The best advice I ever got in the sales arena was from a Yellow Pages rep that was so "old school" that he called all the women, "sweetie".
Though he was still rough around the edges at 60, he could out sell any of the Young Turks in the office.
"If you want to sell lots of products and services, if you want to develop your business with quality leads and turn them into excited new customers; you've got to know how to play the game.
" He always used sports metaphors; especially football and basketball.
"You gotta' go long and wide.
" You've got to have more than one product or service option for your prospects.
A person who has a problem really isn't interested in your product.
They're interested in the solution to their problem.
You need to have a menu of options for their problem.
"Going wide" means offering lots of products or services that follow a basic theme (suppose you sell vitamins and health related products as well as a website that offers diet and exercise membership).
"Selling long" means finding lots of good variations on your successful products or services.
If you have a good list of prospects and customers and you touch bases with them often, you can survey your list regularly to see what they want.
The best marketing demographic is your customer list.
If you aren't able to provide extra products or services yourself, work with other companies to provide them for you.
You can easily offer your customers lots of products and services supplied by others at very little cost to your own company.
The follow-up email is the favorite place for up selling by internet marketers.
All businesses start out with some idea of what they want to sell.
The best investment you can make if you're just starting out; is to build a list of potential prospects who have previously purchased a product or service.
Your list will help you to test the next big product or service.
You can use the collected information to develop your service or product.
Regardless of your business profile, it is always better to combine a product and service mix to bolster your bottom line.
If you are a manufacturer with a sales team, you can offer service and repair, online or on location training, and other support services.
As a sales strategy, your company can benefit from the mixed model and so will your customers.
For marketing success, might depend on it.