THE FORTUNE IS IN FOLLOW-UP

THE FORTUNE IS IN FOLLOW-UP
Essential Ingredients To Major Business Success
Chapter One ~ The first step to effective networking is…
Connecting One To One

You’re probably in business to build as large an organization as possible and/or make as many sales as practical in order to build a better life for yourself and your loved ones. In order to achieve that objective you need to reach as many targeted prospects as possible with your message. The Internet provides a tool for potentially, inexpensively reaching thousands. Yet, your message must get through to your prospects - one… at …. a ….. time. - It’s individuals who read your message, individuals who think about it and who react to it. They react to your message once they connect with you and feel an appropriate emotion based upon the content of your messages. So the real key to your on-line success is connecting with your prospects one-at-a-time or one-to-one.

How do you connect with your prospects one at a time? You do it by envisioning individual readers of your communications (newsletters, articles, e-mails and WebPages) sitting across from you as you write. You write as if you’re talking to them and even try to envision their individual faces. I personally do this very literally because I make note of specific faces as I surf the Internet. I actually study the photos posted on the various websites. Do that too and you will find yourself actually talking to individuals as you write. That feeling will be conveyed in your e-zine (e-mail magazines) articles, e-mails, and web copy. People “feel” this when reading your writing and so they respond to your message to them.

Realizing the importance of knowing who you’re dealing with is a great reason to post your photo on your website. You want your visitors to get to “know” and connect with you. Maybe you should start doing this if you don’t already. Unless you look like you’re “criminally insane,” how you look is not really very important. Most of us are uncomfortable and unhappy with some aspect of our appearances. Just smile and make sure that the photo conveys a professional image.

Realizing the importance of knowing who you’re deal with is part of the reason I frequent online discussion forums and join e-mail discussion lists. You get a feel for what a person is really like after reading a few of their posts. They also get a feel for who you are over time.

Another tool, which has proven helpful in connecting with people online, is listening to the audio clips available on many websites. By hearing the actual voices of your audience members, this helps them to “become” real people instead of just names on a list. It’s also fun discovering what individuals sound like. Since we are from many different countries and regions within different countries, people rarely sound like what you imagined. That’s beside the point, but hearing the voice helps you to know the other person. Talking to people on the telephone, naturally, has the same effect.

If you don’t already, consider using a few sound clips on your website. It’s extremely easy to add short recorded messages to your website. If you don’t want to learn how to do this, get your webmaster to step you through the process. Sound gives a website an entirely different feel.

Through connecting with people one-on-one we build trust and respect. You don’t think of your contacts as just potential buyers or down-line members. You begin to see them as individuals sitting in from of their computer screens reading and responding to something you wrote. You eventually feel the two-way flow of communications and that lets you know that your audience IS being reached.

Examples of the two-way communication flow is when your e-zine readers e-mail you after reading one of your insightful articles, or someone e-mails you with a personal thank you after you responded to their question on a discussion board. In the sales arena, it’s when a potential customer e-mails you with a question about a product you recommended and then orders after getting your very frank response. It’s when someone working on an e-book or piece of software e-mails you asking you to review it before it’s released because they value your opinion.

If you look at your own buying behavior you’ll realize that you buy from people that you connect with. You feel good when you buy a generic product (that you could have purchased from hundreds of different individuals) from someone you’ve gotten to know. Others make their buying decisions the same way! People buy from people that they know, like, and trust. People team up with people that they know, like and trust.

Make it one of your goals beginning today to cultivate those one-on-one relationships. To beginners, it will seem like you might spend a LOT of time just to reach a FEW individuals when you really prefer to reach as many people as possible. There is a natural tendency not to want to slow down and deal with individuals. It’s critical to your business and personal success that you realize it’s individuals that make business decisions. Individuals sitting at their keyboards, or reading something you’ve written (which they printed out to read during a spare moment), should be the focus of your efforts. Master this skill and you’ll be totally amazed at the effectiveness of all your business efforts. You’ll begin to see the essentialness of connecting one-to-one, even when sifting through the thousands of contacts on the Internet trying to locate the few gems that you’ll eventually have business dealings with.

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