How To Sell Online & What To Sell

Only around 1% of the people who try ever end up making money online. How do you sell online, and what should you sell? On this page, you will learn not only how to sell but also what you to sell so you will make money online.

Even if you’re just starting out or even if you’ve already been trying many different things in the past, for sure you were confronted with the question: What should you sell?

The Marketing Dilemma

As an answer to that, most likely one of the first things you will learn about marketing is that: You need to sell what the market wants to buy. While this is true, it is also very difficult to implement.

If you’re like me and you learn about marketing, right away your next step will be to do market research and you will try to find out what it is that your market wants. That’s what we’re being told to do!

The issue with this approach was (and something that I was personally really struggling with when starting out) that the ideas, the product names, the advertisement, all these things, I was trying to find the answers inside my own head.

Yes, I did the research… but eventually, I always ended up coming up with the answers myself.

When we do the research but then still try to answer the market’s needs with our own ideas, what we’re doing here is we’re filtering the market through our own thoughts.

And our own thoughts might be wrong! We might have wrong assumptions about the market, we might have different preferences from what most of our clients want.

When I wrote my books on Twitter growth and Twitter marketing, that’s exactly what I was doing and it literally felt like banging my head into the wall.

How To Sell Without Selling

Let’s talk about sales for a moment now.

A very important element of sales is that the client has to want to buy the product or service.

What that means is, every time you have to tell someone what they should buy, it means you said it and you suggested it – but not them.

Consider these two scenarios:

• If we come to someone and tell them to buy A, then it will be very difficult to make the sale.
• However, if someone comes to us and says “I want to buy B” and we tell them “I have it, here it is”, then it’s much easier to make the sale.

So the crucial step, the crucial element is that the prospect, your future client, or whoever you’re talking to, they have to say first what it is that they want.

Only when they have committed to it, only when they have said it, can we pick up on that and tell them: “That’s what you want, I know where it is, I know where you can find it: I have it, it’s right here.”

From my own experience, this is much more difficult to do than what it sounds like when you hear it explained like this.

Selling By Staying Silent

Instinctively, you will want to help that person when:

1. When you have invested all your resources,
2. All your time,
3. All your effort into creating the best service or the best product
4. And when you even have proof that what you’re doing solves the other person’s problem

I’m sure you have experienced such a situation: Someone comes to you, they describe their problem and it is impossible for you to not tell them your solution. But what we’re doing then is we’re telling other people what to do!

And even if it is the right answer, even if your solution works, the other person will feel pushed to do what you tell them to do, simply because they didn’t say it first.

Giving Back Control To The Prospect

Okay, so we get it now… The other person has to say the words first, they have to say what they want to do or buy. Only then can we jump in and make the offer.

But there is a problem to this: We’re also giving up control over the situation.

When you are in a conversation with someone and you know that you have the solution to their problem (your product or service would do exactly what they want)… but you have to wait for the other person to say it first. You will probably start to feel anxious.

The thought that will creep up in you is: “They’re never going to get to the conclusion on their own.”

On top of that, they might use different words and phrases to describe what they want, words that are different from yours, and even technically wrong words!

As a consequence, it can feel like we’re giving up a lot of control – and that can make us feel like we’re losing an opportunity here to help someone and even miss out on a sale.

What you need to do is to step back from what it is that you want to sell in that moment. Instead, focus on the other person and help them find out what it is exactly that they want and need. Let them come to that conclusion without having to tell them what it is.

And when they say it, when they finally say the exact words of what it is that they need, and it is something that you offer, that’s when you jump in and make your offer: “I can help you with this.” or “I do exactly what you’ve just said.”

I understand that with products (digital and especially physical) this can be more difficult to do because you can’t just snap your fingers and create exactly the product that they want on the spot.

But if you are offering a service, such as consulting or coaching, then it should be possible for you to be more flexible and tailor your offer to what it is exactly that the other person just said in their own words.

And also you have to ask yourself in the moment:

• Is this something you can do?
• Is this something you want to do?
• And is this the client you want to work with?

Selling What Your Market Wants To Buy

And this is exactly what it means to sell to your market what it is they want to buy.

It means:

• Letting them describe, in their own words, what it is that they want or need to buy.
• Letting the other person say it first.
• And then we responded to it by saying: “This is exactly what I do. This is precisely what I can solve for you and I can help you with this.”

When I think back to all my DM’s and private messages on Twitter and social media, I can see now how many times I’ve done this wrong.

Ever since I learned this way of listening first, not only do I have a much easier time offering exactly what it is they want to buy, but also the conversations are much more enjoyable.

I hope this helps you with your start in sales and I hope this helps you figure out what it is that you have to sell.

I know this can be intimidating, especially when you are new to this. And the fact of the matter is that your entire business depends on it: Only when you create sales do you make money, and only when you make money can your business survive.

If you have any doubts or questions about the sales process, then you should schedule a call with me on my calendar here. Pick a time slot that works best for you to reserve your spot. I am sure that with my help we can figure this out and you’ll start making more sales.

And don’t forget to subscribe on my YouTube channel, @creategrowprofit.