Thanks + Well said + Followup

Hi,

Conversation begins:

You wrote:
> And he is skilled enough to control the
> whole thing. He is professional enough to
> know that on any given day he may get twice
> as many NO's as YES's...BUT that doesn't
> mean NO forever (unless he fires them).

This gets into the area of profitability. Needless to say there's a cost attached to attempting to make a sale, and at the end of the month expenses have to be less than income. As long as this is true it really doesn't matter what your ratios are. I know people who are making one cent per unique visitor, so they'd better be masters of getting cheap traffic.

You wrote:
> A professional salesman is able to read the
> person, make adjustments, apply techniqe and
> methods of persuasion honed from trial and
> error.

The highest compliment I could receive would be to be called a professional salesman. I have a long way to go before I'd deserve such a compliment.

You wrote:
> That the DELIVERED goods more than fulfills
> the salesmanship.

This also touches on profitability if the seller initially loses money aquiring the customer and has to recoup it through later, less costly sales. Right now I'm not well financed enough to use that strategy. I know people whose attitude towards surfers is to grab them and bounce them against the wall until money falls out. I also know people who wouldn't dream of offending a surfer and who talk about serving their needs (the link below is a good example of this attitude--after reading this message I was almost starting to wonder if I should offer to mow surfers' yards or wash their cars to thank them for visiting my site). My attitude toward surfers is somewhere between the wall-bouncers and the Surfer Protective Society.

You wrote:
> Since we can't see what the Net surfer is
> really doing, how she is really responding,
> we must use our knowledge of human behavior
> as skimpy as it is, and apply the basic
> principles that might work for the masses
> and not worry about the lone
> individual...but the contention is, even
> then, if you make the choices universal and
> opposite enough, you can get a response.

What I want to learn to do on the web is to build selling machines out of interconnected "mini sites." This kind of self-contained machine is possible to build right now, and these machines are being built and used right now. I know a good example of such a "machine" consisting of 27 sites and around 1500 total pages, all craftily interlinked and designed to target and conserve traffic and extract $$$ from it. What really gets me excited is the idea of building, say, one machine like this a month and letting it do its thing.

You wrote:
> Every response, every click of the mouse
> tells you something. It has been said that
> most surfers are willing to make about 3
> clicks per site before they make a
> LEAVE/STAY decision.

Couldn't agree more.

You wrote:
> If they stay, you've learned something about
> them and you should at this time introduce a
> more complex set of choices, choices
> designed to narrow down even more...
> a set of choices to ascertain their CURRENT
> state of mind. And when you can harmonize
> with the current state of mind, you can then
> offer them your sales pitch, but by this
> time they've travelled down the funnel of
> general interest into the venturi of
> specific problem/interest...with you
> providing the solution/resolution.

Brilliantly said!

Let them pick a path and travel down it, but if they try to break through the side of the funnel present them with a page that has all the choices again, and try to get them back into the funnel. To do this you need popups, which is why it exasperates me when I see businesspeople passing out popup-blockers.

You wrote:
> It is easy to find PEOPLE who have somehow
> qualified themselves...but it is much harder
> to deliver the RIGHT words, the right
> message the right sales pitch to them

> AT THE RIGHT TIME.

> So when is it never the wrong time?

> When they come to you.

Couldn't agree more. That's why search engine traffic is so golden.

You wrote:
> You then lead that person with WORDS, an
> UNQUALIFIED lead, a stranger, through a
> series of choices that helps you to
> establish rapport and learn of their current
> needs/wants.

Couldn't agree more.

The key skills are knowing how to sell and knowing how to get traffic without paying too much.

Thanks for starting this valuable thread!

Best,

- Boyd




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