When you're selling larger-ticket items – distance education,
for instance – you might have a tougher time with the sell.
Anyone will invest $20 in something; it's much harder to get
someone to plunk down $1,000, no matter how useful the
purchase will prove to be.
In person, a hard-sell approach might work. Online, hard
sells are a bad idea. Your customer's not looking you in the
eye; instead, he's a thousand miles away or more, and you
probably don't know who he really is. All he has to do is
leave your site. You can email him; he can delete you.
But soft sells don't work very well either, for most of the
same reasons; you can just be ignored.
What can you do to close a sale?
1. Build up a relationship. Most people don't want to buy
large-ticket items from a faceless online entity. Don't be
one. Instead, be personal, be frank, and be professional.
Develop great online content showing that you are the ideal
person to deliver what your customer wants, either because
you have the proper credentials, you have the product he or
she needs, or because you have the expertise required for
what they need.
For instance, suppose you're running a distance education
website for child therapists. You've gotten the credentials
and recognition from professional organizations to award
CEUs, and this is clearly noted on your website. You have
the education and experience to deliver a quality class
online. But you need to be able to show your potential
students that you are eminently qualified.
Set up a section on your website for your articles. Have
them rotate around the classes you're trying to sell, perhaps
addressing mini-issues that you would like to teach but that
don't fit into the classes for some reason. Create a blog and
post to it regularly so that your site visitors can get to know
you. If you can create a sense of intimacy and trust, you've
set the right atmosphere to make your sale.
2. Create a free tutorial. Online, the best way to get
people to buy your product is to give away information.
Since the hypothetical service offered here is a distance
education program offering CEUs, a free tutorial is perfect
for displaying your abilities.
For other services and products, tutorials may not be so
obvious a method for building trust. But they are. What
about a beginners tutorial in developing a complete model
train layout, from planning the track to cutting the wood,
papier mache to final touches? This sort of tutorial would
make it eminently clear that you know what you're selling.
The care you take with the details in your tutorial will make
it clear that you love your product enough to not sell subpar
products.
If you're selling firearms, free tutorials in safety, as well as
articles on legality and getting yourself trained, would be a
good choice. For saltwater fish tanks, a thorough tutorial in
caring for the fish and the tank would be ideal.
Another benefit of tutorials like this – you can use them to
clarify the reason behind the high price of your products.
Frequently people don't want to pay lots of money for things
because they don't understand why they are so expensive.
With saltwater fish tanks, descriptions of the complexities
involved in perfect conditions, properly balanced water, and
fish health may help your customers understand.
3. Develop special offers for your favorite clients.
When you think you have someone interested enough in an
item to purchase it, you might start emailing them articles
you keep in reserve for just this sort of closing. The best
approach is generally a fairly casual email along the lines of
"thought you'd be interested in this," with an attached
article. You can use the same articles with every sale, but
you don't have to let them know that you're using stock
articles. What you're doing is building a rapport, expert-toexpert
(or obsessed-person to obsessed-person, in the case
of many niche markets!) to build their confidence in you –
and in themselves. If you treat them like the expert they
may become, they will come to think they deserve the item
they're considering purchasing.
Each niche market is a special case, of course, and you'll
develop your own art to closing sales for your customers.
But the basics will remain the same:
Establish a relationship and a rapport
Allow the customer to know you
Allow the customer to see your expertise (in a nonflashy
way, of course)
Finally, invite the customer into the "expert" club with
you
For such a distant and technological medium of
communication, the Internet is surprisingly personal. Take
advantage of that fact, and watch your sales grow, your
business flourish, and make your best customers into your
friends and colleagues along the way.
