Sales and marketing are the gaps between production as a business and distribution to where it is needed. It is a tool to serve your customers what they need. Sometimes, marketing strategies would require you to create a need, making your prospective customers know how you make their lives easier with your products, before successfully selling to them.
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Since we have established how important sales and marketing is to a business, here are common mistakes to avoid:
Selling Your Desires
Sales are never about you. It is about your prospective customers. You don’t create a product you like, except you have successfully identified a large market with those needs. You make sales when demand meets supply, so until there is a demand for your products, you have no need to supply them. The best performing products are those where a large market exists for their needs. It is even better when there is a limited supply to the needs of your customers, you can charge a premium that way, for your services and products.
Making Market Assumptions
Sales have to be very calculating to succeed. Most times, we get to a new market and check for missing supplies, e.g. the absence of a food vendor in a street filled with corporate structures. Rather than making an argument that everyone eats, well-detailed research on how existing occupants cope, the kind of meals they like and the success rate of previous food vendors, might save you a lot at the end of the day.
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Talking About Only The Features Of Your Products
People are only interested in how a product makes their life better, not what it is about. The moment you start to analyse your products to a prospect, their minds waiting to grasp the part where you point out what they stand to gain if they patronize you. You don’t sell features, you sell the benefits. Make people see the value in your products and they will be willing to pay any price.
No Feedback
There is a great chance that even with all the feasibility studies, you might miss a number of things in creating and distributing your killer content. The only way to remedy this is to create structures where feedback is received from your customers, so you can verify which of your products is doing well, and which is not.
Undelivered Promises
In marketing, you have to realize that your words are your primary sales tool. People buy into you through the words you speak. To retain prospects and existing customers, you must prove trustworthy by delivering on the promises you give. It is even better to over-deliver on your promises than to create high expectations of you and fall short. You have to learn to keep to your word.
The world of sales and marketing is quite intense, but knowing how to navigate your way through it is the guarantee for all-around success.
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