Up Close and Personal–Selling and Speaking

 

The real business of business is selling your product to customers ( never mind bookkeeping and taxes. That stuff is easy). The hard part is that you have to sell two items each time you come face-to-face with a new customer; first you have to sell yourself and second you have to sell your product.

By ‘product’ I mean, of course, your book. But we’ll use the term product because selling is selling, and it does not matter if you’re selling Fuller brushes, computers or novels. You still have to sell first yourself and only second your product.

And if you’ve never done this before, it is just about the hardest thing in the world to do. Especially for introverts like writers, who spend most of their working day bent over a computer.

But if you want your book to make it in the market place, if you’ve put a year or two into writing it and need to make a living from your work, you have to put yourself out there and sell.

For the sake of this post, let’s assume that the idea of meeting total strangers and selling yourself as an author strikes you as a terrible deception to pull on some poor innocent. But if you don’t sell yourself as a successful author, one whose work will provide hours of enjoyment (or spiritual comfort or show them how to build a house or whatever) to the reader, why did you ever bother to write it in the first place?

Which, of course, brings us to the matter of self-confidence (or the lack thereof) and a lack of confidence in the worth of your product to a potential customer.

Screw that for the counter-productive pile of smelly stuff it is. Seriously. Self-doubt is a very destructive thing to do to oneself. Let the customer decide if you and your product are worth his or her time and money. Putting yourself and your product down is not your job.

Your job is selling. You’re the one who pushed yourself for the year or two (or in some cases more) to research, dream about and write your book. You did that. You set yourself a task and you saw it through to the end despite everything Life could (and probably did) throw at you.

You have every right to be proud of that, and THAT is what you have to show the customer. You have to demonstrate through your bearing, your dress and your behaviour just how much confidence you have in yourself because of what you have accomplished, and how much value you put on your work.

Be relaxed, be open and cheerful and welcoming when a potential customer approaches your table at whatever venue you attend (church socials, community festivals, author’s events arranged by charities, whatever, including book signings at indie bookstores) and most of all be proud of what you are; an author of an excellent work.

That’s step one, in a nutshell.

Step two is to demonstrate to the customer your interest in him or her as a person. Take a quick assessment of the individual’s dress and demeanor. If they wear a Colts sweatshirt, smile and say, “Go, Colts!” even if you’re a Broncos fan. If they’re wearing an expensive suit and silk tie, compliment their appearance and praise the choice of that tie with that shirt. And whatever you say in greeting, mean it, and let them know that.

You want that individual, male or female, young, old, black, white or magenta, to know that you recognize them as an individual with a value unique to themselves.

You are building a relationship; you are making a friend, you are developing trust between you and your customer. And you have about fifteen seconds to do that before he or she will turn away and look for someplace else to spend their money.

You are in direct competition for customer’s dollars with every other vendor at that event, and all of them have much more experience with direct selling than you do. It’s a hard school the first few times you go to an event as a vendor, but do not quit on yourself after you lose your shirt the first few times you go.

If the thought of putting yourself out there absolutely terrifies you to the point that you can not allow yourself to even consider ever doing such a thing, you are not alone; you are, in fact one of millions of people who cannot, will not, take the chance of being rejected.

But I have a secret to share with you;

 www.toastmasters.org/about.asp. 

Here’s another toastmaster’s link that will prove very useful:

http://www.toastmasters.org/tips.asp

This one is full of tips that will help you get through your first few meetings. They are intended to help new public speakers work through their first few speaking engagements, bot they all apply to conversations with total strangers.

I cannot recommend Toastmaster’s strongly enough for people new to dealing with the public – singly or ‘en mass’. In fact I would even recommend you locate their closest chapter and attend a few meetings. You will not only learn a few things, you will meet some very nice people.

Back to selling for a moment. Selling is not about deceiving the customer (although there is enough of that going ‘round you cannot be blamed for thinking that way). It is about demonstrating to the customer that your product has value for them.

But they don’t know you from Adam, so why should they believe a thing you say?

And that is why your first selling job with any new customer has to be yourself.

I can tell you this much; once you have sold a customer on the idea that you have value for them, selling your product as having value has become a rather simple task.

