How To Get Clients To Chase You Down and Make You Sell To Them
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I was standing there, shocked and in awe at what had just happened. With a blank stare that seemed to look into another dimension of existence, I slowly reach down and picked up my jaw off of the floor. Nothing had ever made me doubt that I was living in reality more then that moment, yet nothing had ever made me happier. The fact that no one could ever get used to something like this made me doubt that it was real at all – yet as awkward as it was, I realized at that point that I had discovered something magical…all completely by accident.
What I was staring at was an email from someone who had tracked me down from a google-stored copy of a webpage I had put up years ago and had since taken down.
Now, I’m a web guy. I’m an internet guy. Ive grown up with technology and have never known anything different.
Even with my background though, I just kinda’ assumed that when you take a website down, it goes down…Like off the internet…like down outside of peoples reach.
Apparently not.
They seemed nice enough with their approach, but but what they were asking for is what surprised me. This person was determined to buy products of mine that had not been up for sale in years.
I replied back to them really more dumbfounded then anything and asked them a few simple questions to gain some intel’ on their side of the story.
It turns out, they had read a forum post that I had written on a related forum. The post in question was a reply to someone that had been asking for a product like mine.
What shocked them was the response I had given though. I didn’t say “Oh HEY! You need X and Y products, and I sell them. buy them from me. Here’s the link!”
Instead, I walked them through the basis of my product and told them how to do what they were asking without any purchase necessarily.
Apparently, this person had taken my forum user-name, cross referenced it to find my real name, looked up my real name, and found references to my old site, and then found the site on a Google cache – all to buy my product.
Looking Back
In retrospect, what made me that sale (and ended up reopening the whole business) wasn’t just the fact that I had shared my knowledge without asking money for it. It wasn’t really my non-self-promotion style either. I like to think it was my authority from being a respected member of that board for so long, but that probably wasn’t the whole story either.
The truth is, it was a combination of the three:
- Authority
- Knowledge
- Helpfulness
When you combine these three key elements with your interaction among your peers, it creates an almost magnetic attraction that will become a marketing machine in it’s own right.
Certainly all of the age-old direct sales and marketing techniques still work to some degree, but as we enter into more of the information age, things are changing.
People want knowledge, now more then ever. They don’t just settle for the product, they want the process. You have to give to get, and in my experience, sharing knowledge has never hurt anyone.
So what about you? Have YOU ever watched a reaction by sharing information and knowledge with someone?
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