Category: Sales

In the Romance Novel industry,
we all hear about the Cinderella stories.
XXX was featured on Oprah
and sold a gazillion copies
of her first book.
YYY was discovered by a big blog
and she made the New York Times Bestseller List
with her first book.

So when we talk about promo,
promo that is doable for everyone,
someone always pushes back
and says something like
‘You’ll only sell 5 books
during your all day Facebook party.
Don’t waste your time.’
or
‘Promoting in groups
will only increase your sales
by 2 or 3 books a day.
Don’t bother.’

Yes, compared to an appearance
on Oprah,
it DOES seem insignificant
but
compared to NO sales,
2 books sold IS a big deal.

I would have been thrilled
with 2 books sold a day
with my first releases.

Most small businesses
start with small sales
and then build.
Embrace these first sales.

I usually have my books
available for pre-order
for a couple of months
before the release date.

There’s quite a bit
of discussion in the industry
about whether or not
a writer/publisher should offer pre-orders.

IMHO… it comes down
to whether or not
the writer/publisher can sell pre-orders.

Pre-orders are delayed gratification
which is challenging for everyone.
There has to be a ‘reward’ to offset that.

In my case,
my stories usually have a twist.
One of my readers’ greatest fears
is hearing about that twist
before she has read the story.

So she ‘pays the price’
and pre-orders the story.

Seth Godin
shares

“If you’re trying
to persuade someone
to make an investment,
buy some insurance
or support a new plan,
please consider that
human beings are terrible
at buying these things.

What we’re good at is ‘now.’

Right now.

When we buy a stake in the future,
what we’re actually buying is
how it makes us feel today.”

If you’re selling the future,
you have to offer something
to offset that advanced payment.

When I craft a romance novel,
I have certain tricks
I use to ensure
readers focus on
what I want them to focus on.

I’ll isolate the sentence
or
word
on a separate line.
I might have a one word sentence.
I might put the word in italics.

This thinking applies
to presentations also.

Danielle Dy Buncio,
the CEO for VIATechnik,
shares

“At the end of the day,
the audience is only going
to remember
one or two things
from your presentation,
if you are lucky
enough to be memorable at all.

I try to make sure that
I am the one deciding
what they will remember.
So I think about
what I want
these key take-aways to be,
and structure my talk around that.”

Control what your prospects
focus on.

A Cover Artist recently posted
on social media
about a prospective client’s bio.
The client mentioned
in that bio
that she was a bestselling writer.
The cover artist mocked her
for that claim,
pointing out
that she’s never heard
of the writer.

I once attended an award ceremony
for Stephen King,
one of the best known
writers alive.
The ticket price for the ceremony
was extremely high.
At least five people at that event
asked me what Stephen King did.

That the cover artist
doesn’t know a big name
in her industry
doesn’t mean the writer isn’t a big name.
It means the cover artist is ignorant.

Confessing to that ignorance
won’t win the cover artist business.
Mocking that prospect
makes the cover artist look like a fool.

I read her post
and immediately deleted her
from my list of possible cover artists.

Know your prospects.
If you don’t know them,
at the very least,
don’t question their credentials
in public.

You’re sitting down
to negotiate a sale.
Who makes the offer first?

Ideally,
you should.

Bruna Martinuzzi,
Founder of
Clarion Enterprises Ltd,
shares

“There’s widespread agreement
among many negotiation experts
that it’s advantageous
to make the first offer.

This taps into the power of anchoring.

There’s generally an inclination
not to “bargain” too far away
from the anchor
established by the opening offer.”

Make the first offer.

Emotion plays a role
in almost everyone’s
decision-making process.

Some decisions
are more emotion-driven
than others.

That makes analyzing them
more challenging.
We can’t look at cost savings
or increase in sales
or brand reach
for these decisions.
We can’t apply logic to them.

We have to look at
the emotional payoff.
For example,
if you voted for XXX
because you liked him,
do you still like him
after he’s elected?
Do you like him more
or less?
If you like him less,
was electing him
a bad decision
or
is it still a good decision?

It is all subjective.
If you’ve made an emotional decision,
only YOU can decide
if YOU made the right one.
No polls or experts
can decide that.

Evaluate the success
of an emotion-based decision
on the resulting emotion.

Almost every saleswoman
has been or will be
called pushy.

Seth Godin
shares

“We call someone pushy
when they are trying harder
for forward motion
than we are.

We call them pushy
when they have more at stake,
or more to gain,
than we think we do.”

Pushy is subjective.
What I think is pushy,
another person wouldn’t consider pushy.
For some people,
ANY action that encroaches
on their personal bubble
is being ‘pushy.’

If you are in sales
or marketing
or, heck, want anything in life,
you WILL be called pushy.

Find peace with this.
Figure out a response.
(My favorite is
“YES, I do want this.”)
Don’t let this label stop you.

Yesterday,
we talked about
how people are selfish.
They go into deals,
even business deals,
with personal agendas.

The thing is…
unless there’s huge personal incentive
to deviate from these agendas,
they won’t budge on them.
Ever.

People are unlikely
to take action
that will personally harm them
physically, financially, emotionally.

Donald Trump,
for example,
will never increase his own taxes.
He has been fairly open
with his investments
and he won’t take actions
to harm them.
He might be unpredictable
in other ways
but he will be predictable
in that.

When you’re building your business,
ensure that either
your business helps your associates
achieve their personal agendas
or
you give them
sufficient personal incentives
to craft a new personal agenda.

I’m selfish.
Most people are
the same way.

I might do things
that benefit others,
like giving to charity,
but that’s
because giving to charity
makes me feel good.

When I get into
any business relationship,
any partnership,
any selling situation,
the first thing
I try to figure out
is why the other person
would be interested
in that relationship/product/service.
What does that person
personally want?

She might be buying
for her company,
might want the best product
at the cheapest price
or the best service
or the most innovative product,
but
she has a personal agenda also.

Maybe she wants to look
like a cut throat negotiator.
Maybe she wants to land
a huge deal
to impress her boss.
Maybe she wants to delegate
her workload
so she can focus
on a side project.

Once I figure out
what she personally wants,
I can predict her actions.
I can better frame
my offer to make her happy.
I know what she’ll do.

Figure out
what the other person
personally wants.

Like listens to like.
Like buys from like.
That’s why it is great
to have diversity on our sales teams.

Kevin Munger
used bots to study
how profile pics/names/posts
can influence other people’s behavior,
in this case,
racist tweets.
He shares

“I found that it is possible
to cause people
to use less harassing language.
This change seems to be most likely
when both individuals
share a social identity.
Unsurprisingly,
high status people are also more likely
to cause a change.

Many people are already engaged
in sanctioning bad behavior online,
but they sometimes do so in a way
that can backfire.
If people call out bad behavior
in a way that emphasizes
the social distance between themselves
and the person they’re calling out,
my research suggests
that the sanctioning is
less likely to be effective.”

Emphasize how you’re the same
as your customers,
not how different you are.