Thursday, July 19, 2007

Making it Work

Making it Work
Hey… You’re Not Done Yet!
by Morgana Braveraven

Building a contact list – oh what a task, what a job! It’s so complicated, takes so long, and is so confusing! And yet, if you are building a business online you’re success and livelihood will depend upon your contact list. Building your contact list is one thing. But learning to use it effectively must be mastered if you really want to succeed.

Most people build a list and then stop there. They think they are done… but, they are certainly not. It reminds me of the way Devlyn Steele (Tools To Life) talks about marriage. He says that people get married and mistakenly think that the journey is over and they are set for life! Of course, that is not the case… The path to marriage is easy! It’s after the “I do’s” have stumbled out, after the dancing and the mashing of cake, that the real work begins! If you don’t work at your marriage consistently over time, you’re going to be in a mess of trouble!

And the same can be said of a contact list. Building the list is the easy part. Making the list work for you is the real challenge, and it’s where the work begins.

I’m sure you’ve been added to one or two personal contact lists, and I’m sure you are familiar with the old ad slam… Now how much sense does this make: Joe sends and ad to Mary. Mary doesn’t read it, but grabs Joe’s email address out of the ad and slams her ad right back to Joe. Joe immediately deletes Mary’s ad and fires another ad back at Mary, who, not wanting to be one-upped, deletes Joes ad and torpedoes a second ad straight back to him…

Goodness – this could go on indefinitely! It’s like a full out Ad War… comical, but not especially productive! Neither party is reading the other’s ad, and both are failing miserably at building a strong list.

So, what have they missed? Hmmmm, let me think…

Now what do you suppose would happen if Mary wrote back to Joe and said, “Hey, Joe, thanks for your info. How’s everything going with your program? …”

Oh my goodness, I think we may be on to something here! Mary has taken an intelligent step outside of the ad war and opened up the opportunity for (now wait for it, it’s coming… here it is!) …a relationship to develop.

As the saying goes – Gee, that was easy!

I think that you can see where I am going here. List building is not about slamming ads back and forth – ads that no one reads. List building is about developing relationships with the people on your contact list .

You often hear people say The Money is in the List. Well, that’s not quite true. The money is actually in the follow-up, and in the relationship. So if you have found that simply sending ads out to your contact list is getting you nowhere in a hurry, then you would probably do well to back up a little and master some relationship building skills to really get that list working for you.

List building is definitely not a matter of if you build it they will come…

If you want to learn list-building skills from the best, learn the fine art of building a strong, responsive contact list and get your business growing then I invite you to learn how to get a free Lifetime Membership to Janet Legere’s ‘Contact List Builder Program’.


Happy List Building!

Morgana Braveraven
follow.morgana@gmail.com

Free Video Reveals Toxic Secrets
http://moms-made-mad.blogspot.com/

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank You...

Anonymous said...

This is an excellent post, and I highly recommend Janet Legere's "Content List Builder" program.