Sell Anything to Anyone

When you’re an entrepreneur, quit a lot of your life, whether you realize it or not, involves selling. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a job hunter,  a blogger, and online marketer, a bricks and mortar shop owner or someone who designs websites for people, you are a seller first and foremost and without selling you would not get very far in the world of business at all.
Sadly, most of us aren’t blessed with the gene that makes us natural sellers – we couldn’t simply point at any old piece of junk and have people handing us tens of dollars over for it – we have to work for it. The good news is, it is possible to lean how to sell anything to anyone if you really want it (and you should really want it if you want to be successful). How? By doing the following:
Do Your Research
If you want to be able to sell anything, from speed bumps to speed cars, you need to not only know the product inside out – even when it seems like there isn’t much to know about a particular product or service – but you also need to know who your customers, audience or whoever else you’re selling to are; what makes them tick and how you can win them over.
Of course, you also need to really understand your competition, so that you can take what works from them and make it even better using all of the other knowledge -like the stuff above- that you’ve acquired. If you don’t have one eye on the competition, then you’re always going to be on the backfoot, so make this a priority, especially when your business is new.
This is obviously a lot of stuff, so it will take time to do your homework and acquire all of this knowledge, but it is a completely necessary step if you want to be able to sell anything to anyone and build a business more successful than any other. You want that, right?
Be a Good Listener
Of course, part of doing your research will involve listening to customers and clients, letting suppliers explain things to you and even fielding complaints from those who have found your services wanting and this is a very important thing. You see, people like people who listen more than they talk. So if you can truly listen to the things people involved with your business are telling you, and do so without interrupting them, to the point that they truly think you are engaged (because you are) you will come off as a much nicer, more interesting person (without even saying a word) and this will bode well for your ability to sell anything.
Connect Authentically
If you’re a car owner, chances are you’ve had at least one interaction with a slimy salesman who says all the right things – complimenting you on your dress, asking about your kids and telling you that he knows you’re a man or woman of taste – and chances are you’ve seen right through him. You know he’s spinning you a line so that he can sell you a substandard vehicle at an inflated price. Did you buy from him? I bet you didn’t. What’s the point of this? You don’t want to be like him.
If you want to be able to sell fur to a rabbit, you need to genuinely connect with your customers. You don’t need to soft-soap them or offer false compliments – you need to find an area where you can genuinely connect and tap into that. What’s more, you need to be upfront with them about who you are and what your product is. If you aren’t willing to address their concerns and talk them through every aspect of the product or service you’re offering, you need to be prepared to lose their sales. It’s always better to be genuine when you’re looking to sell something, anything to anyone – trust me.
Be on Their Side
Very much in a similar vein, as an entrepreneur you should always be on your client’s side. You might be sitting on a different side of the desk from them, and you might desperately want to sell them something, but if you are able to empathize with them and see things playing out from their point of view, you will be better able to tap into their mindset, work out what exactly it is they want from you and then do your best to give it to them.
That’s where so many people trying to sell things go so wrong – they only ever see the sale process from their own point of view – they forget that their business is there to serve the needs of others – and that’s when they start using tactics that put customers off, such as going for the hard sell, lying or even downright bullying clients into submission. This might make them a few more sales initially. But word will soon get around, and they will see their customer numbers fall pretty quickly.
If customers can see that you are working with them, rather than just trying to make them part with their money; if they can see that you’re doing your best to help them, then they will generally feel much more comfortable buying from you than they might otherwise. That’s because it feels more like a partnership than a business/customer interaction and that’s how ideally, it should be.
Summary
Some of these ideas might seem like they’re asking you to be soft and let the customer walk all over you, but that really is not the case. They are more about making interactions between businesses and customers more even so that everyone has their own agency and a greater degree of mutual respect can be allowed to flourish. When this happens, not only are you able to sell pretty much anything to anyone, but you are much more likely to build up a set of loyal repeat customers, which are the lifeblood of any small business. Give them a try and see for yourself, but remember, they’ll only work if you’re genuine!