Advice again, please, from sales pro's

[Monkeyleg]

As some of you may already know, I'm into my 19th month of building what I still believe is a viable website--http://www.gunshopfinder.com. The following post is going to be long, so be patient.

I started calling shops who were on the trial subscription early this year to get them to re-up.

Off the top of my head, the paid renewal rate is somewhere between 66% and 75%.  Much better than I expected.

When I can talk to the owners, that is. Therein lies the problem.

They don't have time to talk to me, they ask me to call them next week or next month. They need to look at their page on the site, because they haven't looked at it since I wrote it for them, sometimes as early as last year.

Or they want to have their manager/teenage kid/nephew assess whether the site has any value.

I'm sorry, but that's a wrong-headed attitude. And maybe it's my fault for being so cheap. But I pegged the $10 a month cost as one that most astute gun shop owners--from the smallest to the biggest in the country--would see as small change for the exposure I offer.

When I called shops to do the free trial last year, I told them that the site would be getting 100,000 visitors or more by March of this year. I hit that target right on schedule. I told them that they would have new customers contact them or stop in; in most cases, I was right. I've been telling them that my site will hit the 200,000 visitor a month mark by early next year, and I'm right on track to do that.

In other words, I've delivered on everything I promised. Based upon past experience, I knew I'd hit the 100,000 mark by March, and I know that I'll hit the 200,000 mark by about February or so of next year. It's not magic: it's simple math.

I told them that my site would be at the top of the search pages for terms like "Texas gun shops" or "Kimber pistols" or "Remington shotguns." Do a search for "New York gun shops." My site is #1 to #3 out of over 5,000,000 results. Hell, I even show up in the top five results for a generic search term like "gun shops."

There's my explanation of what I offer, and how I've delivered on that offer.

Here's the problem(s):

The owner hasn't looked at his page, and is busy. Call him back in two weeks. (Call, and I'm told to call again in two weeks. I have owners who've been putting me off for two months or more).

The owner isn't into computers. Talk to his wife.  She doesn't know anything about it, so tells me to talk to her husband. A circle-jerk.

The owner says he doesn't know if he's gotten any new customers from the site. This is the tough one, because I have the owners of tiny shops outside Tupelo, MS or Billings, MT or other low-density population areas tell me that they know with 100% certainty that they've gotten new customers from my site.

OTOH, I have shops in major areas such as Orlando, Dallas, LA and other large cities that I know with absolute certainty have received new customers; I see the emails they get. Yet some owners of these large stores hem and haw, because they say they don't know.

On yet another hand, I have the owners or managers of large stores in major metro areas say that they know they've seen a bump in sales from outside their areas, and attribute it to my site. And they just pay the $10 a month right away.

To my simple mind, it's simple math: if the owner of a shop outside Tupelo, MS has gotten new customers with him having 2,000 or so people view his page, then the owner of a shop in Phoenix who's had 12,000 people view his page has probably gotten new customers as well.

On top of that, I have the shop owners who are willing to bet that I need them more than they need me (in many cases, they're right). So they tell me to call them in a month or two.

Bear in mind, some of these owners have been on the site for free for well over a year. On my dime. Or, to be more precise, on my savings.

I'm not a salesman. More to the point, I don't know how to tell the "call me back next month," or "gimme a call when I'm ready to think about renewing" types to shove it.

If I just zap a store in Phoenix, somebody is going to complain to me that I have no shops in Phoenix. So, I have to keep the no-payer on until I get a new shop. And that can take weeks or even months.

There were people back in 2003 on The High Road who said my idea wouldn't fly. Well, those folks are partly right, and partly wrong. The site is bringing in about half what I need for a respectable income. If I can keep at it, it should be at full income in the next year or so.

When I sat down again tonight to crunch the numbers, I realized that the site would now be bringing in the kind of income I'd predicted last year---if it were not for the "call me back's," or the "I gotta think about it" delays.

I predicted everything exactly right, except for those delays.

So, for those sales professionals who've indulged my post so far: how would you try to close the deal? How would you overcome the "I don't think I've seen anybody from your site" objection?"

