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You’ve worked hard (darn hard, in many cases) to get prospects to your site and sales pages – and many times they are on the verge of buying when they suddenly decide NOT to. What happened? How can you get so very close to making a sale only to lose it?

It’s no secret that most people are shy about spending money. They’ve had one or a thousand and one experiences in the past that taught them to exercise massive caution before parting with their hard earned money. For example, they’ve made a purchase and then never used the product. Or they made a purchase and then realized they had to invest even more money to enjoy the product. Or perhaps they got something for free which ended up costing them time and even money. We’ve all been there, and the accumulation of those experiences teaches everyone of us to exercise extreme caution when making a purchase, and even when accepting something for free.

Many times the prospect is sitting on the fence, and the result could go either way with the slightest bit of a push. Here are several methods to get more of them to jump off that fence and buy your product. And while none of these are all that glamorous, they are deadly effective at increasing your sales, both short term and long term.

1. Provide lots of detailed, authentic contact information and proof that you are who you say you are. Give your real address and a real phone number. If you have an actual brick and mortar business, regardless of whether or not it is open to the public, show a photo of it. Use photos of yourself and those who work for you on your contact page. Have a group photo of all of you if possible. If you’re a solo online marketer, show a photo of you and your family. (Yes, you’ll still look professional.) Show photos of yourself at events related to your niche. If you’ve personally won awards for work in your niche, display those as well.

2. Legitimize your website. Join the Better Business Bureau and display their logo on your website. Display anti-hacker seals on your shopping cart. Has your website won awards? Display them. Do other well-known companies or websites recommend you and your website? Display these seals or recommendations prominently.

3. Make a list of frequently asked questions with detailed answers and display it on your website. Add to the list as you receive questions from prospects and customers.

4. Be consistent. Discrepancies are big red flashing warning signs to prospects and will derail a sale nearly every time.

5. Be honest. Don’t just tell them what’s so darn great about your product, also tell them what you’re product doesn’t do or who should not buy it. Be candid, be open, and be real. If you come across as a trusted adviser who always speaks the truth rather than a slick salesman, you will build a loyal customer base who believes what you say and acts on your recommendations with little hesitation. Just as in the offline world, your reputation means everything.

6. Solicit and use testimonials. Never underestimate the power of testimonials. Ask your customers for feedback on the product they purchase and their experience with you and / or your company. Put up a wall of testimonials and place the link to that page on every other page of your website. And don’t just use the “Everything was super fantastic!” testimonials. When a customer has a problem, bend over backwards to make it right, and then ask that customer to write about their experience. Everyone knows that even with the best of companies things can go wrong – what they want to know is if you stand behind your business and fix problems when they occur.

7. Ask others to evaluate your website. Find people who aren’t afraid to give you the unvarnished truth, and ask them to go over your website just as if they found it through Google or some other means. Ask them how your website makes them feel about your company, what’s missing and what can be improved. If they were in the market for your product or service, would they buy? Why or why not? What would make them hesitate? What makes them suspicious or leery? What makes them feel comfortable?

All of these things may seem small and mundane, but you’d be surprised how often they make the difference between getting the sale or losing the prospect forever.

Regardless of what you’re writing – a blog post, an article, a sales message, etc. – your copy should sound personal and relevant to the person reading it. You don’t want to sound like you’re writing a textbook to a class of students or a news article to the masses. Instead, your tone should be similar to a one on one conversation with a friend.

So how can you achieve this? With a little research and a healthy dose of imagination. This is one of those tricks that natural writers do without thinking about, and the rest of us can learn with just a little practice. What you’re going to do is create a “persona” of your ideal reader. For example, if you’re writing a sales letter, your persona is the customer. Hopefully you have a good idea of who your customers are, and if not you might want to engage in some research to find out.

Choose one customer: Someone who has purchased your products in the past and reads all your stuff. This person might be real or imaginary, it doesn’t really matter. Now write a bio for your customer, answering these questions: Male or female? Age? Where does s/he live? Occupation? Likes? Dislikes? Desires? Goals? You get the idea – you’re creating this person just as if they were real and sitting there in the room with you. Picture them in your mind, or choose a photo from the Internet.

Now for the fun part: Make friends with this customer. Imagine having a face to face chat about your latest product or the blogpost you’re about to write. What do you tell him or her? What questions do they have? Do they understand what you’re saying, or do they need clarification?

If you’re thinking you can’t do this, it simply means you’re out of practice. All children have imaginary conversations in their heads, and you did as well. This is your chance to let your subconscious mind go to work, filling in the words your persona would say to you in a conversation. You’ll be surprised by what you discover because you’re opening the door to knowledge you didn’t even know you had.

