Category: Sales

An object in motion
tends to stay in motion.

The issue is…
sales aren’t objects.
Having huge sales today
doesn’t guarantee huge sales tomorrow.

Seth Godin
shares

“Authors fall into this trap
over and over again.
They believe that a big launch,
the huge push upfront,
the bending of the media
in their favor (at any cost)
is the way to ensure that
weeks two and three and eleven
will continue to show solid growth.”

What big sales today
DOES help with
is providing a base
for word of mouth to happen.

I know that if I have X sales
on release day
and those X readers read my story
and love my story,
they’ll talk about it.
Sales tomorrow will increase.

Sales might not drive future sales
but, if the product/service is great,
it WILL drive word of mouth,
which will, in turn,
drive future sales.

The unionized workers for Canada Post
are threatening customers
with service disruptions.

They’ve already taken unethical action
by returning mail due to insufficient funds
(even though this mail
DID have sufficient funds),
slowing delivery,
and outright losing mail.

Threatening customers worked
when there was no competition.
Now that bills can be paid online
and packages can be delivered
via FedEx or UPS or other companies,
all these threats do
is drive away customers.
Forever.

But-but-but you’d never threaten customers.
I suspect you have… in some way.

I don’t earn enough from one genre of fiction
to continue writing in it.
I casually mentioned that to a reader.
She viewed it as a threat,
that if she didn’t help promote my books
and increase sales,
I’d stop writing the stories she loved.
She helped promote my stories for a while,
found out how hard increasing sales was,
and now she reads a more successful writer’s stories.

Think twice
before threatening customers.
You’re not the only game in town.

Most of the cost
of a book
comes from producing the story,
not from printing it.
Yet almost every reader
expects to spend quite a bit less
when she buys in eBook,
rather than in print,
format.

This is often true
with other online businesses also.

Maniraj Singh Juneja,
in the May/June 2016
The Costco Connection,
shares

“Since you’re on the Internet,
customers expect you
to save on the cost
of renting a physical storefront
and pass on that benefit to them.
Moreover, pricing on the Internet
is very transparent,
so you have to sell
at the lowest margins possible.”

One of the ways to counter this
is, of course, to have a unique product.

But don’t expect
cost savings associated with online only
to be pure profit.
Customers will expect a discount.

Businesses are rarely
overnight successes.

Most businesses grow slowly,
adding a couple customers
a month or a week or a day.

Seth Godin
shares

“Facebook and other legendary companies
didn’t get that way all at once,
and neither will you.

We can definitely spend time
worrying about/building the tsunami,
but it’s the drip, drip, drip
that will change everything
in the long run.”

Focus on landing the next customer.

I have rarely, if ever,
made a sale
on the first try.
If I didn’t try again,
I’d never have any sales.

Monika Götzmann
shares

“one of the most harmful sales habits
is a tendency to give up too early.

If a sales person does not receive
a response to their initial outreach,
rather than calling it a day,
it often pays off to be persistent.
In fact,
some experts recommend
that you should make
at least five different outreach attempts
unless the person asks you to stop.”

In sales,
one ‘no’ doesn’t mean stop.
It means try again.

I’ve created an ebook series
known for its plot twists.
Readers pre-order
their copies of the books
because they want to be first,
the first to have the books,
the first to read them,
the first to know.

Usually I have these books
available for pre-order
for two months before the release.
This ensures these readers hear
about the release in time
so they all can read it
that first day.

With this latest release,
one of the booksellers (Apple)
decided to release it a month early.
I had a decision to make
— I could pull it from this bookseller
(but X number of readers already had their copies)
or
I could release it everywhere early.
Releasing it everywhere early
will likely result in lower overall sales
(due to Amazon’s algorithms),
less profit in a business with very little profit.

I released it early.

Why?
Because I made a promise
to my pre-order customers
that they would read this story first.
I had to do what was right
for these customers.

The thing is…
even if my customers don’t care
about this
(though I suspect they do care – very much so),
I do.
I’m proud of myself for making this decision.
I feel happier about my business,
about my products,
about my customers.

This is one of the reasons
we should do right by our customers
because WE know it’s the right thing to do.

The default excuse
for almost every person
for not buying a product
is price.

They can’t afford it
or it is too expensive.

That’s usually bullsh*t.
Folks will happily pay
for a $5 coffee.
Odds are
they can afford your product.

What they truly mean to say
is your product isn’t worth the price.

I have one book series
that is priced at $2.99 per book.
I have another book series
that is priced at 99 cents per book.

The $2.99 book series
outsells the lower priced one
10 to 1
yet I receive much more complaints
about pricing
from the lower priced series customers.

It isn’t about price.
It is about perceived value.

If you’re receiving complaints about price,
consider increasing the perceived value
of your product.

We talked yesterday
about why we should qualify prospects.
I received emails
asking how to do this.

Usually, we apply friction.
If we want to discourage
folks who aren’t serious
or who are looking for freebies,
we give them a task to do
(for example, a survey to fill out)
or charge them something
(buy X to get the free gift).

I simply don’t market to the prospects
I don’t want.
I need paying customers.
I don’t market my books around pricing.
I talk about how customers
will want to read my books
as soon as they release
or they’ll risk hearing spoilers.
I give exclusive free stories
to newsletter subscribers only.
They’re part of a club,
a club with members who BUY books.

You’d think that would discourage readers
from trying my books.
It does the opposite.

You don’t want every customer.
You want the RIGHT customer.
Don’t be afraid to qualify prospects.

One of the most powerful things
I’ve recently done
with my writing business
is realize that some readers (prospects)
will never be my readers (customers).
And that I don’t want them
to be my readers (customers).

Once I realized that,
I could focus on the readers (prospects)
I DID want,
ensuring I made them happy.

Mark Henricks
shares

“Atlanta-based marketing coach
Melissa Galt
claims one of her best moves
in her previous career
as an interior designer
was to start strictly qualifying prospects
before taking them on.
“My workload dropped in half
and my income doubled
over the course of nine months,”
Galt says.”

Qualify your prospects.

My agent
(the salesperson
for my books)
told me she’d follow up
with me
by the end of the month
regarding a manuscript
she was shopping around.

I waited a few days
and then I contacted her.
Not only
had she forgotten
about following up with me
but she had also forgotten
about following up with publishers
(my customers).

A salesperson who doesn’t follow up
is unlikely to close deals.

This is an easy thing
to test for
during interviews.
Simply give candidates
information to retrieve for you.
If they follow up,
move them to the next level.
If they don’t,
discard them as candidates.

Great salespeople follow up.