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Blitz Ezine # 185 October 21, 2002
Increasing Sales - Using follow ups - Newbie web business guide Finding Products

Note: This is an archived issue. Some links and/or content may be outdated

The Blitz-Promotions News Letter.
Issue no. 185, Oct. 21, 2002

************ In This Issue **************
Comments
Food for thought
Articles
The Classifieds
Next Issues
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Food for thought
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Be patient with everyone, but above all with yourself. I mean, do not be disheartened by your imperfections, but always rise up with fresh courage. How are we to be patient in dealing with our neighbor's faults if we are impatient in dealing with our own? He who is fretted by his own failings will not correct them. All profitable correction comes from a calm, peaceful mind.

St. Francis de Sales

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Increasing Sales - part 3
Creating a Follow Up plan
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Someone emails you with a question about one of your products, you send them the details and never hear from them again... did you remember to follow up?

You get a phone call with another potential customers asking about pricing, you don't hear from them again.

Follow ups are extremely important for increasing your sales. Below are eight tips / things you should include in your plan.

1. Create a time table for your follow ups. An example follows.

We get a request for a design quote from an email form.
We email them a quote usually within a couple of hours. We also categorize them as Hot or Not. A hot prospect is someone that has a fairly complex project that we would really like to do - like a type of database that we haven't done yet or something similar. A Not - is someone that didn't give us much information or maybe quoted their budget at 50 bucks for a 20 page site.

Hot prospects we -
Call them in a week if we have their phone number - if not we email them again. During the call we find out the objections, questions, concerns etc., and attempt to get a sell on the phone.
We continue weekly until they either say a definite no, or yes.

Not prospects we use email -
Two weeks after the initial contact with no response we email them again, briefly go over our proposal again and ask them for questions.
Two weeks later we send another follow up note.

The main thing is to have a plan and to make sure you follow it.

2. In your phone contacts get as much information as possible from them, so you'll be able to follow up later.

3. Make sure to include as much contact information as you're comfortable in your correspondences. Especially a telephone or a cell phone number, with a note to call you if needed.

4. Include in your signature links for your ezine. They may not be interested in becoming a customer now, but may want to at a later date.

5. Offer an incentive and a time limit to get the purchase. One other thing you can do with phone contacts is tell them about your phone order discounts - but only if they order today.

6. When you're following up make sure to include previous emails and notes from phone conversations.

7. If you didn't get a sale and your follow up process has ended, but them in the long range folder and send them a Christmas card. Make sure to include a few business cards with it.

8. If they don't buy from you, find out why. This could give you some future product ideas or areas that you want to test.

9. Send your prospects a handwritten thank you note, before you get the sale.

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Newbie Guide Part 5
Finding your first product.
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If you missed out on the first four lessons - you can find them at the links below.

http://www.blitzpromotions.com/blitz181.htm - Part 1
http://www.blitzpromotions.com/blitz182.htm - Part 2
http://www.blitzpromotions.com/blitz183.htm - Part 3
http://www.blitzpromotions.com/blitz184.htm - Part 4

A successful business finds a need and then fills it. That has been what we've doing for the past four weeks. First finding what you're good at, then finding a need, now we're going to start the process of fulfilling the need.

By now you should be feeling a bit more comfortable in your niche and learning more about where they like to hang out and more importantly what they're looking for.

A business usually doesn't succede with only one product, so before we launch our new business we're going to have three.

Get out a sheet of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the left side of the page write down those things you're good at from Part 1. From your research you've been doing on the right side jot down the needs you've found in your niche. Now circle those needs that fit what you're good at. If you're having trouble with this part, you can always send us a note and we'll be more than happy to help.

mailto:blitz@blitzpromotions.com

So how do you find a product to fill a need. Basically on the net there are 3 different kinds a product.

1. A tangible product - one that you'll buy at wholesale and sell at retail, or one that you craft / create.

2. An information product - this could be an ebook, ecourse, a booklet or phamplet, an audio, video, CD.

3. A service - this is when you help someone to do something. You're basically selling your time (expertise).

Some examples -

The fishing site - how to tie a fishing fly

1. Tangible product - sell fishing flys that we tie.
2. Info product - produce an ebook on how to tie a fly, along with a video. (so that would be two products).
3. A Service - conduct an onsite seminar or web based seminars on how to tie flys.

So this weeks homework is to figure out three products that you're going to sell. And no we haven't forgotten that we're actually going to build a website - but that whole thing revolves around choosing the right product. Next week we'll talk about how to find wholesale products that we'll be able to sell.

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