Sell for Success 1

DON’T FORGET TO SELL
Today there is a lot of emphasis on marketing, particularly on web marketing, with an expectation of being able to convert sales without a face-to-face meeting with a prospect. Marketing alone rarely converts prospects into customers and business owners have to remember to “sell”. This is the first of four blogs on selling.
Marketing brings income into an organisation by convincing people to buy your product or service. Marketing should develop awareness, trust and desire. Conversion or selling creates action. Aspects of marketing include: Branding; Market research; Advertising; Direct marketing (inc. web and social media); Public relations; Workshops and articles; and Selling. All of these except the last normally involve pitching to a very wide audience in the expectation that a percentage will gain an interest and will take action to buy. In practice, the percentage that takes action is a very small percent of the market addressed.
INCREASE YOUR SUCCESS RATE
Selling – face-to-face or over the telephone – brings a human face to the process and a high conversion rate from interest to order should be achieved. A good salesperson raises interest and then helps the prospect over hurdles far more effectively than other marketing processes.
If your organisation raises interest but you would wish for a higher conversion rate into a sale, maybe you need a dedicated professional sales person or if you are a small organisation, dedicate some time each week to focus on converting prospects to customers. Methods other than selling provide useful support for your sales people. Other marketing methods help to prepare a prospect to buy – a salesperson solves their real issues and gets an order
In the next blog, I will talk about improving your ability to sell. Feel free to ask me a question here or drop me an email and I will get back to you.
What are the sales techniques you have found useful? – Leave a comment below
Coming Soon, “Improving Your Ability to Sell”
Bob Cross