Last night, yes that was Sunday. I had the opportunity to attend a one of my 501c organizations charity dinner in South Jersey. The event was awesome, I won some stuff for the wife. You know that whole "Happy Wife, Happy Life" bit right? Made sure I had a chance at getting here some stuff! Oh yes, the food, the was..., well, let's say that I didn't have a great day today.
But, today was a day when I had one late afternoon webinar scheduled. My goal for today was to follow up with all of those open opportunities. I'm thinking I have at least fifteen of them, a third of them are probably pushing to December, and I'm probably losing one. I don't mind losing a deal here and there, but I do mind losing when I put in countless hours and still lose. Don't we all?
My effort for the AM was centered around writing original content for a new web site. I'll be the first one to stand up and pronounce that I'm a little smarter than the average bear, and I'll also be the first one to tell you that there are some holes in my selling skills. Thus, I decided to do something about one of those holes.
My weakness is making those dam phone cold calls, or maybe I just think it is. After thirty six years in the business it just grinds my gears that I can spend three hours making calls and only get through to a handful of people. What a terrible waste of time! How is that productive?
Today (actual last week), I put my money where my mouth is and made the investment to rule wide format leads in my GEO market place. My thought was to focus on wide format because of the limited competitors and the higher revenue per sale. I partnered with my buddy Jesse Harwell (the SEO King of Copiers) for the SEO and design of the site. Jesse developed the site, did all of the static content and graphics. I'm going to be writing most of the content.
The site was idle for about a week. I did a google search for "lease or buy a plotter in New Jersey" and I was ecstatic that my jerseyplotters was on the first page of google. Not sure if it will be on everyone else's, but it was on my google searches.
My goal is to write at least two blogs per week about wide format plotters, MFP's and scanners. After speaking with Jesse, we're thinking we're going to need at least ninety days before the leads start coming in.
I get it, I always knew it from writing blogs on this site, that you can get the buyers to come to you. It just took me some time to pull the trigger for that financial commitment. As far as time goes, there is no better time of the year than right now. The weather is colder in the East, the Sun goes down at 5PM and web traffic is up from now until April. This AM I was able to kick out two pretty good blogs. Next Monday, I'll be back at it.
My afternoon was filled with emails, and phone calls. I was able to schedule one appointment for tomorrow in the AM. Otherwise I was not able to move any of the existing opps any closer to closing. It was an afternoon that I would rather brush under the rug and forget about it.
My afternoon webinar never showed, and that's one thing I hate about webinars. It's just too easy not to show up. In the last two weeks I set up three and all three bailed. Much easier to get on site and do the show!
I'm still looking for another $20-$30K this month, it may pan out and it may not. But as I've stated before as long as you put the effort in you'll never know what tomorrow will bring.
PS: Here's the new site www.jerseyplotters.com (still have some house cleaning to do, need to dump the RISO and add Contex Wide Format Scanners.
If you're interested in doing what I did, you can reach out to Jesse via email jesse@pahoda.com
Amount Sold Today = $0K
Total Revenue to Date = $80K
New Opportunities Created Today= $0K
Total New Opportunities Created = $224K
Revenue Required $138K
-=Good Selling=-
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