Successful Blog

Be There Before the Sale

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The theme of SOBCon09 is the ROI of Relationships. To underscore the importance of relationships in business and to have a chance to make and celebrate a few while we’re doing that, I’ve opened up this series by successful and outstanding bloggers like you.

Be There Before the Sale
by Chris Brogan

Greg Cangialosi is one of the very best salesmen I know. He hasn’t sold the biggest dollar product ever (I think that would be David Bullock). He doesn’t sell thousands of accounts a day. Instead, he gets the title from me because he taught me a powerful sales technique, so powerful that Julien Smith and I wrote about him in our upcoming book, Trust Agents. He taught us to be there before the sale.

Greg was one of the very first confirmed sponsors of PodCamp, long before anyone knew that we’d have an international success story on our hands. When we called Greg, we had never run an event, didn’t really know what sponsors wanted, and had no idea how to communicate professionally about the give-and-take that is event sponsorship. Greg was kind, friendly, and supported our event. He didn’t ask for anything unreasonable in return.

Since that point, I’ve run into Greg at several events. He uses another trust agent move, be one of us, quite often as well, by hanging out at our events, by creating content and contributing to our space. He’s not some company owner; he’s a guy who spends time with us, has drinks with us, and who we know and care about.

The ROI of Relationships

Greg also gets the sales. I am personally a customer. I bought another account for my company. PodCamp co-founder Christopher S. Penn is a customer, and has sold the service to his company as well. Both of us refer Blue Sky Factory to anyone asking about email marketing. We love the service, and it’s cost-effective and all that, but most important to us, we have a relationship with Greg, and his service is the product of record for us with regards to email marketing.

Given Chris’s audience, my audience, the people who will buy Trust Agents, and all the time between now and the end of his business, Greg gets free, passionate advertising all the time from a growing legion of fans. For the price of a few beers here and there, Greg has an army.

If that’s not a return on investment, I don’t know what is.

Chris Brogan blogs at [chrisbrogan.com]. He is president of New Marketing Labs.
His twitter name is: @chrisbrogan