Before the dot com boom, my first career was in marketing …sales to be exact. I was the marketing manager for an insurance product line at the branch office of a Fortune 500 company. In the few years that I was there, sales and profitability increased by nearly 200% under my direction.

How did a recently graduated English Literature major with no prior experience in sales do it? Here are the top 3 things I learned that apply to online business today:

Publish Information People Can Use …and Understand!

Have you ever read the fine print of most financial documents? To the average reader, the acronyms and third person narrative are dry, intimidating, and confusing. One of the first things I did when I started in my position fresh out university was to leverage my inherent ability to write as a way of connecting with my target market.

Through newsletters that ignored industry jargon, focused on plain language, and provided real-life examples of how our company’s products/services could be used, I not only built respect and credibility for my knowledge …but was able to initiate relationships with others who found value in what I was writing about.

Online Business Tip #1: Craft your web content around your target audience. Provide valuable information in a way that connects and engages, using plain language …not industry-speak!

Relationship Building Doesn’t Stop At The Handshake

In sales, the best source of leads is your natural market – friends, family, colleagues. One of the challenges I faced was that I was working in a market that was entirely new to me. I moved to the city for the job. This meant that each and every person I met had to be treated as a potential client …and the relationships I needed to establish had to extend long past the initial handshake.

How did I do this? By listening to people and finding out what was important to them in their careers, their business and their lives. I paid attention to spouses names, their children’s interests and other aspects of their lifestyle that they valued. I then solidified the relationships I built by seeking out ways to genuinely help people in areas that mattered to them. The key here is “genuine” – - after all, taking a bona fide interest in someone else is very different than serving your own interests by being fake.

Online Business Tip #2: Relationships aren’t built by “accepting” LinkedIn or Facebook invitations alone. Foster relationships through conversations on Twitter, send email links to blog posts, videos of interest, and “share this”. Whenever possible, make sure to connect face-to-face offline. Above all else: be yourself, be transparent and be genuine!

Never Sell On Price

In the insurance business, you never make just one sale. Upon policy renewal, you are responsible for reselling the insurance vehicle despite any rate changes to the premiums. That’s why selling on price alone was always a bad approach to building business.

This unique set of circumstances forced me to focus on educating clients on the benefits of the product and company over its selling features. Most insurance products have similar attributes, so highlighting intangible elements not related to the product itself was a way to differentiate ourselves from the competition and stand out in the client’s mind. Things like: local service, free seminars, and even just the positive aspect of doing business with me and my colleagues. By educating clients on both the benefits and features of the policy, it made reselling at the time of renewal that much easier. Price increases can be explained by external factors, visceral reactions to price increases are much harder to overcome when the client was never sold on the value of the product in the first place.

Online Business Tip #3: A cheaper price is always just a click away! Focus on intangibles like creating a positive online experience by organizing content in a way that makes sense for your target audience, not your organization. Make sure your web content is written in a way that is approachable, readable, and provides information that your current competition may not be offering. Provide value-added services like mobile and customizable content. And think of creative ways to both highlight and add value to your products/services online and off!

In my experiences, the Herb Tarlek approach to sales never worked. My success was largely defined by the relationships I built with other people …both clients and fellow team members.

Successful websites recognize the value in connecting with other people and facilitate this connection in ways that are meaningful and engaging to a specific target audience. Web stats alone can’t reflect this value …but your bottom line results over the long term will!