How To Make Money with Affiliate Marketing

Getting started with the digital sales venture boasting the fastest turnaround time in the online marketing industry.

The buzzword of "Affiliate Marketing" has been gaining major traffic recently in primary search engines. Much of the hype is generated through isolated, individual cases of vast success through the niche, magnified by large social audiences. But more substantially, we have the sizable wave of information products that are saturating the space online. 

The e-knowledge industry has reached all time highs in annual revenues measured, and "online income gurus" are capitalizing off of the wave handsomely. But underneath all of the surface-level hype and fake mentors swarming the topic, lies a highly valuable opportunity very few are fully mastering.

Affiliate Marketing, by nature, is the sale of a vendor or separate company's product in return for a commission (percentage of the sale price) payout. With the explosion of social platforms has the accompanied benefit in a sales and marketing capacity to take these affiliate products, and pitch them straight to corresponding audiences effectively through advanced targeting techniques or brand development on popular social outlets like Instagram, Facebook, and others. 

The key to becoming a successful affiliate lies in two primary skill sets - selecting an effective product, and knowing how to sell effectively. I'll break down some key research points for each below to assist in your due diligence when pondering moving into the space; 

Product Selection:

You can be the most experienced affiliate in the world, but without a product, you'll never make any money. The first step in your journey to becoming a well-paid affiliate marketer is to identify a product that you are passionate about. Selling something you aren't even excited about yourself will prove difficult - while selling something you know and love or can proudly endorse, however, will allow for a much more confident pitch filled with in-depth wisdom about the features and benefits of the product.

To find good products that sponsor affiliate programs that will allow you to create an affiliate account and begin selling that company/vendor's product, go to websites such as www.ClickBank.com or www.JVZoo.com to browse thousands of products spanning several different niches such as health and wellness, sports and recreation, and much more.

Upon finding a product you believe you like, first consider data points such as Gravity (Clickbank). Gravity measures the popularity (and inherent competition) of each product. Picking products with a high gravity may call for higher adspend when marketing to punch through the higher competition, but will also often sell easier and for better commissions if you can accomplish that market penetration. 

Also, note what your commission rate is for that product. For example, if the product holds a price of $100.00, and it reportedly has a 60% commission rate, you'll be paid $60.00 per sale. I personally prefer digital products such as ebooks, courses, coaching recordings, and other intangible products. If you select a similar digital product, you'll be guaranteeing yourself larger commissions because physical products that have overhead (costs of production) for the materials and assembly of that product have a smaller profit margin. If a product is digital, it means that it costs very little if anything to replicate and fulfill delivery for, and therefore has massive net profit margins to afford higher commissions to affiliates. 

Effective Affiliate Product Promotional Approaches:

Once you have selected an affiliate product you believe you resonate with and has good margins and demand in the marketplace, it's down to the reason this is called Affiliate "Marketing" - the actual selling part.

There are many ways to successfully promote products and services online as a brand representative or affiliate. You could go the classic route of prospecting manually (networking personally with potentially interested individuals called "prospects"), or attempt building complex series of websites with sales text and video content in place to sell the viewer called Sales Funnels, built through popular programs such as www.ClickFunnels.com. but whichever route you decide to try your hand at, have these key factors in mind when promoting your product;

  1. Know your Niche! Always reverse-engineer and deeply understand the perspectives of your perfect customers. Use this comprehension of your ideal customer in order to identify and leverage the needs and desires of the target market you are hoping to sell to.

  2. Know your Product! Just as important as understanding what your preferred customers are looking for, you better also know what it is you have to offer like the back of your hand to effectively sell it. Ponder unique (although always accurate and ethic) ways to represent your product that will best tailor to the interests and hopes or worries of your prospective customer. However, you can only ever achieve this if you fully understand and appreciate the features and benefits of your product.

  3. Know your Channel! Everybody is better at different things and styles of marketing. Learn whether or not you're most effective manually prospecting directly for your sales by practicing sending 10 - 25 messages per day depending on how hard you want to grind it, or get your feet wet jumping into the more enhanced topic of web design, conversion rate optimization, funnel building and email marketing integration with tools like autoresponders.

Through the topics in this article, you should at least have a solid general basis of terminology and vocabulary to research to begin your affiliate journey. I hope that this article was helpful, and if you found it valuable, I'll always appreciate emails with comments or questions as well as sharing. 

To emphasize - if you have any questions at all, please don't hesitate to reach out through the contact page to fire over any clarifications you'd love to have made so you can go out and hit the ground running.

Cheers, and catch you guys in my next article! Be sure to follow on social media channels. 

How To Become Successful In Any Market - The Mindset Principle

I know for a fact that if I were to go backwards in terms of my analysis on my entrepreneurial journey, HARD WORK and CONSISTENCY were the two primary factors that molded me. From applying these, I've gained everything I have now. Even when I was working hard from the start, I lacked the knowledge that I've since acquired regarding the process, and the pivotal facets of my industry that would be the determining factors to my success and ROI for all of that time and hard effort.

This has led to now recognizing and comprehending fully that ANYONE can succeed at their dreams, regardless of their initial situational positions. This is true, because I now understand the process of learning and adjusting. If anybody started a venture they felt was in alignment with their passion, it will enable the hard work necessary - because they enjoy it, and will hardly see it to be "work" as they forge along. The trials and difficulties that arise within entrepreneurship whereby having to identify and properly execute every single piece of a given business will often turn people away. With so much on the table to solve, it'll often make them feel that the overall task at hand would be above them. Upon embarking on the very base level of research, once the complexities have revealed themselves behind what it all takes - people will frequently generate the conclusion that they couldn't succeed at the execution of it all.

However, I also know it to be true from personal experience and 6 years now of close, attentive observation over thousands of coaching members, students, consultation clients, course owners, and just standard social connections that if you simply put your mind to application, the rest will fall into place when coupled with problem solving. What somebody may lack in initial expertise or comprehension of any given field, they can make up for with the hard grit and grind others won't put in. They can OUT-WORK. Through doing so, and seeing failures as more than just a stop sign, and more of a "red-flag for correction", they will empower their future efforts with increased knowledge of what does and does not work. 

After enough consistent application of both the mindset necessary to chase this approach, and the hard work it entails, one may find that they have already pushed significantly through the marketplace they're operating within. This often occurs solely on the basis of having put out the most content and with the best consistency, from having brought more value than the other players in their industry to the market audiences, and from having brought themselves to more problems to innovate solutions for and monetize than their competitors, because they simply were not putting the same hours and elbow grease in to then encounter that same hidden gem. I refer to a problem in business as a hidden gem like this, because problems are the seed for innovators to analyze, and create meaningful and tangible solutions to the market for. 

