Comments on: An Overview: How Every Web Professional Should Think About Marketing and Sales

By: rolywalter

rolywalter — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

This is a great presentation - well worth the read to anyone that is provoked by the title “get all the business … without the indignity of selling!” I’ve never been good at ’sales’ and this presentation has pointed out exactly why I don’t like it and why I’m no good at it, but how one can learn to be good at it & enjoy it.

The problem I find is that when I’m working on a small website for an arts-sector client (e.g. a gallery or photographer), I find there just isn’t room in their budget to be able to think blue-sky about the solution I provide, and there is usually some kind of compromise needed (i.e. more than in most projects). This means that in order to be profitable I have to take quite a mean project-management / task-based approach, rather than the organic ‘practice’ approach, but perhaps someone can suggest ways I could improve on this.

Also, I’d be interested to hear how you think the practice approach would shape a business structure on a practical level. Would you have a clerk and a whole pile of barristers like the English legal system. How does it work when you are trying to expand from one or two subcontractors to employees, all with different skills which need to be brought in at different stages in the project?

Thanks,
Roly Walter

By: Octal

Octal — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

“I find there just isn’t room in their budget to be able to think blue-sky about the solution I provide, and there is usually some kind of compromise needed”

I would also like to hear from others as I foresee myself being in a similar situation.

By: Dnyarri

Dnyarri — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 19:00:00 +0000

Reaching people is only the first part of the battle ya know? :) Marketing is NOT sales. Sales is not marketing. Marketing is reaching people that have a potential use for your product or service. Sales is about closing the deal.
Sales is about passion. Marketing is just a numbers game.
10,000 people reached, 1% sale rate, that’s 100 people sold. Would you like fries with that?

Sales is all about energy, fun and life. If you excite people about the potentials, if you talk to people like you’re having fun and you help them to enjoy their time with you, then they will buy from you before they buy from anyone else. Droning on about budgets won’t close the deal.
I’m not saying that you need to be Tony Robbins here or drown out intelligence conversation with mindless buzz-phrases, just let your natural love for this work reach out to your clients. If you don’t love this work, find something else to do with your time. Because there are those of us who DO love it and we’ll bulldoze right over you.

Enjoyment is not love, btw. “I enjoy doing web design” sounds like an ad for ITT tech. Some poor guy sitting on the side of the road talking about how his old life was squat before this magical thing came along and solved all of his problems like a pill. Yea, right… I got a bridge to sell you too. Nobody trusts that junk. Ya know? I mean honestly, do YOU trust it? Sure, there are people desperate enough to go for it… but that’s not a good business strategy either. “Wanted, 10 desperate people to pay me a lot of money for web design work.” Not really the best classified ad to place.

“Everytime I hear about a new internet technology my loins quake in desire!” is a much better approach to business.
If you have an orgasm just thinking of the potential benefits of world-wide wireless and RSS-based marketing.
Ooo yea.

Try this:
Find what THEY are passionate about in their business. Then just ask, sincerely (because if you’re not being sincere this won’t work), “So tell me, and I don’t know if it can, but you know your business better than I do… how do you think the internet could really benefit your company and it’s sales?”

If they can’t answer that, then you aren’t doing your job.
You’d be suprised how many objections and hurdles this approach can solve.