How To Sell To Other Businesses

Business to marketing seems like a foreign language to many people who are trying it for the first time. The consumer markets seems so much plainer and easier, after all, we're dealing with every day people. With businesses we feel we are dealing with some mysterious entity or some divine VIP, a thing whose persona is foreign to everything we knew in the every day human consciousness.

The reality that most people miss, and it's a well-kept secret, businesses are people. They are decision makers, executives, highly paid company officers, and even midgrade managers. At the end of the day though, they are people, selling to other businesses is no different than selling to people, except that you have to consider the kind of person you're selling to. Much of this involves trying to get into a person's head. What does a business owner or manager need and/or want? What things will improve their lives, and more importantly, the operations of their business? Answering these questions is the first key to selling to other businesses.

1: Identify Your VIP

The first step in creating a strong pitch for your product and service is considering your VIP, there may be more than one to consider depending on how the decisions are made. You have to know who you're selling to and then consider how your business can benefit them personally. As we discussed, you're dealing with real people, and they taking their own needs and desires into consideration as well as their roles in serving the greater needs of the company. Is your contact a buyer, a manger, or a business owner?

Depending on who you're speaking to, you'll want to come with ideas and features about what you have to offer and how it makes their lives easy as well benefiting their employer.

2: Don't Just Sell, Give Them Something They Can Use

Whoever your VIP may be, you can expect that someone has found them too, and they probably get multiple pitches a day for what you have to offer. A simple letter with a sales pitch is no longer enough to draw people in anymore. Because of this, you want to attach your sales pitch to something they can use. Many companies do this by offering white papers. White papers may be written as guides on important industry topics and trends, and may even highlight problems the industry is facing. This can be accompanied by a pitch explaining how you offer a solution. Either way the white papers are free and useful, so there's no harm in reading.

Writing effective white papers isn't easy, but it can be done.

3: Start With Value Over Price

When you're making a pitch to any business, you may find yourselves in the middle of a bidding war. Too many entrepreneurs focus in only on their prices as a way to put their best foot forward. While pricing certainly is important, it's far more vital to highlight the value your product has to offer. What can your product do that others can't. Can it save the company time or money even while requiring an investment? Can it make life easier for managers or help improve employee morale and productivity?

When you're making your bid don't advertise that you are cheap. If anything this will raise red flags if it's all you have to offer.

4: Highlight The Business Benefits

Whether it's in consumer to consumer or business to business marketing, even professionals have made this terrible mistake in copy-writing. Never just tell someone about the features of what you have to offer. Features are boring and no one wants to hear you list them all day long. They want to know how what you have to offer is going to solve a common problem. Just don't tell them “My computers have a lot of RAM” but instead consider, “Are you tired of losing valuable company time and money waiting for your computers to load? With our CPUs high RAM capability your upload, download, and processing speeds will be through the roof. You'll save time, money, and your business will be moving at lightning speed when processing your data!”

Benefits are everything. Nobody wants to know what you can do, everyone wants to know what you can do “For me”

5: Make it Easy To Act

Your call to action (CTA) is the grand finale of any pitch you write. It needs be dazzling and out of the park, but more importantly, it needs to be easy to act upon. Links in emails should be large, thought not obnoxious, and easy to see and click on, and MUST NOT BE BROKEN OR INACCURATE. Contact info should be prominent, accurate, and very visible. Like it or not, nobody likes a hassle. If your final pitch is hard to act on, even a little, or your lead finds it hard to get in touch you may lose your sale to someone else out of sheer convenience.


6: Gather Leads
This probably should have been the first step, but you need to gather solid prospective leads to sell to. It means nothing if you have the greatest product in the world and killer sales pitch to back it up, and no relevant people to sell it to. Gathering leads can be tricky, but made much easier by programs like Macroleads that help you organize, streamline, and even somewhat automate the process.

How to Make More Money Without Having to Look for More Customers

It’s often a lot easier to sell to your current customers than to get a new customer. They already like and trust you and know your product/service works. Tap into that opportunity by looking at what else you can sell to your customers that compliments what they bought previously.

For example, if you have a resume writing service, you could go out to recent customers and also offer an additional service where you submit their resume to X amount of job ads and write a customized cover letter for each ad, and also submit their resume to several recruitment agencies.

One of our followers once had a tech business where he sold server management services, and he was asking me how to increase sales. After pointing out how it’s often much easier to sell to existing customers than get new ones, I asked him what kind of stuff or things his current customers seem to want or ask him for. As I suspected, they were often asking for things like websites, ranking help, etc. among other things. But to my surprise, he wasn’t offering any of these services (or even taking a cut from others he referred them out to). Months later I heard from him that he finally put my advice into action and said that he instantly saw a big boost in sales, and then months after that I heard that he increased his sales to something around 66% more with just adding a couple other offers that he’d approach existing customers on. He admitted that he wasn’t really even trying hard, and that if he gave it some more thought, he likely could’ve more than doubled his existing sales. That’s the power of selling to your existing customers with relevant offers that they likely already need!