If you can achieve that level of mastery from being in your space long and hard enough to become an authority on the basis of having developed such innovations, you'll immediately become one of the top earning individuals within that industry.

SOLVE problems. MONETIZE solutions. PROVIDE value, then HELP others who have utilized your solution and graced you with the humbling honor of being a consumer for your newly packaged concept, product, or service.

Solve, Monetize, Provide, Help. 

And if you get good enough at those long enough? You can throw in "RETIRE!" at the end of those four primary facets.

Thank you so much for reading, and if this has brought any value to you or your mindset and actions to come, please share with a friend or somewhere on social - after all, the entire point is to be bringing value to people. If you found some within this article, I implore you as an ethical entrepreneur and a man humbled by your viewership to allow others the opportunity to grow from this as well.

Hustle hard, work smart, and see you at the top my friends. 

Keys To The Close - Successful Follow-Up Engagements

If you're reading this, you probably have some sort of background in sales. Let's take that skill set you've been developing, and further it! Here's a killer article about the proper mentality to have when following up with your sales, new or old, and how to approach them in such a way that propels them into closing. Eat this up.

Everybody has their own busy life. In order to successfully integrate your product or service into their life in the form of making a sale, you need to give consistent CTA's (calls-to-action) to push the transaction through. But just telling somebody to buy again and again obviously won't fit the bill - you'll need an emotionally intelligent, logically sound, and genuine approach to a prospect that you have been in contact with that hasn't yet purchased, and even more so with older leads that you haven't been in consistent correspondence with.

Products and services provide value, or a solution to somebody's pain points or problems within their life. When following through, my most effective messages to continuing cultivating the relationship and rapport to eventually close have been messages that directly appeal to these issues first. If you target the product or service as the topic first, they'l react with apprehension knowing that cash leaving their pocket would be inevitable if they continued down that path you are asking them to with the conversation. However, if you come out of the gates asking about things they have directly and passionately expressed to be issues they want to be resolved within their life that your product or service can alleviate or assist with, they'll be far more receptive to your further explanations of how your product/service can do exactly that - remove stress from the previously expressed pain point, and allow for a better life thanks to working with you and deciding to finally transact.

For example, in a recent sales situation where a woman had requested information regarding increasing her income through one of my many sponsored opportunities within my program team, she had stated right off of the bat that it's urgent, due to expenses in one of her other ecommerce ventures. She was in need of a side hustle that provided additional capital for adspend overhead (costs of running PPC [pay-per-click] ads in this case).

When following up a couple weeks later after talking price regarding my consultation service, I began by inquiring about the financial state and recent success of her ecom shop. This level of care and attention to detail shows true and genuine intent, and draws the relationship between closer and prospect far tighter. By discussing the ecommerce shop first, it allowed me to uncover additional areas where there were existing issues, all of which my consultation service was congruent with. After portraying persuasively how my service could be complimentary to her situation, and how it could optimize her shop and remove these issues from the equation in her business, she swiftly came to the wise conclusion that it'd be better with me on board, then it would be if she continued stumbling by herself. 

A sale is achieved when you reach this point - the point where the prospect is in agreement that the closer and said closer's service or product can improve their life or business somehow, and that the price of that product or service is correlating fairly with the value. As previously stated in my blog articles and over my social media often before, my very simple equation for successfully closing a sale is as follows;

When perceived value exceeds monetary price, people pay!

This being said, in order to cultivate converting and successful connections, it's often necessary to take extensive notes on each prospect. To track my sales notes and progressions, as well as pipeline value and projection tracking, I currently integrate "Base CRM" into my sales teams and my individual prospecting/lead generation efforts. 

Base CRM (CRM = Client Relationship Management System) is one of many available CRM's in the marketplace today. The associated overhead will calculate out to $25-PU (per user). With Base CRM keeping me closely updated and reminded automatically when follow-up processes are due, I consistently and effectively stay on top of all of my potential sales, thus maximizing my revenues as a result.

When both tracking and following up successfully with your prospects, you'll see a significant increase in your sales almost immediately as time elapses since your previous interactions with older leads, and as you choose to engage them more intelligently and thoroughly. You'll notice right away that when coming into a conversation informed around the prospects pain points, desires, and needs, you're a hundred times more equipped to effectively position the value of your product or service in parallel with their requirements and desires.

Millennial Mindset - Generation Shifts

As many have likely noticed by now...

The game has had a massive shift. The path to success isn't necessarily the traditional route of "jumping through all of the hoops", proceeding to wave your transcript and other credentials and commendations around to colleges, cross your fingers to nail down a prestigious scholarship, then get your "receipt" for it all (of course, this refers to your degree) by the end of the line.

But then what?

Post-completion of college, young adults are spat out into a world and into a scenario that despite our traditional scholastic system's best efforts, we are completely and utterly unprepared for. Yes, we know by now how to go grocery shopping and such; but unless you majored in finance and accounting, you likely have no idea how to do your own taxes, you have no basis of understanding of how to make money other than getting a job with your sparkly new certifications, and aside from all of that, there's the looming statistic that under 20% of all college graduates even from IV League institutions even manage to land a job in their targeted field that they had just spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and four years of their life to specialize in.

There's a new reality in this digital age of entrepreneurship.

In recent years, there's been a massive swapping of roles; a monumental shift of responsibility. To elaborate; it used to be the case that younger aspiring entrepreneurs and business people would turn to their elders and family, who may potentially guide them to success in their particular niche. However, as practically every business model in the world is forced to adapt to the ever-changing technological advancements implemented by competitors, the practical and "old school" advice of the previous generations are becoming highly outdated. 

Specifically, traditional methods of advertisement are rapidly fading into a thing of the past as their methods become obsolete, making way to new, far more targeted and higher converting digital marketing solutions. No more billboards, people. And as we all are well aware of in the marketing world; you can have the best product or service on the planet, but without effective marketing tactics and proven numbers behind your approaches, you're desperately spewing money out the door and shooting from the hip. This "spray and pray" marketing strategy is becoming the norm for our previous generations, as they desperately continue what used to work for marketing their business, rather than catching on and adapting to the digital world. 

It's millennials like myself and other digital marketing experts in this decade that have the duty and responsibility in the business world to properly educate and demonstrate the recent dynamic shifts in the marketing space to older, less savvy generations. That's why I've taken it upon myself to develop the content I've put out there. But my point is emphasized. Now-a-days, we are the go-to people others turn to. This expansive demand for digital marketing solutions makes this the perfect time to establish a digital marketing firm or agency as I have, so that we can not only teach but also charge existing businesses for their social media marketing and management, targeted campaign creations, landing page design and development, growth hacking with sales funnels and email marketing systems, and so much more. 