Up Close and Personal–Selling and Speaking

 

The real business of business is selling your product to customers ( never mind bookkeeping and taxes. that stuff is easy). The hard part is that you have to sell two items each time you come face-to-face with a new customer; first you have to sell yourself and second you have to sell your product.

By ‘product’ I mean, of course, your book. But we’ll use the term product because selling is selling, and it does not matter if you’re selling Fuller brushes, computers or novels. You still have to sell first yourself and only second your product.

And if you’ve never done this before, it is just about the hardest thing in the world to do. Especially for introverts like writers, who spend most of their working day bent over a computer.

But if you want your book to make it in the market place, if you’ve put a year or two into writing it and need to make a living from your work, you have to put yourself out there and sell.

For the sake of this post, let’s assume that the idea of meeting total strangers and selling yourself as an author strikes you as a terrible deception to pull on some poor innocent. But if you don’t sell yourself as a successful author, one whose work will provide hours of enjoyment (or spiritual comfort or show them how to build a house or whatever) to the reader, why did you ever bother to write it in the first place?

Which, of course, brings us to the matter of self-confidence (or the lack thereof) and a lack of confidence in the worth of your product to a potential customer.

Screw that for the counter-productive pile of smelly stuff it is. Seriously. Self-doubt is a very destructive thing to do to oneself. Let the customer decide if you and your product are worth his or her time and money. Putting yourself and your product down is not your job.

Your job is selling. You’re the one who pushed yourself for the year or two (or in some cases more) to research, dream about and write your book. You did that. You set yourself a task and you saw it through to the end despite everything Life could (and probably did) throw at you.

You have every right to be proud of that, and THAT is what you have to show the customer. You have to demonstrate through your bearing, your dress and your behaviour just how much confidence you have in yourself because of what you have accomplished, and how much value you put on your work.

Be relaxed, be open and cheerful and welcoming when a potential customer approaches your table at whatever venue you attend (church socials, community festivals, author’s events arranged by charities, whatever, including book signings at indie bookstores) and most of all be proud of what you are; an author of an excellent work.

That’s step one, in a nutshell.

Step two is to demonstrate to the customer your interest in him or her as a person. Take a quick assessment of the individual’s dress and demeanor. If they wear a Colts sweatshirt, smile and say, “Go, Colts!” even if you’re a Broncos fan. If they’re wearing an expensive suit and silk tie, compliment their appearance and praise the choice of that tie with that shirt. And whatever you say in greeting, mean it, and let them know that.

You want that individual, male or female, young, old, black, white or magenta, to know that you recognize them as an individual with a value unique to themselves.

You are building a relationship; you are making a friend, you are developing trust between you and your customer. And you have about fifteen seconds to do that before he or she will turn away and look for someplace else to spend their money.

You are in direct competition for customer’s dollars with every other vendor at that event, and all of them have much more experience with direct selling than you do. It’s a hard school the first few times you go to an event as a vendor, but do not quit on yourself after you lose your shirt the first few times you go.

If the thought of putting yourself out there absolutely terrifies you to the point that you can not allow yourself to even consider ever doing such a thing, you are not alone; you are, in fact one of millions of people who cannot, will not, take the chance of being rejected.

But I have a secret to share with you;

 www.toastmasters.org/about.asp. 

Here’s another toastmaster’s link that will prove very useful:

http://www.toastmasters.org/tips.asp

This one is full of tips that will help you get through your first few meetings. They are intended to help new public speakers work through their first few speaking engagements, bot they all apply to conversations with total strangers.

I cannot recommend Toastmaster’s strongly enough for people new to dealing with the public – singly or ‘en mass’. In fact I would even recommend you locate their closest chapter and attend a few meetings. You will not only learn a few things, you will meet some very nice people.

Back to selling for a moment. Selling is not about deceiving the customer (although there is enough of that going ‘round you cannot be blamed for thinking that way). It is about demonstrating to the customer that your product has value for them.

But they don’t know you from Adam, so why should they believe a thing you say?

And that is why your first selling job with any new customer has to be yourself.

I can tell you this much; once you have sold a customer on the idea that you have value for them, selling your product as having value has become a rather simple task.

Up Close and Personal–Selling and Speaking

 

The real business of business is selling your product to customers ( never mind bookkeeping and taxes. that stuff is easy). The hard part is that you have to sell two items each time you come face-to-face with a new customer; first you have to sell yourself and second you have to sell your product.