Since your customers are going to be buying related products and services anyway, you might as well have them buy it from you! And even if you can’t offer the product or service directly yourself, you can easily reach out to those who can supply them and work out a commission deal for referrals. Reselling to your current customers is often a lot easier and less costly that trying to obtain a new customer. So try reaching out to your current and past clients with a complimentary offer to what they’ve bought in the past.

For other marketing tips on how to maximize revenue from your current customers, and refine your current sales funnel and offerings, check out this tool: BizFire's Free Funnel Maker & Analyzer.

Five Super Important Things to Rank Your Site

What is a Ranking in SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is meant for the betterment of web pages to help search engines rank them accordingly. In SEO, ranking indicates the position of a website’s page on what's called the search engine results pages (SERPs).
According to Google, the ranking of a website is vital because it helps in showing the relevant search results. It is also essential for the organization of largescale data present on the web and making the information reachable and valuable to people all around the world.

The ranking also makes it easier for Google to catalog the pages based on the optimization and quality of the pages.
The five most important factors in ranking of a website are:

1. Secure Website

The right URL is secure and easily accessible. A secure and accessible URL is probably the most important ranking factor of any website. Google’s bots should be able to access and crawl URLs for the information they need.
In other words, websites that have URLs that Google can visit and review easily, are more likely to rank higher on the SERPs.

To improve the ranking of your website by making it secure, you need to consider the following:
• A well-developed website through a standard website builder.
• Robots.txt file that is used by Google to determine where it can and cannot view the website information.
• A thorough sitemap which gives the details of all of your pages.

2. Page Speed

Page speed is one of the primary SEO ranking factors for many years. Websites that have rapid-loading webpages give an excellent experience to the users. Faster websites are highly preferred by search engines in any ranking system.
Since 2018, Google has taken into account the page speed on mobile devices as well as PCs. Therefore, website developers should consider smart devices and their loading speeds as well.

3. Mobile Responsiveness

Smartphones and other smart devices have become ubiquitous in the last decade. The majority of users on the web use mobile devices to browse websites. Hence, the mobile-friendliness of a website is a major ranking factor today. It has impacted the SERPs a lot because now, only mobile responsive websites are ranked on the first few pages of Google and other search engines.

Google implements a mobile-first index, which means that the results of the searched keywords are drawn from the mobile-optimized pages. Your website must be mobile responsive if you have a desire to see it ranked high on Google.

Some important factors included in website friendliness are:
• A responsive site that can fit and resize according to the device.
• Fonts are large enough to be readable on small screens.
• Different menus and pages can be accessed and navigated easily.
• Ads are placed appropriately and do not hide the content.

4. Content-Length

Some SEO experts do not consider the content length to be an important factor in the ranking of pages. However, it can be observed from the general ranking on Google that websites that have unique, engaging, relevant, and an appropriate word count are ranked higher than the others.

There is no hard and fast rule on the content length. A long piece of writing is appreciated in SEO ranking because it takes time and energy to create a unique and engaging long content.

However, there must be a balance in length. An excessively long and uninteresting piece of writing content will not attract many people to your website, which will adversely impact rankings.

Recent trends in Google rankings have shown that content length should never be ignored, and long-form content is performing better at the top of the SERPs. As a general rule, 1,000 words or more is optimal for most general content.

5. Domain Age and Authority

Data about the top-ranked websites on Google suggests that the old websites are ranked higher than the new websites. The main reason for this is that the old site is usually optimized over a period of a few years. In some cases, the domain name also accounts for the ranking of a website.

Some researches show that domains that match to each other and that are relevant, useful, and highly-optimized enjoy a significant ranking boost. However, your URL must reflect the nature of your business.

Authority is also another factor in SEO ranking. It consists of SEO signals like inbound links, social media impressions, and page authority. All of this requires a great deal of research, time, and experience, but the process can be made simple by automating it all through advanced programs. Highly ranked websites and SERPs are possible and you no longer have to be a digital marketing expert to make it all work. Web Fire is a great way to make this process fast and simple.

How Creating A Sense of Urgency Can Help Improve Sales: Reducing/Offering Free Shipping Within A Certain Time Frame

Don’t you hate it when you’re searching for an item, find it at an amazing price, then see that shipping is going to cost you an arm and a leg? One way to increase your sales, especially over a short period of time, is to reduce the cost of your shipping, or offer a sale period time where shipping is free. By putting a time limit on when you make free shipping available, you add a sense of urgency, encouraging customers to buy now, as opposed to at a later date. It’s also a good way to encourage customers who may have been on the fence to make a purchase now.

For example, say you have a business that sells gardening supplies online. Reach out to your customers and let them know that for any supplies ordered by midnight on Sunday, you’ll offer free delivery. If you have regular customers that place large orders with you, you may even want to reach out and call them. On your website, make sure it’s clear that you have this offer available for a limited time - it may be a pop up on your website or the first thing your customer sees.

