The marketing environment never sits in one place. Trends come and go, strategies arise and disappear, and businesses launch and fade away quicker than ever before. As the digital era is here, every marketer and salesman must adapt to the most effective practices that bring the most results.
Every business is looking for profits, and profits are accomplished when a business manages to sell its products and services better than its competitors.
Finding new prospects to buy your products is surely a key factor of the entire sales process. High-performing marketers and salesmen already understand how precious their skills, how important their knowledge of the marketplace is, and so they tend to focus on marketing tactics that allow them to skyrocket both their personal expertise and the business performance.
In today’s post, I’m sharing several marketing tactics and tips that you can use to kick-start your sales skills and improve the outcomes of your actions. Pay attention and apply!
Sell Benefits Instead of Features
If you want to capture your customer’s attention for real, you need to approach his needs and present the best possible benefits for his problems. Many marketers fail to understand the fact that most people are “for themselves”, so they try to impress their audiences by showcasing their product’s features instead of its benefits.
Put yourself in the place of the customer. Would you buy a shiny product that promises to do a million things but can’t manage to satisfy your needs or solve your most pressing issue? Remember: people mostly buy results that your product/service can offer!
Know Your Customer Better than You Know Yourself
Effective selling is impossible if the marketer/salesman fails to understand his target audience. After all, without knowing what your potential customers want and need, how will you know what to offer?
First off, develop a target persona (imaginary ideal customer) by asking yourself these questions:
- What’s the location, age, gender, nationality, and the language of my target customer?
- What does he/she need the most?
- What are the most challenging issues that my target audience regularly faces each day?
- What’s the income of my ideal customer?
- Is my customer educated? To what degree? What job does he/she have?
- What are his/her passions and hobbies?
- What does my ideal customer do online? Does he/she play games? Spends time on social media? Uses the Internet to check email and just that? What are the common activities?
You shouldn’t stop here. There are so many other questions you can ask yourself before defining who your target persona, so make sure you give this process some time.
After you’re done with the brainstorming process, you should start collecting real insights from people directly. You can email your prospects and ask relevant questions, you can organize social media contests that involve surveys, or you can simply “listen” to your audience’s voice on forums and Q&A platforms like Quora.
This is important…before you start selling, ensure you know your customer better than you know yourself!
Develop a Unique Value Proposition
What makes your offer different from your competitors? How does your product stand out from the crowd? Why should your customers choose you instead of your biggest competitor?
These are some questions that every marketer and salesman should always ask himself. The answer is often simple: unique value proposition (UVP). Simply put, the one value proposition that nobody else on the market has, and the one point that needs to be emphasized during the sales process. For your inspiration, here are some examples of effective unique value propositions from successful brands.
Offer Value for Free
At first, it may sound weird. As you keep thinking about it, offering value for free is one of the most effective ways to introduce your brand, products, and services to a “cold” audience who might not even be familiar with your name.
Mark Finick, Marketing Manager at EssayOnTime, left us a great insight:
“Many successful businesses offer free reports, case studies, software trials, and product samples to “warm” their audiences and take them one step closer to the purchase. If you approach this tactic, make sure you offer something truly valuable because this freebie is your “first-time introduction”. If you leave a good impression, converting your prospects into loyal customers will become a much easier task.”
Create a Daily Sales Ritual
Developing productive habits around your sales practices is a sure way to develop your skills quickly and efficiently. For example, you can set aside one hour each day to perform cold calls, to send cold emails, or to set and review your sales goals. Stick to your routine and you’ll notice a great improvement in the areas that you’re constantly focused on.
Study Your Competition
Many times, salesmen and marketers run out of ideas or they might not be so confident in applying certain strategies. If you ever find yourself lacking the necessary inspiration, you should always take a “quick peek” at your competitors’ strategies.
Nowadays, there are so many incredible competitive analysis tools that can help you identify what your competition’s doing to keep their performance high. Make sure you get familiar with some of them and start using them for your own benefits.
Takeaways
Improving your sales skills through effective marketing tactics is a long-term process that demands constant practice. Start following our advice on a regular basis and see where that gets you.
If you observe significant benefits, scale the strategies that provide those benefits. If the results are poor, make sure you add new twists and optimize your campaigns until you’re satisfied with the resulted performance.
Jacob Dillon is a professional writer and distinctive journalist from Sydney. Being passionate about what he does, Jacob likes to discuss stirring events as well as express his opinion about technological advancements and evolution of society. Find Jacob on Twitter and Facebook.
