever had was as a telemarketer.
I was about 19 at the time and this big fat guy who had the build of someone who sat at a desk 10 hours day on the phone eating snacks, got up to address all us newbies.
He was the top salesperson on the team and they called him the “Hammer”.
Well the Hammer made this impassioned speech about how you have to go for “the kill” and you are only a few sales away from being a top dog like him. He then gave us some techniques to use to close our calls.
Like everyone else I was all pumped up from the Hammers speech. But then I got on the phone and proceeded to do almost the complete opposite of what he told us. I wasn’t passionate. I wasn’t persistent. I wasn’t confident in the product or what I was saying.
Needless to say I had absolutely ZERO sales that day and the Hammers position as the top dog Sales telemarketer was safe. I quit that telemarketing job the next day and have never really liked direct selling since.
Now of course that does mean I do not appreciate the importance of sales. I actually think a good sales process is one of the most important part of having a successful business.
Because remember; at the end of the day, if you don’t have paying clients you don’t have a real business. And you cannot get clients without some form of selling.
So I personally hate sales but Im telling you its important to the success of your online business. How do I get around this for my business? Well for one I know that Im going to have to get better at it at some point. Right now with me still being at a full time job, getting more clients is not yet my primary focus.
But until I get better at sales let me show you how I got around my weakness in this area to get the clients I have now.
By the end of this post you are going to know the answer to this question.
How do you get a client if you suck at sales?
Here are 3 methods I have been using so far to get my clients.
1.) Leverage Your Personal Network
When you are first starting out with online lead generation it can be tough. You may not have much proof yet that you can actually bring results for people.
One thing you could do is to rank your own websites so you have that much coveted proof of results. What you could also do is to offer your services first to family and friends.
Of all your family and friends there has to be someone who has their own business right? Approach that person(s) and tell them you want to help drive more leads to their business.
This is an all around win. You get to practice at developing your skills with a real business while at the same time helping someone close to you do better in their business.
After you start driving them real results you can record the progress and use it as proof to sell others. You could also ask your family/friend to recommend you to other business owners.
What If No Family/Friend Owns Their Own Business?
What if you cannot find someone you know personally that owns their own business? Man you gotta get out more! You don’t have one person close to you who has their own gig going?
Well no worries, I guess you will be the first of your family and friends to have a successful business.
But if you dont have close friends or family to offer your services to you will have to go one more degree of separation. Ask everyone in your close network if they know someone that has a business and wants more customers.
This is not as a good as a direct connection to you of course but still way better than a complete cold connection who you have never met and knows nothing about you.
Having someone vouch for you can go a long way towards your chances of successfully signing that client so don’t underestimate it.
This first method of leveraging a personal network has worked wonders for me. When I was just starting out and gaining my online skills I approached a very close family member who had their own business.
I asked them if I they wanted me to see if I could bring them more leads. They are in a high end service business so each new client is worth a lot of money for their business.
So even though its a family member why would they trust their marketing to you? Well the key is to make them an a no brainer offer which we get into more with step 2.
2.) Make Them An Offer They Cant Refuse
If you want to start a lead generation company and plan on getting really good at it you will have a very valuable skill.
Every company wants to make more money.
For more money you need more clients and to get more clients you need more good leads.
That is where you come in. You are going to use your very valuable knowledge and skill to get their business good leads.
But here is the problem. How do they know if you can do what you say can. Can they trust you? Are you just wasting their time? When your first starting out it can be tough to prove yourself.
So this is what you offer them.
Its very simple. If my work makes you money, you pay me. If not, you don’t pay me. You have absolutely nothing to lose.
Now some Internet marketers are going to say this is crazy. Your services are very valuable and you should be paid for them from the jump. You need to sell the person.
And I totally agree. But if you are really bad at selling there is no way you are going to convince a business owner who does not know you and has been pitched by SEO people hundreds of times before to pay you without results.
Besides, you should not want someone to pay you if you cannot deliver. You will just end up having a short term client and a burn in churn system that will rely on what you hate. Having to constantly sell to more clients.
Instead aim to prove to this client your skill. If you are getting real results after a few months they are going to be willing to pay for that good ROI. That is how you get a long term, recurring client.
Even if you have to spend some of your own money during this time it will be worth it for you to work with a real business and have real results to show future potential clients.
It really makes me crazy when people tell me they don’t want to invest any time or money in their online career.
Think about it. People spend 4 years and almost 6 figures for a college education. The purpose of college is to learn a skill so you can get paid. But even after all that learning and money spent on college, most folks start at the bottom when they start their careers.
They still have years of working their way up and proving themselves to their company before they can expect any substantial pay.
So what is a few hundred dollars and (usually) less then one year investment into your Internet Marketing skills? Especially when you can start out as the boss (of your own company) instead of the bottom of some corporate ladder taking scraps while years and years pass by.
Just to illustrate this for you. I have worked in IT almost 15 years. I have now worked my way up to a level between $125,000 and $150,000 a year.
A lot of money for some people right? But my Internet Marketing business which I have been doing for only 2 years and work less then 5 hours a week on generates me between $8,000 to $10,000 a month.
So lets be conservative I average $8,000 a month over a year that’s already $96,000!
In fact if I averaged $2,500 per client. you know how many clients it would take for me to reach the max window of my IT career that I worked 15 years to build?
5.
Yes you read that right. Only 5 clients.
5 x $2,500 = $12,500 x 12 = $150,000
What makes more sense to you as an investment of time and money. 4 years of college and close to a hundred grand in debt. Then about 10 years of working your ass off to reach the upper pay in your field.
Or a couple of thousand dollars a year and 1 or 2 years of self training to start making that money in 3-5 years and be your own boss?
Now imagine I got just two more clients? That’s $210,000. It would take me at least another 5-8 years to make that in my IT career if it was even possible at all to get that high.
3.) Team up with a Good Sales Person
So if you don’t have any close friends or family with a business to help. And you are so scared of sales you wont even do the offer they cant refuse. There is still another option.
That is you can team up with someone who excels in your weakness. Find someone who is a good salesperson and have them close your potential clients. You can either go into a partnership with them or even better just pay them per close.
I have an agreement like this with my friend Rey. He owns a very similar client lead generation site RapidCustomers.com But we dont see ourselves as competition, we help each other out.
Rey is an actor, so he has the looks and charm but he is also a damn good sales person. To subsidize his acting career he worked for a big Ads agency for a few years calling and closing every day from a list of warm leads.
He later struck out on his own with his client agency. The thing is as good at sales as he is, the technical part of SEO and paid advertising hes not a big fan of. That is where we help each other out. I will send him leads to close for me and give him a cut. He will send technical stuff my way to help him out when he needs it.
We both do what we are good at and its a win, win. Now if you find the right person you could form a partnership and they could handle the sales end while you do what you are good at. But for me I think its better to just cut each other in on individual deals and keep your own companies separate.
One of the great things about having an Online company is the low cost and uncomplicated startup. If you bring on a partner out of the gate you are going to make things more complicated. Its better to work with someone for awhile on individual deals and only after you know for sure your partnership works to consider sharing the same company.
So there you have it. Don’t let sucking at sales stop you from getting starting with your online business. For any business you own sales will be a key component to its success. You can use these strategies to get your sales jump started while you keep working on getting better at sales yourself.