Once you become involved in marketing to offline businesses, particularly if you are an experienced online marketer, then you will probably have to adjust your mindset.
This is because you are not going to sell anything.
Your primary task is to show business owners how they can improve their bottom line by using your services.
This means sitting down with the business owner and listening to what they regard as important about their business, developing a thorough understanding of the major issues facing the business and understanding what has gone on before in terms of marketing and promotion.
Once you sit down with people and find out about their issues and what they are doing, you will find it a lot easier to recruit them as customers.
In fact, the more you focus on listening the greater will be your ability to come up with solutions to improving their business performance by taking it online. This is the mindset change.
Let's spell it out even more clearly - a successful mindset involves:
- Evaluating what they are currently doing with their business
- Absorbing what they are trying to achieve
- Learning how you can use that information to help them improve their business
So often, internet marketers get it wrong when they try and involve themselves with small business owners by creating a business plan before- hand without knowing or understanding the realities. It is not the job of the internet marketing consultant to tell the business owners what they need, but rather to listen to what they tell you and how you can follow through to give them what they want.
Most offline business owners will know that an effective web presence would be a great boon to their business.. However, quite a lot of them will have little understanding of the processes involved.
Once you have used your changed mindset then you will be in a strong position to create a package that is tailor- made for that particular business owner
The very last thing you want to attempt is approaching them with the intention of selling them a particular package that you have decided in advance is good for them. Inevitably, this will mean a lost opportunity.
Adoption of this mindset will help you to develop your own business as well as helping the local business owners to develop theirs.
Changing your mindset is not so difficult - it's simply a matter of listening first and acting afterwards. Find out more... http://www.offlinebusinessonlinewealth.com
Ian Purdie is a partner in the BlueRam Group where we specialize in assisting internet marketers to expand their activities into the offline business arena.
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