Greetings from Sean Harry in Portland, OR

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Permalink Reply by Brad Trnavsky on June 30, 2008 at 4:57pm

Hey Sean,

Welcome to the site... I'll try to get back to this discussion later, but it sounds to me like you are a salesman until you hire someone else to do it for you. :) Professional service folks always seem to have a bit of a hard time wearing the salesperson hat, but the reality is everyone is selling something... I have a friend who says "Do you know what they call an attorney or accountant that can sell? A partner..."

A couple of things to get the conversation started... First, I think you can use a blog to generate a lot of leads, but I would do that in combination with some type of e-newsletter Talk to Karl Goldfield, he works closely with a company that can help you with this inexpensively. The best way is simply referral business, and from the looks of your website you have that undercontrol. As far as needing a sales force, I think if is difficult to do until you get to a certain size. With a well designed website the web could take care of that given appropriate traffic. The real question then becomes what are you really trying to accomplish? Creating a job for yourself or a automated revenue stream?

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Permalink Reply by Nesh Thompson on July 1, 2008 at 2:06am

Hi Sean and welcome, putting up products on the web really depends on what kind of product it is and this will affect how you market it and how well it performs. My opinion is that you can be successful on the web if you are willing enough to dedicate the time and effort into making it happen. The common myth of the internet is that it will be a magic talisman that will pull in customers with minimal effort. Nothing can be further from the truth and if you are serious about making business from your website then it will require a lot of time, dedication and effort. Also, expect some lag time in seeing results from efforts. The web, for all it's technology still takes time to filter, so what you do today which might not see any direct results, may see a result in 3 or 6 months. A lot of people get frustrated with not seeing returns that very moment. The key is patience.

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Permalink Reply by Brad Trnavsky on July 1, 2008 at 7:15pm

Great input Nesh. Thanks for commenting.

-Brad

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Permalink Reply by Sean Harry on July 1, 2008 at 9:24pm

Thanks Nesh. What kind of time should we expect to put into a web expansion project?

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Permalink Reply by Nesh Thompson on July 2, 2008 at 12:54am

Again, the money is in the detail. You wouldn't consider starting up a business without a business plan and forecast and so that would be the prudent thing to do in any web project. Set goals (realistic ones) in what you wish to achieve in 3 and 6 months - you may see peeks and troughs in activity and interest within those periods but in that time period you should get a realistic picture of the growth of the site (so that you can set new goals for next period).

Set goals for your dedication to the project, so if you can commit to 1 hour a day then stick to it. Web projects aren't necessarily difficult but require a long term effort and periods of inactivity can be very detrimental.

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Permalink Reply by Brad Trnavsky on July 2, 2008 at 3:45pm

Nesh, I can attest to that... I have had this site for 5 months now, and while it has been very inexpensive to get going ($4.95 per month) I have hundreds of hours involved in the marketing and maintenance of the sit. ANY period of inactivity and I see a immediate reduction in traffic. That being said, once it starts to grow it is a lot of fun to launch a web venture!

-Brad

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Permalink Reply by Sean Harry on July 2, 2008 at 3:54pm

Brad - from what I see, you are being quite successful with this site. Are you using it to sell and products or services? Or is it simply for "discussion" purposes? I'm hoping to set up a site where I can sell some services.

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Permalink Reply by Brad Trnavsky on July 2, 2008 at 4:04pm

I have a job board that should come online this week, and am also planning to sell coaching services from here in the near future. Right now my focus is on building web presence. I work a full time as a sales director so I am not easily able to build web presence, work and coach all at once. I think I have a few more months before I can back off the building presence phase and start working in some coaching.

I am getting organic growth now without much effort... The hard part is getting members to join and then participate.

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Permalink Reply by Gina Cappiello on July 11, 2008 at 6:05am

Thanks Sean and welcome to the site, too!

It's possible to generate quality leads with no money. I've been using social media/networking for the past few months and have had a lot of luck with it. Just stay active on a few sites like Sales Mgmt, maybe check out some relevant blogs (and comment with a link to your site), and use some forums like Sales Practice or LinkedIn Answers.

Best of luck!
-Gina

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Permalink Reply by Brad Trnavsky on July 11, 2008 at 7:31am

That's great advice Gina. I have grown this site in 5 months without spending a penny on advertising. There is a lot of power to be found in social media if you leverage it properly.

-Brad

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Permalink Reply by Sean Harry on July 11, 2008 at 11:46am

Thanks Gina, How have you been using LinkedIn Answers? What kind of response are you getting? Are you using any specific method(s) to track your results there?

Sean

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Permalink Reply by Brad Trnavsky on July 11, 2008 at 7:57pm

Sean,

Hopefully Gina will chime in on this as well, but I have used LinkedIn Answers and Yahoo Answers both with excellent results. I think you generate more traffic by answering questions than asking them, but it is a great traffic source.

My strategy is to provide a solid answer and then link to a relevant blog post of mine to give more details. The trick is to not sound spammy. if you just say read this post and drop a link you will get nothing and possibly even flagged as spam. If you leave a insightful answer with a good link for supporting details though you will see traffic.

The best part is yahoo answers are all indexed for search so you will continue to get residual traffic from your efforts.

-Brad

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