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10 Secrets to Blogging for Sales

June 14, 2010 By
Bettercloser.com - Blogging for Sales

Bettercloser.com - Blogging for Sales

One of the hottest topics in the sales community right now is lead generation. Not just the big marketing programs that your company runs (and you rarely get any good leads from), but personal lead generation. Marketing efforts that you can start, manage, and see results from without any significant investment of time or money.

One of the best forms of personal lead generation is blogging. It can be, and probably should be, the anchor point of all your sales lead generation tactics.

You may be under the false impression that a great lead generation blog is all about being a great writer. That’s wrong. Of course with practice you will become a better writer, but there are a few steps that will connecting with you compelling enough to overcome the fact you’re not an award-winning author (yet).

1. Get Started

There is a reason Get Started is number one on this list. This simple point can’t be overemphasized. You won’t generate a single lead thinking about blogging, imagining a perfect logo or theme, or wishing for all the fancy gadgets on bigger websites.

Your customers don’t care anyway. They came there for one thing–information. If they wanted beautiful design they would have gone to a marketing blog.

2. Keep Going

Starting is half the battle. Keeping your blog going is the only way to win. Put blogging into your schedule. Make it a necessary element of your sales process and routine. Determine a good rhythm and stick to it.

Frequency isn’t all that important as long as you’re consistent. You can blog once a day or once a week. Just find a pace that works well in your schedule and stick to it.

3. Write to Prospects

One of the biggest mistake I see lots of bloggers making is writing to their industry peers. Unless you selling products and services to these people…knock it off! Write to your prospects.

When you sit down to write visualize your customer. Write the conversation you want to have if you get that appointment you so desperately seek. You might be surprised how many prospects call you to have that conversation–in person.

4. Write About Customers

(Hopefully) you work with customers everyday. Share these stories. They’re references and give your readers, your prospects confidence that you can help with their problem too.

Customers often feel like they have a unique and complex need. In reality, that is rarely the case. Chances are you’ve seen the problem and solved it many times.

The really neat thing about this misaligned reality is that when your prospect reads or hears your perfect representation of their problem, they often assume you must be the only one that can solve it.

How cool? Your blogging probably just remove some competition.

5. Answers Customers

How many questions do you get from prospects, customers, partners, and friends everyday? Take a second and stroll through your email inbox. How many of those unanswered emails are asking the same question? How many of them would make a great blog post?

One of my favorite tricks is to take an email and answer it, in great detail, on my blog. Then I can point this and all future emails like it to my new blog post.

This yields two benefits: First, your customers get a far more thorough answer than you whave time to give in an email. Second, you’re going to attract several people that have the same question, but would never know to ask you.

6. Be a Storyteller

How-to writing is usually boring. First this, then this, step one, step two, and if all goes well you get this. Yawn! Learn to tell stories.

People are captivated by reality. People love to hear war stories. People often internalize these stories into their own vision of the future. Stories get you calls like, “I read your article. Can you do that for me? I have this similar situation…”

7. Bring them Value

This is another secret that often gets mangled in translation. I will try to be really clear about what value is to a blog reader or online community member:

  • Value is educating people about things you are an expert in
  • Value is bringing your readers special offers
  • Value is introducing your readers to complimentary products
  • Value is asking them to buy things that will improve their life, business, paycheck

Value is not equal to free. Sure you might give away free advise or stuff from time to time. However, real value is bringing your readers a distinct advantage because they know and read you–even if they have to pay for it.

8. Be Direct!

This secret flows directly from number seven above. Don’t be shy about telling your prospects what you want them to do. Be direct. Tell them what websites to visit. Tell them what products to buy. Tell them when you are bringing them the best deals and exclusives.

9. Be Brief

No one has extra time. And even great authors like Hemingway knew the magic of brevity. Part of the value of your blogging should be to deliver what your customers need to know clearly and quickly.

10. Leave the Ending to Readers (Customers)

Your ultimate goal in blogging for sales is to engage your readers. Maybe even engage them in a sales conversation. That means drawing them into the conversation.

Try this by leaving the ending to them. Like this…

Do you blog for customers? What are your tips and tricks for bringing in prospects? How would you end this blog post?

Filed Under: blogging, Lead Generation Tagged With: Advertising and Marketing, Blog, business, FAQs Help and Tutorials, marketing, Money, Sales lead, social selling

Writing (Blogging) for Sales Conversion

August 18, 2009 By

Bettercloser.com - Writing for Sales Conversion

Bettercloser.com - Writing for Sales Conversion

The rise of simple online publishing, like blogs and feverish social networking, like Twitter have made writing an increasing component of most sales processes. Unfortunately, most of us cut our sales teeth on the phone, not on paper.

I thought is would be helpful to dip into the copywriting pool of knowledge and learn from the best at selling with their pens.

In this survey I visited some of the top online copywriters and sales people on the Web:

And here is what I learned:

1. Don’t forget AIDA - We are selling here so don’t stray too far from the proven sales process basics. Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action is a flow that comes quite naturally to most Web publishing platforms. Whether you are talking about blogs, Twitter, or Facebook you are attracting interested prospects, piquing their interest, creating a desire and showing them how to take action.

The key to using the AIDA sales process on with your blog or social media strategy is starting with an objective. Most people start blogging and social networking without any idea what they are selling. That can create a very confusing and inconsistent experience for your sales prospects.

Know what your products and services are and then keep a tight focus on AIDA and convincing your readers you are the best person for the job.

2. Start with the Headline - Every headline, whether it is a blog post, Tweet, or Facebook status is precious. This is your brief opportunity to accomplish several things:

  1. Attract attention
  2. Capture interest
  3. Convince credibility
  4. Encourage a click
  5. Promote a forward (ReTweet)

Your headline is so important to sales conversion. Study closely how to create a magnetic headlines and you will increase your opportunities.