Monetize the trend, before new software does it for us...

I have recently partnered with a team of amazing entrepreneurs (interestingly enough around the same age as I!) that have developed a tool to automate the targeted and high-engaging growth of any given Instagram page. This soon-to-be-launched program is one of many examples; but the point remains. 

As we sit around and watch businesses flock to the nearest non-booked digital marketing firm for their online marketing and brand awareness solutions to grow their business, there are massive multi-billion dollar software and tech companies grinding away relentlessly to fill this sector of the market with tools and platforms to automate it all. 

Now is the time to jump into digital marketing if you can manage to learn the core fundamentals of social media marketing and the other digital marketing strategies that have now recently been consolidated under the umbrella term of "growth hacking". That, or it's the perfect moment to jump into software development, and knock all of them out by automating the tasks they preform as a service.

Either way, millennials are put into a position of power in this decade due to technological advances and all other factors aforementioned. Pull the trigger before it's too late, and grab your piece of the pie!

I hope you've enjoyed. Subscribe below for more essential tips on digital entrepreneurship!

The Top Ten Mistakes - Digital Business Philosophy

I have made a few observations about making money online recently that I would like to share. If you are trying to make some cash online, and have had issues getting something to work, I've determined a couple of "roadblocks" that you will likely encounter along your path to success;

1. Not having technical know-how to design and develop necessary sales funnels, websites, landing pages, email marketing systems, or other mediums of visitor engagement online that could result in conversions (sales, opt-ins, other). Lacking this skill set will mean you'll have to take the time and effort to procure it yourself through research and deep trial-and-error, or that you'll have to hire a professional to take care of this area of your digital venture for you in return for either direct compensation or some form of profit sharing arrangement for when you begin generating revenue.

2. Not catching trends. This one is huge. The massive figures out there like Grant Cardone, Tai Lopez, Jon Penberthy (all of which I've spoken with before) made their millions because they innovated their spaces. Tai Lopez beat everybody else to the curve with the educational, digital product course concept. Grant Cardone revolutionized the sales industry with his similar "Cardone University" in-depth sale closing course. Jon Penberthy was a YouTube magnate who acted as an affiliate marketing for a large variety of "make money online" related products. But he was also among the first people to start such affiliate accounts, and figure out all of the search engine/traffic algorithms and top the charts, making him his first million by age 21.

3. Not acting quick enough. Most digital entrepreneurs have great, viable concepts; however those of which don't immediately spring on those opportunities at first site will fall prey to an industry where somebody else will. Swift, decisive action and expedient but thorough planning is absolutely crucial. This also applies highly to the previous step, in the sense that if you don't spring on popular trends making waves in your niche you'll miss them entirely or be dominated by somebody else who monopolized it by then.

4. Not sticking with it. I know for a fact that you won't get this whole internet marketing gig perfectly the first go-around. You'll buy course after course, training ebook after webinar after consultations and so-forth and so-on. But the people that make it massive in this industry are those who strive on long enough to eventually dominate the niche filled with the others who did not do so themselves.

5. Not having a mentor-ship figure. I started internet marketing when I was just 12 years old. For those of you who do not know this, I'm currently only 16 years old. But I would have already have monumentally more success at even earlier ages if I had gone out and found a mentor. I totally missed the mark in this regard; thinking I could master everything myself with long hours and sleepless nights. However, here's the reality; there's likely to always be somebody ahead of the curve, when you're just hitting it; and if you can leverage the knowledge of mentors and others that have superior experience in your field, then you'll skyrocket yourself around critical mistakes that otherwise could have potentially knocked you out of the game entirely.

6. Not knowing your target market, and nailing a specific niche down. This was (personally) a big mistake that I've made previously. I figured; "Well, I will obviously make more sales if I'm doing websites for everybody, right?!?" --- No. Not at all. By lacking proper targeting of my "Consumer Avatar" (also known commonly as Buyer Profiles), I wasn't able to properly nail down my warm leads and close them effectively, and all of my marketing campaigns in my early stages were far too broad and wouldn't convert at all. Be sure to target your ideal customer, and translate that same practice into the development and infrastructure of your ad campaigns.

7. Not having a repeatable, solid sales cycle process. As a digital entrepreneur or any other type of business owner or operator, you will ALWAYS be struggling to keep the sales coming through the door (or, in this case, website!) if you don't have a strategy to gain a sale that can be repeated with no necessary major modifications each time. Be sure to invest a large portion of your time into developing a sound, RELIABLE process of gaining new clientele. When you nail this, you'll feel an overwhelming sense of joy and freedom from financial worry both in business, and in life all around in general.

8. Not having a scale-able business model. This one is huge. Even if your sales process is solid like mentioned in the step prior, you'll never grow as a business financially unless you have a plan or business model that supports rapid growth potential. I always make sure to highlight each and every step of the sales cycle for my digital agencies, and find areas that can be multiplied or enhanced to create more success for my business in the form of better deal flow. Focus a majority of your time on the activities that work, doubling down on them, while minimally operating the tasks that don't produce as well.

9. Not having a team, or knowledge of task delegation. This is crucial. If you don't have the know-how to create, manage, and delegate tasks to a team for the different sectors of your business, you'll quickly swamp yourself when attempting to grow or scale up. You won't be able to manage all of the work load you're taking on, forcing yourself to neglect your sales process, thus choking out your deal flow and revenue as a whole, and strangling your business to bankruptcy in the process. Be sure to research methods of obtaining certified, dependable individuals to establish as your team members that will support such growth movements in your ventures. As for task delegation, you need to find the balance point between micro-management, and no oversight at all. Keep a close eye on your employees/associates/partners, but never make them feel like your a shoulder-mounted camera that doesn't trust their efficiency.

10. Not having a coach-able, networking mindset. You need to get out into the depths of your space, and connect with individuals that clearly have the processes of operating a business venture in your industry down better than you may understand yourself. Create a Facebook group like I have, or join another that holds intelligent, skilled individuals that can further your success. Sometimes, all it takes is the right partnership to nail down contracts that will triple your deal flow as a result; so go out, and find them! Partners also may hold information regarding better lead generation strategies than your own from their past experience, they may know other people that could become excellent team members that you otherwise would have never connected with, and may have powerful insight as to the next steps you should take within your business. Don't underestimate the strength you can gain from leveraging the strength of others in mutually-beneficial partnership.

I hope that this has provided some valuable insights into your business processes, and that it may allow you more success with the effort you are pouring into becoming a successful internet marketer, or digital business owner! And if you're new to all of this then I envy the fact that you saw these critical thought-points before making mistakes not knowing them! 

Subscribe to my newsletter below for real, practical, and legitimate systems, techniques, strategies, programs, tools, promotions, and sales on the content you'll wish you had later down the road in this industry! Hop in now. 