Before you answer that last question, bear in mind that one of the best performing shops I have has had 11,016 people view his page on the site since April. He's #2 on the list of people checking out gun stores in his city. Yet he told me that he's not going to spend a single dime on advertising this year. His cost per view would be about four-tenths of one cent, based on the annual cost of $100 per year ($8.33 per month). The cost per view for other stores ranges from under one cent to roughly 1.9 cents per view

I'm not selling Yellow Pages ads. I'm selling advertising that is focused on a very narrow market: people who want to buy guns, and want to know where to buy them.

There are gun store owners who "get it" when it comes to having an internet presence. As I was warned back in 2003, there's a whole lot more who don't get it.

$8.33 a month for advertising. I spend that much in a couple of days on dog food.

[Guest]

"There are gun store owners who "get it" when it comes to having an internet presence. As I was warned back in 2003, there's a whole lot more who don't get it."

I think you have it nailed right there.  People who don't understand 'eyes on the page' by now, aren't likely to.  If you are doing 2/3 paid renewals you are doing pretty well in my book.

A hint: anytime you post the URL for your page on a board like this, leave a space in front and a space behind.  That will make it come up as a link on places that recognize html- like this:

Blah blah blah http://www.gunshopfinder.com .

First I have heard of it, gonna go take a look.

lpl/nc
====

Edited to add: I'm back.

Note first of all that I am not a sales pro.  I used to be in the information business though.  And that is what you are selling- information.  

You are selling 'eyes on the page.'  In order for there to be page views there have to be eyes.  There cannot be eyes without people.

I looked at the listings on your site for my state- North Carolina, and found five listings.  For the entire state:

  ARCHDALE AMMO & ARMS Archdale 336-434-1522    Population 9014
  BENNETT'S GUN EXCHANGE Franklin 828-524-5000   Population 3490
  BRABBLE GUN SHOP Ahoskie 252-862-4867             Population 4523
  THE CAROLINA HUNTER Belmont 704-825-2274        Population 8705
  WINDY HILL TRADING POST Elkin 336-366-2409       Population 4109

About 30,000 people total population for the five cities if my estimate is good.  Thirty thousand people total.

Now then, where are the most people in NC?

http://www.secretary.state.nc.us/kidspg/cities.htm
10 largest North Carolina cities by population

 1. Charlotte: 540,828           6. Fayetteville: 121,015

 2. Raleigh: 276,093              7. Cary: 94,536
 
 3. Greensboro: 223,891        8. High Point: 85,839

 4. Durham: 187,035             9. Wilmington: 75,838

 5. Winston-Salem: 185,776  10. Asheville: 68,889

But not one listing there from any of those places.   Or most of these:
http://www.city-data.com/city/North-Carolina.html (cities w/pop. over 6000)
http://www.city-data.com/city/North-Carolina2.html (cities w/pop. 1000- 6000)

Now I have no clue about your business model.  Or how you selected or contacted the businesses you originally gave free listings to.  But yellow pages are available for free online and easily searchable, and it is easy to find out where the gun stores are for any area.  Granted larger stores already have their own web sites, many of them, but wouldn't they go for another way to get eyes on their pages through your listings?  Wouldn't it make sense to target population densities?  Wouldn't it make sense to target areas with an identifiable high percentage transient population of the correct demographic (young, male, with disposable income) likely to be firearms buyers- like military towns for instance- say, Fayetteville (Ft. Bragg) and Jacksonville (Camp Lejeune)?  What am I missing?

[atek3]

advertise your site more.  I've never seen it before, and I'm a pretty hardcore gun guy.
Maybe buy banner space on more gun forums?  Or Blog Ads.

atek3

[Monkeyleg]

atek3, I want to advertise the site as far and wide as possible, but I can't so without the income. I still need some money to put food on the table.

I've been very fortunate in a couple of respects. Denny Fallon, the editor of Firearms Marketing Group's newsletter, did a nice write-up on my site. From what he's told me since then, he's also going to do  the same article in Firearms Industry News. So, that gets the story out to the retailers.

If a friend of mine at the NRA is able to call in some favors, there will be at least a couple of small articles in American Hunter, America's First Freedom, and American Rifleman. If that friend can pull those strings, that's advertising that's worth tens of thousands of dollars. And that, if it happens, will get the news out to the buyers.

I also had a great boost from a PR article in the online edition of Outdoor News. Again, directed at retailers.

And there's more to come.

