Tips for Selling More of Your Products and Services
By Rachel Remington
Many businesses aren’t making enough money to sustain themselves, and even when the products and services offered are great, often there are just not enough customers yet committed to buying what is being offered. Fortunately, there are ways to improve this through marketing strategies, special offers, and conveying the information about your business that makes it desirable. If you give the following strategies a try, you may just find that all your business was missing was the right approach to selling.
Create a Great Offer for a Limited Time
If you offer a limited time discount on one of your products or services, customers are more likely to act on those products or services for a few key reasons. For one, customers may feel more compelled to act quickly on purchasing your product or service because they’ll know that it will soon go back to full price. Secondly, offering the product or service at a discounted rate could likely result in much more sales of that product/service than usual, giving you more profit overall. Finally, if you offer limited time deals on a regular basis, you will most likely keep your customers coming back to check out the latest deal, resulting in more business from your past customers as well as new customers.
Focus on How Customers Will Benefit
Rather than focusing on the key features your company has to offer, or how your credentials make you qualified for the products/services you offer, a better approach is to focus on how customers themselves will benefit from your products/services. The difference between a feature and a benefit is that features are the characteristics that describe your products/services, whereas benefits are the positive outcomes of customers using your products/services. For example, if your company sold portable compact barbeques, a feature of the barbeques could be that they have a handle to carry them with, and the benefit of that feature would be that customers will be able to take the barbeques more places because of the easy transport.
Identify What Makes Your Business Different From Your Competitors
In such a saturated business market, it may be difficult to compete with companies that are very similar to your own. In order to drive more business to your products and services, you should focus on demonstrating to your audience how your company is different from your competitors, and how customers will benefit from your company’s unique qualities. For example, if your company was a wedding dress store, you could set yourself apart from other wedding dress stores by offering to help brides find the perfect shoes and accessories for their dresses at a great price.
Chances are, there is something unique and compelling about your company that you may not have even realized yet, so once you figure out what that thing is, make sure that you’re telling your customers about it in any way you can.
Give Samples or Discounts for First-Time Customers
When a customer is interested in trying out a new product or service, often they may be reluctant to take the plunge because they’ve never used the product or service, and are afraid that it won’t be money well spent. To avoid this dilemma, you could offer a free sample or trial of your product or service. This gives customers a way to experience your product or service risk-free, and gives you the chance to reel in more customers. If you can’t afford to give away products or services for free, you could offer a great deal to first-time customers, such as buy one get one free, or 50% off the customer’s first service.
Offer Bundled Products/Services for a Big Discount
Customers love getting a lot of value for their money, and it’s easier to convince customers that your products and services are worth the money if you have an offer they can’t refuse. If you offer a big discount for bundled products or services, there is a good chance that you’ll be able to sell more of those products/services as a package than by selling them individually. Although you are offering those things at a lower price, you are most likely making more money overall because you’re selling more quantity. On top of that, you may be getting more potential customers to commit to buying your products/services, and those customers might just come back for more business later.
All of the strategies in this article can be put into effect on your company’s website, your social media accounts, by word of mouth, or by handing out marketing materials that convey the information. If you would like help putting the above marketing strategies into effect, feel free to contact us, and we can help you get the ball rolling.