Cheers, and keep up the hustle!

Affiliate Marketing 101 - Traffic, Funnels, And Fun

Hey! In this blog post, I'll be talking a little bit about a topic that you will be hearing much more about in the coming week or so through my blog, social media, and other outlets of media you might follow me on, like my awesome newsletter!

And by the way, if you aren't on it yet; I'm a little sad! Jump into the action with my digital entrepreneur community below, at the bottom of this post. 

But regardless, back to the matter at hand; Affiliate Marketing. 

Affiliate marketing is a style of marketing both online and partially offline that consists of selling a vendors product for them, and receiving a percentage commission in return for affiliating that sale.

Some products or services you may affiliate may land in the range of thousands, while others may be small, fashion accessories. But whatever it is that you're affiliating for, you need a few key components to make that sale go through for your vendor, thus earning you your commission. Here is a basic list breakdown of the things you'll want to make sure you implement into your online selling efforts;

  1. Traffic
  2. Sales Funnel/Landing Page
  3. CTA With Affiliate Link To Product Page

Now, bear in mind; there are literally hundreds of plausible and profitable ways to utilize the power of sales automation and affiliate marketing products hand in hand to become rich online, while spending minimal amounts of time managing or changing your business model. But the 3 points above are absolute must-haves; things that you won't be able to successfully affiliate without in most cases.

Let's go through and break down each individual component one-by-one!

First off, we have the traffic. This is bar-none probably the most difficult part of this process, and this step is what puts the word "marketing" in the term affiliate marketing. Even if you had the best landing page or sales funnel system set up, you won't make a single conversion (traffic to lead to sale) off of any of your visitors unless you have visitors in the first place. This is traffic. You need a reliable, cost-efficient method of generating leads and traffic to your website, in the hopes that a small percentage of them will convert into sales for your vendor, and again, sale commissions for yourself. I will be going into this vast topic of traffic generation in a couple blog posts to come, and I will also provide some valuable strategies you can swipe from my own practices to generate your sales funnel traffic.

Secondly, we have the sales funnel, or landing page. This is essentially a system or singular web page that represents your persuasive, selling efforts. There are a lot of factors that go into a successful, high converting landing page or funnel, and I will elaborate on both of these in future blog posts up and coming soon here for you. These factors are among copywriting, graphic optimization, social proofing, and more. This is a very important step, because if you don't have a landing page or funnel, you'll essentially be sending your valuable traffic straight to a checkout page, without even explaining in-depth why they should be purchasing what they're then looking at. It is absolutely essential that the traffic you manage to acquire is sent to a highly converting, aesthetically pleasing, and well-thought out page that will greatly increase the amount of sales commissions you receive.

Thirdly, you have the CTA (Call-To-Action) function, that contains a hyperlink to the product/checkout page for your affiliate product. This is a page that the vendor set up to represent their product, and provide a place for the consumer to check out and acquire that item. Some vendors will allow you to take your own landing pages and sales funnels, and itnegrate this checkout feature straight from your pages instead of making the visitor go to yet-another website before finally getting what they've been looking for.

It's a proven fact through countless A/B Split Tests for conversion rates on landing pages and sales funnel systems that if you overload the potential consumer with options (such as multiple websites they have to go through to finally arrive at checkout), the less likely they are to stick it out and make the purchase that you are looking to achieve from them.

As I mentioned, I will be going into depth regarding these concepts more so in future posts, and in future courses to come. But please, stay tuned and start dipping into this realm of affiliate marketing carefully, as you will encounter countless "gurus" and "mentors" that claim to be able to make you millions right out of the gates. It is certainly possible; but have high-caution when approaching or interacting with these characters or their "systems" and "training courses".

Now, that isn't to say that there aren't legitimate affiliate marketing trainers out there; quite the opposite. There are many very reputable sources and authority figures that can guide your journey; but there are tenfold that amount of people that are either scammers, ameteur marketers that haven't gotten results, or courses that have useless and repetitive information. I was victim to many of these, to the tune of thousands of dollars lost personally from my collective investments in these programs. Heed my warning! 

Thanks so much for reading, subscribe below if you haven't already, and check out my new ebook about social media that will help you immensely (especially with affiliate marketing!).

My ebook can be found for free on www.socialmediasuccess101.com/download. Go grab your copy! You'll thank me later.

Stay tuned for more upcoming posts about affiliate marketing!

My Lessons Learned About Delegation

Throughout my career as an internet marketer and trainer, web design company founder, and entrepreneur in general, I've learned some very valuable lessons when it comes to the people that I choose to work with, which succeed and earn my companies money, and which fail and ultimately cost and lose me money consequently.

I've brought in over 40 different people into my ventures over time, and very few have made it through to remain with me today. There are many reasons for this elimination of my previous team, and also very vital reasons as to why the remaining operators within either Aspire Consolidated (web design company) or Connor Markets (personal brand and internet marketing company) have continued to exceed my expectations and climb further and further through the ranks. 

Pretend for a moment that you are the CEO or owner of a decently sized startup company that is successful, and generating consistent revenue. Your goal, as it's primary operating officer, is to continue the growth and scaling of the company, and to manage the other employees and contractors below you. How would you get all of the massive tasks at your feet completed? It is far too much for any single person to complete by themselves; leading to task delegation to members of your team.

This being said, take a moment and assess how you would feel trusting a huge task that was initially your responsibility to somebody else. Also, if you are already in a situation of power within your venture and others are working with you currently, do you feel confident that you have somebody working alongside you that you could comfortably assign such a task to?

Task delegation is very risky sometimes depending on the composition of your company's employees. But with the proper management skills and consistency with training your people, you can sufficiently oversee the processes to be completed. 

It is very controversial however how much surveillance should be taken over your co-workers, as too much will portray to them that you don't think they can complete the task without you. But with too little assessment of progression, you could be making a fatal mistake by allowing important tasks to go unchecked.

Be sure to keep a solid balance when it comes to progression checks with your team members, and giving them freedom to prove themselves as competent operators in your company. The famous quote "trust, but verify" very much applies to ask delegation, and should be implemented into your mindset when delegating tasks out to others.

Hopefully this has provided you with a mindset and refreshed approach to trusting others with crucial tasks within your organization, but with the proper precautionary measures taken. Email your comments to me at connorjsmithmarketing@gmail.com, or from the Contact & Hire Page.

Thank you for reading, be sure to subscribe below to not miss out on any of my valuable email broadcasts or future blog post notifications, as well as my ebook and video course releases!

Factors Of Achieving Success - My Take

Hey there, and thank you so much for reading my blog post! In this post, I will be laying out some of the primary factors that I have observed in individuals and establishments that have achieved massive success, and why I believe those factors to have been significantly instrumental in the upbringing of that high-achieving entity, be it a company, or otherwise. 

