Thought I'd heard 'em all:-)

> Whilst its fun to look at these answers from
> your perspective... what they are really
> saying to you is they don't trust your sales
> proposition.

This nails it (and I'll come back to it in the end). But ...

> And at the end of the day you are still
> asking them to spend their hard earned money
> UP FRONT with NO GUARANTEE of any success.

But that's how they got into business! They launched themselves away from the security of the corporate world, with no guarantee of success.

They bought their inventory, their business license(s), their office/retail space/webspace/whatever, all with no guarantee of success.

They pay their development costs, their tax advisor, their utility bills, their employees, all their ordinary business expenses, with no guarantee of success.

There is, in business as in life, no guarantee of success. Hard work helps. Luck helps. A track record of success helps. Intelligent management of available resources helps. (Getting good advertising and marketing counsel helps.) All these things stack the odds in favor of one enterprise over another. But they are, as you point out, no guarantees.

> There's a New reality of selling brewing.
> Times have changed forever. It's certainly
> going to become increasingly harder than
> ever to make the old rules work.

I believe the old rules still largely apply; it was the go-go 1990s that were the abberation. In order to sell something, you have to connect with each individual buyer and offer him or her real value in his or her eyes. What has become harder, is the task of cutting through the noise.

What's missing, in the above posts, is that connection to the buyer. Off-the-job, we can laugh about their little quirks as we'd laugh about our own. But on-the-job, one must connect with the person to whom one is trying to sell. And that's how to build trust in your sales proposition.




John Kuraoka, freelance advertising copywriter