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Last night I was lying in bed reading Brian Tracy’s book, Eat That Frog.
If you haven’t heard of this book before, it’s a pocket rocket of productivity tools and advice.
Brian’s 21 tips for getting more of the important things done is a must read.
Some productivity and time management books can be long winded, a tad boring and far too complicated.
This book is none of those things.
Eat That Frog is easy to read and understand, down to earth and you can implement the actions immediately to make a difference to our work output.
I first read this book back when I was a Personal Assistant. At that stage, I got a lot out of it, even choosing the book as a presentation topic for my fellow PA’s, who also found it useful.
This is one of those books you can read again and again and each time you pick up something different to put into action and improve your productivity.
Now that I am working for myself, I have to admit I was reading the book through a completely different mindset.
As I was reading through the chapter Focus on Key Result Areas, I had a bit of a revelation.
In one section, Brian discusses the key result areas for a salesperson. Then it hit me. I actually sat up in bed (at which point my cat was wondering what all the sudden activity was about).
I realized I am a salesperson.
For some reason, I hadn’t actually put two and two together.
In the book, Brian describes a key result area as, ‘something you must achieve to succeed at your job. It is a task area for which you are completely responsible.’
Though it sounds silly, I hadn’t made the connection.
It’s probably because when I first started blogging I didn’t have anything to sell directly from my blog.
Come to think of it, when I first started this blog I was freelance writing, so I should have done a lot more selling of myself and my writing. It’s not like I didn’t focus on selling at all, it was just nowhere near enough!
As a blogger, you are a jack of all trades. You need to create great content and emails, market and promote yourself, do the tech stuff, be the bookkeeper and do all the admin tasks.
What I overlooked was that you had to be the salesperson as well.
More to the point, sales were a key result area (not something that was much lower done the priority list).
While I read a lot of material about marketing and the tech side of things, learning about sales wasn’t as high up on my radar.
This was a serious oversight.
Even if you don’t have anything to sell as a blogger, you still need to get people on your email list. You still need to build trust and rapport.
Not knowing much about sales is definitely a knowledge gap I need to work on.
Is sales a knowledge gap for you?
If like me you need help in the area of sales, CreativeLive have an online course Sales, Sales, Sales run by Tamara Lackey. Tamara is a photographer who has worked in a 100% commission sales based role for 15 years. This course is made up of 34 lessons. Check out the curriculum for yourself to see if it suits your needs.
I’m currently working through two other online courses but when I have finished those, this one is definitely on my to-do list!
If an online course isn’t your thing, then what books, websites or resources can you invest in to improve your sales knowledge?
As a blogger, learning how to sell is important. Learn as much as you can, implement what you learn and watch your online business grow.
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