If you are a small business/home based business owner, you need to sell your product or service to interested parties. Do not think that, being the owner, you need not get involved in sales as you have a marketing and sales team for that. Nothing can be far from the truth.
Being a sales person, who do you work for? There are two types of people in the sales profession. Some people are on regular payroll while others are commission based (Affiliates). Those who are on a regular payroll tend to sell less as compared to those who are on commission.
The reason is obvious. One person puts more effort in selling while the other can be a bit relaxed since whether or not he makes a sale, he will be paid for the month.
So this post will be for those who want to put in serious effort for every single sale and applies to affiliates.
How Can You Sell Effectively in Less Time?
Take it up as a job
Selling can be a very demanding task if you are the wrong person for this kind of job. For some, sales come naturally. They are able to close a deal sooner than their manager can utter a second word while others take months to sell something.
So, what exactly is the secret of successful selling? If you are employed with someone else, think that you are working on your own. Forget the fact that you will be compensated for selling someone else’s product and take it up as a sales job for your own business. Think that you are self employed and you will end up making more sales than you would have done, if you had that employed attitude.
Know what you sell
Another quick tip to sell effectively is to offer a product or a solution you really believe in. Just because your company says that this product is good, it does not mean that you have to blindly sell it. Use it, evaluate it and then if you are satisfied go ahead.
People, who sell products which they believe in, sell more effectively than those who do it just because their boss told them that sales quota need to be met. In the online world, I wish people would follow this advice.
Many unethical people promote products from clickbank for affiliate commissions without even trying it out.
Target your customers
Never try to sell the product to a wrong person. Always evaluate the fact that the product or solution you give to someone else is of real value to them. If you do not think that the product will do the customer any good, stop selling it to him/her.
You may succeed in making him buy it for a quick buck, but you are spoiling a long term relation you could have had with a customer. This is how it works in the case of email marketing. People who are in your email list will buy from you again and again if you are promoting quality products.
Be prepared for more than FAQ
To sell effectively, be prepared for any question your customer might ask. Nothing spoils a chance to make a sale more than the inability of the sales person to answer a customer’s question regarding the product/service.
If you sell SEO service and if your the client asks you about the best web directory to get a backlink you should be able to answer. If not, you can’t make a sale.
Be current
Be updated with the current market trends. If you are selling a product or a solution which is no longer the trend in the market, be ready to explain why your product or solution is still worthwhile.
Demos work best
If you can, give your customer a demonstration of your product. It always works wonders when people can really see how your product takes care of their problem hands on. No wonder most online services and products have a trial that helps customers get a feel of what they are getting.
Does your product have a demand?
Sell products based on market demand. If you plan on selling a winter coat in summer, there is very less chance that you can successfully make a sale.
Similarly, you should not be selling ice creams in the winter. In the online world, expect your e-commerce site sales to be low if you are promoting something seasonal such a match tickets or season clothing.
Get to everyone in the family
If you have field staff, make sure that they go to your customer’s house/client site when all the decision makers are present together. If you have a product suited for a home, it will be best to choose a time when all the people in the house are present. This will help them take decisions and avoid the common excuse, “I will ask my spouse/manager/partner and let you know”.
Quality comes first
Do not sell subpar products if you want to sell effectively. People can quickly recognize cheating sales people who try to make a quick buck by selling an inferior product or solution.
Update
If required, keep up with your customers and inform them about any new updates regarding your product.
Follow up
Never bother your client by cold calling them again and again. There are lots of companies that keep calling people again and again even though they say that they are not interested in their offering. They sure do make a sale or two out of ten.
Educate
Educate your customer first before trying to sell him your product. Make sure he/she understands the technology (if it is technical) and knows how to effectively use the product to get maximum results.
You don’t want to make a sale, provide support and finally the client asks for a refund because the product did not meet their expectations.
Bonus
Give them an incentive to buy your product. The strongest incentive is emotion. If they think your product can get rid of their problems, they will buy from you no matter what.
Support
Assure them of good after sales support and be true to your word.
Have confidence and believe that you are making and not breaking a sale.
Adarsh Thampy is an independent marketing consultant for small business who blogs at Conversion Optimization blog and helps small business get more customers and improve their conversion rates.
Knowing what you sell and a good FAQ go hand in hand, one feeds into the other almost automatically.
