My Deep Dark Secret Sales Technique....
By: John Skorczewski
Hello,
Well the switchover is nearly complete....it went as well as it could...only a few minor bumps and bruises along the way!
Thanks to everyone who emailed me their encouragement on the new ezine layout!
This week I want to talk to you about something that everyone
can do right away today that is almost guaranteed to boost your sales...and I'm talking THROUGH THE ROOF.
About five years ago I was selling our Submission-Spider Search Engine Submission Software.
It was still pretty new software at the time, and not the wild success that it is today.
Sales were ok....but nothing great. Then I did something that literally changed the entire company around,
and it's something you can do very easily for your own business.
What did I do? I started snooping!
Yep, I headed over to the web site of my main competitor. They've long since gone
out of business so I can talk about it to you.
I looked at their web site...I read their sales copy...and then I did the thing that skyrocketed my own sales....
....I downloaded the free trial of their software.
So what? Well...I'm getting to it.
Right away I got an autoresponse email from them thanking me for trying the trial demo.
A few days later I got another follow-up letter offering me a special deal on the software if I bought
it right away....
A few days later I got another follow-up email re-confirming the special deal they sent me the previous
day.
You may be asking.....so what?!
Well at that time I wasn't doing ANYTHING like that with my software. I wasn't even collecting
the email addresses of the people who downloaded my free trial.
So I thought to myself....maybe I should do something like that.
So I started my own follow-up program for the people who downloaded my free trial. I patterned it
after my competitors. Now, I didn't copy their emails and use them as my own....I wrote my own
email letter that the autoresponder would send to the people who downloaded my trial software...
I didn't copy, but I patterned them after my competitors. The first day I sent the downloader an
email thanking them for trying the software...then I waited a few days and sent my own special
offer...then I waited a few days and sent a re-confirmation of the special offer. Just like my competitor...
The result? Sales immediately jumped over 80% That one little thing that took me 2 hours to
do almost doubled my sales....year over year....for the last 5 or 6 years, I can't even imagine how much
money it's made me.....
Is what I did wrong? Is it unethical? Is it illegal? Of course not. I didn't copy my competitors,
I just used a similar tactic that they were using...but one I would have never used if I hadn't done
a little snooping.
I was talking about this to a friend of mine who teaches Marketing at a local college and he said that
there's even a term for it...it's called "Competitive Benchmarking" and all the big companies
do it....it means measuring your products and processes against other companies in order
to improve your stuff.
And you can do this yourself today. Head over to Google and type in the keywords that
describe your products. Look at all the other sites that come up. Study them. If they have
a freebie or download of some sort, download it. If they have a newsletter, subscribe to it.
Study everything you can and apply the things you think are cool to your own business.
Don't steal proprietary stuff....but model your processes after their processes and test
things out!
Heck, I'll go so far as to BUY my competitors products just to see how they follow-up
after the sale...and see what kind of literature or sales material they send me in the mail...
It's a wonderful way to boost your sales and it's something you can do right away and at
little cost.
That's all for this week. See you next Monday!
John Skorczewski
(pronounced Score-Chess-Key)
Editor, WebPromotion-Weekly
http://www.WebPromotion-Weekly.com