But before we dive into it all, we have to first clarify something. Success is defined in many ways, however for the purposes of this blog post, I intend that "success" is being measured by monetary gain, and financial freedom and prosperity.

This being said, here are some valuable "keys to success" I have observed of others in my days as an internet marketing professional and online business owner:

  1. Solution to a common problem (product or service)
  2. Significant publicity relative to audience size of niche (become a niche authority, dominate the specific market or at least establish a significant following)
  3. Affordable pricing with flexibility in payment plans for higher level products or services to spread out payments so that more people can move forward with purchasing
  4. Aesthetically pleasing and highly functional website or landing page that converts so that the owner is making as many sales as possible from the amount of traffic they are receiving
  5. Email list so nobody is left out of sales cycles, and more income for individual/company as the subscriber list grows (exponential growth of residual income)
  6. Tri-package price options (common method whereas there are three tiers of pricing to appeal to different affordability rates for prospects, leaving no sale behind)
  7. Automation of delivery of product, or team delegation for completion and delivery of service
  8. No negative public relations can be found because of prompt refunds and high quality of service or product
  9. Maintained a majority, if not all, equity and profit sharing so that very little income from the venture had to be sent elsewhere, meaning higher profit margins for the owner
  10. Tight-knit team that has been delegated enough tasks to allow the owner to continue cranking out more content for the loyal followers, rather than having to complete menial, basic tasks that are the basic ground work of the operation

Of course, there are also additional factors that will play a role within the efforts of climbing to success for everybody. Among those are definitely ones of mindset. Without the proper drive to execute on these 10 key points above, nothing is going to get done regardless of having "the perfect plan" in place.

I am pondering elaborating on these points in blog posts to come, as well as making the list longer. Also, I am thinking that I will consolidate all of these factors into an ebook in there near future in order to provide a simple, clean display of my findings regarding the top factors and features that you should perfect when creating an online business. 

There are millions of successful people in the world, representing that top 2%. Some got lucky, but some followed a formula to success devised by mentors of the previous generations. But to achieve success ourselves from the ground level, we have to analyze how these millionaires and billionaires had achieved their goals. 

The goal of this blog post was to provide some hopefully valuable insight in terms of what pieces of the puzzle I've noticed that the hugely successful individuals had nailed down, and to share that insight with you in the hopes that you might be able to implement it yourself within your business.

Bullet list as it was, there are likely many questions that I will receive from my subscribers regarding clarifications they would like me to make about some of these points. If you are one of these people, and would like to Skype or hop into a phone call with me personally to discuss any of the points in this posting, I would love to do so. 

Thank you for reading, and be sure to subscribe to my email newsletter below if you haven't already to join the thousands of hustlers in the Connor Markets Success Community!

How To Make Money Online - The Next Steps

As touched on by my last blog posts, making money online is a series of systems working symbiotically to funnel prospects through a sales funnel system which will eventually entice them to purchase whatever it is that you are marketing.

We have discussed that email marketing is a huge part of how these funnels operate, and will determine the conversion rates of your campaigns based off of the copy (sales oriented text) that is included within the emails that are being broadcasted to your mailing list.

I also mentioned the 3 communications agencies that I suggest using (Aweber, GetResponse, or MailChimp), and discussed the primary strategies and concepts behind the necessary components of a successful sales funnel. 

In today's blog post, I'll be laying out the top 5 things that you will need to perfect in order to make money online, no matter who you are, what you do, and what your passion is. This strategy teaches you to become wealthy and financially prosperous doing what you love:

These 5 steps are all you need. But this last one, APPLICATION, is arguably the most important!

These 5 steps are all you need. But this last one, APPLICATION, is arguably the most important!

Study these 5 primary components to death. Because if you can really nail each of these, and then learn traffic generation to put people into your mailing list through the landing page, then all you need to do is create great copy to sell your list subscribers from that point forward! This could be a mailing list about literally ANYTHING. There is a market for every niche, and whether your blogging on your website about baseball, makeup, internet marketing like me, or any other topic, there ARE interested people.

Email me with any questions, and keep an eye out for the next post! Thanks so much! 

How To Make Money Online - Basics

Many people wonder how it is that the mastermind "gurus" and "mentors" online make their money providing the ebooks, video courses, training programs, consultations, and other knowledge based packages online. It's a golden question for many, but the even more burning wonder is; "Can I Do It Too?".

Yes, yes you can. 

What people don't realize about the internet now-a-days in terms of monetizing (making money from) their websites, blogs, or social media accounts is that websites are the new retail stores that you would walk into casually on a weekend shopping. The world is becoming ever increasingly digitized, and appropriately enough, so are our commerce experiences.

Part of what I teach in my programs behind Connor Markets is how to make money online, how to grow a social media brand, and most importantly, how to monetize it.  

Essentially, making money from the internet on a consistent, reliable basis successfully is determined by a couple key factors:

  • Audience
  • Valuable Content
  • Products or Services
  • Strong CTA's (calls to action)
  • Email Marketing (automated upselling)

Point by point, here we go!

First off, we have audience. One of the most important factors in the list for sure. You need to have a large following to make sure that when you give a CTA (call to action) such as "buy now" for one of your products, there will be enough people so that it'll be worth it in terms of your ROI (return on investment). If you spent $10 on a Facebook Ad Campaign, for example, and reached 5,000 people, you need to make sure that your post is well designed and engaging so that your conversion rate (percentage of people effected that actually take action) will make you enough money to outweigh your costs. That's the essential overview of why it is important to get your promotions and content in front of enough people, however this will be elaborated upon in my next ebook series all about teaching success on social media. Be sure to subscribe to my newsletter to get updates on this!

Next, we have "valuable content". Obviously, no matter how large or small your audience may be, you'll never convert a single viewer, subscriber, or follower into a sale unless your content is seriously stellar to begin with. This means that your social media posts are fun and exciting, well designed graphics from high-resolution images with witty and intriguing captions. There are many tools that will help for this, my primary suggestion for graphic design purposes that is both free and very easy to use is Canva

Once you have your social media accounts up and running, you have a good following, and you have solid content down and posted, you're ready to get the ball rolling in terms of sales. This is where "products or services" come into play. While there are many ways to monetize any given following or audience that you may have accumulated, the best is always to either sell an informational product training others on key topics in your niche, or to provide a service that essentially preforms the tasks behind those key topics for the prospect. In my case, I not only am launching an ebook series about internet marketing, but I also provide services that complete the tasks I train others on for them, for an increased price. 

