Early in my sales career I was sitting with a prospect. My sales manager had come along to observe and critique. I had all my brochures and facts and figures and knew all about my company and product. As I sat there with the prospect, I spat out all kinds of information, thinking I was going to impress my target into signing right then and there. After my presentation I was anticipating the big close, when I got my first big disappointment. The prospect shook my hand, looked at me with disinterest and simply said, "I'm not interested."

What went wrong, I asked my manager. I told the prospect how great we were, how my product could help him, why his life would be better with it. My sales manager gave me an answer that I still carry with me to this day:

"You didn't earn the right to ask for his business."

Huh?

I never established a rapport with him, I just went straight for the kill. I hit him over the head with so much information, that I lost him half way through. By not establishing that all important rapport, I didn't gain his trust.

Think about that when you are trying to make money being online. The only difference is you aren't face to face with your prospect.

A lot of times we run an affiliate campaign and all of our links head straight to the pitch page. We have a website and all of our links point back to that where the prospect proceeds to get information overload.

What are you doing to first build and gain the trust, to establish that rapport? What can you do since you may only have one chance to get the business?

Give something away.

Prospects love to get free information...after all, that is what most people use the internet for...free information. If you make use of this fact you can turn it to your advantage.

Find a digital product you can offer free, either an e-book or software that your prospects would find useful and could get excited about. There are plenty of free software and e-book sites on the web, just make sure they are trusted sites before you download anything.

Set up an "opt-in" page tied in to your auto-responder campaign and market that page in all of your promotions, instead of your actual website. You are going to direct your prospects to enter their name and email to get on your email list before they can download the information.

You just gained an opt-in subscriber to your list; now you can build a rapport. You can build trust by setting up a campaign on an auto-responder to send out emails in regular intervals. You might offer insights, other valuable offers, what have you, but gain that trust. What you are doing is letting them know you are there to help them solve a problem or achieve a goal. Then after establishing that rapport, after a few emails, show them how they can solve that problem or get what they want by directing them to your website or product.

Research has shown that on average it takes 7 contacts for someone to make a buying decision. If you are just directing people straight to your site and not capturing their information for an email list, you are losing a lot of potential sales. Likewise, if people get to your site but there is no incentive to sign up for an email list, you are losing a lot of potential sales as well.

In the world of internet marketing, it is good to be a giver. Most of your competitors are doing it. They know it works. Offer something useful, earn their loyalty, gain their trust and the sales will follow. Trust is everything!

Earn the right to ask for the business and you will make money working online!