Selling makes the world go round…

Way too often I run across people who have concluded that sales is a nasty word, and sales people are the bottom feeders of society.

They may have reached this conclusion on their own when door to door sales people show up at their home, or maybe when buying a car they can’t stand the pressure the sales person and the sales manager apply during the process…and I don’t blame them…these are the worst examples of the sales process.

I watch people who have that view create websites, and they are financial disasters from the very beginning.

Here are some of the signs of a website that reflects a fatal aversion to sales:

1) No email capture

They do not provide a signup form where a person who is interested in the topic can get more information.

They don’t provide a series of follow up messages or send out newsletters giving people more information about the subject, or informing them they can buy their product or service to achieve their desired outcomes.

2) No listed benefits

A mistake I’ve made and seen many others do, is not listing the benefits for the product or service.

As a recovering engineer, I felt that just listing the features was enough. People could easily spot the benefits…was my thinking.

I was wrong. People don’t visit a website, then sit down and think of all of the benefits they would get from purchasing the product that had 21 features listed.

Instead, they are either a bit lazy, or don’t have the background to understand the benefits. You need to be specific as to what exactly they will gain by getting your product.

3) No sense of urgency

Many create sites where they hope to sell something, but they don’t put a sense of urgency. It is part of that not wanting to push their product on someone.

What is that visitor likely to do the instant they leave your site? Will they come back…very unlikely.

There are a number of ways to create a sense of urgency.

We’ve all seen the “limited time offer” where if you don’t buy in three days, the “price will increase” or “it will be taken off the market”.

The one time offer is popular as well, where you are given only one chance to get something, and if you come back later the offer will no longer be available.

The “limited quantity” offer is also used.

An example of that is: “Only 323 damaged cases are left, so you can get the special hail damaged version only if you are one of the 323 next buyers.”

One of the best techniques is to paint the benefits so clearly, they won’t be able to sleep that night without getting it, because they will have such a vivid image of what it will do for them. They won't want to wait another day without those benefits in their lives.

4) No call to action

Some websites have no button or phone number requesting people buy or get more information. I’ve heard reasons from: “it doesn’t fit our image” to “I don’t want to seem desperate” to “I just feel bad asking people to buy.”

The best answer I’ve heard came from popular author Larry Winget, years ago, while I was attending a presentation he gave. He was speaking to a bunch of us who were members of the National Speakers Association. He said that we should have “stuff” to sell people that attend our speeches. Several in the audience had different variations of the objection: “I don’t want to cheapen myself by asking them to buy something from me.”

His response, which came so fast my head began to spin, was this: If what you are saying has any value, you owe it to your audience to offer them something to further advance their understanding and development of your topic.

If what you say has no value, then don’t bother, but if you have quality content and helpful advice, then you must provide multiple different media products so they can learn more and improve their lives and their businesses. Have a book, a downloadable MP3, and a video. This will appeal to the three dominant learning styles: visual, auditory and tactile.

What should you do?

If what you have is truly valuable, life changing, and worthwhile, then you need to get better at selling, so you can benefit those who want or need it.

Think back to all of the sites you’ve visited; do you remember anything from the sites you didn’t buy something from? Maybe. But it is easy to forget about it.

When you buy something, print it out and keep it next to your desk. Not only are you going to go through it, you will take action and improve your life and your business.

Be sure to become great at that process…otherwise all of the great things you know and the great things you’ve created will have been wasted, since you weren’t able to persuade others to buy a good product from you that will help them out.

- Dan