If you worked in Sales a while you may or may not be familiar with this movie, it’s not an epic but in particular one scene rings true.

I was introduced to the movie in 1990 after a started work for a new software company selling Graphic Development tools. My immediate reaction, OMG who is this new sales manager and WTF does he want from me, my soul?

Take a look first and then we’ll discuss some elements (WARNING:there is some use of profanity in this video clip):

Coffee’s for closers

Don’t expect anything for not making a sale.

First prize is a Cadillac El Dorado second prize is a set of Steak knives

Again basically means their is no second prize, the same can be said about your site visitor’s first prize is an RSS subscription or comment, second prize they leave and never come back, nada.

The Leads are weak!?…The Lead’s are weak you are weak!

Now don’t misinterpret the purpose of this post, Sales is not about forcing your product on the customer (visitor) but each time you have an email a subscriber that’s a lead, those leads are not ‘weak’ you just need to find the right message or products for your visitors, try taking polls, try different advertising techniques ask your visitors ‘What do you want?’

I know a very successful blogger who makes his money purely from Hosting referrals! The reason is that his site is tailored towards New bloggers, people who may not have taken the plunge yet and need that newbie advice, when I heard about his success and how much he was earning just from Hosting I thought ‘I’ll give that a try’ the problem being I tried it on a design site, of course 90% of visitor’s to the Design related site are designers and they have hosting already so not a good choice of advertising options!

Only one thing counts in this life, get them to sign on the line that is dotted

What is your dotted line? What are your immediate goals? Make money?, RSS subscribers?, Twitter followers? Concentrate on one think at a time and promote it, you want more Twitter followers then link in all posts put a big ‘Follow Me’ badge in a prominent place.

For a new blog ‘Money’ shouldn’t be your first worry or goal if your good at what you do and talk about content and value and give that to your visitors the rest will come in time.

A,B,C….Always Be Closing

Now the days of the hard sell are apparently over!? I disagree to a point Yes we need to take care of our visitors and find out what they want that’s in Sales Handbook Chapter 1, Asking Open questions, Finding their needs, How they want to buy etc etc.

But at the end of the day it’s about number’s if 1 visitor from 10 converts into a sale then if you ‘talk’ to 100 visitors thats 10 sales and so on. Numbers!

A,I,D,A Attention, Decision, Interest, Action. Do I have your attention? Interest, Are you interested I know you are! Decision, Have you made your decision…. And Action….

You have the visitors attention What are you going to do with it, thats your choice. Interest, the visitor is still reading you have their interest, again, What will you do with it? Decision, well not in your power I’m afraid. Action, think when reading your post as a preview, when you got to the end What do you see? Where do your eyes go?

This kind of 80’s hard sell is extreme but as with any techniques they come and go, learn from each technique take a piece of it with you and evolve.

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