By ‘product’ I mean, of course, your book. But we’ll use the term product because selling is selling, and it does not matter if you’re selling Fuller brushes, computers or novels. You still have to sell first yourself and only second your product.

And if you’ve never done this before, it is just about the hardest thing in the world to do. Especially for introverts like writers, who spend most of their working day bent over a computer.

But if you want your book to make it in the market place, if you’ve put a year or two into writing it and need to make a living from your work, you have to put yourself out there and sell.

For the sake of this post, let’s assume that the idea of meeting total strangers and selling yourself as an author strikes you as a terrible deception to pull on some poor innocent. But if you don’t sell yourself as a successful author, one whose work will provide hours of enjoyment (or spiritual comfort or show them how to build a house or whatever) to the reader, why did you ever bother to write it in the first place?

Which, of course, brings us to the matter of self-confidence (or the lack thereof) and a lack of confidence in the worth of your product to a potential customer.

Screw that for the counter-productive pile of smelly stuff it is. Seriously. Self-doubt is a very destructive thing to do to oneself. Let the customer decide if you and your product are worth his or her time and money. Putting yourself and your product down is not your job.

Your job is selling. You’re the one who pushed yourself for the year or two (or in some cases more) to research, dream about and write your book. You did that. You set yourself a task and you saw it through to the end despite everything Life could (and probably did) throw at you.

You have every right to be proud of that, and THAT is what you have to show the customer. You have to demonstrate through your bearing, your dress and your behaviour just how much confidence you have in yourself because of what you have accomplished, and how much value you put on your work.

Be relaxed, be open and cheerful and welcoming when a potential customer approaches your table at whatever venue you attend (church socials, community festivals, author’s events arranged by charities, whatever, including book signings at indie bookstores) and most of all be proud of what you are; an author of an excellent work.

That’s step one, in a nutshell.

Step two is to demonstrate to the customer your interest in him or her as a person. Take a quick assessment of the individual’s dress and demeanor. If they wear a Colts sweatshirt, smile and say, “Go, Colts!” even if you’re a Broncos fan. If they’re wearing an expensive suit and silk tie, compliment their appearance and praise the choice of that tie with that shirt. And whatever you say in greeting, mean it, and let them know that.

You want that individual, male or female, young, old, black, white or magenta, to know that you recognize them as an individual with a value unique to themselves.

You are building a relationship; you are making a friend, you are developing trust between you and your customer. And you have about fifteen seconds to do that before he or she will turn away and look for someplace else to spend their money.

You are in direct competition for customer’s dollars with every other vendor at that event, and all of them have much more experience with direct selling than you do. It’s a hard school the first few times you go to an event as a vendor, but do not quit on yourself after you lose your shirt the first few times you go.

If the thought of putting yourself out there absolutely terrifies you to the point that you can not allow yourself to even consider ever doing such a thing, you are not alone; you are, in fact one of millions of people who cannot, will not, take the chance of being rejected.

But I have a secret to share with you;

 www.toastmasters.org/about.asp. 

Here’s another toastmaster’s link that will prove very useful:

http://www.toastmasters.org/tips.asp

This one is full of tips that will help you get through your first few meetings. They are intended to help new public speakers work through their first few speaking engagements, bot they all apply to conversations with total strangers.

I cannot recommend Toastmaster’s strongly enough for people new to dealing with the public – singly or ‘en mass’. In fact I would even recommend you locate their closest chapter and attend a few meetings. You will not only learn a few things, you will meet some very nice people.

Back to selling for a moment. Selling is not about deceiving the customer (although there is enough of that going ‘round you cannot be blamed for thinking that way). It is about demonstrating to the customer that your product has value for them.

But they don’t know you from Adam, so why should they believe a thing you say?

And that is why your first selling job with any new customer has to be yourself.

I can tell you this much; once you have sold a customer on the idea that you have value for them, selling your product as having value has become a rather simple task.

“Lonesome Cove” is finished!!!

 

"Lonesome Cove" is finished, for the most part. I typed the last word not ten minutes ago. What a relief that is. I put in eleven hour days for the last five days and produced on average 4500 words a day just to get it done, damnit.