Lee Lapin, you've just nailed it. I need the shops in the major cities. Yes, Larry at Pontotoc American Arms (15 miles west of Tupelo, MS) has seen new business. But the shops that see the most page views are those in the major cities.

The problem, Lee, is that I've already contacted many of those stores, and they said "no." There's many reasons why they would do so: they've been burned before; they've never heard of the site and so it lacks credibility; or maybe they just think they don't have to do anymore than what they're doing now.

I'm hoping that the PR from Denny Fallon and other industry publications will negate the first two objections in the previous paragraph. After that, it falls on my shoulders to make the owner "get it."

Make no mistake: I get emails just about every day from shop owners who want to be on the site. They found it by searching for "Remington Shotguns" or "North Carolina gun shops," or whatever other search terms.

As I said, I've delivered what I've promised to the majority of shops on my site. I honestly did not expect shops in Montana to do well, but they have. On the flip side, I simply cannot believe that shops in Florida or Arizona, who are receiving far more attention, are not getting new customers. It simply defies logic. The ones who are saying they're not getting new customers are either not paying attention, or they're trying to screw me out of a few month's payments. I'll find out the truth in a few months.

It's now 3am, and I can't sleep, so forgive the following ramble. I just did a Google search for "New York gun shops," and found my site at the #1 spot out of over 14,000,000 results.

Do you have any idea how much money a company--any company in any industry--would pay to be #1 out of 14,000,000 results? I do. $2000 a month, $3000 a month, or even $5000 a month.

Over the past several years, I've learned how to get to the #10 to #1 spot for various search terms. It's not easy work, it's not particularly creative, but there's a methodogy, and a skill. And I've tried to sell companies on my skills. Unfortunately, I can only show them the results for gun-related terms. They can't see that there's no difference between "Remington shotguns" and "fire-proof safety cabinets."

They just see me as a gun nut. And I watch them spend a thousand, two thousand, three thousand or more a month to get ranked, and go nowhere.

But that brings me 360 degrees back to my site, and what I do for the shops I have on it. Do a Google search for "Avon New York Gun shops." Avon Gun and Hunting Supply is in the #1 spot, on my site. You'd have to search several pages further to find their site, if they even have one.

In other words, I'm giving every shop on my site the equivalent of hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars a month in Search Engine Optimization services. For $10 a month.

Every day or so, a shop owner says, "oh, we just put up our own website." 99% of the time, it looks like something Little Timmy put together using Microsoft Front Page.

When they're bragging about the site that Little Timmy put together, I'm searching for their site by the store's name, city, and state. And 99% of the time, I can't find it. Little Timmy just doesn't know how to optimize a site for the search engines. If he did, he'd be charging them no small amount of money.

Aside from some freelance photography assignments, this is pretty much all I do. And I think I do it well.

But, frankly, I'm turned off by the shop owners who are just looking to get six months of free advertsising.

I'd like to be able to idenify the shop owners who are in it for the long haul, and who "get it."

How I find those shop owners, and get them to commit, is the  question I asked at the start of this thread.

I deliver results for probably two-thirds or more of the gun shops on my site. All I ask now is that they pay me for the work I've done.

[Guest]

Find out which ones are already paying for advertising and target them first.  Get them to see your name more than once..send them something in the mail listing your credentials (news articles, etc.), then call them, etc. Don't give up..no one is going to give you money the first time they hear from you..or very few people anyway.

I work in purchasing and honestly, you just don't have time to talk to everyone who calls you. This is your livelihood..to them, you're just one more guy on the phone asking for money..so its up to you to differentiate yourself from the other 600 people a year who call them promising miracles.

[cfabe]

Direct calling may not be your best approach. I hate when people call me trying to sell stuff; it's always at an inconvienent time. Maybe a mailing with a copy of some of the articles you mentioned would be better.

I still think you're under-pricing yourself. If it only costs $10 a month, how good can it be. "You get what you pay for", etc. I bet if you charged $50 or $100 a month many of these gun shop owners might take you more seriously.

You need to find a way to prove to the non-believers that they have gotten new customers. Maybe follow up with people who have sent them emails through your website. I know your logic is sound, but you're going to need proof for these people.

You need to list more gunshops on the site. I don't see why you can't have a basic listing (city state) for all the shops and then have the full deal for paying shops. When I searched for shops in my area you had one that I knew of. And didn't have about 5 others. That says to me that your website is new and makes it hard to take it seriously.

