Find a better way to sell

If you want the sales to improve in your business a useful strategy is to spend a bit of time looking for one or more of these better ways. Photo / iStock

Let me start this week's marketing column by asking three simple marketing questions...

Question 1:
How many businesses are there in the entire world that are selling similar products and services at similar prices to the same type of customers as you normally sell to?
In most cases the answer is that there are a lot!

Question 2:
Now, how many of these businesses are getting better sales results than you are right now?
The answer again is there are probably a lot of similar businesses who are getting better sales results than your business.

Question 3:
Why are these businesses getting better sales results?
If these business who sell the same type of products and services as you do, to similar types of customers at similar prices are getting better sales results it often means one thing.

They have a 'better way' of doing something in their business.
It could be a better way of making a sales presentation, creating repeat sales, generating referral business, resolving customer concerns.
These businesses may have a better way of lead generation, a better way of getting customers to trust them or a better way of making add on sales.
And so on.

So here's my suggestion to you this week...
If you want the sales to improve in your business a useful strategy is to spend a bit of time looking for one or more of these better ways.
Because when you find this 'better way' and put it into action your sales will often increase.

Here are two examples of a 'better way to sell' to get you thinking...

Example 1:
Many years ago I was selling motivational seminars and I was struggling to reach my sales targets each month.
My sales approach at that time was to meet with potential clients one at a time and explain the benefits of this seminar. (This was taking a long time and sales were very slow.)
I then asked a very successful sales person who sold the same seminars what his marketing secret was.

He explained that he sold the same motivational seminars by giving a 45 minute live presentation to sales teams. In this presentation he shared some useful tips from the motivational seminar and showed the sales team how they could use these tips to improve their sales. He then gave a short 5 minute commercial about the motivational seminar at the end of his presentation. He found that by doing this he would normally make between 5 and 15 sales in the presentation.

I was astonished because I had never tried group selling before.

However I practised the same presentation and gave it to a group of sales people a few weeks later.

To my delight I made 9 sales in less than an hour.

This 'better way' of selling worked remarkably well and was a great improvement over doing individual one to one sales presentations.

Example 2:
In the book "Yes-50 secrets from the science of persuasion" there is an interesting example of a new sales approach taken by a home improvement firm that sold expensive hot tubs.

These hot tubs sold for around £7,000 so were a big ticket purchase for most people.
This firm did two very simple things differently and this increased their hot tub sales by over 500%.

First of all they began telling prospective customers, that many buyers of their top of the range hot tub model reported that 'owning it was like adding an extra room to their house.' (A number of their clients had made this type of comment after buying a hot tub so it was genuine feedback they were sharing.)

Secondly, they began asking these prospective customers what it would cost to build an extra room on the side of their house.
When you compared the cost of a £7,000 hot tub with the much greater expense of building a new room on your home, the hot tub seems far less expensive in comparison.
This made it a lot easier for clients to justify purchasing it and sales increased dramatically.

Here's my main point in this week's marketing column.

I believe that there are many 'better ways' to improve your sales results.
And when you find these 'better ways' and apply them the results can be spectacular.

'There's a way to do it better - find it.'
Thomas A. Edison

Action Exercise:
Look for a better way to boost the sales in your business.
When you look for a better way you will be surprised at what you find and how well it can work.

Graham McGregor is a consultant specialising in memorable marketing. You can download his 396 page 'Unfair Business Advantage' Ebook at no charge from www.theunfairbusinessadvantage.com