Is it a myth that a good marketer must have skills of selling almost any product the seller or an employer offers? Your puzzled mind may now retain the typical scene where a hiring human resources manager or the boss offers an interviewer (presumably a marketer or a sales manager) to sell a pen right on the spot. We are going to break the scenario by trying to understand the sales process with a watermelon – a juicy, cold, yummy, summer fruit.
The buyer sees the same round-shaped green surface almost everywhere he looks for watermelon and 100% of the sellers assure him they have the watermelon in the town. Your employer asks you for a sales plan for his product. If you pass you’ll get hired.
The fact that watermelon is yummy doesn’t give you a full understanding of the product
Yes, you’ve got it right, to start the sales chain, first what you need to do is to understand your product features, weak points, and privileges that can help you define your potential client in the future. In our case, the most important features are watermelon nutrition, triggering weight loss, vitamins and minerals it has, and other natural benefits that help you determine your product.
So what we have:
- It is advised to people with diabetic conditions -> user type 1
- For pregnant woman -> user type 2
- For those who have weight issues or/and keep a diet, or just live a healthy lifestyle -> user type 3
- Associated with summer -> seasonal sales
This list can be continued if you carefully research all the features of this magic summer product can help you determine not only user types as you see but also other important metrics that will help you in your sales campaigns.
Building your sales funnel or sales chain
Digital sales are a mess of possibilities. What you should do after you understand your product fully is building your sales funnel.
The previous examination can greatly help you in this process. Sales funnel stages are:
- Awareness
- Interest
- Decision
- Action
Each stage requires careful attention if you don’t want to deliver the wrong message to your customers.
Awareness is maybe the most important part of the customer acquisition process. It can be a Facebook post, an Instagram story, an email, or a cold call introducing your brand or a good combination. Following the previous example, let’s imagine you’re selling a yellow watermelon. People who find it something exotic depending on the locational particularity, depending on the approach and delivery method may treat it negatively or not. Understanding of targeting of each social media platform can greatly impact your brand’s positive awareness with good content, in our case, a good content plan of yellow watermelon Instagram story ideas and an aesthetic profile look can be enough for you to start.
For further triggering, you’ll need something besides good content to intrigue your potential and existing audience. People are used to comparison types of buying, and because your watermelon can be of the same taste as millions of others you need something else than quality for burning the interest.
For example, your yellow watermelon in the particular area can gain popularity by being new in the market. In another case, you can build sale campaigns, promos, and coupons that will interest him.
Even if your product interests and fits all needs of your ideally targeted customer/user, you can never be sure he will choose you in the end. For the final decision, you should keep on reminding him of being somewhere around every time he needs you. That’s the simple concept of retargeting.
Making him believe that the watermelon is what lacks in his life, he will make the last the concluding part of the sales funnel – BUYING.
Whatever you’re actions are your final goal is a product sale, so if you understand the whole process in detail and did the previous steps right, finding the means will be of no difficulty.
So you sold your watermelon, congrats, you’re hired, next!
