Hi 

 

One of the things that puts people off starting a business - online or otherwise - is the idea that they’ll have to SELL.

 

I reckon that’s born from the bad experiences most of us have of being SOLD to 

 

That old fashioned type of hard sell which is based on pressure

 

The sales people are under a ton of pressure to make sales because their sales managers are under even more.

 

So they use every trick in the book to take an out of the blue cold call to a sale - and the bigger the sale the better.

 

In the old days and possibly still the worst industries for this were double glazing/home improvements and car sales. Those were the real foot in the door merchants. 

 

If you’ve ever seen the superb play or film version of  “Glengarry Glenross” it depicts this perfectly

 

I was visiting my folks a couple of years back when one of these types showed up and tried to persuade them  they needed £7k worth of exterior wall treatment.

 

I took the guy aside and explained that my parents are both in their eighties and my dad has dementia so please don’t bother them with this. 

 

Leave a leaflet and we will check your company out online. If we decide there is work needing done we’ll get 3 quotes and take it from there. 

 

In other words - we’ll call you… 

 

An hour later his boss turned up to do a “follow up call” and advise us of a “special deal”.

 

He was sent packing with the assurance that his company will not be on the shortlist of any future work and that the police would be called if he or his colleagues made a third visit.

 

This type of selling, along with telephone cold calling should be consigned to the past where it belongs 

 

Doing business online is utterly unlike this. The closest anyone can come to it online is to bombard people with unwanted or unsolicited emails. 

 

Doing the second of these things is illegal and the first is easily combatted simply by unsubscribing - again a legal requirement. 

 

No self respecting internet business owner does either of these things anyway. 

 

The beauty of doing business online is that you can easily find the people who are actually looking for your products and present them only to those people

 

There’s no need to try and persuade everyone and their dog that they NEED your stuff. 

 

So if the idea of SELLING is putting you off starting an online business put that out of your head immediately 

 

We really don’t want any “Sales people” online.   

 

We want to choose to buy from people we know, like and trust. 

 

 

Bests 

 

 

Dave