Your sales will skyrocket when you do this, I promise.

Hi all.

There's no doubt a wealth of advice on here by a lot of very talented and experienced professional marketers but there's something that I find is truly missing here. It's something that's so critical, without it, I wouldn't even consider selling any marketing service without taking advantage of.

If you and I were on some sick game show where we were dropped off in a random city, given a random product or service to sell, and given a few thousand prospects to target, I'm fully confident that I would sell substantially more of them than you, in significantly less time.

Do you know why?

It's because I can sell and close more effectively than you can. Those of you who have successfully worked on straight commission in the past know exactly what I'm talking about. Those of you who have been up against the wall with everything to lose unless you sold something, know where I'm going with this.

When someone says "I'm not interested, thanks.", I don't give up and move on to the next.

When someone says "Give me your card, I'll think about it", the last thing I do is leave and let them think about it.

Personally, when I pitch someone, I'm not trying to somehow bump into those people that happen to have a need I could fill at that convenient moment in time. Those people are often a pain in the ass to deal with anyways since they like to pit you against other people or they've done some 'research' and are now experts in all things marketing. Agree?

The idea of pitiching and ditching, or trying to find the laydowns is not what real selling is about my friends. Real selling is getting people to want what you have NOW, even when half an hour ago they could care less about it.

I go in and create that need. I create something that's so f***ing fantastic and intriguing that not only do they feel the need to have it, but they feel that if they don't act on it immediately the opportunity may be gone forever.

You can do it too, even if you're selling the same exact crap as everyone else. The money's in the pitch and the close, not just the prospecting.

I don't want to talk too much about the pitch, because I think most of you at least have some kind of rough presentation (although it probably sucks, admit it!) that resembles a pitch. I'd rather discuss the close and how you can immediately increase your chances of getting a check and landing a deal right now by introducing a little thing called urgency.

The best way to sell your service is to create some goddamn fast-expiring incentives for moving forward NOW for christs sake. When you talk to a prospect and simply explain that you can offer them some great services, where the heck is the urgency for them to do it? Why should they even act right now, what's the incentive for them NOT to take some time and think about it? Have you ever really thought about that?

When an incredible opportunity presents itself and the time is very limited to take advantage of it, there's no 'let me think about it for a while' nonsense to deal with. Thinking about it wouldn't actually make sense if the offer has expired.

If you're trying to just throw sh** at the wall and see what sticks, you'll burn yourself out and be miserable as a business owner without any business. The laydowns are few and far between, which is why so many of you have trouble landing clients even when you've got a good service to provide.

You have to work on your OFFER and introduce some URGENCY that makes the offer truly irresistible. Many of you probably don't present a real offer in the first place. I bet most of you just tell them you do Mobile/SEO/Web or whatever and ask if they might be interested, right?

NEWSFLASH: You're not giving them a compelling reason to act on it now. You didn't make them feel anything that got them warm, fuzzy or excited. They probably would have signed up with the next person to call them that day but you got there first. (Oh I love those clients too, don't get me wrong, but I don't rely on uncovering them).

These are local business owners you're dealing with, who are often just a minor step above a shoe salesman. Half the time their business sh** isn't even together, let alone have any type of marketing prowess. They need someone who comes into their life and has the confidence and enthusiasm to help their business grow. You gotta make them feel really good and enthused, but you didn't do that did you?

You didn't make them feel like the stars just f***** aligned and the baby jesus sent you down to save their business from complete and utter ruin. Instead you just threw your line in the water like everyone else to see what bites.

Now I'm not talking about blurting out something stupid like "Do it right now and I'll take 20% off". I'm talking about building a credible, airtight logical and emotional case of why it makes sense to do business with you right now, and what the repercussions of NOT taking advantage of this opportunity may bring in the future.

They must feel that you can offer them something so valuable that they'll be better off by investing in now, and much worse off if they let it pass by. These two emotions work best hand-in-hand.

And on top of everything, they must feel that there's only a brief window of opportunity to take advantage of it. It's not a hard-sell if you approach it this way and even though the pressure is god-awful on their end, you won't come off like a sleazebag. It's like you're some kind of jedi mind marketer instead.

Take these concepts into consideration, build your pitch around them, and stop being a 'pitch & ditch' amateur.