But they are GOOD words, and in the right order, and I promise you'll enjoy reading it as much (and hopefully more) than I enjoyed writing it. I've got another day or so of rereading and adding a few bits here and there before I send it off to the editors, but it is done!

And man, was that a tough gig. I am wiped out. My back hurts, I’ve had no exercise and it seems even my dreams conspired to keep me pumping out the words. I didn’t have to spend much time thinking about what I was writing; in fact, it was just the opposite. I had to slow my typing way down or waste a lot of time going back to correct typing errors.

The words were already written, somewhere way in the back of my lizard brain. I just had to let them out slowly so my fingers could keep up with the flow.

It’s a fine story indeed, and I am tickled pink to know that I had a hand in writing it.

Two very long years of writing, and a long, hard slog at the end to get it all down on ‘paper’ (sic).

But it is done, now.

As I mentioned earlier, I still have to reread it, make a few corrections, fill out a few bits here and there and then write the Dedication, Acknowledgements and Author’s Note pages, but the story itself is done.

“Lonesome Cove” is finished!!!

 

"Lonesome Cove" is finished, for the most part. I typed the last word not ten minutes ago. What a relief that is. I put in eleven hour days for the last five days and produced on average 4500 words a day just to get it done, damnit.

But they are GOOD words, and in the right order, and I promise you'll enjoy reading it as much (and hopefully more) than I enjoyed writing it. I've got another day or so of rereading and adding a few bits here and there before I send it off to the editors, but it is done!

And man, was that a tough gig. I am wiped out. My back hurts, I’ve had no exercise and it seems even my dreams conspired to keep me pumping out the words. I didn’t have to spend much time thinking about what I was writing; in fact, it was just the opposite. I had to slow my typing way down or waste a lot of time going back to correct typing errors.

The words were already written, somewhere way in the back of min lizard brain. I just had to let them out slowly so my fingers could keep up with the flow.

It’s a fine story indeed, and I am tickled pink to know that had a hand in writing it.

Two very long years of writing, and a long, hard slog at the end to get it all down on ‘paper’ (sic).

But it is done, now.

As I mentioned earlier, I still have to reread it, make a few corrections, fill out a few bits here and there and then write the Dedication, Acknowledgements and Author’s Note pages, but the story itself is done.

Let’s Talk about Selling and Other Stuff

Marketing, promotion and selling are all separate activities with the same goal of Increasing your market share, and thus your profitability.

Nobody has ever accused me of being a guru in any of those fields, which is a good thing, because I am not. But there are plenty of people out there who are, and you need to find someone who can help you market, promote and sell both you and your books.  A quick Google search for “Book Marketing” should do the trick nicely, or at least get you started in the right direction.

As an independent, self-published author, you and only you have the responsibility of making your ends meet. You not only have to produce work that is sellable, you have to sell it.

But first, you have to sell yourself. You need a ‘Brand’, something that sets you apart from other authors who write in your genre, whatever it may be. Something that will connect you in the reader’s mind with stuff he or she already likes and trusts. Something that will encourage your potential customer to become a happy and satisfied buyer of your product (your book or your books).

Get on the radio. Literally. Get on the radio. Do live interviews to promote yourself and your upcoming novel. Promote a book signing or a local event where you will be selling.

Your web site (if you don’t have one now would be a very good time to set one up) has to reflect that brand. If you blog, your blog has to reflect that same brand. If you write articles and get them published they,too, have to reflect that brand. Your goal is to make sure that wherever your potential target audience looks they see your name and your brand.

Contact a few book/author bloggers and arrange a small blog tour to get your feet wet. It’s all marketing. You can also use these same venues (radio and blog tours) to promote a promotion on your web site. Tell the listeners/readers about your promotion, what you want from them and what they’ll get in return, and how to participate. Keep it simple, keep it easy and make it sound like fun.

That way they will begin to associate your name with something they like and prefer above other competing authors and their works.

You can spend lots of money on setting this up, or you can do it with very little money and lots of time and research on your own. But you’d better get started, because every minute your books are not selling, other authors are, and they are taking money from customers that you would rather went into your pocket, and they are building a successful brand while you are sitting around trying to figure out just what in the heck a brand is and what it can do for you.

Marketing is the process of building relationships with members of a target audience.

Promotion is one means of getting your product into the hands of your target audience. You give stuff away in return for a few minutes of your target audience’ time. Time in which your product is in front of their eye, eyes which may have never given your product a moment’s attention before.

