How to convince a customer to patronize your products?
Convincing a customer to buy from you is an art. Once any salesperson learns that, sales come easy. Can you scientifically get better at an art? To some extent, yes, but really, you get better through experience, and that takes a lot of the pressure off when you’re still new to selling. It’s going to be tough at first, but as you get experience and learn how your audience thinks, you’ll get better and better results. Based on my experience in cold calling and sales, I would like to give you some tips with which you can convince more customers to take a chance on your products or services.
1) Be an effective communicator:
Communication skills are pivotal in sales. Don’t worry if you are self-conscious about your communication. These skills develop over time by experience, guidance from experts, and self-learning from various online and offline resources. Public, one-on-one speaking is key. With proper facial expressions, hand gestures, voice pitch adjustments, etc. a salesperson can make better connections with customers. You want to come across as calm and confident, but not authoritative. You’ll also need to be aware of the main expectations of customers in your niche. For instance, a customer in the health and fitness niche is going to want a lot of assurance that a product is safe and approved by authorities like the FDA. A customer of fashion accessories might be concerned about how timely and hip a product is, and possibly which celebrities are associated with it.
2) Clearly present the USP of your product:
Every business or product has a unique selling point. If you have not already identified that, you’ll need to work on your branding and do some research on your competitors. In short, be as clear to the customer as you can about your USP. Make sure they understand it, without pushing too hard. Customer education is really important in some niches, and your customers may need to be taught the difference between your product and others, in the process of selling them on its general value.
3) Inclusion of social proof:
Everyone’s buying decisions are influenced by other people. For that, social proofing is a strong point. The inclusion of social proof in communication with the customer, like mentioning a celebrity or a famous person using the same product, raises the chances of customers to get easily convinced, as long as there is congruity between the social proof and the customer. It doesn’t have to be celebrities, either. For instance, try to include stories of other ordinary people who are happy after using that product. Testimonials work.
4) Influence through emotions:
Understand and value the emotions of a customer when he/she is to make a purchase. What problems do they have, questions they need to be answered, etc. that your product will definitely solve or answer? Try to encourage your customer to talk about these things, gracefully. This helps you form a better emotional connection with the customer, which leads to a better turnover for sales.
5) Handle the five most common objections of customers in sales: I’ve found that there are five common objections that customers usually have whenever a salesperson approaches them for selling a product or service, universal to all niches and business types. Discussing all those objections here can make this long as I want you to understand those in detail. If you are interested, you can read my post: 5 Deep-Seated Customer Doubts That Kill Your Sales (And How to Erase Them), which discusses those objections and their solutions.
Depending on the product, I can give more specific tips. By implementing the above tips with more research, anyone can convince more customers to buy. Please feel free to reply to me if you need more information on any of the points discussed in this answer or the post.
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Good Luck!
Thanks,
Cleo