Secret of Success is Sales . . . Yeeuck!
The great promise of the web was that vast worldwide market
where you could reach millions without doing traditional sales.
Put up a killer web site and reel in the big fish! Or simply
scoop up millions of tiny fish in that big "net". Voila! No
sales necessary! Now it's only spammers that fall for that as
the rest of us realize we must sell to succeed.
How many ideas have succeeded on their own merits - without
promotion, marketing and sales? What products have taken the
world by storm when no one knew about them? Why do authors go on
book-signing tours, actors make the rounds of the talk show
circuit, and major companies spend millions on trade shows? They
launch monstrous public relations campaigns and give away
tchotchke's with their logo emblazoned on them.
Public awareness does not come cheap or easy. The sales process
is a necessary evil that many small business people abhor (and
then they die) or embrace (and then they prosper.) Innovators
and inventors must seek venture capital and sell their concept
to investors. Why do we recoil from the sales process if the
task falls to us as independent business owners? We look to
gurus of marketing, P.R. and promotion to rescue us from this
task and throw money at advertising to avoid doing sales
ourselves.
Riches are reaped from multi-level marketers recruiting vast
hoards of amateur sales people through pep-rally conventions
offering "residual sales" without further effort by building a
"downline", another name for sales staff. Then you can ease off,
live on the sales efforts of hundreds of new "recruits". The
product is secondary and the business opportunity is key to
building that sales staff, so you can reach the top of the
pyramid and sip tropical drinks on the beach while "they" sell.
MLM seeks salespersons whose goal is to avoid selling by
recruiting others to do it for them. Affiliate programs have
proliferated on the web, recruiting others to sell for them. But
in the end the key is sales, sales and more sales, no matter
whether the business model is direct sales or through selling
the idea to others of selling for you. Sales is key.
Try search engine optimization. Is this another approach of
seeking sales without effort or expense? No, you must still do
the sales while "it" delivers the targeted traffic. SEO brings
you folks interested in what you sell by helping your web site
communicate effectively with search engine spiders. You must
still give each of those visitors your best sales pitch by
communicating why they should consider buying your product after
SEO helps them to find your site.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) delivers potential buyers for
your product or service. Eyeballs for your sales pitch are its
specialty. You create a needed product or service and SEO brings
you people interested in what you sell so you can sell to them.
You still do the selling, but now you have visitors to offer
your sales pitch to. Convince them after SEO brings them to you
and you will make sales, make lots of sales and you will be
successful.
SEO delivers prospects for your sale.