3. Structure is Important - You have probably heard it millions of times, but it bears repeating: No one reads on the Web. That’s right we are in an attention-deficit world and the best you are likely to get is a quick scan. Therefore, you need to make that process as easy as possible.

Good structure is the key to facilitating the Internet user to quickly scan your content, but to put speed bumps that will capture and slow their eye scan at the critical parts.

Techniques like sub headings, bulleted lists, judicious bolding, and strategic italics are all ways to indicate the important parts of your content in a quick scan.

4. Chunking for Readability - Chunking (pretty sure I got this idea from Chris Brogan, but can’t find it again) is somewhat related to structure, but I take it a little beyond any single piece of content. In a single article it is important to break up your prose into short, neat, tight paragraphs and bullets. However, it is just as important to break up complex concepts into bite size morsels as well.

Popular magazines are great at this. If you scan the magazines in the grocery check-out you don’t see the fashion magazines talking about the latest fashion trends–no, they are talking about the latest in shoes, accessories, summer dresses. Likewise, health and fitness magazines are not talking about work-outs they are talking about abs busting routines or diets for that summer bikini.

Break your content and your sales process into one pain point at a view.

5. Benefits, Benefits, Benefits - Face it people buy because they get something they want. When you are writing don’t make that a secret or rely on your reader’s imagination. That is exactly what you do when you fill your writing with features–”my services include” or “my product does…” Copy like that forces me to imagine how I might turn those features into something valuable–something that gives me a return on the money I give you. Bad idea to make a sales prospect work that hard.

Concentrate on benefits! Tell them a story, paint them an ideal picture, describe success through the eyes of a purchase from you. Tell them where your products or services will take them.

6. Irresistible Offers - Okay, you got them paying attention, convinced you are someone they are interested in doing business with…How do you create Desire and Action?

Irresistible offers of course. Brian Clark is so right in this comment:

It’s troubling to see so many companies and solos trying to gain business online, yet without ever making a compelling offer. There’s no apparent reason why someone should select you from the overcrowded field, because often you’ve made no express offer at all.

And there is really not much more to say–don’t ask and you will most certainly not receive.

7. Swipe from the Best - There are somethings that just work. Why wouldn’t you try a lot of the sure things? Why wouldn’t you iterate off of a foundation of success?

That is precisely what a swipe file does for you. A swipe file is a treasure box full of idea generators and examples of headlines, emails, advertising, blog posts, and other content that was successful. When you have a new idea or project leafing through a swipe file is going to accelerate your execution and increase you chance of success.

Hope you enjoyed a quick primer on selling with your pen. Here are a few more excellent articles to continue priming your selling process:

If you liked this post please sign-up to the RSS feed or get them via email and avoid missing the next Better Closer sales best practice.

Filed Under: Lead Generation Tagged With: Blog, Brian Clark, chris brogan, conversion, copywriting, facebook, problogger.net, social selling, twitter

Better Sales Performance Starts with a Strong Core

July 7, 2009 By
Four runners
Image by shaggy359 via Flickr

It has been years since I tortured you with a running analogy for sales. So, I think it is fair to apply my passion for running to the sales discipline again.

Several years ago runners and their trainers began to discover a bit of a counterintuitive fact-maximum performance is not all cardio fitness and strong legs. Turns out strong shoulders, arms, back, and core (abdominal) muscles have a lot to do with turning in world-class times and reducing injury.

That’s right, top performance requires a strong core.

The same applies to sales performance. Dialing the phone mindlessly all day is unlikely to build the strong core that you need to consistently fill the pipeline and close deals.

Let’s explore a few core strengthening exercises you should be doing on a regular basis:

1. Read and Learn-This needs to be a continual process. I am not just talking about books, magazines, and websites devoted to your sales niche. Your continual education needs to be broad. This approach, like a liberal arts education, is likely to give you the greatest opportunity for creative advantage in the market. It also increases you chance of finding something to talk about with a diverse pipeline of prospects.

2. Join the Conversation-Social media and networking has made it easy to directly engage and build an audience of “followers.” Each of these connections increases your opportunity for a referral, an inquiry, or a partnership that pumps up your sales pipeline and production numbers. However, remember that social networks thrive on conversations-make sure you are frequently engaging and exchanging within your social network.

3. Educate Others-Remember 90 percent of your prospects will come at you with the same questions. Turn these routine questions into sales materials, cleverly disguised as education materials. Answer the questions and give them a way. This simple effort will immediately increase the number of prospects that come to you already trusting you and finding you credible to advise them. Try a variety of channels to execute this core building strategy-a blog, eBooks, slideshare.net, Facebook fan page, etc.

4. Write, Speak, Network-Never pass up the opportunity to put your ideas and perspectives front and center. They are always opportunities to test your assumptions, broaden your beliefs, and uncover opportunities. Good or bad, right or wrong your ideas and efforts to communicate with others will strengthen your sales message and ability to counter objections. Every interaction makes you smarter about people, emotions, and behaviors-all unpredictable variables in a sale-that you become better at managing with practice.

Applying time and effort toward building a stronger core will increase your sales opportunities and make you more efficient at closing deals. What are some of your core strengthening training routines?

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Bill Rice is the founder and CEO of Kaleidico, lead management software provider and online lead generation consulting services. You can reach Bill on Twitter: http://twitter.com/billrice or via email: bill.rice@kaleidico.com.

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Filed Under: Sales Training Tagged With: Blog, communication, facebook, On the Web, Online Communities, Social network, social selling, training, twitter

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