[Antibubba]

Maybe if you re-define who needs to advertise on your site?

"Gunshop" defines a lot of categories.  People can buy and sell firearms there, but a lot of them take in guns for smithing, too.  So if you call your site "Gun Shop Finder" and set it up so that it lists gunsmith's in the area, who may not have more than a workshop, and FFL's, who may be licensed in that area, but don't keep more than a safeful or two (but will be happy to order and/or receive anything you desire).  For some of them, an increase of 5-10 guns amonth might make an enormous impact, and they might see the benefit of such webvertising.  

I like the idea of sending letters, but wait until you get some others in that area (like the smiths and the FFLs) signed up.  Then when you call the shop owner who has been putting you off, you can point out to him, "Look at all the others in your area who are signed up-some of them are seeing quite an increase in sales".  If he's has a slower month than usual, he'll make a connection.  This works even better on the small town gunshop, because, as a rule, these guys aren't used to seeing competition in their area; yet in these more rural areas there are likely to be more machinist/home workshop types who have branched into smithing or selling on the side, who were never known about by more than a few friends, and who are suddenly visible nationwide.  City shops are going to recognize the need to be as visible as the guy three blocks away, or the pawn shop across town.  If you call, wait a few months to call back, and tell them, "I would have called sooner, but there were so many others in your area I was too busy".  Just make sure you can give them names when they call the bluff.

  Just my two zinc discs.

[cfabe]

Dick, how are you finding the gun shops now? Is there a way you can get a list of all FFLs from the ATF? Antibubba might be onto something with targeting some of the smaller FFL holders who now probably only work by word of mouth. I know I'd like to find someone around here to do transfers for me cheap; all the "big" stores want $40 or 50.

[Monkeyleg]

Antibubba: I have a number of shops that do primarily gunsmithing, and sell a few guns on the side. Some do well with my site, others don't. And there's really no pattern to it that I can identify. The guy outside Tupelo is doing better from my site than the guy in Austin.

As for the price, cfabe, that's something I grappled with for a long time. A lot of High Road members thought it was too cheap, and a lot of them thought $10 a month was too much. One even suggested that I charge $20 a year.

Right now the price is one that the guy outside Tupelo can easily justify, and the owners of larger stores--at least the ones who "get it"--consider pocket change.

When I use that term, "get it," here's what I mean. We have two gun stores in Milwaukee. One of them, the Shooters Shop, has been very supportive of my idea. Between their presence on my site, and the site I created for them, they've seen a boost in calls from all around the country, enough so that the owner is now buying 20% of all of the pistols that Ed Brown makes. Because he can sell them. He's even dropped his Yellow Pages ad, since he doesn't think the cost justifies the return.

The owners of the other shop hate the internet, and won't have anything to do with it. Last I heard, they only had five or six dozen guns in stock. I don't think they're going to last long. They think all they need is their Yellow Pages ad. They don't "get it" that the internet is every bit as important for advertising, or maybe even moreso, than the Yellow Pages.

A forum member emailed me yesterday with his phone number, and we talked for a good hour or more. He's a sales professional, and had some really good advice.

I put some of that advice to use today, and got five paid renewals. One was from a fairly small town in IL, one from a medium-size town in NY, one from a medium-size town in WI, one from a small town in ID, and one from a medium size town in MI.

I realize that I'm nowhere near where I thought I'd be in terms of number of shops on the site, and how that affects the image of the site. Believe me, I'm trying. And I'll continue because every indicator so far is telling me that it's a good idea. The biggest obstacle is time: time to recruit new shops, time to get the existing shops to pay, and time to add additional features that will make visitors want to return. (BTW, roughly 40% of the visitors to the site are repeat visitors, so that must mean something).

If anyone else has any suggestions or ideas, please feel free to chime in. I'm all ears.

[280plus]

Dump the dead wood, keep plugging along, eventually it will explode. You've only been at it a year? Not nearly long enough. You need 3-5. So what if people email you because you don't have anything in their area. Ask THEM to point you to a few in their area and you'd be happy to contact them and try to get them on the list. When you talk to the gunshops in a particular area, ask them what other gunshops are around that you might contact. Go to the library and get into the phone books. Some big libraries will have a every book for the whole USA. Check the yellow pages for gunshops book by book.

