Your Sales Process: Open 24 Hours A Day!

So I’ve spent two of the last three weeks sitting in a hospital room. Not for me, but because a member of my family has been very sick…

Needless to say, that’s quite disruptive to the daily process, routine, and flow of running your own business. And despite this very frustrating and maddening experience…

…I sold two pieces of business.

How? Because of my e-rep.

I had two entrepreneurs visit and spend time on my website while I was attending to family matters. They learned a little about me, my philosophy, and my services, and made the decision to reach out to me for assistance.

It was most satisfying. I mean, closing a sale is always gratifying. Closing a sale that you didn’t have to expend too much energy on is even more so.

But this didn’t just happen. This is NOT a “build it and they will come” scenario. There is some groundwork that goes into this process, and seeds that need to be sown, and land that needs to be tended…consistently over time.

Here are four key principles to think about when building an e-rep designed to sell 24/7/365:

1. You do have to regularly publish solid content, at least a couple of times a week. Most likely this is on your blog, but can also be done by contributing guest posts elsewhere, submitting articles to other aggregate sites, and/or distributing content via your e-newsletter. Generating good content is critical. If your work is poor, people won’t be inspired by it, and more importantly, won’t be motivated to share it with others. But writing good content – and just waiting for people to find it – doesn’t work either.

2. The content, particularly on your blog, should also be optimized for the search engines. Be sure you strategically place the right keywords and phrases in the title, the body of work, and in the SEO tools used by your blogging platform (see your webmaster if you are not clear on these tools). A great body of work is most important, but you are missing opportunities to expand your reach and draw in new prospects if people can’t find your content using search engines…

3. You do have to network with people. You do have to engage with people. This is where spending time conversing with the right people on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn begins to make a difference. The two guys that I mentioned above who bought from me, first learned about me from Twitter. I never sold them services on Twitter. We just talked. About non-business stuff. This is how to begin to establish relationships with people. This is where you begin to learn a little more about your prospects. What happens, inevitably, is your new friends on the social web begin to check out your blogs and websites, and once you capture their attention there, they begin to consider ways to do business with you.

4. You have to help other people. This won’t work if you are only in a me, me, me position. You need to share the good works of others. You need to comment on the work of others. You need spotlight the works of others on your own website and blog. Why is this important? Because this is – bar none – the best way to drive traffic back to your site. And the best way to stir up referrals back to your site. This is the key piece to building awareness to your blog, and that’s how the 24/7/365 sales process begins…

What do you think?

[cartoon by @gapingvoid]