FBO: Blogging Is a Marathon, Not a Sprint

Sunday, October 26th 2008 by Shanel Yang

[For “FBO: Always React to Viewers Immediately,” click here.]

This part of the “FBO” or “For Bloggers Only” series is actually NOT JUST for bloggers, but FOR ALL entrepreneurs, employees, and nonprofit organizations seeking to raise funds to support their goals.

If you want millions of viewers, readers, customers, clients, members, etc., then you’ll want to follow along as we go through, one by one, the rainmaking secrets provided by Jeffrey J. Fox in his book How to Become a Rainmaker: The Rules for Getting and Keeping Customers and Clients.

BLOGGING IS A MARATHON, NOT A SPRINT

A. FOX’S TIP NO. 20 FOR ALL RAINMAKERS

Fox’s Tip No. 20 for how to become a great salesperson, or rainmaker, is: “Learn the ‘miles per gallon’ rule of selling.” As he explains in his book:

Selling is a time journey. The seller’s destination is usually a quota, a goal, a necessary amount o revenue. The timing of the journey is often a fiscal year, a deadline to bring in revenue (e.g., to meet next month’s payroll), or the sales cycle of the product.

This timed journey is like an automobile trip. The length of the auto trip is the number of miles between the start and the arrival. The sales journey is the dollar revenue to generate from the beginning of the selling period to the end.

The gas tank is the seller’s available number of sales calls. The miles per gallon is the seller’s call-to-close ratio. If the car has 25 gallons of gas and gets 20 miles per gallon, the car can travel 500 miles. If the seller has 300 available sales calls in a year (number of selling days times average number of calls per day), and has a call-to-close ration of 20:1* (i.e., 20 calls for every sale), the salesperson an make 15 sales. [Footnote: *To calculate a call-to-close ratio, review last year’s (or the last few years) and count the actual number of sales calls made. Divide that number by the actual number of new sales.] If the seller, in this example, cannot increase the total available sales calls, or improve his call-to-close ratio, then the sales potential is fifteen closes … not sixteen.

The Rainmaker understands this mathematical reality. Consequently, this Rainmaker plans up to twenty calls on a target customer, and does not call on more than fifteen targets.

The Rainmaker fishes where the big fish are. This means the Rainmaker calls on customers with large enough sales potential that, if closed, the resultant revenues will hit goal.

Less than 5 percent of all salespeople (and of all selling organizations) understand this concept intellectually, know how to calculate the math, know how to prioritize the probabilities, or have the discipline of the Rainmaker. Ninety-five percent of all salespeople will dilute themselves, by calling on too many customers and not allocating enough sales calls to close each sale. They will, in effect, run out of gas and not hit their goal.

Your available number of sales calls is your gas tank, your selling capital. If a home builder needs a mortgage of $140,000 to complete the house, and his banker only lends $130,000, what should the builder do, leave off the roof? It is better to lend $141,000 than $139,000. It is the same with selling. If it takes ten sales calls to close, don’t plan eight. If it takes ten calls to make the sale, then it is better to make no calls than to make nine.

In the art and painting business, it once took 14 sales calls to get a collector to invest in a museum piece. Therefore, the call-to-close ratio was 14:1. If the art salesperson made 130 calls on 10 collectors, he would make zero sales. But if the salesperson called 14 times on 9 accounts, a 14:1 ratio, he makes 9 sales.

You must decide how many sales calls—or gallons of gas—you have in your tank. You must maximize your miles per gallon, your call-to-close ratio.

Work the math and the numbers will work for you.

Rainmakers don’t plan a thirty-mile trip with twenty miles’ worth of gas.

B. APPLYING FOX’S TIP NO. 20 TO BLOGGERS

If you want to become an A-list blogger, apply Fox’s Tip No. 20 above to your blogging business by always remembering that blogging is a marathon, not a sprint.

Pace yourself. Most new bloggers give up within the first 3 months of blogging. Even those who start a blog business by promising themselves they’re in it for the long haul—“as long as it takes,” they tell themselves—rarely make it past the first year because they start to doubt they’ll ever make any real money from it.

Finally, even those who manage to make it past the 3-to-5-year mark, when they start making some decent money at last, suddenly think about throwing in the towel every time they face any major-but-temporary setbacks, like sudden drops in traffic for any number of reasons. That’s like running 26 miles but then stopping when you’ve only got 385 yards to go to finish the marathon! Only blogging isn’t just one marathon; it’s one marathon after another until you are ready to sell it or otherwise hand the burning torch to someone else. Pace yourself, but keep running.

What is your “call-to-close” ratio? In blogging, that can refer to the frequency of your posts. Post as often as you can without burning out. How do you know how often that is? That’s just another way of knowing yourself, your blog, and your viewers. But, most of all, know your own limitations, so you don’t burn out. Start slow and work your way up to your maximum capacity without sacrificing your creativity or enjoyment of the process. For some of you, that may be a few posts a week, say 2 or 3, if you want to add relevant quotes and images for each of your posts like many bloggers do (e.g., Zen Habit). However, if you dispense with all of that and just focus on providing the best text you can and as much of it as possible, you may be able to post an article a day or more (e.g., The Simple Dollar).

In blogging, your “call-to-close” ration can also mean how many times you comment on other blogs. Remember, “go where your biggest viewers hang out.” But, how many times do you suppose you have to comment on those other blogs before their viewers finally come to check out your blog? And, what types of comments, of all the ones you’ve made so far, tend to bring in the most traffic? For how long? And, from which blogs? You don’t know? Get the answers you need to these questions by tracking your results on the “Last Referers” column on your ShortStat page. Why do you need answers to these questions? So you can find out your “call-to-close” ratio. Always do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.

CONCLUSION

Blogging has got to be a labor of love to succeed. But, don’t just flail about blindly, either. Try things, track them, and constantly work to improve them. You can’t know what’s working if you don’t track everything you try. Find out what your “call-to-close” ratio is for everything you do on or for your blog. There are only two ways to improve that ratio. Make each “call” (post, comment, etc.) more effective or make more “calls.” Or, do both! But, don’t give up! And, pace yourself for the long run: 3 to 5 years, not 3 months or 1 year—or even 3 years if you’re not quite there by then! Sound daunting? Not if it’s a true labor of love! It’ll fly right by! : )

If you would like your own copy of Rainmaker someday, here’s what it looks like.

[For “FBO: Beware of Good Advice That’s Bad for You,” click here.]

[For entire “FBO” or “For Bloggers Only” series, click here.]

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