Mal Gordon – How to Sell on the Web

I recently attended a business networking breakfast. As per standard practice, cards are exchanged and I ended up giving a card to a self proclaimed “internet marketing expert” who had a system that was hotter than the sun and was used by some self anointed guru who has a bazillion followers and gets a gazillion sales and a few more outrageous claims that we’ve all heard before yada, yada, yada!

To be fair, the system is actually half decent, what was immensely off putting was just how aggressive the system spruiker was. She introduced herself, seemed instantly dismissive of what I did or had to say as if she was waiting her turn to deliver her seemingly contrived pitch then delivered a very forceful monologue on what she had to offer and why it was the best thing since sliced bread. She was a human spam machine and I instantly disliked her!

Despite this terrible first impression, I visited the website of the system she was spruiking and it’s actually half decent yet my dislike for Human Spam as we shall call her had given it all a bad vibe and I decided not to pursue it further.

About a week after the meeting I missed a call. I checked my voicemail, instead of hearing “Hi Mal, it’s Human Spam and i’d like to touch base to talk about X” I got a repeat of her forceful pitch delivered in a demeaning tone as if I was an idiot for not having signed up with her ten times and how quickly can I sign up so she can move onto spamming more people with her amazingly life changing email marketing system. Yes, Human Spam had just spammed my voicemail box! I was livid and there was absolutely no way I was going to do business with this woman!

Unsurprisingly, I did not return her call. This didn’t deter the unstoppable force that is the Human Span machine. She called again yesterday:

HER: “Hi! It’s Human Spam, is now a good time to talk?
ME: *very annoyed that she had the gall to call me again despite my disinterest* “No, now is not a good time to talk.”
HER: “When would be a good time?”
ME: *Immensely annoyed that my rude tone has not slowed her pushiness one iota* Never, goodbye!
*click*

The lessons I took from the Human Spammer are:

1. Don’t be Aggressive

Some sales people think they can steamroll weaker minds into bending to their will to get the sale. There is no faster way to turn people off your brand or product than to be rude and pushy. Build the relationship first, then sell softly second.

2. Do Your Homework

Research your potential customer BEFORE you contact them. A great part of my irritation with Human Spam was down to her lack of interest or understanding of what I did. She made no mention of my site and didn’t even suggest that I might be able to use her system AS PART OF a strategy as opposed to being THE STRATEGY which was what she inferred.

Show an interest in your customer or prospect and heck, they may show an interest in you.

3. Don’t (Human) Spam

You wouldn’t barge into a group conversation, ram your card into every member’s hand, shout a scripted sales pitch to them without giving them the chance to respond and abruptly leave would you? Didn’t stop Human Spam.

Ask people how you can help them, trust me, it works a whole lot better.

It used to be my dream to want to work for an advertising agency in a creative capacity. I’m not sure that dream is so attractive anymore.

The Last Advertising Agency On Earth

“Earn a fortune without having to do any real work”
“Just sit back, relax and watch the money flow in.”
“Make fortunes from investing in as little as 5 minutes a day.”

Why do fraudsters and scam artists continue to use such hackneyed and cliched phrases? Because their market of the desperate and uninformed so dearly want to believe it.

One born every minute.

In the pre-youtube days the music industry would produce music videos and give them to tv stations at no charge as a form of free advertising in the hope that they would get airplay and people would rush out and buy the cassette tape/LP/CD. With the advent of the mp3, itunes and youtube, this model no longer works.

Interruption advertising doesn’t work anymore which is why advertisers are choosing to make ads that are part of, instead of an interruption in between the entertainment. This video had an ad at the start (revenue sharing with youtube) as well as several product placements by many well known brands. I am a big advocate of product placement on youtube and feel that videos like Telephone are going to play a big part in the future of advertising.

How many placements did you spot? I counted 11

Remember when you used to explore the web for stuff like this?

lunchtime
back to the same news site while you eat your lunch in front of the machine if you’re addicted to the internet or really, really busy and have to try and appear to work through lunch
check facebook (employer permitting)

home time
check facebook (if you hadn’t done it on your phone already)
check email
send emails
maybe watch a bit of youtube

Sound familiar? The truth is that the web is no longer so shiny and new. When it was in what seems like a blink of an eye ago we were more adventurous with our web surfing. After realising that every possible genre of porn under the sun was there we would move on to typing crazy names into the address bar like ‘crazyinsane.com’ or that perennial favourite ‘pandaswearinghats.com’ just to see if anyone had been mental enough to put something up there. We would also be more adventurous with our searches and search yahoo (Google what?) for ever more obscure terms to see if we could stump it.

Like all shiny, new things, the novelty soon wore off and the net became more routine. You were using it more and more in your work and now it’s right up there with oxygen and electricity in terms of essential services. Sadly, our web surfing habits have also become more mundane. After a hard day sitting in front of a computer staring at spreadsheets, who wants to come home and search for obscure stuff like the dietary habits of Himalayan Yak Herders?

We are now so overwhelmed with Facebook status updates, a plethora of constantly updated news sites covering every topic imaginable and Tweets that we can barely get through processing the pile of information that now builds up in mere nano-seconds.

Yet, so many continue to pay good money for websites that don’t grab people’s attention. You have to give people a very good reason nowadays to break out of their little web routine which may consist of no more than five sites in total to come and visit your site and hear what you have to say. Just being on the web with a web site is not good enough, you have to be providing content that is relevant, unique and compelling. If you ain’t, then your site isn’t going to shake the common web surfer out of their tiny web universe that now dominates their day.

If you’re going to do something on the web make sure it’s something like pandaswithhats.com or the dietary habits of the Himalayan Yak Herders because that stuff is just plain out of the ordinary and anything but mundane. It may just be so extraordinary that some people may break their routine and give you a try.