Have a friend call the deadwoods to ask about some obscure gun part and when they don't have it ask, "Are there any other gunshops in the area that might have this?"

I guess we're talking about leads. THAT'S where your work is.

I hate snivveling cheap people so I choose not to do business with them. As soon as the haggle and whining starts, I'm gone. You'll have a lot more fun dealing with people that see things your way. They're out there, you just have to find them.

[grampster]

Dick,

If you're gonna send mailings, you need a "hook" on the envelope.  Prospecting mail is junk mail.  Most of it goes in the trash and is not opened.  You need to do something to get them to open it.

Put a black bullseye on the envelope with a red cirlcle around it with the diagonal slash through it, you know, the stop symbol. Put the words "DON'T TARGET THE CONTENTS UNLESS..." under it.  Or put a stop sign on the envelope with the words "DON'T OPEN UNLESS..."  You need them to open the letter!!!  A foldover sheet works too.  Easier to open.    

Inside at the top of your one page of propaganda have large block letters   ...YOU WANT TO SELL MORE PRODUCTS!

Below remind them they know you and you have brought them success and that you need them for you to be successful and to continue to help them, and that it has not cost them much.  You are cost effective.  Any business man knows that, you need to remind them!

Your propaganda should be short, sweet, to the point, factual, NO bs and probably use a little humor.



Tell them you will call because their success is your success.  Tell them that!  And then do it, yourself.  Shows you are interested in them personally.  They will be more likely to talk to you because you have become something more than a peddler.

Just my .02 cents after 40 years in sales.

[280plus]

Tell them you will call because their success is your success.

Good one Gramps! Only 40 years? What could you possibly know?



Are you collecting lump sum or monthly? Lump sum will scare the cheapies. They see it as $100 out of pocket right now not $10 a month. Another thing, I know I am CONSTANTLY bombarded with all kinds of pitches for all kinds of things. Like Gramps said, 99% goes right into the garbage unopened and my answering machine screens all the phone solicitors out. So I assume they, like me, are sick of it. If we gave our full consideration to each and every sales pitch, we'd have no time for actually working.

[Monkeyleg]

Grampster, 280plus, thanks for your replies.

I haven't been in sales for 40 years, but I have been in advertising for 27 years. Everything from photographer to copywriter to marketing consultant, and every job in between.

From the outset, I've ruled out direct mail. Direct mail has a response rate of 1% or less; on top of that, it's expensive, especially for a very small business such as mine. No matter how pretty the packaging may be. My success rate in doing direct calls to the owners or those who make the decisions regarding internet advertising has been 45%. It would be even greater if I were able to get through to every decision-maker. Sometimes I just have to say, "OK, I'll try them next year, when they've heard of the site". Of course, that means that I have to make multiple phone calls before reaching that person. But 45% is 45X greater than 1%.

As I mentioned before, I'm getting a paid renewal rate of roughly 66%.

So, let's do some math there. Originally, my most modest goal was to get 10% of all the gun shops out there to pay to be on my site. I've only contacted a fraction of those shops. 45% of those shops agree to the trial subscription. When I call for money, 66% or better decide it's a good expenditure. So, 30% or more of the shops I've contacted initially still think it's worth the $10 a month. Three times or more what I expected.

I have to keep reminding myself of that, or I'd go crazy.

Grampster, I do remind the shop owners that my success hinges on their success. If I get the "I don't know if I've seen anyone off your site" objection, I suggest that we together try to come up with a way of measuring the response, and ways to increase the response. And I then ask that the owner give it a month or two. It doesn't cost me a dime to keep a non-payer on the site, but it costs me a lot of time to replace him with a new shop in his area. I'd much rather try to convince him of the value of my service than go negative.

280plus, I have to charge either a $60 for six month or $100 a year lump-sum payment. If I had to call every store owner on my site every month for $10, and get put off for weeks or months, I'd not only go broke, I'd go insane.

You've made reference a couple of times to the annoying phone calls. Believe me, I get them as well. Almost without fail, it's somebody who's doing the job for $6 an hour, and reading from a script.

I've always been good at making phone calls, whether to try to hook my high-school friend up with a date, or to get some fat-cat to give a grand or two to a pro-gun candidate. I'm surprisingly good at phone-calling. Don't know why, but I'll just accept it as one of God's gifts.

