Personal Financial Planning Concepts

Is it possible to take a normal offline service business like a legal practice, private medical practitioner or even a real estate business and make money with it from the Internet?

As someone who’s been doing this since 1996, I say the answer is a resounding “YES”.

If you are a business owner, or even an affiliate marketer, you know how hard it is to make a living online.

Many so-called Internet Marketing gurus will tell you that the only way to make money online is to create your own information products, hype them up with a completely fictitious sales letter and then sell via Clickbank, allowing an army of keen and eager affiliates to do your marketing for you.

Whilst that can and does work, there are other paths that are equally successful.

I know from experience, having made my living online by using my own web sites to promote other people’s businesses.

The business I chose were all service oriented. The reason for this is that a service business typically has a low overhead in order to provide the service.

I found that they were more willing to provide me with a larger share of the fees I was able to generate.

The key is to use sales language and “speak” to the businesses clients in language that they understand and respond to.

For example, there’s no point using a 5 page sales letter when you’re trying to sell the services of a conservative legal practice – it just won’t work.

The other key thing is to build the web site in a way that it looks to be providing objective advice.

People like objectivity when they are buying.

The sites I tend to concentrate on are business to business sites. I just don’t like selling to individuals, as they have less money to spend and are infinitely more fussy than a corporate buyer who typically just wants the facts.

My approach works and through various web sites, I have attracted the business of quite a few household name clients for my clients.

The great thing about the way I do business, is that I don’t necessarily have a client when I build my web sites.

Instead, I build a web site based on a certain topic and then quite literally build a business around it.

The sales copy doesn’t have to be blistering hot, it just has to be convincing and contain a strong call to action for the reader on the particular web page.

Make that call to action strong enough and the customers will come knocking on the door and there will be no need for cold-calling. The web site does the selling for you.

When you establish a relationship with a customer, you want that relationship to have many levels, not just one layer from one sale.

We all have our sales goals to meet on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis. This doesn’t mean that once we get a sale out of our customer, that we hurry them out the door and move onto the next one.

Build a relationship with your customer. As you close the deal on your sale, talk to your customer, find out what it is they need and can use that you can provide them with.

People love to talk about themselves, so it shouldn’t be too hard to get them talking.

Ask about their job, their family, their pets, their hobbies, etc.

For instance, when I was in banking, working within the branch network and someone came in to open a checking account, I would sit them down at my desk and profile them.

How would I profile them?

I would take down their information and put it into my computer. By doing this I was able to see if this customer was new to our bank or an existing customer.

Now, if they were a new customer, and came in to open a checking account, I could safely assume that their savings account, investments, and loans were at another bank.

This is about the time I would start my profiling. I would ask about the other institutions that he did business with and compare the benefits and features of our products to the ones he had.

I also knew that there was a reason that he decided to open an account with me, perhaps he just wasn’t happy with his existing bank.

Remember, I only told him about our products and services, I did not push them on him. However, I did make notes of everything we discussed, so I could follow up at a later time. I would also leave my customer with a welcome packet consisting of a brochure for each of our products and several of my business cards.

The customer is in the door. You have some of their business. That is fine for the time being. You don’t want to overwhelm them. Build the relationship with them, gradually find out what their needs are by prospecting, than when the time is right, go over a product with them that you believe is ideal to their needs.

If I had an existing customer in front of me, I had the ability to se what they did and did not have, and again, I would go over the benefits and features of our products, taking notes, and following up at a later time.

The next time you have a customer in front of you, prospect them. Find out what they do and do not have with you. Once you have figured this out, offer to explain the benefits and features of products you have that you believe would be good for them. Make notes of the conversations you have with your customers, than follow up with them to talk about the products you had discussed.

Prospecting is simply finding out what a customer needs that they don’t have. Once you have established what their needs are, the rest will come relatively easy. Good luck.