Knowing who you should sell to also helps
In my opinion, what you just said is the best advice for someone looking to make sales. You must know your audience.
Of course, knowing your niche is best done right from the jump; figuring it out later, like I did, just ends you with a blog full of the wrong people.
Hey Adarsh,
Effective selling is definitely an artform and not everyone is cut out for it. Selling can first be learned by working with and modeling other sales professionals and then tweaking it to our own style.
Many of my consultant clients like the idea of selling and earning commission yet they become timid sometimes at closing the sale.
I help them to see from the end so that they don’t get cold feet in the middle of a sale.
It definitely helps to model someone at the beginning. As you said, we need to tweak it according to our own style. Imitating someone else for too long is not going to help.
Thanks for your insight
To be honest any buisness owner who doesn’t get involved in the selling of their product shouldn’t really be a buisness owner! If I had my own buisness I’d want to be getting stuck in and working as hard as my employees otherwise I’d feel like I wasn’t giving 100%.
In a way I feel that knowing what you sell is a little bit like preparing for an interview, you have to know all the answers to any FAQ that you might get asked but not know them off by heart in case you appear false.
Once your business grows too large, sometimes it might be impossible for business owners to get involved in sales themselves. That’s why corporate’s have marketing and sales divisions
I think the most important thing about selling is to focus and find targeted leads who are a right fit for the product. I think this is the single most important factor - even more important than the quality of the product itself. Most folks who start out try to sell their product to anyone and everyone - with disastrous results.
Absolutely true. Finding high quality prospects is the key. However I won place it above product quality.
You can still sell high quality products to less targeted and qualified customers. But, its very difficult to sell low quality product to customers no matter how much targeted they are.
Hey Adarsh,
I have never been a good sales person, so this post is very helpful for me as I am trying to develop my skills. However, my guess is that a sales man success relies mostly on the quality of the product. If your product is not competitive and well positioned on the market you are starting with very little success changes, no matter how good your selling skills are. Am I wrong?
Hey Cristian,
A person who sells the product and the product itself complements each other. one cannot succeed without the other. If you are really good at selling, you can surely sell a bad product. However, that will, in the long run, affect your reputation and trust with others.
I think you should be ready to sell everywhere and to everyone who is interested in your products. The knowledge about the products and its features is a must and also it is desirable to know some information about the competitors in order to persuade potential clients that your products is really better.
Being ready to sell about anywhere is a good trait. Not many people have the courage to go in front of a crowd and make a sales presentation
That’s a real problem - trying to sell knowing you sell for someone else. You get paid less than you would if that product was yours, but you work the same. Off course, you can imagine you’re the boss, but it’s still better to start your own business, the motivation will increase tenfold.
Although motivation can increase, it doesn’t need to be the best route always.
Say we are really passionate about movies. We absolutely love them. But, that doesn’t mean we can create a course on movie making.
What we can do is, promote something else by someone who has real experience and has produced quality information.
It depends on what your end goals are and what how much effort we are willing to put in
@Adarsh, i believe that with a lot of work we can do anything. Well, learning how to make movies when we’re 40 is a bit exaggerated, but i hope you get what i want to say.
Absolutely. I get your point.
Once you educate your customer, enjoy life time. During education also introduce him bonus on a particular product.
Educating our customers are very important. However, what is it about introducing a bonus?
So right that all business owners need to sell. I was in pharmaceutical sales for over 14 years and one thing I really learned is that sales is a relationship process. The most successful sales people offline and online are those who take the time to build relationships and trust with their potential customers and clients.
You are absolutely right about the relationships!!!
Adarsh -
This is all really great advice, and a very comprehensive list of strategies to sell more effectively… And faster, too! I appreciate all the help. I totally agree that having confidence is important - any tips on maintaining said confidence?
Natasha
Nice tips that I am gonna adopt when I start selling on my blog (Its still in baby stage). I think you missed out on a thing to acquire ultimate mind of the reader to a thing by talking about it and then creating a sophisticated landing page so you can target the user nicely.
Great article. Thanks for sharing. Such a great writeup and couldn’t agree more with this
Depending on what you are selling, it may be hard at times to make the number of sales that you want. This is because at times people do not really know how to maximize on the sales they are making. The tips you have shared here will go a long way in helping those people who experience a lot of difficulties when conducting sales.