By Ben Botes: http://www.my1stbusiness.com You don’t have to be a born salesman to get orders. You don’t even have to enjoy selling. You just have to be clear about what you want and what you have to offer. Remember that effective selling is essential to
success of your business. So whether you will be making sales or have a team to do that, you should do everything you can to ensure that your sales are done in best way possible.
Selling is one of most important aspects of any business.
I suggest that if you at this point have not yet worked through Micro Module on Finding Clients and Knowing Your Clients, that you do that now.
As you go through following nine skills, think of practical issues of your specific service, how can you implement these steps, what else could you do? In order for this module to be effective you have to work through it and not just read it. Use this as your opportunity to become a great presenter.
Step 1 Know your product, its benefit and competitive advantage
Your product may seems to be a haircut, but it's probably admiration. It looks like a motorcar, but it's probably status. It might be called a bungee jump, but it's probably excitement. If you're selling to other companies, benefit is probably increased sales, lower costs or higher profits.
Why does your customer buy product or service? What benefit do you sell? In which way is your product different from competition? Do you have a unique selling proposition? What is it? What is your competitive advantage? Why should anybody buy product or service from you? Is your product perceived by customer as being better in some way? Is it cheaper/faster? Does customer buy because you are an extremely pleasant person? Who is your competition? Why do some customers buy from competition? What is competitive advantage of your competitor? In which areas are your competitors superior? In which ways are they inferior? How can you creatively imitate your competitor? What is "unique" about product? Does it provide better durability, not like another in nature, quality or form? Is it unique by its appearance and/or design? Does its appearance convey desirable qualities? How does product compare with competition? Can product be recognizable and prove useful and be price competitive? Service - will it require less servicing or less costly servicing than existing products?
Step 2 Identify your customers It is only logical that in order to find your clients, you need to know who they are.
Who or what do you plan to sell your product to? How do customers perceive themselves? How do you plan to acquire customers? What distribution methods will you need? What features do your customers want? What are they prepared to pay? What form of advertising and promotion will be effective to produce sales and sell product? What will promotion and advertising cost? Where is your target customer most likely to buy your product? How important is price to a customer? How important are product or service quality and convenience to your customer?
