FBO: How to Be a Great Salesperson or Blogger
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[For “FBO: ‘Content Is King!’ What Does that Mean?,” click here.]
This series is called “FBO” or “For Bloggers Only.” If you’re not a blogger and never want to be, skip this and all other posts that start with “FBO.”
Hmm. On second thought, don’t skip this one because the “how to be a great salesperson” part applies to absolutely every adult who needs to make a living, at least in part, by attracting and keeping customers, clients, members, business contacts, etc. That’s basically everyone who isn’t born independently wealthy.
If you think you don’t need any sales skills just because you’re some kind of professional or executive, you have one hand tied behind your back. There are only two kinds of people in this world who don’t need to learn great sales skills: (1) those who already possess great sales skills; and (2) the independently wealthy (either rich with cash or rich with services or products so high in demand that people fall all over themselves to pay crazy amounts of cash in exchange for them). I’m not independently wealthy. But, I do want to get there. And, I could improve my sales skills to help me get there faster.
A GREAT SALESPERSON CAN BECOME AN A-LIST BLOGGER
All the skills required to become a great salesperson will also make you a great blogger. Why? Because you need to know how to attract and keep readers just as any business owner needs to know how to attract and keep customers. It’s that simple. A terrific book on the subject of great salesmanship, also known as “rainmaking,” is How to Become a Rainmaker: The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients
American Indian tradition exalts the Rainmaker. The Rainmaker used magical powers to bring the rain to nourish the crops to feed the people. Without the rain, the people would weaken, die, or have to move elsewhere.
Today, a Rainmaker is a person who brings revenue into an organization, be it profit or not-for-profit. That revenue comes from customers and donors. That revenue is the aqua viva—the lifeblood—of the organization. Without it the organization will die.
Customers’ money is the rain.
The term Rainmaker is more commonly used in such professional service industries as legal, accounting, consulting, investment banking, advertising, and architecture. In these industries, Rainmakers are the two or so people in the firm who are responsible for generating most of the new customers, the new business.
Big-hitting Rainmakers are among the highest paid employees in every company in every industry. They operate under many titles: owner, partner, chancellor, sales representative, CEO, agent, managing director, and fund-raiser. If becoming a Rainmaker is your goal, then this book will help you get there.
There is another kind of Rainmaker, and he or she is an employee—or associate or colleague or team member or crew member. Every employee must be somehow involved in the identification, attraction, getting, and keeping of customers. The advice in this book tilts to the salesperson, but if you have contact with customers, or work with and support colleagues who have contact with customers, this book will make you more effective. You will be better able to sell inside, to sell your ideas to your organization.
The most important success factor in any business or organization is having a customer. This is more important than the business idea, the products, the machinery, the buildings, the financing, or the people. It is customer money that pays everyone’s salary, that pays for 401(k) plans, union dues, bonuses, vacations, health insurance, computers, and office furniture. Customers are known by many names: members, students, fans, soldiers, parishioners, and patients. Regardless of what they are called, without customers no organization can continue to survive.
Therefore, the paramount job of every single employee in an organization is to, directly or indirectly, get and keep customers. This is true without exception!
The job of every employee is to help ring the cash register. The job of every employee is to keep the customer coming, and to keep the customers coming back.
This book is a recipe for how to sell, for how to make rain, be it drizzle or deluge, sprinkle or storm. If your organization needs revenues, and if you want to become invaluable to your organization, then read this book.
Just substitute “customer” for “reader,” and you have the clear argument for why being a great salesperson or rainmaker is important to the success of your blog.
14 SECRETS TO BECOME A GREAT BLOGGER
These tips are taken from How to Become a Rainmaker: The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients
1. Never take your readers for granted.
2. Treat your readers like your best friends.
3. Listen to your readers carefully to figure out their changing needs/wants.
4. Give your readers what they need/want. (Create it if you don’t have it yet.)
5. “Price” your content based on how much money your readers can save/make from it. (If you sell books, consulting, etc., the same for them.)
How do you put a price on your content for your reader? It’s what you “charge” for their readership, or, how much you make them do in order to have access to your content. Do you make them join a membership just to view the contents like some websites do? Do you force them to put up with too many annoying ads? Do you post too many articles trying to sell affiliate products rather than providing more of the excellent content that the readers originally signed up for? If you have awesome content, then most readers will put up with a lot to get it, like waiting in ridiculously long lines for the latest iProducts. But, if you don’t have content in super high demand, you’ll need to “price” your “product” accordingly.
