How to SELL!!!

[Plato]

Hey, guys. To the sales people amongst us... what top advice would you give to somebody who knows nothing about it?

[ssandra]

From an ex-sales person:

Always sell against the needs
Find what matters for the client and show the benefit of your product.
Most people just list features and advantages, but you have to find the benefit.

For example:
Feature: extra fast pizza delivery
Advantage: your pizza gets there very fast
Benefit: When you have a craving for pizza you don´t have to wait anymore, just call us and your craving will be satisfied instantly

Another example:
Feature: tips in the book "personal development for smart people"
Advantage: Great tips that help you develop and make you a better person
Benefit: With these tips you will finally become the person you have always wanted to be and get more money/woman/power/happyness... etc.

The key thing to remember is that customers don´t give a cr*p about all the cool stuff that your product does.

What they care about is how it helps them. How does it solve their needs? What is in it for them?


But: Good news for people that have no sales skills but have a great product. If you enthousiastic and authentic about your product that is just as valuable as any sales "trick" in the book!

Good luck selling

ps if anybody is interested, I have a couple more where this came from...

[borisg]

I would say, first and foremost.. believe in the product that you are selling..if you don't you need to get out of that situation. All the sales books in the world will not help you if you don't believe in your own product.

[vMike]

Sell what and where?
Best advice is read good and old marketing books

[AGBourne]

I would add knowing the market, your product and the trends in the chosen industry.

Very Important:

Know who you are selling to. Who is your ideal, avatar costumer?

[ssandra]

Originally Posted by AGBourne

Know who you are selling to. Who is your ideal, avatar costumer?

Better is to know who your real customer is...

Ideal customers don´t exist. Pretent they do and you will be selling the wrong message to the wrong people.

Another good tip is to always be closing (ABC)... sounds lame and sleasy sales guy, but still true.

Always be closing doesn´t mean that you are always pushing for people to buy.

It means that you EVERY STEP OF THE WAY know where your customer stands and you are not afraid to ask the difficult questions.

If you are very enthousiastic about a sales you can shy away from questions like "what don´t you like about it", "do you have the budget to buy" etc. These are very important.
Worse than loosing a sales is loosing a sale late in the process (because it costs more, in time and investment).

For great tips on sales see also:

Some Irish Pearls of Sales Wisdom | Sales Machine | BNET

[UIS4821]

Pretty simple:

1.Know what your selling
2.Believe in what your selling
3.Develop persistence

The rest is details

[Plato]

I am reading these. Slowly building up my idea of what's going on. Thanks.

[Still Growing]

Selling is like any other skill; you have to work at it.

For example, you shouldn't sell the same to everybody. Every person has something they value differently.

According to one self help guru there are six basic human needs:

1. Certainty/Comfort. We all want comfort. And much of this comfort comes from certainty. Of course there is no ABSOLUTE certainty, but we want certainty the car will start, the water will flow from the tap when we turn it on and the currency we use will hold its value.
2. Variety. At the same time we want certainty, we also crave variety. Paradoxically, there needs to be enough UNcertainty to provide spice and adventure in our lives.
3. Significance. Deep down, we all want to be important. We want our life to have meaning and significance. I can imagine no worse a death than to think my life didn't matter.
4. Connection/Love. It would be hard to argue against the need for love. We want to feel part of a community. We want to be cared for and cared about.
5. Growth. There could be some people who say they don't want to grow, but I think they're simply fearful of doing so—or perhaps NOT doing so. To become better, to improve our skills, to stretch and excel may be more evident in some than others, but it's there.
6. Contribution. The desire to contribute something of value—to help others, to make the world a better place than we found it is in all of us.

I would say that Steve Pavlina values "Growth" pretty highly. If you flew into Las Vegas and called Steve to get an appointment promising to make him a lot of money or save him any money he'd probably ignore your request. If you wrote a book that fascinated him and then wanted to meet him under the premise that "HE" could "GROW" as a result of meeting you then you'd probably get some time with him.

I could make 40 posts about selling. Saying that "selling is as simple as meeting someone's needs" probably isn't aware that we all have different needs that need to be catered to in terms of approach.

[David Cain]

Learn from people who know what they are doing. There is a HUGE community of marketers online, and a ton of top-notch blogs.

Here are two great places to start:

copyblogger.com

johnchow.com

Go to the sites they link, they have high standards.

Get into the online marketing community, read the top blogs, and you will see who the big names are. Go to their sites, read all of their content.

All of this is free, but there are also great online courses and resources if you are willing to pay a little money too.