Additionally, we have "strong CTA's". Strong Calls-To-Actions (CTA'S) are very important because if you do a bad job asking for somebody to purchase something, opt-in to your email list, or any other engagement or conversion action you want people to take, then it sure as heck won't happen. This being said, it's very important that you word things properly, and give clear and concise reasons as to why somebody should choose to take the step you want them to take.

And finally and most importantly, email marketing. This gets pretty technical eventually as your layers to your email list grows; but put simply, email marketing through Communications Agencies such as Aweber, GetResponse, or MailChimp allow you to not only keep in touch with previous prospects and customers for your venture, but also, this will enable you the option of selling additional or new products or services to them later down the road. It will multiply your sales exponentially, comparative to the amount of subscribers you have, how many releases you make, and how well your emails convert. You email conversion rate is effected primarily by something called copywriting; copy is the text in emails that closes the sale. It's the way you say things, when you say them, who you say it to, and what you say. Those are the 4 key aspects to copywriting, and again like all of this content, these things will be covered in depth in my upcoming ebook series.

I hope that this has provided some valuable insight for you in terms of what successful people online utilize in order to make their millions! For more training, advice, and free pro-tips, please subscribe to my email newsletter to stay in the loop with the Connor Markets Success Community, and to work alongside me! Also, you'll get a pretty handy "heads up" when another of these diamond blog posts go out! 

Thanks much for reading, keep the hustle up, and read some more of my content to get a better idea of how all of this ties together! Feel free to leave a comment, like, or shoot me an email from the contact page with any questions or comments!

 

 

 

Mastering Mindset - Mentally Motivated

This blog post interrupts the series on lead generation, as that will continue in my upcoming eBook that will be released in 2-3 weeks from now (2/22/16). Representing the first of several posts in this vital category of success, this post begins the topic of mentality and staying driven enough to make significant progression on a consistent basis. 

Here is one concept I found very useful. Find out what you envy. Most people have been habitually trained to ignore those they find that they envy, or to suppress the feeling. However, this is a very foolish notion, because envy is what drives the human mind to seek to copy. If you envy somebody because you are jealous of their success or whatever else, you will either hate them if you are demotivated, or you will try to match or surpass their success if you are motivated enough to take significant action towards doing so and making it a reality.

Therefore, envy is one of the mental tools in the toolbox that anybody can utilize. Find an idol or somebody that you wish you were or wish you had certain aspects of their life that you consider to be superior to your own, then actively pursue attaining those factors of life through hard work, perseverance, consistency, and research.

And on the note of research; the more you know, the more mentally fit and motivated you naturally become (scientifically proven time and time again). You need to eat, sleep, and breathe your niche in order to succeed in life, or else you will never become the niche authority (the person with the power and say-so in your field of practice/work. Also the person that other people in the same niche envy!). Never stop in-taking knowledge for any reason. Industries are ever-changing and evolving, and you must have enough acting intelligence in your field to adapt and overcome any changes that may disrupt your techniques.

Application of effort towards either a working system, or towards proven knowledge will always yield results. This being said, make sure you have enough;

  1. Envy Towards Niche Authority
  2. Knowledge Of Niche
  3. Drive/Motivation To Apply Knowledge + Envy Consistently

If you can implement this formula into your life, you'll find it will be pretty easy after drilling these concepts for a good 67 days (time it takes to psychologically form habits) to remain on track and to be knocking down tasks ahead without procrastination, hesitation, or any mental barriers what-so-ever.

Thank you all for reading, and I hope this has helped out! For more information of lead generation prior to the full launch of my eBook featuring all of these blog posts as well as several pages of elaboration on all topics, please email me from the Contact & Hire Page!

Getting Warmer - Prospect Prioritization

In the world of lead generation, there is a very general and simple term to describe the likelihood of a certain lead closing. Typically, leads are differentiated as either a "cold lead" or a "warm lead". In order to be an effective sales closer you have to understand which to go for first, why you should do so, and how to go about that. As stated prior, the point of the lead generation blog series on my success blog here is to overview the steps and tricks to doing that, and to doing it well.

The first step of lead generation, of course, is to identify your market and find a lead in the first place. But let's say that we already have a good 25 leads or so that we have encountered and logged into a CRM (client relationship management system) or just a basic spreadsheet of some sort. Now that we have some leads to work with and to begin negotiating and closing with, the next step is to conduct some basic lead analysis. Assessing your leads can be fairly simple, depending on your niche and how many factors are at play in terms of the closing timeline and whether any contracts or paperwork is involved. You go through and look at each lead closely, and determine how likely that lead is to close, and how soon. Those two factors determine the warmth of the lead. 

If a lead is cold, then it is likely somebody that you have spoken with awhile ago, and that you haven't had all that much contact with. This could also be a referral that you know needs your product or service, that you haven't contacted quite yet. If it is a warm lead, then it is probably a prospect that you have already spoken with, possibly even began the negotiation process with, and have already schedule a follow up meeting together with. Going through and prioritizing your sales efforts based off of the lead statuses (cold/warm) will greatly impact your closing efficiency, and save you time. This will also make sure that the most important and high-paying prospects are being taken care of first and foremost before any "possibly" viable cold leads are pursued. 

Thank you all for reading! I'll be going into greater detail on the lead generation process within the next 24 hours! If you would like elaboration on the contents of this post, as always, feel free to shoot me an email at connorjsmithmarketing@gmail.com!

Introduction To Prospecting - Art Of Lead Generation

All training aside, let's think critically for a moment. Every person that needs a website won't just go out there and state that is the case, meaning you have to have some system or method to identify and connect with prospective clients. This is the art of Lead Generation. 

This post is one of many in a long series to come that will delve into the world of lead generation, client prospecting, and analyzing, assessing, and prioritizing leads and therefore all of your sale's efforts. Lead Generation is an absolutely essential step in any sales process. Without leads, you can't close sales to begin with. If you have been studying my blog thus far, you would have a pretty solid understanding of how to negotiate with clients, and that level of understanding will continue to increase as I proceed to blog and notify you all. However, we have to all take a step back, and really research and properly comprehend the process behind finding potential clients in the first place.

There's a certain mindset that lead generation entails. While there are plenty of extremely helpful systems I could mention, that isn't the point of this particular posting. The goal of this post is to accentuate the thought process required to find and make connection between a sales associate and a prospective client. Networking plays highly into all of this, and will determine the web of people that you have at your disposal to pitch inquiries out with in order to identify anybody they can refer to you as a potential client, or lead.  But without networking in play, how else can one make those necessary connections to be bringing in sales if you aren't working in a call center where such leads are already provided to you?

