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Introduction

Nearly every time we go online we are bombarded by varying strategies to gain our attention. Most internet sites are filled with more information than we need and some to try to catch our attention with pop ups and the like. Some sites even use tracking or remarketing tactics that follow us wherever we go online.

Even when we log on to our own social media accounts, we’re pulled this way and that by purposefully-aimed distractions. These appear in the form of ads and notices. Some are from the social media platforms themselves: Advertise with us! Others are from their advertising partners or clients. Even when there are no specific ads, those platforms continually suggest other people and companies we might want to follow or with whom they recommend we connect based on our own interests and posts.

This is also true with e-mail. If by chance you give a website your email address, you can almost guarantee a flurry of emails to hit your box. You’ll be entered into a short- or long-term campaign by that company to spoon feed you information interspersed with offers to invest in their products or services. Not only will that vendor send you emails, but in some cases, they trade or sell your contact information to similar companies so they can send offers, too. Even worse, they’ll sell your information to list brokers. Those list brokers will in turn resell your information many times over!

It’s no wonder we’ve become a society of people with short attention spans! Everyone wants it. And, many of us are so jaded about all the non-essential information being pushed on us that we have learned to block it out quite effectively. When we enter the digital world, either we’re distracted to no end or we train ourselves to get in, get what we need, and get out—sort of like putting on mental blinders. If we don’t put those blinders on, it’s all too easy to fall down the rabbit hole of the internet. The next thing you know, it’s two hours later and you have no idea how you got to the site demonstrating how to prepare a new recipe for chicken.

With the realization of how we react to all the clutter online, how do we, as sales professionals, make effective and direct contact with our own ideal potential clients there?

We’d like to believe that we all recognize the need to understand and use online resources wisely in our marketing efforts. After all, that’s where most people turn for research. The hard part is figuring out what will be most effective specifically for us, for our products, and our industry.

It’s sad, but true, that much online marketing is designed to throw the informational spaghetti at the wall in hopes that someone will be interested enough to “like” or “connect” with us and become part of our opt-in email list or business social group. The hope is that by sending out massive amounts of pertinent content to enough people that a small percentage of it will reach the desired target audience.

Content marketers say the more interesting and specific your information is to your potential clients, the better chance someone will join your little world. And if you keep pumping out enough interesting information, someday, hopefully, in the not-too-distant future those people will contact you with questions or to purchase your product or service.

And you know what? There are some very successful content marketers who have created systems that are working just fine for them and thousands of their clients. As with anything though, there are way more people who have tried and failed with similar methods. So, as with anything, there are pros and cons to the various online marketing strategies.

Con(s): It can be very time consuming to develop the industry or product information you need to make available to potential clients (unless you work with a large corporation or hire a content marketing company that has a designated team of marketing professionals to create it). When a potential client responds to content marketing (outbound) there’s an interest you’ll need to be prepared to follow up on. It’s likely that they have already been looking for a product or service like yours and have received several quotes. You’re just another source allowing them to gather information or comparison shop with no direct contact, emotional involvement, or commitment.

Pro(s): When you have the right information for the right demographic of clients, this method can shorten your sales cycle dramatically. With the right investment of time and funds, you can create a steady flow of semi-qualified leads direct to your inbox—awaiting follow up.

With an extensive number of years in sales under our belts, and having adapted to changes in the marketplace during those years, we are proposing the use of a combination of some old-school sales strategies with current technology to improve your odds of finding and closing ideal clients. Our winning combination will have you connecting with qualified buyers in a professional manner, communicating directly with decision-makers, and closing more business.

This book is about assertively and consistently contacting your demographic base individually and directly through specific, timed, and professional online communications; developing strong relationships by providing excellent service; building trust and confidence in you, your company and your product; and closing sales online. With the strategies in this book, you’ll be closing sales through very specific techniques and sequences that we have developed through years of trial and error. These techniques are designed to work through online communications with very little-to-no actual face-to-face interaction and, in some cases, no verbal communication with your buyers.

That’s right, there’s little to no contact except through online communication. No face-to-face, no phone calls, and no sliding paperwork across the table and sweating it out waiting for the next person to speak. We refer to it as silent selling.

Please don’t get us wrong, there will always be a place for face-to-face selling in the business world. With some products, direct, personal contact is still and will always be a necessity. As a matter of fact, many of the same successful verbal prospecting and closing techniques that have been used for years parallel with the unspoken techniques you will learn in this book.

Today’s decision-makers want to be fed information as fast as their brains can take it in. However, each person has their own pace at which they can take in and retain information. Because of that, developing patterns for delivering information is critical to succeeding in the current business landscape. Potential clients want to be able to decide within the first five seconds if they should invest their valuable time to click on your offering or not.

Because of the limited time frame to capture buyers’ interest, we need to present specific, compelling statements or pieces of information that will leave absolutely no doubt as to what is being offered. And it must be done in a professional manner, with a plan for various following communication options to meet the specific needs of each and every potential client.

This may sound like it takes a lot of hard work or effort to do. We’ll readily admit that it does take time to learn and get the ball rolling on the process we’ll cover in these pages, but you won’t be reinventing the wheel. We’ve developed a system that works and are prepared to teach it to you in as simple a form as possible. So, let’s dig in and start our journey to selling silently—online.