Blogging – The Backdoor Approach To Sales

If you’ve ever attended a sales meeting, you’ve been reminded to “ask for the sale”.  Sales trainers vouch for the fact that novice salespeople often go on and on about the features and benefits of their product or service, and then literally forget to ask for the order!

Enter the Internet, standing that advice on its ear… With blogging for business, guess what? Don’t ask! As blogging expert Ted Demopoulis explains in his book “What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging And Poscasting“:, in creating buzz through blogs you “cultivate an audience of people who ask you to sell them something!”

Posting blogs is how businesses take advantage of the main reason people use the Web – to find content.  Instead of running traditional ads for your brand of hats, or vitamins, or travel, you provide lots of information on the history of hats, on why vitamins are good for you, and about exciting places to go on safari.  Consumers interested in your subject, but who never even knew your name come to see you as a trusted resource, possibly as a business to do business with!

As a professional ghost blogger, when I’m working with a new business client, we select just the right “tone” and direction for the series of blogs. As I explained in Ask Not What Your Business Blog Can Do For You, I need to pick up on their unique corporate culture and style, so I can “speak” in their voice to their type of customer. At the same time, though, I need to make it very clear that this effort is different from all the other marketing and sales that company’s doing. 

We’re not asking for the sale, remember.  It’s a “Don’t Ask, But DO Tell” arrangement. “Watch out, world!”, I want to say.  “We’re coming in – but through the back door!”