Social media, arguably, is the foremost lead generation strategy, as it establishes your business's brand as well as extends and exposes yourself to a massive community of prospects, and people that are actively searching for your products or services to solve their problems. This being said, there are millions and millions of potential clients out there. The disconnect for many sale closers is how, exactly, does one find and meet them to potentially negotiate a deal to provide the aforementioned product or service?

Demographic targeting is used to define a specific "target audience profile" that determines the exact crowd of people that an advertisement campaign is meant to impact the most. This is helpful to know for any social media campaign because it helps determine the proper hashtags to use in order to reach potential customers, and will also get more content regarding your company out there, raising your brand awareness.

The more your brand is grown, the more your phones will ring off of the hook. But if they aren't currently, getting your brand well established and marketed is absolutely essential. You have to cast a very fine net into the right pool of people, and lead generation is the practice of making that net as fine and accurately cast as possible, metaphorically.

I will go into far greater detail about additional lead generation strategies for you all soon, so actively keep an eye out for additional postings on this blog!

Thank you all for reading, and as always, I am available for consultation. Please email me if you want to have a better grasp on lead generation methods! Shoot me an email at contact@connormarkets.com.

 

 

The Right To Referrals - Marsupial Method

This post is going to go into one of the most crucial and absolutely essential methods within sales to maximize the return off of each and every client without directly taking from them, and keeping everybody happy and fairly compensated. The following will go into brief detail about the power of referrals, and one of the best methods to obtain them; the Marsupial Method.

Referrals, by nature, result from a job well done. This being said, quality in work is vital. You, as the company rendering this client services or a product that will help them significantly in some way or another, are completely deserving of referrals to result from a good experience on the customer's part. But this being said, how should one go about acquisition of these valuable referrals?  The answer resides in a very uncommonly known strategy known as the Marsupial Method, whereby the sales closer/representative, during negotiation, offers a significant discount off the top of the service or product before finalizing the sale, in exchange for something that only takes a little reaching out on the client's part to his or her network; three referrals.

This strategy is very lucrative because every client, if this method is applied, will lead to three more clients. And if Marsupial is exercised with those next 3 clients additionally, then those three will lead to nine more, and nine to twenty-seven, and so forth. Essentially, this method utilizes your existing base of clientele before the sale even occurs in order to drive yourself additional qualified leads to close with. 

I hope that this post has assisted you all with your closing efforts, and that you may find more success than ever through the consistent implementation of this strategy's principles. 

As always, shoot me an email for any consultation or training on sales! Always happy to assist others in mastering the art of the deal. 

Closing Ethics - Client Interaction Law

Clients are people, not payments. It is absolutely essential that they are treated as such, and nothing short of a person that you are trying to assist. If you give value, you will inevitably receive it in return if you play your cards right with contracts, documented agreements, and set payment milestones. 

When in any closing situation, it is important to respect the fact that the person on the opposite side of that call is somebody looking for help, guidance, and service (or a product). This being said, you have to be patient, respectful, and provide said guidance or service/product to the best of your ability, and make the proceeding process as simple and painless as possible.

In the stages of negotiation, comprehending the client's budget requirements are absolutely essential. Any given prospect is not just some person to close and get payments from, they are a real person, with a real problem, and a real interest in pursuing the solution to their problem. Be flexible with the pricing and clients will feel a connection with you as the your company's representative, a connection to the brand, and a feeling that they are indebted to your team. This means more referrals, and more success for your business. The way clients are treated and the experience that they have reflects the brand and appearance of your business as a whole.

Respect your clients, and they will respect you. Your business will grow as a result.

VRIN Scoring - Your Success Prediction

Alright guys, today's post is about something I have recently been researching after discovering. There is a measurement concept regarding somebody's success and status that bases the assessment off of four key aspects.

The "VRIN" Score acronym stands for the following four factors of measurement;

  1. Value
  2. Rarity
  3. Inimitable
  4. Non-substitutable

Each letter category within the VRIN Score system is out of 10. The higher the number, the better. This means there is a maximum attainable score of 40. If you are scored at 40, you are essentiallty projected to be a billionaire. Somebody such as a minimum wage worker is a 1, or something low and around that lower number range.

So let's start with over-viewing value. Basically, this VRIN category scores your concept or business model based off of the amount of value that it provides to the customer or recipient of the product or service. Also, it's a measurement of the perceived value of the product or service being provided. Having a high perceived value will give a higher score in this category. 

Next, we have rarity. This letter represents how innovating your concept is, and whether or not it is found out in your market already. If you have a high rarity, you are considered the niche authority. Essentially, this means you are the go-to person for your service or product. This is extremely lucrative. Having high rarity is effectively monopolizing your niche and dominating your target market over all competitors.

Third, we have the inimitable rating over your concept. If your product is difficult to replicate or your service is unique in the sense that nobody else can provide it, you also have a boost in the rarity category. But it overall increases your score in the inimitable category because what you are doing has high innovation that nobody else is able to provide to others.

Finally, Non-substitute value. This is an assessment of your competition's ability to provide your service or product, and essentially describes your monopoly value as well. If you are high in this category, that means that your business cannot be replaced by another product or service.

Overall, if you rank highly in each of these categories, your business is in a prime tipping point for massive success. All there is to do is to effectively get your now-prepared and high value, irreplaceable and innovating idea out there and gain sales and establish your brand.

Hopefully this brief assessment of the VRIN Scoring system is beneficial to you all in developing and creating the best and most optimized product or service possible, and that it has provided valuable insight that will further yourself and your business. I hope you have enjoyed! To discuss this further, let's Skype or do a Google Hangout conference, or simply email me at connorjsmithmarketing@gmail.com.

Thanks much!

Niche Networking - Pro Tip For Successful Networking

To the tune of my last two blog posts, this post will continue in elaboration on the topic of networking. Specifically, this post will go in depth about one massive tip that I have found to be success inducing.

Everybody has a different niche and industry, and therefore, target market. The biggest question not only in sales, but also in networking, is where is it that people can connect with either customers or potential partners and mentors that they can network to in order to further their success? 

I have discovered 2 primary methods that have allowed me simple and often cheap access to effective groups of targeted people that I can network and connect with for business purposes. These two methods are listed below;

  1. Webinars, online seminars and conference calls, and tutorial sessions
  2. In person seminars and conventions, or small group meetings

Let's start first with discussing the first listed method. Webinars are very helpful towards meeting others that are in your specific niche. They are highly targeted pools of people attending these online webinars because all of them have the exact same objective for attending that particular webinar; to learn the content being taught by the webinar host. This being said, if you can find a webinar that is in your niche, you can attend it and not only learn something valuable potentially within you niche, but also connect with other potentially beneficial individuals that you can leverage for clients or assistance or any number of other things. The issue that you may often encounter with webinars of a larger size is that there can be so many people in that given session that none of them will actually notice your comments, and it is next to impossible to line up a solid, consistent conversation, and much less obtain contact information. I suggest going for webinars that are a much smaller group of people that you can better connect with. Webinars are often found within social media, typically Facebook. This is because this is primarily the platform that the webinar hosts are trying to gain an audience from. On this same note, you can also attempt to host a webinar or online conference session to meet interested people and give a call to action at the end of the session asking the attendees to contact you further.