Set up a contact form on your web site. In return for filling out the form your target audience receives something. Perhaps a free download of one of your novels or sample chapters or a chance to win a signed copy of your novel. What you get is their contact information and the right to mail them updates on the publication of your next novel.

You are building a relationship with someone who has never met you or read anything you’ve ever written.

Selling is the art of convincing a potential customer that your product has sufficient value to them that they become willing to part with their hard-earned cash in return for your product. You add value to your product in the form of an autograph along with a short note on how nice it was to meet them. Be sure to slip a bookmark and a business card into the book before you hand it to your new customer, and be sure to ask them to email you a few comments after they finish reading. they probably won’t because getting someone to do that is worse than pulling teeth. Maybe one in ten will ever write you about how much they enjoyed your novel.

But if you don’t ask every customer, none of them will ever write you a single word.

Selling is tough. Selling means getting up close and personal with someone you’ve never met and letting them see that you are a human being who likes them and is interested in them. That you are someone with whom they have something in common.

Once you do that, you have made a new friend. They will see value in you as a friend. Selling them a copy of your book should come as an afterthought. Once you sell them on you, selling a copy of your book is easy. They might even buy two. Stranger things have happened, believe me.

You sell to individuals at local community events in your State and you sell through independent book stores. Most independent booksellers will only take your work on consignment with a 60/40 split, with you getting the 60%. They will usually pay only after five sales, so be patient. Check back with them every month to see how things are going. Every major city has lots and lots of independent bookstores. Pick two or three in different parts of each city, since their customers are usually with five miles of their store.

Travel to other cities in your State and if you are close to a State line, don’t hesitate to cross it and look for additional outlets for your work.

Whatever you do, do not ever quit on yourself.

Gary Showalter

"Gary Showalter writes in the tradition of John D. MacDonald, Elmore Leonard, James Grippando, and Carl Hiassen.

His novels have been called 'impossible to put down'".

www.garyshowalter.com

Some notes and suggestions on selling your work

 

My last post promised a piece on what to do once you have your manuscript completed.

So here it is, with no holds barred, no dreams left standing and bring your own band aides.

So there you are, happy as a clam in a tidal flat. You’ve got the manuscript of your very first ever novel in your hand.

Now what?

If you wrote it just to write it, and have no intention of ever doing anything so crass as selling it, find a vanity publisher to print out a few hundred copies and ship them to you. Then just pat yourself on your back, slide a copy of the book onto your bookshelf, and stand back and admire the lovely cover. You’re done, and that’s that.

If it’s a family history, you might hand a few out every year as birthday and Christmas presents, and if it’s the history of how you built your company, make sure you give a copy to every employee when you hire them.

But if you wrote it hoping to become a successful author, your joy and pleasure in finally getting your first ‘project’ finished will be very short lived. The decisions you must make are many, and without rock-solid information, you can’t do anything.

This is what you should have done when you began to write the first draught:

You should have contacted a few professional editors, and compared quotes. Nothing will improve your chances of marketing your work successfully as a well-edited manuscript. If you lack the funds for a professional editing job, find a retired English teacher who loves to read and have him or her do the editing for you. And be sure to give your ‘editor’ a few complimentary lines on the ‘Acknowledgements’ page.

By the time your manuscript is in the hands of your editor you should also know if you are going to seek an agent to market your work to publishers (Traditional Publishing), or self-publish. In either case, you will find that you and you alone are going to be responsible for any and all promotion and marketing of your work.

Traditional publishing may or may not net you a small advance, and may or may not get you a line or two in Publisher’s Weekly, And your book might or might not wind up on bookstore shelves (for a few months). And your book might or might not sell enough copies to pay back the publishers for whatever advance they did give you.

But probably not.

There are about 75,000 new titles produced each year in the United States alone. Your novel is only one of them, and nobody knows you from Adam (or Eve, for that matter).

If you are young, believe you have written the Great American Novel, and have lots of time and money to invest in selling yourself and your manuscript to an agent, your path runs straight to your local bookstore. Look for the shelf that holds all of the writer’s guides to finding an agent.

Good luck. Agents are very busy people who know without any doubt that their time and money are far more valuable than yours. You are an author, and a potential source of income for any agent. But that potential is just that. You have to prove yourself to them, and you have about thirty seconds to do that.

