7 Effective Principles That’ll Skyrocket Your Sales 1. Influence Drives the Value of Your Product ● When you’re selling online, becoming popular shouldn’t be your ultimate focus. Spend time building your influence. It takes time, but it’s worth the effort. ● If you’re a blogger, you’ve already cleared the first hurdle of building authority and influencing people. ● Next, give adequate time to content creation and building friendships. Reply to comments, answer questions, and every so often visit a reader’s blog and give them some free feedback or tips on how to improve their site. ● Public speaking is another way to establish your personal brand and build a loyal following. 2. You Have to Sell Yourself Before You Can Sell Your Product ● Make no mistake: You’re a product. And like any product, you have to successfully communicate the value of that product. Until that happens, you’ll find it difficult to sell your actual products or services. ● When you’re selling yourself, you’re not concerned about the money. Your responsibility is to educate others, as you convey your brand’s core message. ● Learning how to sell yourself first is critical to your success. No matter what product you’re offering for sale, do your best to connect with and communicate your core brand values to your prospects. 3. Build Interest with Features; Build Desire with Benefits ● Whether you’re selling via email, direct mail, or social selling, highlight the benefits as well as the features of your product. ● In order to avoid misleading prospects and customers, you have to start by building interest with features. Then you increase their desire for your product with benefits. ● Customers are at different places with varying levels of trust for you when they visit your site or view your landing page’s sales copy. But they all must first: 1. Recognise a need or desire 2. Seek potential solutions 3. Evaluate solutions 4. Decide to take action 5. Make the purchase 6. After purchase reflection ● Use features at stages 1 and 2; benefits will work better when they’re actually making purchase decisions (stages 4 and 5). ● To get the best results, highlight 70% of your product’s benefits, and 30% of the features. 4. Sell the Results by Painting a Clear Picture ● Are you selling your product’s results? If you don’t do that consistently, you’ll likely struggle to acquire qualified leads and increase revenue. ● In advertising, the result is the data — that is, the actionable metrics. So if your product helped a customer increase lead generation by 27%, that’s a metric that you can use to win more clients. ● A few ways to sell results instead of products are: i). Lead with the value of the product, not the title: If your product helps people cut 5 ​ hours off their work week, lead with that. It’s your competitive advantage. ii). Showcase before and after results: In selling the results of a product, rather than the ​ product itself, you’ve got to use visuals that allow your customers to see themselves getting the results they want. Don’t just describe what the end result will look like — represent it with visuals. 5. Credibility Depends on Trust and Expertise ● You can build credibility in a number of ways, including by providing top-notch customer service. ● Customers want to reach an agent who can help them resolve problems quickly. They also want to interact with real people, and access information to resolve issue themselves. Basically, trust + expertise = credibility. ● How do you establish credibility when you’re an online business owner? ● Stanford Web Credibility Research compiled 10 guidelines for building credibility of a website. This can be applied to your product, personality and brand. ● Guideline 1. Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site. 2. Show that there's a real organization behind your site. 3. Highlight the expertise in your organization and in the content and services you provide. 4. Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site. 5. Make it easy to contact you. 6. Design your site so it looks professional (or is appropriate for your purpose). 7. Make your site easy to use -- and useful. 8. Update your site's content often (at least show it's been reviewed recently). 9. Use restraint with any promotional content (e.g., ads, offers). 10. Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem. ● Here are a few simple ways to improve your credibility: i). Answer questions correctly. ii). Produce valuable content regularly. iii). Offer to solve relevant problems. iv). Build relationships. ● Don’t be solely consumed by the amount of money you can make. Instead, now and again, help people for free. Brenton Hayden recommends that you follow a few specific strategies if you want to up your credibility: ● Release your authenticity: How far should you go to demonstrate your authenticity? ​ Determine where you will demonstrate your values and how far you want to go. Then make a plan for your release. ● Be consistent: Keep your messages consistent. The messages that you're sending out ​ through marketing, promotions and social media should be in line with the in-person experience that you provide to customers. ● Prepare for backlash: Finally, be prepared for opposition. When you gain a certain level of ​ publicity, you're going to have haters. Plain and simple. Don't let this discourage you or distract you from your values and mission. Stay true to your beliefs, and you'll gain respect from those around you. Your loyal customer base will have your back! 6. Sales is a “Give and Give” Relationship ● Giving is the only way to build a sales relationship with potential customers. ● When you first establish a relationship with prospects, it becomes easier to sell to them. The best salespeople are the best givers. ● Don’t get tired of giving. It’s your life as an entrepreneur, whether you run a brick-and-mortar business or are an online marketer. ● Ivy Exec highlights the four things you can do if you want to build relationships that’ll lead to sales: 1. Go to the right events. 2. Give tons of value upfront. 3. Go the extra mile. 4. Be flexible. 7. To Close More Sales, Stop Selling ● Stop pushing your products to the target audience. Instead, push high-value content. Answer questions and show the results of your services or products. ● Don’t try to push sales too much. Instead, educate more. Become a teacher. Become passionate about helping other people. ● When you teach, you’re giving away so much value that people can’t find elsewhere. If you continually educate and inform your target audience, you’ll sell more product in the process. .