The anatomy of a sale has not changed over the hundreds of years that we as humans have been selling to one another. First there is the offer, and then there is the counter offer, the exchange of money and the delivery of the product or service, affectionately known as "the close."

If only it was that simple, right? The problem is that normally a person will never take the first offer and as such most sales people give up and don't know the anatomy of a sale. When each step in the sales process is handled correctly, the close is the natural conclusion to a successfully followed sales process. If research tells us anything it is that: "You Can Not Take "NO" For an Answer!"

In the anatomy of a sale, most internet marketers or sales people have the following disposition;

• 48% of them will quit after the 1st contact where the buyer says NO.

• 73% will quit after the 2nd contact.

• 85% will quit after the 3rd contact.

• 90% will quit after the 4th contact.

Because of these startling numbers is it no wonder why over 80% of the sales will go to only 10% of the marketers who refuse to take No for an answer. Now obviously in today's internet marketing world it would be impossible for you to maintain contact with so many people over such a long period of time.

That is the reason that we discussed the power of auto responders in our prior newsletter. The auto responder will handle this process for you almost guaranteeing that you will have a sale in the future.

So when you are setting up your email campaign, you want to automatically plan to send out no less than 3 emails where you do nothing but provide the reader with good, valuable, and viable information. By looking at the chart above, you will note that you have already bypassed over 85% of your competition. If you remember correctly we made a recommendation that you do not make a product recommendation except for every 3 to 6 months, now you know why; it puts you ahead of the power curve.

Remember ultimately that your objective is to get people to click through your affiliate link to get them to buy a product or service. How you go about doing that is totally up to you. I would recommend that you do some further research into the art of the sale and how to do the soft sell. The most powerful tool in your tool box is the auto responder. Make sure that you use it.

An interesting corollary statistic that coincides with the above chart is that:

• Only 2% to 3% of the people will buy at the first to second sales contact.

• Only 3% to 5% of the people will buy at the third to fourth sales contact.

• Only 6% to 8% of the people will buy at the fifth to sixth sales contact.

• Only 8% to 10% of the people will buy at the seventh sales contact.

• Over 80% of the people buy when at or over the 8th sales contact.

So again, maintaining a good relationship with your readers is critical. Also critical is that when you do make a product offer you should plan on making that offer no less that eight times. How you do that is totally up to you. I would recommend that you push the soft sale with your post script for the first four to six contacts. Then really make an offer/product recommendation for the seventh, eighth, and ninth contacts and then a final email for that particular campaign thanking all recipient's that decided to buy with some testimonials thrown into the mix on how much success they are having and a sorry you missed the opportunity to those that decided not to buy. That way the next time you make a product offer those that waited the last time might be more prone to act the second time around.

To your success in all you do

E. Alan Cowgill

PS. Go online and research some of those mini-sites that we talked about that are referred to as "long sales copy" so that you can get some ideas about the proper flow of a sales offer and get some ideas you can implement into your sales process.