But getting an agent to invest that thirty seconds of his or her time means that your ‘Pitch’ has to first get beyond the agent’s guard dogs (otherwise known as minions, mail clerks and/or secretaries).

Those 75,000 authors and their titles were selected out of hundreds of thousands of submissions to literary agents, most of which never made it past the guard dogs.

Those guides on that books shelf in that book store will tell you how to do this. Read lots of them, and when you have developed a list of agents who are familiar with your chosen genre, be sure to check their submission guidelines and follow them to the letter. If you fail to do this, your pitch will not even be read by a guard dog, much less a literary agent.

You will need to invest at least a year of your time searching for an agent, and if this is your very first ever novel, probably more than a year. During that time, between mailing out (email or snail mail, depending on the submission guidelines of the agents you have selected) be sure your work is properly edited, and be sure you keep working on your second or third novel.

Publishers specialize in different genres. Some only handle sci-fi/fantasy, others handle only romance, or westerns or mysteries or erotica, and so on.

Traditional publishing houses have a big problem (well, they have a few really big problems, but we’re only going to discuss one of them here). They work on a very tight margin; fully one half of their annual book list will ever show any sort of profit. They know this up front, so they are very anxious to avoid investing a single penny in a loser title, and equally anxious to avoid paying successful authors a single penny more than they absolutely have to.

And they all have several editors, each of which has a relationship with several literary agents who try to market new titles to them on a weekly or monthly basis. And each of those editors is desperate to show a profit for their publishing house. And equally desperate to avoid loser titles.

Those 75,000 authors and their titles were selected out of hundreds of thousands of submissions to literary agents, most of which never made it past the guard dogs.

So if you do chose to go the Traditional publishing route, you need to have everything going for you from the start, or you will never make it past the guard dogs. There are lots of them, and they all have a vested interest in not screwing up.

Authors are a prey species in the jungle world of Traditional Publishing. You might actually get a publisher to sign with you, and give you an advance on your novel. It is very likely the very last money you will ever see from the sale of your work.

Whatever else you do, do not ever quit on yourself, or your dreams. Authors produce dreams for other people, and people need dreams.

You sell dreams.

Agents market dreams to publishers. They need marketable dreams, and whatever else your particular dream may be, it must be marketable, or no agent and no publisher will be willing to invest his or her time in a product they cannot sell.

Good luck.

Self-publishing, on the other hand, is like a long, drawn out cat fight. Instead of being a member of a prey species, you are a predator.  You compete directly with every other author for the eyes (and dollars) of readers.

Instead of spending a year or more searching for a literary agent, you invest your time and money in finding a publisher who will format and print your manuscript in either paperback, or hardback or eBook format, to your specifications. Right up front, you make decisions on cover art and page formatting so your book looks exactly as you imagine is should.

Once you begin to consider self-publishing, join a local Writer’s Group in your area, and join several on-line writer’s groups, as well. Listen well, ask intelligent questions and consider any recommendations very carefully. Writers are a gregarious bunch for the most part, and they are always very helpful to new authors.

Do not sign ay agreements with a publishing house until you do your research, and research very thoroughly. Let your writers groups (local and on-line) know you are in the market for a publisher who works with self-published authors and get several recommendations. There are a few very reputable publishing companies out there, and many not-so-reputable.

Ignorance can be very costly. Caveat emptor, as they say in the old country.

As I mentioned briefly above, you still have to handle all of the marketing of your work. So if you know absolutely nothing about marketing and selling books, now is the time to rectify this short-coming in your education.

Actually, this is something you should have done while you were writing your manuscript and chasing down a literary agent (and here you thought all you had to do was write the Great American Novel, didn’t you?).

What you did in those two years while writing your novel was to produce a ‘product’. Now you have to market it to potential customers.

Customers? You mean I have to deal with customers?

You betcha.

Even if you’d managed to find an agent who believed in you and your novel and he/she convinced a publishing house that you really did write the Great American Novel, you would still have to do all of the marketing and promotion and selling yourself.

Not much of a deal, is it?

We’ll go into what kind of customers you need, how you find them and how you sell to them next week. Needless to say, you have your work cut out for you. All you have to do is figure out how to fit the pieces together.