Avoid the word sell when selling. When the term sell is used, sellers are left high and dry as all other parties look on them as pariahs. Successful sellers steer clear off the word sell. And many other words to avoid when selling. This is because the word sell is pleasurable only to sellers. To
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Sales lessons from COVID-19. It doesn’t matter how much you extol the virtues of your product or service; if it’s not working, it’s not getting buyers “Hata Corona imeisha” my cabbie said, casually declaring the end of COVID-19. He said this as he donned his mask because company policy dictated so, and it could affect
Private school parents buy teaching. Instead of defending insignificant reduction in fees, schools should first “demo” the service to justify its value. What a deadlock! On one hand, as one newspaper put it, “Parents are in revolt over the unrealistic costs associated with virtual education for children out of school.” On the other hand, according
It is your responsibility as seller to differentiate your product to buyer. To make your product stand out in the buyer’s mind. To begin with, which of these are you likely to use when withdrawing money using Visa? The ATM with a sanitizer next to it or the one without? The mask with a creative
An executive hearing this is likely to give you his full attention. You are giving him a solution to what keeps him awake at night. Buyers are selfish we said in the last post. And to boost sales, progressive sellers align themselves to this selfishness. Because the selfishness can feel convoluted, effective alignment is attained
For instance, it is easy to miss the M-PESA paybill number at a Java restaurant. Oh, it’s there; on the table and the counter. But we are accustomed to looking for the colour green To remain successful as a business-to-business (B2B) seller, always keep your eye on the 7Ps. Popularized as the marketing mix, the
To the lay person, the trick is to reverse the pitch starting with value then benefit, and unless the feature is easily understood, ignoring it completely. The eyes you are reading this through have an ancillary body and muscle, anterior chamber filled with aqueous humour, cornea, vitreous body, macula, iris and retina. Unless you are
The average seller harps on the benefit of the two-door lift; the progressive one first vividly spells out to the buyer what not having the two-door lift means. Before sharing the benefits of your product, first spell out what the lack of its benefits means to the buyer. Let me illustrate. You’ve watched it in
The inability to speak the respective buyer’s language just prolongs the sale or loses it altogether. Customize your product’s value argument across the organization’s hierarchy. This is an indispensable ingredient for success in the business-to-business (B2B) sale. The B2B sale is one where an organization sells to another organization. For instance, an engineering firm selling
Did you know that your competition sees your weakness as strength? It never ceases to amaze me how, when doing a comparative market analysis, sellers (say, of This Company) are quick to lament thus: “Competitor J’s product has a higher torque than ours”. Or, “Competitor K’s service is priced lower than ours.” Or, “Competitor L