A Click. This is the key difference between the sales process within the online world, and the offline world. Online customers are in full control of their experience, what they want to see, and what they don't want to see. Exiting from their current "state" is no more difficult than a click of a button, a toggle, or a movement on their computers track pad.

So why does this matter to you?

Well, to be frank, it means everything. It means that you cannot offer thin, invaluable content. It means that you cannot be overtly promotional or pushy. It means that you cannot be irrelevant with your offerings. It means that you have to be interesting and engage your audience. It means that you have to actually be helpful.

To give this some overall context, I want to give you a real life example within the offline world, and the online world to exhibit the apparent differences between the overall sales processes.

You walk into a furniture store...

You have a sales rep come up to you, and ask you what you are interested in buying. You say a "brown couch", they then proceed to show you every couch in the store, and work to get you purchase one. I anticipate this sort of salesperson when I go into a furniture store.

Now I don't want to portray ever single furniture salesperson as pushy, but from my experience most have been. This type of marketing does work in some cases though, and it does actually lead to people buying.

To be honest, I really don't love this type of experience. I have always found pushy salespeople really annoying and there are much better things I would rather be doing. But I have the tendency to "stick things out" within the offline world. I deal with the pushy salesperson, and I may or may not end up buying something.

However, within the online world people's activities are much different.

That exact same activity is treated much differently by a prospective customer. Let's say I do a search online "best brown sectional couch with recliners". That is exactly what I am looking for. I end up on a website, they offer some information, but nothing of value and I feel like they are just trying to sell me a series of couches that I don't really like.

What do I do? Do I stick it out on their website? Nope. I am long gone, I CLICK away.

What do I do if I ever encounter scummy sales practices within the online world? I always CLICK away.

That is the luxury we have as customers within the online world. We don't have to deal with pushy salespeople, or irrelevant offers. We can navigate to any source of information that we want until we find one that we trust. Yes, one that we trust.

So if your goal is to sell someone something, and that appears to be the only goal to them, guess what their response is going to be? Clicking away. Every single time.

It's Simple. Help People, Don't Sell to Them.

I just want to spend a few moments reminding everyone of something that should always be at the forethought of all of your activities online. If people don't like your content, they don't like your pitch, if they don't like your video, or they don't value what you are offering, they will CLICK away.

When you are sitting down to create your content, put yourself in your visitors shoes and ask yourself these questions.

• Is this content relevant to the title?
• Am I offering value to the reader?
• Is the content engaging and interesting?

If you answer yes to ALL of these, then you are heading in the right direction. That will keep your audiences interest, and keep them from "clicking" away from your website.

But once you have your visitors attention and once you establish their trust, you don't want to lose that trust by being overtly "salesy".

If you over SELL to people, they will leave faster than a toupee in a hurricane. I personally despise being in a sales situation where I feel as though I have a dollar figure on my head. This I suppose is ironic because I am in a business where marketing is a big part of my day to day, but marketing is much more about offering value and establishing trust than it is "selling" something.

So I guess that the real irony is that people think that selling is marketing. In reality, it is far from it. Selling is about building a relationship with someone, it is about offering insightful information. It is about establishing trust with your respective audience. If you can comprehend that "helping" is the core element of converting someone, you are going to be much more successful within the online world.

I want to remind everyone that we all make mistakes when it comes to "selling". I have done it, and I know I still do it. Sometimes I have to pull myself back and look at my own content, or reassess a video and view it from the perspective as a customer. Do I feel like I am selling something here, or do I feel like I am helping? If I fall into the "selling" category without offering value, then I will fix the glaring sales folly.

Don't push your audience to "click away". Help them, build trust, and you will have a much higher probability that they will be "clicking" through to an offer based on your recommendation.

I would love to hear your feedback on how you approach "selling" within the online world. Do you find yourself being overtly pushy at times? If so, how do you catch yourself? What are some strategies that you utilize within your content to convert at a higher rate, while retaining a feeling of being helpful?

And one more thing...please don't click away! lol