I've had many shop owners tell me that they listened to my spiel because I sounded sincere, and knew about their business, and cared about it. And they're right: I do care about their business and their success. I believe that the whole future of 2nd Amendment rights hinges on the success of the independent shop owner. I want them to beat the WalMarts and Sportsmen's Whorehouse box stores. And, when an owner tells me that he's been zoned out of business or just run out of town (like Koscielski's in Minneapolis), I take it personal.

And that's why I don't think I should just hire some telemarketers (even if I could afford to right now, which I can't). The only people I could hire for such jobs would be gun nuts from THR or TFL, and most of them don't seem to work cheap.

Right now, I can only afford to drop the "dead wood," as you put it, when I have competing shops in the immediate area. I can't eliminate a shop from a major metro area unless I already have another shop there. That would only contribute to the perception that my site is not first-class.  And I've spent a ton of money--and no shortage of talking with my wife about finances--trying to get to just where I am right now. I can't afford to go backwards.

And that means that I have to see the page views for those "non-hackers," see the emails go to them from new customers, and just calm myself knowing that I'll get a new store--and probably a better store--in a month or two, and then present them with the option of losing the new customers they've been getting for free, or pay.

[Antibubba]

You're in Milwaukee, right?  Go to one of the local colleges, find the marketing or business departments, and find a student who needs an interesting research topic that no one else has done before.  And that subject is

some do well with my site, some don't.  And there's really no pattern to it that I can identify.

that YOU can identify-but there probably is one.  Maybe you can offer shooting lessons.  who knows, you might find your first employee (after it gets too big for you alone).

Eager-to-please-their-professor college students will do some strange things for no money.  

Find the pattern, and you'll get way ahead.

[280plus]

Eager-to-please-their-professor college students will do some strange things for no money.

Hence my tribulation in the academic world. I dealt with several professors who thought I would be their personal assistant for no money. They were wrong. The kids and wife may have had something to do with it.

Points taken ML. It sounds like you've done a lot of homework. I suggest you methodically go from dead wood to dead wood and research the area they are in. Find a new prospect and give THEM the 6 month free ride. Right now you're hoping they'll give in and they're loving the free exposure.

Are you set up on credit card? Maybe they would go for a $10 every month that way and save you the hassle.

I was also thinking, maybe for an additional charge you could build them a website that customers could order direct. I have no idea what any of that costs although I am interested in finding out. How much does it cost to generate and maintain a website?

[grampster]

Dick,

I got into a debate with a VP in our company's marketing dept regarding mail.  I am aware of the success rate being low.  We wanted to contact existing customers to tell them about a discount we were offering on an additonal product we offer if they were over 50.  He was laughing at my "Forgive the bulk mail letter, but it's important to contact a lot of you now, so you can save money" letter that I did using a felt tipped pen and photocopied on good quality paper, then personally addressed and signed that gave a short outlline of what we were proposing, followed by a call.  Actually his laughter was more mockery than laughter.  I challenged him to send his professional, Harvard shiny pants MBA letter to a portion of my client base and I'd do my backwoods bubba letter.  Well, I actually got folks calling me and I virtually sold everyone that I had mailed and called.  He got 0 response from his.

People somehow respect personal effort.  Hell, I used to tell prospects I was a brand new salesperson for 5 or 6 years into my career because I found they liked to help ME succeed.  I still think some selective mailing with a "hook" on the envelope, followed by a call asking them to help you which in turn helps them, might be worth, at least, a trial.

[280plus]

That's another good one! I like it! I'm glad you stuck it to the guy too gramps! That's always so much fun.

I had a guy tell me once "You play the game pretty good BUT I CAN PLAY IT BETTER!!"

I said, "What game? This isn't a game, it's work! "

[Waitone]

People somehow respect personal effort.  Hell, I used to tell prospects I was a brand new salesperson for 5 or 6 years into my career because I found they liked to help ME succeed.

Particularly this day and time companies (people) appreciate personal effort.  But more to the point Americans as a species love to help as long as it is their idea to help and you will be appreciative of their assistance.  Hence, one of the oldest openings in the sales gig is "Can you give me a hand understanding <>."  Can't overdo it but it is a way of avoiding the dreaded yes/no question sales people fall into.  