Now then, once you’ve got a good sense of who your persona is, go ahead and write that blog post or article or sales message directly to your persona, just as you would write a personal letter. Be sure to connect with them on an emotional as well as intellectual level. Your persona is the only one that matters when you are writing because it is just the two of you having an intimate conversation.

And if all of this sounds terribly silly, don’t worry. Just try it. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by how much better your writing can become when you’re writing to that one specific persona.

BONUS: As you get to know your persona better and better, you might try asking him or her questions and quietly listening for the answers. Your persona can tell you why your marketing is falling short, how to market your product for more sales, and even what product to create.

Once you’re well acquainted with your first persona, consider getting a second one that is quite different from the first. For example, if your niche is Internet marketing and your persona is a 50 year old male looking to make extra money to sock away for retirement, your second persona might be a 22 year old looking to earn a full time living online as fast as possible, or perhaps a newly divorced 35 year old mother of 3 trying to make ends meet.

These personas will make your writing come alive, as well as accessing useful and sometimes brilliant information and insights that take you by complete surprise and significantly add to your bottom line.

Believe it or not, all success in business comes down to this one formula. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling insurance, hamburgers or lawn care. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been in business for 30 years or you’re starting your business today. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you live or who your customers are. This same formula brings success to every endeavor, and ignoring this formula almost surely brings failure.

Big promises, huh?

Think of Occam’s Razor (also known as Ockham’s Razor) which simplified states that the simplest answer is often the correct answer. And so it is with THE Formula – there is no need for volumes of business advice when you have this simple formula and FOLLOW this formula to the letter.

Are you ready to know once and for all the true secret to business success? I’ll clue you in – I am not the first to write of this, nor will I be the last. Many others have written millions of words about it, sometimes taking an entire book to cover this simple piece of information:

THE Formula for Business Success:

Step 1: Create an Irresistible Offer
Step 2: Present this Irresistible Offer to the prospects who are hungry for it
Step 3: Sell to them again. And again. And again.

That’s it. To clarify, the irresistible offer is one that presents so much desired benefit for such a small perceived cost that prospects rush to purchase. Step 2 says to present this offer to the people who desire it. Don’t sell snow tires to Floridians, sell them to Northerners on the eve of the first winter snow storm.

And Step 3 says to hang onto those customers and sell to them time and time again. Why? Because they already know you, trust you, and like what you sell. It is far easier and far more profitable to sell to an existing customer than it is to acquire a new one.

So what does this mean in the world of Internet marketing? First, don’t sell something because you want to sell it. Instead, find out what your customers fervently desire and create an irresistible offer based on that.

Second, target your offer to those who are most interested. If you have a course on marketing for brick and mortar businesses, you might have to get it in front of 200 prospects to make one sale. But if it’s a course on marketing for chiropractors, you can double the price and still close 1 in 20 prospects because your offer is more tightly targeted to the exact people who want to buy it.

And third, treat your customers like royalty. Notice I didn’t say to treat them like family, because unfortunately we sometimes take our families for granted. NEVER take your customers for granted, and always share your very best insights, news and helpful tips with them so that when it is time for them to make another purchase, they don’t hesitate to purchase from you, even if you are merely the affiliate recommending someone else’s product.

Whatever you’re selling, this is the formula that will make you rich.

“But surely,” you wonder, “there must be exceptions?”

Not really. Let’s say you don’t sell anything outright, and instead you are a blogger or perhaps run a curation type of website. You still have an irresistible offer, and that is the information you are sharing on your website for free. If it is great information that is targeted to your niche, then your readers will be excited to read it and return time and time again to read it again. And surely you are monetizing the website, whether it’s through ads or affiliate products. So while your readers are returning to read, they are also sometimes clicking your ads or purchasing the products you promote.

And so it is with any online endeavor. “But I run a non-profit,” you say. Even non-profits follow this rule. The irresistible offer is the chance for the person making the donation of time or money to help a cause that is near and dear to their heart. The non-profit will be promoted only to those who have a keen interest in the cause. And if treated with care, respect and gratitude, those who donated once will likely donate again and again.

I’ll give you one more example of this formula working, this time in a non-business platform. You find the woman of your dreams, and you create an irresistible offer to convince her to marry you. Of course this offer would not work with most women, but it works with your beloved because you have caused her to fall in love with you (targeted market). And then you go on selling yourself to her for the rest of your life if you hope to have a happy marriage, and she does the same for you.

You can apply this to religion as well, and to getting your children to mind you, and even to training your pets. In fact, I can’t think of one human interaction where this formula won’t work, it’s that powerful.

But we are focused on your business today, and so here is my challenge to you: Take out a pen and paper and write down the 3 steps. Now write how you will specifically accomplish each of the three steps in your niche or your next marketing campaign. And then please drop me a line to tell me of your success, because if you do these 3 things, you will be successful indeed.