If you want to sell a product, you can’t think in terms of black and white. It’s not that simple. As a salesperson, you can’t take things for granted if someone likes the idea of your product. You need to follow sales principles, and you can’t bring a halt to your persuasion if someone dislikes that idea.
You have to constantly push and influence people until you make them cross the winning line. Human behavior is involved here and there are principles that you need to follow.
Based on their research, SiriusDecisions made an interesting inference, “On an average, a salesperson makes 2 attempts to win a prospect and around 45% of salespeople give up after one follow-up.” If you don’t want to be that salesperson, then do read our piece of “sales follow-ups.”
So it’s about knowing the science behind winning prospects and being persistent.
Let’s go through some of the sales principles that can make you a “Sales Giant”.
1. Influence people. Pave way for a decision in your favor
“Influence” is the poster boy of sales principles, and you need to ace it. As per the research conducted by AdWeek, around 60% of marketers are planning to expand their “Influencer Marketing” footprints in the coming time.
As the name suggests, it involves persuasion, until your perspective is bought by others. For the reasons you believe in your product, others should also believe in your product. That’s how it works.
It’s about tapping the right emotions of people, without overdoing it, to enhance the perceived value of your product and increase your sales.
Now you either need to be influential or know influential people, to influence people. It’s not just about being popular and garnering likes on Facebook. It’s about making people execute certain actions, based on your trustworthy, no-nonsense perception. It takes years to establish yourself in that space. So, if you haven’t reached there yet, you may connect with someone who has.
Let’s take the example of Seth Godin who has written more than 20 books, all of them being bestsellers. He is one of the most sought-after influencers. People trust him because he values his words and isn’t verbose. Most of his posts are to the point, which people connect with.
Just imagine how a guy like him can take your product to his extensive reader base.
2. You yourself are your product
It’s one of the most important sales principles. Once you start seeing yourself as a product, your selling game will become zippy. You need to communicate your own value, that trickles down to your product.
People buy your aura first. They must say to themselves, “This is the right guy to work with”, or, “This is the right guy to buy from”.
So before jumping on the bandwagon of email marketing, it’s better to establish yourself as an educator first. Always remember, people prefer Educators to Salesmen. So brand yourself as an educator, by speaking passionately either on your product or area of expertise.
But again, you are not the only educator in the vast sea of bloggers, consultants, and public speakers. To stand out, you need to be versatile. You shouldn’t stick to just one medium, say WordPress or Blogspot.
You should know how to propagate your content using YouTube videos, memes, or gifs. These days, “Going Live” is the thing to do.
3. More than features, people desire benefits
When you talk about sales principles, you can’t ignore what people desire. “Products sell because of their features”. It might be true for purists, but for people, in general, it’s benefits that count.
As a maker, it’s quite obvious for you to perceive your product more in terms of features. But when you are selling your product, focus more on the benefits. In other words, focus more on the outcome of your product, which is what buyers care about. Through benefits, you can also highlight the “Social Security” side of your product.
There is another way to look at it. When you underline the benefits, you convey this to buyers, “This is what you can do with the product”. As you can see here, buyers become the focal point. But when you underline the features, you convey this to buyers, “This is what the product can do”. In this case, the product becomes the focal point.
You can capture buyers’ attention by mentioning your product’s stellar features. Once you get their attention, you can increase their desire for your product by talking about benefits.
Desire wins over attention, always.
When people buy a product, they think of a better future, where they don’t have to scamper for things for which they are scampering currently. In other words, people don’t buy products, they buy better versions of themselves.
Give some thrust to your memory and remember how iPods were sold, “1000 songs in your pocket”. This one phrase successfully overshadowed Mp3 players. People bought that completely as it promised an exciting, fast-paced future for music listeners.
4. Tell your product’s results in a crystal clear manner
“Clarity” comprise one of the most important sales principles.
has your product achieved? How well it has been received? You need to consistently sell answers to these questions, otherwise, you will struggle to acquire qualified leads.
Now, who form the bulk part of today’s consumer base?
It’s the millennials (People reaching young adulthood in the early 21st Century). Around 30% of them holds a bachelor’s degree or higher, which makes them a reasonably educated generation.
Millennials are well aware of their needs and what’s on offer. They know what they are after in a product. Therefore, they gravitate more towards results. So if you are creating a marketing copy that isn’t result-centric, then you can’t create that desire inside a millennial.
Your copy must be backed by impeccable research and data. A result is an actionable metric, meaning, it’s data in itself. For example, if by using your product, someone increased the lead generation by 30%, then you can use this metric to win more clients. You just need to articulate the result with clarity.
It’s not about negotiating or persuading customers. You just have to put the numbers out there. Interestingly, introverts tend to achieve this easily, as they are not much of a convincer. So naturally, they sell the results of the product better than the product itself.
Next time you want to create a catchy, result-oriented copy, you better hire an introvert.
5. Lay emphasis on trust and expertise
You can sell more and make more money. It’s quite a linear equation. But a variable which affects this equation is your credibility.
The best way to build that credibility is to be there for your customer 24×7, and take care of the slightest and the severest of technical glitches. The technical support needs to be quick and should have enough human element. You shouldn’t leave everything to chatbots.
It’s not just about providing that technical support. You actually create a space to showcase your expertise.
So if you are there for your customers, not just for the sake of it but expertise, your credibility is bound to rise. That’s how you penetrate the thought process of a customer who is apprehensive of a new product, and rightly so. This is how you eventually dominate the market.
The reputation of customer service has a viral nature. Whether it’s good or bad, its reputation spreads quickly. But the thing is, people like sharing their negative experiences of a product more than their good ones. And the bad experiences mostly include their interaction with a product’s customer support. This is how crucial it is.
It may sound a bit dramatic to you, but every morning you must ask this to yourself, “How can I enhance my customer’s experience today?”.
Do this to reinforce the idea of building trust in your buyer’s mind.
We hope this write-up will help you ace your “Sales Game”. Don’t forget to share your two cents on the subject in the comment section.