The other factor Grampster ID'd is that of a coach.  A coach is someone inside your target organization who has nothing to do with your sales transaction yet they want you to succeed (for a number of personal reasons)  by providing information.  Coaches are perhaps the single most important sales influence a peddler can have.

Sales can be called a game, but in my view it most resembles a dance.

[Monkeyleg]

Grampster, that's a very creative solution to a sales problem. I'll have to noodle on that to figure out how I might incorporate such an idea into my approach.

Here's another obstacle I face: seasonality.

In the early months of the year, gun store sales are typically slow. So I'm more inclined to get shop owners willing to go for the free trial. But I'm less likely to get trial subscribers to pay. After all, from January through perhaps March, they're counting pennies.

From March through June, the owners have typically seen a pick-up in business. Not a lot, but enough that they're "fat enough" to cough up the $10 a month.

During the summer, most shops are in their dry periods. In fact, that's when I get the most emails from shops wanting to try the free trial; they're desperate for new business. But getting that $10 a month from those who've been on the free trial is much harder.

Come September, it seems to get easier on both fronts. Business is good enough that shops are willing to pay, but not good enough to turn down free advertising.

Then comes the hunting and Christmas seasons. The shops are typically doing so well that they don't think they need to advertise, free or paid.

Grampster: "People somehow respect personal effort."

I think the majority of shop owners on my site realize the amount of personal effort that goes into this. I don't just call them when it's time to renew. I call them if I have someone looking for a hard to find item, and I think they just might have it. I call them just to see how business is going, and if there's anything else I can do with my site to help. Sometimes I'll just call them to see how things in general are going, and offer some perspectives that I've gleaned from what other shop owners are doing. Or sometimes it's just a call to chat, because I really enjoy talking to the guy.

280plus: "Points taken ML. It sounds like you've done a lot of homework. I suggest you methodically go from dead wood to dead wood and research the area they are in. Find a new prospect and give THEM the 6 month free ride. Right now you're hoping they'll give in and they're loving the free exposure."

Oh, believe me, if I get a shop in good-sized metro area that cancels on me, I immediately start looking for their competitors. That's why I post the "what's a good gun shop in XYZ?" posts on THR.

As I said, though, the time required to get a replacement shop in that city takes weeks, or even months.

One thing I do if a shop cancels on me, and I get a replacement in that area, is send a very polite email:

*****************
"Hello, Joe. Per your decision not to continue your subscription with Gunshopfinder.com, we have removed the page for Joe's Sporting Goods from our site.

For your own information, you have had 7,966 people view your page on our site since April. That's 7,966 people who were interested in a gun store in your area, and in all probability were not aware of your store. Had you continued your subscription at our annual rate of $8.33 a month, your cost per view would have been about one cent each.

Should you decide you'd like your page reinstated on our site, please know that all of the information is still in the database, and we'd be more than happy to restore it. Doing so would take just a couple of minutes.

Thank you again for your time, and for trying out our trial service.

Yours truly,
Dick Baker"

******************

I've only sent out 22 of these cancellation emails, but I actually had the owner of a large shop in MA email me back the next day to say that he'd reconsidered. And he gave me his credit card # on the spot.

The forum member I talked to on the phone the other day framed the issue in terms of presenting the owner with the prospect of some sort of loss. Other sales professionals have given me similar advice.

In the case of the MA store owner above who reconsidered, my guess is that he went to my site and saw that I had one of his competitors--less than 30 minutes away--still on the site.

I don't claim to have found a cure for cancer. All I found is a website concept that's worked very well for restaurants, golf courses, topless joints, and any number of other businesses. But nobody was doing it for gun shops. Maybe somebody realized what a brick wall that would be, and moved onto porno sites.

Maybe it will take three to five years. If that's the case, then so be it. I have a number of job skills, but I'd like to settle on one that I can still be doing at age 65, because I sure won't be able to retire, and my days of pushing a full-dress Harley up a flight of stairs for a photo shoot  are long gone.

[280plus]

Maybe it will take three to five years. If that's the case, then so be it.

Patience is a definite virtue in the world of self employment. You have to be able to look at that big nut you have to crack and know that it WILL be paid down eventually and then it's all gravy. Like I said, it sounds like you're on the ball to me. EXCELLENT LETTER BTW, just keep plugging away. And GOOD LUCK!

Don't forget, If it proves to be profitable, it becomes a commodity you can later sell.