So consider, for a limited time, offering reduced or free shipping on your products. The limited time frame creates a sense of urgency, encouraging customers to purchase now, as opposed to at a later date, and encourages customers who may have been on the fence to make the purchase.

For more tips on boosting sales within your business, check out this book 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years!.

How Listening to Your Clients Wants and Needs Can Help You Land More Sales

Business owners often do more talking than listening. When it comes to making sales, often it’s best to do more listening than talking. Instead of overthinking and brainstorming what your prospects might want, why not just ask them? You’d probably be surprised at how easy it can be to sell them what they’re already telling you they most want/need.

For example, if you’re selling a variety of online marketing or web services, instead of trying to force them to buy a particular SEO package to help rank their site, why not ask them what they think their biggest issues are right now with their business? You might find that they really don’t care much about their ranking but might instead be focused on their social media, e-mail list management, or some other service that you could easily do for them.

Once someone tells you what their issues are, ask them what they think that would do for their business if those issues were solved, and then ask them how much more they think they could make with all of those things being fixed and running smoothly. This lets THEM tell YOU the value those services mean to them rather than you trying to convince them of the value that you can bring to the table. The more you talk about yourself or your services instead of just listening to what their needs are, the less likely you are to typically land those sales.

And, as an added bonus, this method works well both for prospects who’ve never bought from you, as well as for existing customers that you could sell other things to.  For instance, you might find that all of your clients of one service are practically begging to buy a different service if only you offered it! And this might be incredibly easy for you to either offer or outsource.

One of our clients once was able to nearly double his net income just by finally asking what his current clients also wanted … and then simply offering them that after years of not selling them anything else! It’s amazing how much money is often left on the table by most businesses out there (even we’re guilty of that from time to time). You also might be surprised at what your customers say that they want, as it might be completely different than what you think they’d want.

So ask your prospects and clients what their needs are and what would help them the most and then provide them with a product/service that fulfills that need. Do more listening than talking to land the most sales.

For more help mapping out your upsells and sales funnels, so you can look at how you can increase your business, check out this software that helps you build out your sales funnel. BizFire's Free Funnel Maker & Analyzer.

How Affiliate Programs Are A Great Way To Bring In More Sales With Less Effort

Want a way to make sales without paying for any ads and with zero risk of losing money in doing so? The obvious answer is a big YES, but very few business owners take advantage of running their own affiliate programs, which can do exactly that!

Affiliate programs are where you offer others a cut of any sale that they send your way. When this is done online, there’s traditionally special “affiliate links” that they get from you. When they send people through those links that later buy from your site, they’d get credited for and paid a percentage of the sale. You can do a similar concept offline just by letting others refer your prospects directly (and manually crediting them), or even by handing out special “unique” coupon codes to others to hand out to their prospects so you know where they came from. This could be a special coupon that you hand out, with a code or ID on it, so you know where it came from. Regardless, in either case you only pay them after a sale is made, which makes it virtually risk free for you.

If you go the online route, there’s various places you can sign-up to, in order to have your offers on their networks, like Clickbank.com, Amazon.com (which is great to sell on just by itself), CJ.com, etc., as they can instantly let affiliates sign-up for and start promoting your offers. Alternatively, there’s also private affiliate programs/scripts out there that you can get free or for fairly cheap to run your own affiliate program without the need for another network.

Regardless of which route you go, don’t expect to magically get lots of affiliates signing up and promoting your offer without you raising a finger. It can take some work to reach out and recruit these affiliates to get them promoting you. It’s best to reach out to those who you can also help in return first, as well as to make sure that you truly have a great converting offer with good payouts to make your offer attractive to these affiliates.

So consider creating an affiliate program and recruiting affiliates to help promote your offers at little to no risk to you. Make sure that you have attractive offers and payouts, and that you proactively reach out to the best affiliate prospects out there.

Liked this strategy? For more tips to increase your sales, check out this book 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years!.

How to Show Value and Position Your Price to Encourage Customers to Buy

One way to show value and highlight the great price you’re offering your customers is to point out when you are giving a discount or savings, as this lets customers know you’re giving them a great deal and lots of value. A discount also has a psychological effect - we feel we are getting a better deal and are more likely to buy. Seeing that an item is discounted not only is an incentive to buy it now, it can also encourage new users to buy that might otherwise have not considered it.

For example, when listing your price, you might write: "$97 --- 50% Off Today!" This makes people feel they are getting a great deal, helps them justify the purchase to themselves and is more likely to push them over the line.

If you have several similar offers that are slightly better or more/less expensive than the other, instead of just listing off the benefits of each one next to their price, you can also not only list off the savings, but say “Good Deal,” “Better Deal,” and “Best Deal” next to each one (or “Most Savings” or something similar). Never assume that people will just do the math in their head and know which one is the best deal.

Think about how you can apply this to your business. Can you put a savings amount next to a price point (eg, “$97 --- 50% Off Today!)? This makes customers feel they are getting a great deal and can encourage customers to buy that may not have bought before.

After more tips to show customers the value of your product? For more marketing tricks and strategies, check out this book here: 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years!