Do You Pass the Test? An Online Entrepreneur Mindset Exercise

online-entrepreneur-test Imagine you’re in this scenario:

You have an online business as a graphic designer coach, which means you teach other graphic designers how to make money with their talent. You have a coaching program that has videos and tutorials about how to contact potential clients and really expand their own freelance graphic design business.

To promote your $497 coaching program, you decide to hold a free webinar where you’ll be giving a short presentation and then pitching your course to whoever is watching. 300 people come online to watch your presentation. At the end of your extremely helpful and convincing webinar, you tell your audience about your coaching program, why it will sky-rocket their graphic design business, and where to get it. You also tell them that if they have any questions, to shoot you an email. You go to bed with dreams of seeing an inbox full of transactions in the morning.

You wake up to see that you have 75 unread messages in your inbox! Payday baby! But wait…

You open your inbox to see that you’ve only sold 4 programs, and the other 71 messages are questions from the webinar. 71 emails that you have to go through, some of which are a bit lengthy.

At this moment, how you would feel?

Go ahead, really think about it for a second…

Do You Think Like an Internet Marketer?

If you’d be pissed, you’re definitely not alone. When I first started doing business online, I would HATE to get emails from potential or existing customers. I setup my business to be as passive and as automated as possible, so whenever I got an email in my inbox, I would get a bit angry, especially when they came in waves of 2-5 emails at a time, which wasn’t all too rare.

You might think this post is about how to minimize the emails you get from your audience, but you’re wrong. In fact, this post is about how to embrace these emails, and why they are good for us.

If instead of getting pissed, you saw these emails as a golden opportunity – then you’re thinking like a successful online entrepreneur. Let me explain…

Emails are Good

An email from a person means that this person took time out of their day to contact you and engage in a conversation. This is HUGE for any business. Any time you can engage with a customer, especially one on one, you’re more likely to close a deal and make a sale. Think about it. These emails are from SUPER TARGETED customers, not only because they were from people who watched your webinar, but because they actually have a question about whatever product it is you’re offering!

Embrace these emails. Answer their questions better than anyone ever has and impress the crap out of them. If you can do that for them, there’s a good chance they will either do one or more of the following:

Buy from you
Give you a great review or a testimonial
Recommend you to a friend
Become an affiliate
Always remember you

This Isn’t Just for Webinars

It was smart of you to announce your email address on the webinar so people with questions could contact you. Chances are, most of these people were probably on the edge of buying your product, and just needed a little push, which can come from an outstanding response to their emails. If you can email those people back and blow them away, then they’ll definitely be more than happy to pay you.

This doesn’t apply just to webinars though, this applies to any shape or form that you have a presence online. I see so many websites and blog owners out there that try and make it so hard for people to contact them. They hide their email addresses or contact forms deep in their websites where no one will find it. What does that say about that person? What does that say about their business or blog?

Make it super easy to get a hold of you, embrace those emails, and you’ll be rewarded.

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10 Comments (Click Here to Leave a Comment Below)

Reply Will Atkinson on October 7th, 2009 at 9:28 pm

It IS huge for someone to take time out of their day to contact you. I’ve seen over and over again that some people do need that extra push. They are basically looking for “permission to buy”. I enjoyed this post.

Reply Diggy - Upgradereality.com on October 7th, 2009 at 11:26 pm

I am far from the stage of getting 75 emails from people who want to buy something from me

Great reminder Pat!
Tweeted!
Cheers and have an awesome day!
D

Reply Digigirl on October 8th, 2009 at 6:07 am

I actually experienced this exact thing recently. I had a person contact me about a month ago with a bunch of detailed questions about my service (free WordPress installation & optimization). We exchanged several emails, and I answered all her questions in detail. Then, she went away and I figured that was it.

Last week, she contacted me back again and placed her order! Although those lengthy email responses may seem time consuming at the time, in the long run, they provide a very good return on investment.

Loving the posts. Keep up the good work! I’m determined to learn from you and figure out a way to get some passive income myself!

Reply Harsh Agrawal on October 8th, 2009 at 8:08 am

Hey very useful tips. I run various services and when I get any inquiry email , I try to keep it as much scanable as possible, and give as much as input as possible, this serves two reason
1. Trust
2. Confidence.

Reply Michael-John Wolfe on October 9th, 2009 at 5:30 am

Chances are – if you have 71 questions, many are going to be the same questions. I would make a form email body that answers any possible question. Then I would simply use their name and write “Hello John” – and then paste the email body. You may have to add a few sentences to personalize the response. You could even write “here is the answer to your question along with some other FAQ’s.”

How are your iphone apps doing Pat???

Reply FatBanker on October 9th, 2009 at 7:53 am

Pat, great post.

Gonna give you some comment love here: just wanted to say that your blog, advice and general approach have been an inspiration.

Passive income interests me a lot (why wouldn’t it!) and your experience has induced me to have a crack at setting up a site to monetize “how to’s” (eHow payments not available in the UK yet), an online tee shirt store and eventuially an ebook.

The tee shirt store is up-and-running, currently linked off one of my other blogs, but it to the point of being independent eventually.

Thanks for the inspiration!

Reply Dustin | Engaged Marriage on October 9th, 2009 at 11:54 am

I enjoyed this article and agree with it wholeheartedly. At the end of the day, customers are people, and people respect and trust those that pay quality attention to their needs. I would be thrilled to get a flood of emails about a product I am promoting!

My site is fairly new, and I currently have none of my own products. However, I have received emails from readers and I take them very seriously and respond quickly. After all, these are my future customers.

Reply Eunice on October 15th, 2009 at 5:33 am

Hey Pat,

I’d be THRILLED to make 4 sales! If I have my math right, that’s almost $2000 for a 3 hour webinar? Pretty good, in my book.

I found your site via my Twitter account….you followed me first! Glad you did because I really like your blog. Great information and you don’t see to be one of those “guru” types, which is refreshing.

I’ll be following you, too!

Reply George on March 12th, 2010 at 2:57 pm

It has always been a bit of a leap of faith for me to actually contact a webmaster. When they respond I feel great, important really. It is a good idea to treat each email you receive with respect because in the end, they are your customers.

Great Post.

Reply Tiara Eifert on August 18th, 2010 at 2:17 am

The company we represent expect us to know automatically how to market, recruit and promote the products, even if we are complete novices with no marketing training.