Selling is and always will be a challenging task. It is a complex process of human behavior without any shortcuts. They say that believing that you can sell anything to anybody is a trap you should avoid. The best move is to identify who your ideal customers are and you’ll find it easier to get them to act. Whether you are selling a digital product online or you run a brick-and-mortar business, the principles to be discussed below will definitely help you. They can drive more visitors into the marketing funnel and convert casual visits into sales.
- Influence drives the value of your product.
Influence marketing will always stay, so it's important to just embrace it. According to AdWeek, almost 60% of marketers intend to increase their influencer marketing budgets over the next 12 months. This is because they see influence as the ability to persuade others to adopt your own perspective. It would also really help if you are an influencer in your industry. When someone believes in your product, naturally that someone wants others to believe in it, too. Your ability to persuade others by appealing to their emotions will increase sales. Influence increases the perceived value of products.
- Sell yourself before you can sell your product.
You need to see yourself as a product. And unlike any product, you need to successfully communicate the value of the product. By failing to do that, you’ll also find it difficult to sell your actual products or services. The good thing is that there are a lot of opportunities today to appeal to the human brain. You just need the right mix to stand out from the crowd.
- Build interest with features; build desire with benefits
You need to sell the benefits, not the features. A lot of people and companies think that products and services sell because of their great features, but that's not true. It is because of their benefits. That’s why it's important to start the selling process by introducing the strongest benefits of the product that will reassure customers that you care about them, not just their money.
- Sell results by painting a clear picture.
These days, most of us are selling to a new generation of customers – the millennials. They are a unique set of people born between 1982 and 2000 and they currently make up 26% of the world’s population. Over 23% of millennials hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, making them the most educated generation in history. That’s why it is important to somehow pattern the selling process to them and to understand that generations consume content and information differently. Millennials often want results and they won’t let their human brain function be swayed by fancy copy that doesn’t give at least a sneak peak of the results they are expecting. That’s why most of the advertisements today are backed by solid research and data.
- Credibility depends on trust and expertise.
To make more money, you need to depend on your credibility. To create a solid one, you may need to provide a top-notch customer service to your customers. Often, customers want to reach out to someone who can help them resolve problems quickly. They also want to interact with real people and access information to resolve the issue themselves. You may want to start by providing top of the line customer service whenever they are in the establishment. You need to make them feel that you can be trusted.