6. Show your readers how much money they can save/make with your content. (E.g., I provide self help advice about relationships, work, and money that can save my readers thousands of dollars in expensive self help books, tens of thousands of dollars in therapy or professional coaching fees, and potentially make them millions to billions of dollars if they pursue their own million-to-billion-dollar businesses from being inspired by the many posts on this blog about entrepreneurship. All I ask for in return from my readers is their loyal readership by simply signing up for my RSS feed. When I get enough RSS subscribers, I can, in turn, receive more money by attracting bigger advertisers. That’s a fair bargain!
7. Teach your readers to want what they need.
8. Write your posts the way your readers like.
9. Post as often as your readers like.
10. Give your readers a little something extra, a little more than they expect.
11. Remind your readers of the money they save/make from your blog.
12. Thank each reader sincerely and often.
13. Help your readers sign up for your RSS feed, etc., so they won’t be embarrassed and go elsewhere.
14. Ask your readers to come back for more.
CONCLUSION
I never give advice I wouldn’t take myself in similar a situation. So: I hope everyone will join me for the next installment of this FBO series because I’m going to start sharing each and every one of the excellent tips Fox provides in his brilliant book that reveals all the secrets on how to become a great salesperson (and blogger)!
Finally, a very special thanks to all my readers, old and new! You are all helping make my dreams come true. I hope that I continue to provide content that you feel is worth reading so that I earn, and deserve to keep, your trust and loyalty. As always, I invite all comments and emails to help me achieve these important goals.
If you would like your own copy of Rainmaker someday, here’s what it looks like
[For “FBO: Why Should Millions View Your Blog?,” click here.]
[For entire “FBO” or “For Bloggers Only” series, click here.]
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August 24th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Hi Shanel,
I read both articles of FBO series. Both articles are very good and contain useful tips for blogging. In this article I like the concept of ‘Rainmaker’. However I have a little confusion. In above article, you explained to give healthy and useful content to readers. But when I do blogging I have a biggest challenge to create readers. Second thing how can we know whether the content which we are writing in blog is helpful and intresting to other? As much as I know , bolgs are the content of my intrest.
Correct me if I am wrong.
Warmest wishes.
Gaurav Bhatnagar
August 25th, 2008 at 8:46 am
Hi Gaurav! Thanks for your comment! I didn’t know you have a blog. What is your blog called, and what is the main purpose of it? Or, maybe, you’re thinking of starting a blog? You write “blogs are the content of my interest.” Do you mean you post articles about how to blog, about other blogs, or something else? It would help me very much to answer your question if I knew more about your blog.
Getting and keeping readers is the biggest goal (and challenge) of every new blogger. I have a short answer and a long answer to your first question, “How can we know whether the content we are writing is helpful or interesting to readers?”
1. Short Answer: The hottest topics on the web and elsewhere (magazines, books, DVDs) are: (a) Relationships; (b) How to Get Rich; (c) How to Lose Weight
2. Long Answer: People are interested in anything that can help them be happy. What makes people happy? Even children know the answer to this question, but adults have a hard time with it. Children would say: “(a) a family who loves and protects me; (b) good friends who like me and won’t steal my toys or fight with me too much; (c) lots of yummy things to eat; (d) and lots of fun things to do!” But, ask an adult, and you’ll either get a sarcastic — or, worse, serious! — reply like, “Sex, drugs, and rock and roll!” or “Too rich and too thin!” Or, they’ll look at you blankly and finally say something noncommittal like, “That’s a tough question.”
My suggestion is for you to start with what YOU want to blog about, then do some research to find out if people on the internet actually want to read about that topic. For example, let’s say you want to blog about organic fruit. That’s a pretty specialized topic — what they call a “niche market.” But, if you love organic fruit and want to blog about it, you’ll need to find out if there is enough interest on the internet for that topic to make it a money-making blog for you in the long run. What do you do? You look for blogs and/or websites about organic fruit on the internet. If you can’t find any specifically about organic fruit, you look for the closet thing, perhaps organic vegetables or organic food recipes, etc. Check out their traffic rankings on Technorati, Alexa, etc. Study the most popular blogs/websites you can find on related topics and read the comments left by their readers to find out what about organic fruit interests them. And, keep on studying blogs/websites related to organic fruit to stay current on your blog topic.
You wrote “blogs are the content of my interest.” Definitely people on the internet are interested in blogs about blogs, or blogs about blogging, so you are on the right path there. However, will your blog be in English or in Hindi? English is still the most widely used language on the internet. If you plan to use English, I would strongly recommend that you either improve your English writing skills dramatically first or find someone willing to edit your articles before you post them. Even if you have a great deal of useful information to share on your blog, most readers won’t bother reading much of it if it’s too hard to understand what you’re trying to say.
I hope that answers your question! I applaud your efforts to learn English and about blogging! Keep gathering information and learning as much as you can about these topics. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” - Lao Tzu