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Your 5-Step Internet
Sales Cycle
by Alexandria K. Brown, "The E-zine Queen"
Many people seem
to think that selling on the Internet is a complete mystery. Funny
how we see the Net as its own entity instead of just another marketing
channel.
When I meet people
and they say they're going to start an "Internet business",
I get worried. It's as if that's all they need to know -- not what
they're selling or who their customers are. (I mean, when faxes first
came out, did you hear people saying they were just starting a "fax
business"? Not really.)
The Internet is just
one type of media that can sell for your business, and it follows
a sales cycle like any other. It's not magic ... it's a process.
But once you WORK
that process, it CAN work like magic!
So let's look at
the five basic parts of the Internet sales cycle:
1. Collect Leads
Who are you looking
for? Your answer should match your ideal client or customer. (Please
don't say that's "everybody"!) Do you market to women? Men?
What ages? What professions? Certain areas of the country or world?
What publications do they read? What interests do they have?
The answers to these
questions will help you determine where and how you can find these
folks. There are tons of ways to get leads online: search engines,
pay-per-click ads, banner ads, articles, and other types of advertising
and promotions.
2. Get Them in Your
Funnel
Once you've found
who you're looking for, you need to get them in your "sales funnel".
On the Internet, that means get them on your 0pt-1n list. The best
way to make this easy is to offer a free ezine or e-course.
On your website,
getting visitors on your list should be your #1 objective! Why? Up
to 99% of your first-time visitors will not buy from you or even contact
you. They'll take a quick look and then click away, and you've lost
them forever. These people are already valuable prospects -- they
took the time to find your site and are interested in the subject
matter or products you deal with. Does your home page or landing page
give the visitor a bazillion choices? If so, ditch the clutter and
give them a compelling invitation to sign up for your ezine or e-course.
3. Follow Up
Marketing studies
have always shown that your prospects need to be exposed to your message
at least nine times before they'll take action! (Some say it takes
even more times on the Internet.)
In traditional sales,
real people had to follow up with their prospects via live meetings,
phone calls, or postal mailings... over and over and over. What a
lot of work! But the Internet makes all this easy, instant, practically
free, and ... automatic.
This is where your
ezine or e-course works like a charm, following up for you automatically.
In fact, with many of the programs available today, you can schedule
email messages up to two years away! It's like putting your marketing
on auto-pilot, so you can just "set it and forget it"!
4. Close the Sale
The goal of your
ezine or e-course should be to drive the reader to buying what you
have. Of course you're also providing useful content and information
-- that's why they got on your list, and that's why they'll stay on
your list. But your underlying objective is to make more sales.
Most people make
the mistake of trying to sell from the actual email. That is, drive
them straight from the email to taking out their wallet. This is usually
not effective for two reasons: 1) you don't have the room in an email
to fully explain what you're selling and demonstrate its value to
the prospect, 2) it can turn people off who aren't ready to buy yet,
and you'll lose those prospects from your list.
The idea of the email
is to get them excited about your offering and to get them to CLICK.
Once they click,
they're taken to a sales page that you set up specifically for that
product or service you're promoting. It's THERE that the prospect
will get the full scoop on how great it is, why they need it, how
much it costs, how to order, etc.
5. Upsell, and Upsell
Again
Here's the biggest
mistake I made when I started to sell my first information product
online (Boost Business With Your Own Ezine): It was the ONLY product
I had to offer for two whole years! So once anyone bought it, I had
nothing else in my funnel to sell them. (Marketers also call this
having a "back end" product.) That meant I had to work extra
hard at finding new prospects all the time.
Smart salespeople
know it's much easier to sell to people who have already bought from
you than to constantly go out and find new prospects.
I finally realized
I already had thousands of valuable customers who knew, liked, and
trusted me. They'd already purchased a product from me that they were
happy with. So I learned more about WHAT ELSE they wanted.
That's when I began
churning out valuable new products and programs that my customers
ate up like crazy. And that strategy took me from sales of less than
$5,000 a month to between $15,000 and $20,000 a month.
Now, that didn't
happen overnight! In fact, I recommend starting with ONE product like
I did. It makes learning this entire process much easier, and your
results will come faster. Once you get the system down, you can start
adding more valuable offerings to your prospects and customers.
Learn It, Work It,
Live It
Pretty simple, yes?
Based on this model, you may see the missing links in your own Internet
sales cycle. Have patience, keep learning, fill in these gaps, and
you'll start to see the magic work for you.
© 2001-2005
Alexandria K. Brown
HELPFUL RESOURCES
RELATED TO THIS ARTICLE:
The Boost Business
With Your Own Ezine System
101 Simple, FREE
and Low-Cost Ways to Quickly Build a Massive Email List
The Secret, Simple
Formula to Writing a Web Page That SELLS
WANT TO USE THIS
ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include
this blurb with it: Online entrepreneur Alexandria K. Brown, "The
E-zine Queen," is creator of the award-winning 'Boost Business
With Your Own E-zine' system. To learn more about this step-by-step
program, and to sign up for her FREE how-to articles and FREE audio
class, visit www.EzineQueen.com
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