Marketing is Great But You Still Need To Learn How To Sell
When it comes to online marketing, all it does is generate attention to your business from people that are interested in buying a specific product or service. That’s amazing, but it's only half the battle. Once the customer is in front of you, you still need to know and master the art of sales in order to convert that customer from the browser into a closed deal.
Online marketing simply amplifies your business; if you have an amazing business and a fantastic company culture, online marketing is going to amplify that.
If you have terrible products or services and your staff have no skill, well then online marketing is going to be useless for you. Mastering sales and people psychology should be a top priority for any business. You need to master the ability to understand customer needs and be a good communicator and a great listener. These skills are not taught in school; you will need to self-educate yourself by reading great books, taking high-end sales training courses and immerse yourself in this skill set.
We work with a lot of clients in our digital marketing agency, and we see just how much usage some of our clients are able to get out of our marketing strategies, simply because they are great salesman who can close deals consistently and at a high level. Obviously, not everyone is going to buy from you, but you want to have the ability to close a majority of the people that come into your business.
All we can do as marketers is to bring the right customer in front of you; if you are a great salesman, you will be able to close very easily and start dominating your market.
If you want to know how good of a salesperson you are, just ask yourself this question, out of 10clients you meet with, what is your closing rate? Anything 60% or above is considered pretty good. If it's below 60%, you might want to get training on how to sell.
Over the years from working with several companies, a few of our clients that have grown into successful brands in their respective niche have found it easier and easier to convert leads into sales as they became trusted brands in their local market. This means as their portfolio grew and their reviews increased and outcompete against all their competitors, along with the help of our digital marketing.
They were able to close deals faster and faster as a result of this combined effort. In other words, the better your marketing & branding is, the less “sales” you have to do. However, in order to operate at a high level, you still want to master how to sell your products and services. Every deal you don’t close is a loss of time, advertising budget and energy.
Every time you walk out of a meeting that you didn’t close, don’t be upset about it, be proactive and start asking yourself intelligent questions like, what could I have done better? What areas are weak in my presentation? Did I show the value in my pitch, did I figure out and present an accurate solution to the customer's problem etc.
Start taking the art of sales more seriously inside your organization, train and become a master at this one skill and watch your company skyrocket through the roof. Let us know your thoughts in the comment section. What’s the best sales technique you've used so far?