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You know you need more business. Obviously, the first step is to make your offering available for sale. If you\u2019re like me, you probably want those sales already made yesterday! You do have choices available to you, however, regarding what you sell and who your target customer is. Let\u2019s start by answering the title question: What is the easiest sale to make today?<\/p>\n
What\u2019s the answer? We entrepreneurs love big ideas. But if we\u2019re not careful, promoting new ideas can consume too much of our time. Eventually we must ask ourselves if promoting our new big idea is the best use of our time. Let\u2019s say we have the goal of getting the most reward for the least amount of effort. We\u2019re not lazy, just a little greedy. Plus, we have other things to do. Let\u2019s review each of the following choices we make regarding what to promote and who the audience is: A New Product to a New Customer<\/em><\/strong> Arguably the most difficult product to sell is a new product to a new customer. Why? Imagine the situation from the new customer\u2019s perspective. The new customer doesn\u2019t know you, your company, or your new product. Is the new customer comfortable? Probably not. It\u2019s not an impossible sale, but it\u2019s definitely the most challenging. You like challenges sometimes, though, right? New Product to an Existing Customer<\/em><\/strong> Here, the customer knows you and already buys other products from your company. Half the battle is won. Now all you have to do is convince the customer that the new product benefits them enough for the price. OK. You can try that. An Existing Product to a New Customer<\/em><\/strong> You are very comfortable with your product and your company\u2014however, your new prospective customer isn\u2019t quite as comfortable. You\u2019ve sold your product before and had many satisfied customers. Unfortunately, the new customer doesn\u2019t know you. They might have heard of your company, but not you. The task here is really to get them comfortable with you first and then your product afterwards. Make sense? An Existing Product to an Existing Customer<\/em><\/strong> Ding, ding, ding! If you answered \u201cD,\u201d then you are correct. The product has substantiated its value to a number of customers over time. Your customer already decided to buy an existing product from you. Therefore, due to their comfort with you, your product, and your company, you will encounter the least resistance\u2014making this the easiest sale. For those of you that have been in business for a while, you probably already know this. But how do you use this knowledge? Why do so many experienced businesspeople get out of balance with their sales and marketing efforts? In my travels I observe the majority of sales and marketing time being spent on marketing new products to new customers. The rationalization that I hear most often is, \u201cThat\u2019s how we grow our business.\u201d That\u2019s true if existing customers continue to buy your existing products with minimal customer attrition. In other words, don\u2019t give up existing customers to acquire new customers unless you absolutely have to. In conclusion, it\u2019s easiest to sell existing products to existing customers. They know you, you know them, and the value exchange has been proven. The hardest sale is a new product to a new customer. The other two options fall somewhere in between on the effort meter, depending on your situation. My advice is to make sure you\u2019ve handled the existing products and existing customers before branching out to new products and new customers. When acquiring a new customer, the unfamiliarity creates a challenge. Having both a new product and a new customer makes for a very difficult sale. By taking care of our current customers today, we are in a much better position to take care of our new customers tomorrow. I hope that you find the balance between new and existing products and customers that suits you best. \u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What Is the Easiest Sale to Make Today? You know you need more business. Obviously, the first step is to make your offering available for sale. If you\u2019re like me, you probably want those sales already made yesterday! You do have choices available to you, however, regarding what you sell and who your target customer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,33,26],"tags":[15,18,17],"class_list":["post-4870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lead-leadership-executive-strategy-resource-allocation","category-business-plan","category-sales-marketing-advertising-public-relations","tag-marketing","tag-sales","tag-strategy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4870\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pioneerbusinessventures.com\/nsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}