Secondarily, we have the in person, more original method of networking. This being said, it is mainly the same sort of concept. Facebook will be a great place to obtain information and access to these offline events, and if you have the capital and potentially the reputation and audience, you could attempt to host your own event by renting a venue and setting up the marketing campaign to gain traffic and to get people to opt-in for the event to attend it.

Both of these options are easier, far more targeted methods to obtaining targeted, high quality traffic that will either convert to sales, or will provide seriously vital opportunities or connections to you and your company. I hope this pro tip has helped, and there are many more to come!

Thank you for reading as always. Contact me at connorjsmithmarketing@gmail.com for any questions, or to connect with me!

Networking 101 - Socialites And Success

My previous blog post was surrounding a few of the primary benefits that networking successfully with others can bring. Some of these benefits include access to discounts, private goods and services only available to few, other people's "Rolodex" that can benefit you and your business, and much more. I suggest warming your mind up to the concept of networking by reading the previous blog post before delving further into this one.

This post is written for the purpose of training you all on how to effectively network yourself out to a base of beneficial people that can improve your life and business in one way or another. The first element in networking is a place factor. By place factor, I mean where it is that you are positioning yourself with the sole intention of networking. In such a case, there are particular qualities in an area to look for. Is the area run down, or higher scale and well kept? Also, do the people carry themselves professionally in the way they walk, act and dress? These are a couple of the important, highly vital variables to look out for when selecting an area to prospect in for networking purposes. Of course, networking is meant to be a genuine, person-to-person connection that creates opportunity. But sometimes, when you are stuck and need assistance in business, or simply wish to expand your network of contacts, it is wise to deliberately seek to network with others. In such a case, where does one look?

Typically (and this is highly dependent on the industry), urban environments whereas a large populace of different, unique people can be found is the best style of location to network within. And as I often preach to my associates within my web design and development corporation, Aspire Consolidated, dress to impress. If you look ordinary within a crowd of people that haven't a clue who you even are, good luck trying to attract professional, beneficial attention. You have to dress like you mean business. Which often means formally. Here is a pretty common example that had occurred to me a month ago. Me and my team from Aspire were having a meeting in downtown Bellevue, when we migrated from out meeting place over to a public meeting table a few blocks down. When we arrived at the table, a gentleman by the name of Svet Nazarov was already occupying this table. I approached him, inquiring when he would be wrapping up so that the table would be available for our use. He was dressed sharp as well, alike everyone attending that day's Aspire Consolidated meeting. Next thing we knew, we were delving into a large conversation regarding sales and lead generation, and my company's niche, web design and development. The sporadic, spontaneous conversation resulted in an agreement towards over $800 in sales, and soon after, Mr. Nazarov proceeded to become a part of Aspire, leading our sales team to success for multiple months impressively. He also specifically remarked that if it weren't for the fact that me and my guys were wearing business professional attire, the deal wouldn't have closed.

This small excerpt from one of my personal sales and networking experiences boldly highlights the fact that not only is it essential to look in smart regions for other like-minded professionals to meet, but also, you have to look your part to get any actual serious consideration in the first place. I could go on for pages and pages regarding situations in which I've encountered people that benefited me or my organizations, but I think the point has been made clear. However, if any of you would like to hear additional situations whereas networking worked in my favor and how, then I would love to share to further your knowledge about what to do, and where to do it to become successful networking pros. Email me at anytime at connorjsmithmarketing@gmail.com to go in depth on this blog post's topic with me.

I much appreciate you all reading! Stay tuned for additional elaborations on network marketing and networking in general.

Benefits of Networking - People Power

Before I write out the next few blog posts that follow this one that will be about how to properly network and create significant, lucrative connections, I find it appropriate to make this post. This post will outline the benefits and reasons that networking is absolutely essential for your business, and how it can help. 

To start off, let's go back to that previously used quote from my last post; "It's who you know, not what you know". Often times, you will lack the appropriate skill set and knowledge to move forward with your plans. Having an asset on your team that has more skills, experience, and knowledge on a certain topic is highly important. Another great quote to highlight this; "A great man surrounds himself with wiser ones". It would be futile and foolish to hire only people with lower knowledge or basis of skills just to retain a sense of superiority and control over your crew. They may be able to learn from you, but that takes a significant investment of your time to get them competent and effective, and time is money. Save time, money, and a great deal of trouble by being an effective and respectable leader to those who exceed you in certain fields of your industry.

Also, of course, there is the facet of networking that provides you access bonuses to products, goods, services, and any other potential tool or beneficial item to your business. By "access bonuses" I am referring to discounts, free things, exclusive access, expanded programs due to that person you connected with having some kind of employee edition they were able to share with you, and so forth.

And lastly, the simple addition of a great mind to your roster of people to call for advice. You'd be surprised how far it can get you sometimes to just shoot a quick call to an intelligent confidant who will retain your secrets and advise sincerely and intelligently with deep thought. Use your network of people. We are all born with one. However if you fail to grow your network significantly in business, it is completely your fault. 

There are clearly more benefits to networking that have not been elaborated on in this posting. And if you wish for the full training on any topic found in my blog, please, simply contact me from connorjsmithmarketing@gmail.com or fill out my website's contact form on the appropriate page. If receive enough requests, I will likely continue this post with all benefits listed out that I can think of.

Hopefully this content has been beneficial to you all, and that it will inspire you to go out there and meet new people, create new connections both personal and business oriented, and to grow as a person and a professional. Thank you for reading!

Introduction to Networking; The Power of People

Throughout the extent of my blogging so far with The Success Blog, I have covered various topics ranging from how to close sales in person or over the phone, CRM systems, the influences to a person's mindset and how it effects their drive, and what categories of people make the most influential impact towards our hustle for success.

Now, I will be delving into Networking, which is a decently broad category of sales and marketing in general that covers interaction between people and how you can benefit from certain interactions, and how to leverage the power of connection to further yourself and make money.

So, please stay tuned with my blog over the duration of the next few days to a week to learn about the power of networking and connections, and how leveraging them properly can cut massive corners with gaining success and shoot you to the top far quicker, bypassing massive obstacles with other's resources otherwise impassable or very difficult and time consuming to overcome. 

"Sometimes it's who you know, not what you know" 

Thanks much! Any questions, shoot over to connorjsmithmarketing@gmail.com.