Do you fancy working from home sitting in your pyjamas? Are you fed up of the 9 to 5 job and the busy commute? How would you like to tell your boss you’re never coming in to work again? This all sounds lovely but is it really possible to build a sales machine that works while you sleep?
How To Build a Sales Machine
We have all used an automated sales machine, without really noticing. If you have ever bought anything online, there is a great deal of automation involved. Amazon lets you buy from your mobile phone. There isn’t a sales person at the other end, just a computer sending emails and ordering deliveries. The sales system is the Amazon website.
This same system can work for you too. Selling something online can be done with no human intervention at all. This is the crux of an online sales machine. Digital products are especially simple to sell online. They can be delivered automatically in an instant, once someone checks out and pays for it. Putting yourself in this sales system is the first step to building a sales machine that works while you sleep.
The Sales Machine
The ‘machine’ which delivers products and services automatically is already running. It is known as affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing you simply direct people to products and services online. When they buy from an online store through you, you earn a commission. You can simply send people to already existing products and services around the web, so you don’t need your own products. Affiliate marketing is like a referral system, in which you get paid for recommending certain products and services around the internet.
How To Build A Sales Machine That Works While You Sleep
The internet is running continuously. Your ‘sales machine’ can run 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, throughout the year. You simply need to place yourself between website traffic (visitors) and online products and services. You can do this in several ways:
- Create content – By providing information in the form of videos, pdf’s, articles, podcasts or webinars, you can deliver value and connect people with various products and services online.
- Advertising – The fastest way to generate website traffic is by using paid advertising. Growth in technology has made it possible for small businesses to reach a global audience. Targeting methods let you specify your market down to interests, age, location and other important demographics.
Email Marketing
Marketing products and services through email marketing is one of the best ways to build a sales machine which works while you sleep. As your list of subscribers grows, an automated series of emails delivers content to your growing audience. By delivering value through these emails, and offering services which are useful to your subscribers, you can automate the entire sales process while building your customer base. Email marketing is the ‘killer app’ of online marketing. It offers:
- A cheap means of communication
- A service which can be automated
- List size is not limited and so you can grow your audience into the tens of thousands +
- A means of building trust
- A means to sell products and services and deliver value
How To Build A Sales Machine With Affiliate Marketing
Anyone can start a blog, pick some affiliate products from sites like Clickbank.com, and start to build their ‘sales machine’. However, many would-be affiliates struggle at this point and give up. Those who get the right education from the start are much more likely to make a success of their affiliate business. In addition to getting the right education, it pays to use a business system which is geared for long term sustainability. Many affiliate products sell for $100 or so. As an affiliate selling a digital product you can earn 40% commission. In order to make a sustainable income from this model you would need to sell a huge amount of these products.
High Ticket
Instead of trying to sell many items of low value, instead sell high ticket items. A product for sale for $2000 can make you a commission of $800 on a single sale. Compare this to selling an item for $100 and making a commission of $40. To make a good level of income you would need to sell a lot more of the $100 products than the $2000 products. Selling high ticket items also has some other benefits besides the obvious bigger commissions:
- You can offset advertising costs more easily. To use paid advertising with low value products is very risky. With high ticket items it is much easier to recoup your advertising spend.
- You can scale a high ticket business up much faster than a low priced item. Scaling up should be done after a lot of testing and once a successful campaign has been found to be consistent.
Monthly Sales
The success of a business is not solely dependent on the number of customers through the door. Most businesses think that they just need more customers. This is not true. If you concentrate on the lifetime value of a customer, you will notice that they offer far more value over the long term.
This means that rather than concentrating on a single sale and finding more customers, you should offer your existing customers more value again and again. Monthly memberships offer the best value for affiliates. By choosing products which pay every month for each customer, your sales model is much more viable for the long term. A single sale can earn you thousands over the years from a single customer. Compare this to the basic affiliate model of selling a single item and you will see the immediate benefit.
Back End Sales
Offering more products to the same customers is another long term strategy for success. With many affiliate products this isn’t an option. You only get pad for the initial referral sale. Any future sales are for the benefit of the company. By choosing products which offer lifetime commissions for each of your referrals, you are benefiting again from a sales model with a long term sustainable income.
Built In Sales Team
Choose products to promote which offer a built in sales team who close sales on your behalf. This is another benefit of affiliate marketing. You don’t have to be a sales person. You can simply refer a sale and benefit from a built in sales team.
With all these things in place you will have built a sales machine that sells automatically on your behalf. The only thing missing is the driving engine which brings people through the system. The driving force which does this is your marketing campaign. This too can be automated. As already mentioned you can drive traffic by paid for advertising and content marketing. Learn how to do this here and access a fully functional sales system.