Increasing your product sales
In this post I’ll show you some common anti-patterns that can impact your sales success. Use this information to improve your own offering, especially if it isn’t working well.
Below is a simplified buyer’s journey with the decision criteria for them to move to the next stage. At each stage they will make a decision to move on or drop out.
Perceived versus real value
It is essential to understand what a customer bases their purchase decision on.
Perceived value
This means the customer has yet to use your offering and has to make an educated guess as to how much value you bring. This typically aligns with the first three stages.
Real value
This means they are using your product and aren’t relying on other people’s opinions.
You can move away from perceived value in these early stages by offering free trials of your product or service. However, if your product is hard to use or needs major work to be competitive, this should be avoided. This can cause a loss of sales.
Stages and failure points
Trigger stage
At the trigger stage, your target customer group is considering a problem with their current solution. Your value proposition will contain a solution to this problem.
Failure points:
Potential customers have poor awareness of the impact of the problem
The problem isn’t big enough to need solving
Solutions:
Be clear on the problem you solve
Validate the impact of the problem with your target customer group
Create educational material focussed on clarifying the problem
Evaluation stage
Failure points:
You don’t reach your target audience
You aren’t shortlisted:
Your brand isn’t strong enough
Your solution isn’t strong enough
Solutions:
Identify where your target audience looks for information
Be clear on competitor strengths and weaknesses and how you compare
Create material such as case studies and customer reviews that improve your brand image
If your solution is good enough, allow customers to demo your product so they can determine it’s real value
Seek feedback on your solution to see if customers will buy it
Decision stage
Failure points:
You aren’t differentiated enough
You aren’t easy to buy from
Your pricing isn’t competitive or clear enough to the buyer
Solutions:
If possible, find out why people didn’t buy from you
Optimise your pricing
Make your pricing clear
Test and modify your price point to maximise revenue
Find out from existing customers what your differentiators were and double down on these
Make the buying process simple
Summary
It doesn’t matter if you have a very good offering if your target customer group perceives your offering value as low, or even worse, they don’t know about you at all.
If you are currently focussing on building an offering and are seeing few sales, consider optimising your buyer’s journey.
Can you see why your sales are underperforming? Let me know your thoughts below!