Free Tools For Selling Anything To AnyonePosted by clever ativity on May 16th, 2018 Most people don’t realize how important selling is – not unless their livelihood depends on it! Every time I start talking about the digital marketing or sales process, I hear things like “I’m not good at selling”, “You have to be someone who’s good at this”, or “I just can’t figure out how to do it” – but that isn’t how things really are. Marketers and sales people aren’t the only ones who try to sell things. Great salespeople are made, not born, and nobody achieves success without knowing how to sell. Think of the last time you convinced your children to go to bed early or talked your parents into letting you head out with friends for a weekend – that’s the sales process at work! It doesn’t matter what you’re trying to sell – just keep the following principles in mind and you, too, can learn to be good at selling anything. You will see that it’s easier than most people think! The First Thing You’re Selling Is Yourself. Stop thinking about what you’re selling when you start your digital marketing campaigns or when you’re in front of your prospect. If whoever you’re selling to doesn’t trust you, they’re not going to be interested in buying, no matter how good your offer is. Make sure you know the product and present yourself well. Be the salesperson that you, yourself, would actually pay attention to – if you don’t like yourself, you certainly can’t expect anyone else to. Be sure to save all of your digital marketing material in Google Drive or another cloud storage system. Use folders to keep it organized, and star presentations and brochures you frequently use. Make sure to save copies for offline use before any meeting – this will help you avoid embarrassing moments. After all, even digital marketing needs to go offline every now and then. Listen More Than You Talk. Bad salespeople are obsessed with their pitch – they just keep talking, trying to fill every moment with a hard sell. This is especially common when dealing with the short attention span people have for digital marketing. Good salespeople listen to what their clients are saying (and what they aren’t). Once they’ve listened, they adjust their pitch to target that particular audience. By listening, you can figure out things like whether cost or quality is more important, how important deadlines are, and who’s going to make the final decision. To help remember any bit of useful information your prospect mentioned, use Google Keep. Be sure to use colors to mark the most relevant notes and review everything before your next call or meeting with that client. You can also use it to save brief notes about anything you plan to say. This will help you drive a stronger message and convince more prospects in your next digital marketing campaign. The best part, though? Google Keep is free! Know Who To Sell To. If you’re selling a widget that costs k, don’t try to sell it to the guy whose budget for widgets is k. One of the most common mistakes in digital marketing is trying to sell to anyone and everyone. When looking at a prospect, make sure that whatever you’re selling fulfills your client’s needs (i.e., actually helps them) and is realistic for them. You’re much more likely to get the sale. Hubspot Sales CRM is a great tool for digital marketing not just because of its CRM features, but because it comes with a database of literally millions of companies – and you have free access to it! When you send an email to a prospect, it will automatically add their contact into to your CRM and create a record for their company. After that, you’ll be able to inspect some information about them to help you better target your pitch. Understand What Motivates The Other Side. All right, you love what you’re selling – but why should anyone care about your digital marketing efforts? How is your product or service providing value to them? Pay attention to what’s driving a potential client to your meeting and address that in your pitch. This is one of the hardest lessons to learn. If you’ve spent months developing a great product, it’s easy to get sidetracked into talking about all the hard work and passion you’ve put into it, especially in the short number of characters allowed in many digital marketing ads. However, not a single client cares about that. Selling is always about the customer, and the more you match their motivations, the higher the chance of making the deal. A piece of advice: No product or service is 100% perfect. During your presentation, a prospect might point out a flaw in whatever you’re selling. Instead of panicking, mention a workaround and re-pitch it with a feature the client isn’t aware of. To do this, start preparing well before the meeting and think about a few “objections” clients might have. Write them down in Google Spreadsheets (part of Google Drive), specifying the objection, the workaround, and the other feature in three separate columns. Try to memorize these once you have them – it’s always more impressive if you can respond instantly, rather than having to check your notes. Keep It Simple. Don’t make your pitch too complicated – trying to sound especially knowledgeable usually backfires. Besides, the true mark of knowledge is how well you can explain something to the average person. Keep the pitch simple and under 30 seconds – if you can’t shorten things that much, keep working on it until you can. Digital marketing doesn’t give you too much room, so you’ll need to pay close attention to this. As part of this, create a daily routine for yourself. Start with music that helps keep you focused, and plan your day well in advance. You can find plenty of music on places like YouTube or Spotify, both of which are freely accessible. (Noticing a pattern, here?) Just be sure you know the local rules about playing music in public places. The most fundamental part of success in digital marketing is thinking about your audience – and I really can’t overstate how important that sentence is. Everything you do should consider what they want and how you can help them solve a problem. Everyone who seems like a “natural” was once just as new to marketing as you are – the only difference is that they’ve already learned the principles above. If they can do it, so can you. Like it? Share it!More by this author |