Selling should become like second nature to every enterprise or entrepreneur. Next to developing a solution for the market, is to effectively sell it to the end users.

The money in business isn’t in your product or service; it’s in the selling of your product or service. As we already established, businesses fail if their solutions are not sold quickly and in enough volume to their target market. What are you giving the market that would make them pay you happily?

4. Know your buyer’s psychology

Understanding your buyer’s psychology can be beneficial for effective sales. While it is not possible to directly read someone’s mind, you can gain insights into his or her inner make-up and sentiments, preferences, and interests. When you know your buyer’s decision-making processes and buying triggers, selling your solution to him or her becomes fun.

You should recognize the emotional factors that influence buying decisions, and align your sales messages to resonate with their emotions. Are they looking for a solution to a problem? Are they trying to improve their life in some way, or what?

A deeper insight into the buyer’s psychology shows that (s)he would rather pay more and make the right decision than pay less and make a mistake. When you understand what motivates your buyer, positioning your product to meet that aspiration will make you to sell-out.

5. Discover unspoken objections

Most sales are lost over unspoken objections. If people don’t buy from you, it’s about something you didn’t uncover, and never about the price of your product. Price is actually at the bottom of the list of reasons why people don’t buy.

Sadly, most salespeople are concerned about making sales but fail to take the time to listen to the prospect or find out what that person is looking for by what (s)he is not looking for. When the buyer objects to buying from you in any way, it could be what you are offering him or her does meet their expectation at that time.

Identify gaps in the areas where you can differentiate yourself by addressing objected concerns. Once you understand your buyers, you can start to tailor your sales messages to appeal to them, and hence create better products or services that meet and exceed their expectations.

6. Show interest in them

Selling is a process, and one of the critical elements in the process is to find out what interests your target customer. Take interest in your prospective buyer and not just be interested in selling to him or her. You find out who the buyer is, what (s)he wants, and why (s)he wants it.

If you are not sure what your customers’ problems are, ask them. You wouldn’t know what they want until you ask them. Ask a lot of intelligent questions that will make you understand the customers’ problems, and how your solution can address that.

The customers hardly hide their pains and concerns. It’s just that those they are talking to don’t care enough or aren’t paying attention. David L. Rogers said, ‘To cultivate the customer’s point of view, a business needs to institutionalize listening to its customers, particularly lead users. By taking a truly customer-centric attitude, a business can stay ahead of the curve of change.’

Until you demonstrate to the prospective buyer that your solution is what (s)he has been searching for, it’ll be difficult to have them part with their money. 

…to be continued

About the Author:

Tony Ajah is a Business Growth Strategist, and the author of BUSINESS SENSE, and ON BECOMING AN ENTREPRENEUR. He maintains a personal blog, where he shares proven business ideas and principlesfor SMEs.

It’s been said that even God and the Devil need good salespeople. Selling is the single most important job of any business, and it trumps every other thing.

Here is a fact: businesses fail fast because their ideas weren’t sold quickly enough and in quantities great enough to the right market. In this article, we will look at proven ways you can sell your products and services to those who need them.

1. Define your sales ‘why’

The ‘why’ of any salesperson is critical to confronting his or her market and making sales that create an impact. Your sales ‘why’ is the source of motivation that compels you for a higher purpose in your sales experience.

This ‘why’ will define what you do, and how you do it in achieving your sales goals and targets. Like someone said, ‘When you want to make your “why” so big that your “how” becomes easy.’ How big is your sales why?

The size of your ‘why’ has a way of affecting the level of your commitment to whatever solution that you are selling.

And as you know, every success in sales requires unwavering commitment from the salesperson. So, your line of business is not the problem but defining your ‘why’, and staying committed to selling the solution the right way. When the ‘why’ is big and motivating enough, your drive to make that sales happen becomes irresistible.

2. Believe in your solution

If you desire to do well in business, you must be prepared to sell the solution that you unapologetically believed in. It’s difficult to sell any product or service that you don’t truly believe in. You must first believe in your solution if you want others to believe in it too.

Believing in your offering means that you have wholly bought into the product yourself. You will fail at selling to someone else any solution until you are completely sold. If not for any reason, you should believe in it because you know that your solution will better the life of whoever it was designed for.

In sales, when the product or service you believe in meets the right market (those that need it), selling becomes fun. Your prospect is never the problem but you. If your product or service is not selling well, you are most likely the ultimate barrier to making that sale. To the degree that you believe in your product, you will take action. And to the degree that you take action, you will be successful in selling others.

3. Understand your customers’ needs

People don’t buy from you because they understand what you sell—they buy from you because they feel understood. It’s instructive to carefully research what your target market wants and is willing to buy.

The problem with sales most times is taking a solution that does not meet the needs of your target market and you still expect them to buy. That is like trying to squeeze water from a rock. But the right product to the right audience is like selling a glass of water to someone dying of thirst in the Sahara Desert.

All that matters is what your customers care about. You can’t sell to the people what they don’t want or need. If you focus on what your solution offers the market, and how it will meet their needs, you will succeed in the selling business. But when your focus is just on the customer’s money alone, you will fail.

…to be continued

About the author

Tony Ajah is a Business Growth Strategist, and the author of BUSINESS SENSE, and ON BECOMING AN ENTREPRENEUR. He maintains a personal blog, where he shares proven business ideas and principles for SMEs.