5 Hacks To Sell Anything, Anywhere, Anytime.

1. Forget the psychology of selling — what you don’t see you don’t buy, what you don’t hear you don’t have interest in, and what you do taste, you can buy more of it! The first iron law of selling is to bring anything you sell to your customer (prospect). Let them know that you exist in the market and you have something to offer.

Create a hype around your next project, generate contents and narrative towards your line of service and ensure that those you have in mind, your minimum viable market are aware that the solutions to their problem exist — which they know, because your competition exist, but do they know you have an offer too?

I started with this because I have seen many marketers read hundreds of books, saw people recommend that the first thing you do whenever you are lucky to man a marketing unit is to buy bundles of marketing books for themselves and their teams.

Let’s ask ourselves the glaring questions: Is that the first step to selling? If you want hot water — boil water! Do not waste your time learning about the brand of kettle that doesn’t rust after a year when used to boil water continuously… after you have had a hot bath, and a hot coffee you might worry about the chemical components that make the water hot — the catalyst and the anti-catalyst. Right now, all you need is “water” which is “hot” In sales, the same principles work, and you need to bring your goals into mind — and universally is it to sell. Do not allow anyone to make you feel ashamed of that fact! You are in business to make sales! You may have other goals for your business but

the root idea for a “for-profit agency is to: create a product or service (hell, yeah, it should meet market want or need, it is not an iron law though), market the product or service, make sales and turn in profit to pay all the stakeholders — you first!

Let them say what they have to say, that you have a poor customer service — of which you wouldn’t and shouldn’t, let them say you are in business for selfish reasons — opinions soon shifts after few philanthropic moves. That you are in business to rat out your competition — nobody likes competition before. You have one goal that push you out on a daily basis, a commandment for you — Thou shall /must make sales!

2. Take your Market Strategy Drawing Table out of Your Fancy Office: When people have a product idea in mind, the next thing they think about is — a big fancy office, spacious, ergonomic, state-of-the-art fixtures and fitting, smart offices and the likes — even tech companies, which have the luxury of the internet have this thinking too. When I hear these kind of statements or see this kind of thought pattern. I sense a fish having dreams of flying one day — that isn’t a dream but a nightmare! Before you start thinking that your prospect are wishing to have to do business with you in smart offices, understand that if your so-called office does not have what the customer so wish — he is ready to take his money to the ghetto to find that company that will provide him the utility he wants!

When you are drawing up a market penetrating strategy, you should be considering the outside and not the inside, in other words, your customers and not yourself, you should be where they are — in their minds.

That’s the best place to pitch your tent. What is your prospect thinking right now, where is he planning to go (that shows you where to place your ad). Isn’t it?

Map out your ideal prospect’s life and place yourself where you want to be seen — do you want to be seen at his happiest moments or his worst moments?

We as humans, all need to be serviced at this two critical points in life and we listen to people that are ready to share with us our grief or our happiness, and yes, we remember those who were there with us — and become “loyal” clients and customers. Banks send people birthday wishes. Why? They want the customer to feel a sense of belonging and a sense of we are keeping track of your life’s progress… I have seen many marketers pile up hundreds of demographic data that they don’t use. What’s the need of picking a customer data that you won’t use proactively — to me, that is a waste of your time and money that was apportioned towards that process. Use data wisely!

3. There will always be alternatives in a large market — you be the alternative: I am really hoping that customers could threaten to do business with you when they are before their “chosen clients”. That they could prefer/consider your service on the conditions that if those who are currently servicing them make a wrong move or treat them poorly, they are jumping on the next train to your business door step. That’s really competition — and a stiff one that keeps everyone on their toes. I also consider this as another kind of positioning in the market — the state of alternatives.

The fact of life is when a complaining customer mentions an alternative. He is already gone, we are only viewing his comet dust.

The end of servicing that customer is already at hand. If only you would provide a little discount as minute as 0.000001%, the customer would be ready to pally with you. Just take for an analogy, a woman wants a joy ride and her fiancé arranges for a canoe- half way into the water, the woman is fearful and very displeased with the current and the moving tides. What happens when a rich dude flashes by with his double engine, comfy super boat, and waves at the woman — you bet it, she’d leave the rickety to the rickety. Don’t blame her — she wanted a joy ride! So be rightly positioned to be the better alternative in the market, strive at product differentiation and upgrades and add-ons that actually make your goods and services more tasty. If your competitor is not providing customization — provide it! Make it tempting for prospect to feel they are really missing out by doing business with another person in the market other than you.

4. Good are in classes, Markets are in phases and are different: You know when you want to sell sand in a desert, your ads have to be furiously aggressive. But a customer may not be picky when it is an essential good/service and your organization seemed to be the only business available to offer that good/service — take a drowning person, he doesn’t get the chance to choose the company that provide lifeguard services? He just want out of the water! After he is out, then he might chastise his friends for choosing the company he had sworn never to have anything to do with them. But at critical outlook — ground zero, the turnover service for essential good or service will sell faster than non-essential service ceteris paribus. If there is a fair throw of die and you have the choice to pick the kind of good/service you want to offer to the market, you have a low budget for creating endless marketing documents and swipe files, you are rather impatient to building a new narrative…then pipe in for the essential service sector. Prospects are choosy by nature — you are too. How many marketing books did you consider before choosing this one? Hundred?

5. The thing in marketing is that: they play us, the game, we play others…it is always a two-sided thing. Consider yourself when someone bring a product to you. You start thinking hundreds of thought in few seconds — question that always begin with who, why and what?

a. Why should I buy from you?

b. Why should I buy this product?

c. Why is this product/service better than that my friend recommended to me?

d. Why should I buy it at this time?

e. Why does this person think I am interested in the product?

f. What has he learned about me?

g. Who referred this person to me?

h. Who am I buying this for?

i. What can this product/service do?

j. What do I have to gain when I start using this product or services?

Marketing pitches out to answer all these questions outlined above can do well to break through our defenses. But in a “what is good for the goose is good for the gander scenario”. I have seen people who sell themselves, get annoyed with sales people, why shouldn’t karma speak? If you want your prospect to be patient with you, try as much as be patient with someone who has identified you as a prospect too — even if it is your competition. You can always use the option to build a reverse psychology marketing pitch… something that seem to fit into your customers very questions…that helps you tick their checklist as you pitch.

Note that, if you have just one question unanswered in your prospect’s mind — you are sure going to lose the sale. It’s that bad. The simple and strategic advice here is: sales people should be mind readers, and you should be able to read your prospect mind, before you pitch and after you pitch. Before you write your ads and after you write your ads.

The instance for mind reading your prospect in the “after stage” is to learn about those things that stop as an objection in their mind against a persuasive sales message. Every objection is the root strand for a rejection.

Objections are what fuels the “NO.” Kill them!

To Learn more about the strategies, 101 of them that you can use to change your sales game Take my Viral Sales Course here: https://selar.co/8k79

Emmanuel Odekunle