One of the most discouraging moments for any author, entrepreneur, or business is when your products stay on a sales drought. Some of these sales droughts last for a few weeks while others last for a few months. It is during these sales droughts when people learn the hard way that they “don’t just come.” It takes a lot of work to get the customers to come, and it takes even more work to make six figures from your products. When I was in my sales droughts at the beginning of my career, I would feel very accomplished if I could get closer to making 1 sale every day. This thinking got me from making 1 sale every two weeks to making 1 sale every week. Thinking the same way allowed me to pass a major milestone: getting one sale every day. While some people are getting hundreds of sales every day, and companies like Apple get millions of sales every day, it feels incredible when you get daily sales for the first time in your career.
Although having the right mindset is very important, you also need to know the how-to aspect of getting more sales. Having a good attitude is not enough, but it is going to be the main motivation you have when you do the work that will allow you to get daily sales. If you don’t have the right mindset, I highly recommend reading this blog post to acquire the right mindset and then go back to this one.
There are four big things that you need to know about the typical customer in order to get more sales:
- Customers hunt for bargains. My training course used to be worth $47, and I offered a coupon for my blog subscribers that reduced the training course’s price to $20 (and I still do this). That was a $27 difference which accounted for a discount slightly over 50%. Then, I boosted the price of my training course to $100. I offered the same coupon on my blog that made the entire training course worth $20. However, this coupon had a stronger effect. Instead of making the training course a little over 50% off, the same coupon now made the same training course with the same videos 80% off. 80% looks a lot better than something that is “a little more than 50%.” When you give people a discount, make sure the discount either ends in a 5 or a 0 so it is easier for the average person to calculate the savings.
- Customers love leaders. The most successful people just so happen to be the leaders. It’s not a coincidence. Leaders also happen to be the ones with a lot of credibility. That’s not a coincidence either. In order to become a leader, you need to boost your credibility and do things differently from your competition. By standing out, you will become more popular, and customers love buying from leaders who also happen to be very popular.
- A higher priced product is associated with better quality. These products are associated with so much quality that they are worth multiple looks. As a member of HootSuite Pro, I decided to take a look at SocialOomph. It seemed interesting and cost more than four times as much as HootSuite Pro for the one year option. I went on SocialOomph five times before realizing that HootSuite Pro is the better of the two. In addition, the most expensive training courses happen to be the ones we hear the most about. More people talk about the training course worth $2,000 than they talk about the training course worth $500. It’s very easy to put both of these together. You can see a $2,000 training course and tell people that they can get a 75% discount by liking your Facebook Page. Customers would be very quick to click the like button and see the price get cut down to $500. Even if you planned on pricing your training course at $500 right from the start, originally pricing it at $2,000 suddenly makes the $500 look like a steal. In addition, $500 is still a high enough price to associate as a quality product created by a leader.
- Customers get influenced by testimonials. Some people call them testimonials and other people call them reviews. Testimonials have a big influence on customers. In order to get good testimonials for your product, your product needs to be valuable. Displaying some of the top testimonials on your blog may be the difference between getting multiple sales and not making a single sale. It is important to realize that customers have become smarter over the years. Creating fake testimonials became a popular way to get more sales for a new training course. In order to prove that your testimonials are real, you need to link to the person’s social network or blog if you want to include that person’s testimonial.
Those are the four things you need to know in order to get more sales, but you need to know what to do with this knowledge in order to get more sales. The first thing you need to do is distribute your product for free so more people can get access to it. Implementing this part of the strategy will make your product more popular and get some testimonials along the way. You need to be simultaneously growing your presence on the web and social networks so you have more credibility. The person with 10,000 followers has more credibility than the person with 1,000 followers…unless the person with more followers gets caught for buying fake ones. After you offer some of your free products, you need to make it look as if your customer is getting a steal. If you intended on pricing a 40 video training course for $500, bump it up to $1,500 or $2,000. Then, offer a discount that lowers the price down to $500 if someone likes your Facebook Page. Not only is it a steal for the customer, but you get to make the same amount of money you would have made anyway. As you get more customers, you will have more testimonials to include on your sales page, and the more testimonials people read about your product, the more likely that person is to buy it.
Whether you are selling a book, a training course, or another product, implementing this strategy will allow you to get more sales. Implementing this strategy over time will allow you to get one sale every day. What are your thoughts on this strategy? Do you have any additional tips? Please share your thoughts and advice below.
How do you feel about referral programs that offer an incentive to get your consumer on board with helping find your next sale? I know when I was trying to sell a high priced item one time I was getting next to nowhere trying to source for leads and follow up with people but when I started offering to pay people a percentage of the commission I would receive I saw my response rate climb by roughly 50%
Referral programs work very well for getting sales. Some marketers make 25% of their sales just from referral programs. People will try harder to promote your products if they know they can get a slice of the pie.
Great article man. I’m definitely going to use your discounting strategy when I launch my first product.
Do you use money-back guarantees? The theory is that the longer the better, because it conveys more confidence in the product, leading to more sales than if the guarantee was shorter. These additional sales outweigh any losses from people wanting their money back, so you end up with higher net profit.
Your thoughts?
Ive read a number of your articles since I started following you recently. Keep up the good work.
I only sell on Amazon and Udemy, and both of those sites have money back guarantees. I can see how a money back guarantee would convince customers on the fence that they might as well give your product a try. The money back guarantee also encourages the seller to create higher value products that cannot be fully consumed within the refunding time. My recommendation is to have a refund policy anywhere from 7-30 days.