In today’s episode, Nick talks about three sales strategies that most people don’t talk about. These are strategies that can really make your company stand out from others as desirable, credible, and sustainable.
1. Old school sales and marketing
The first sales strategy Nick shares is this: Utilize old school sales and person-to-person marketing. When Nick and his partner first started Storage Squad, they didn’t have the money or resources to pour into digital marketing or social media advertising. But they knew their audience, and did what they could to get the word out about their business. Being a storage solution for college students, they knew where the customers walked to class, where they lived, and where they ate.
Using the information Nick’s team knew about college students, they put up flyers at the dorms, wrote chalk advertisements on the sidewalks to classes, and put up posters in the dining halls. This may not be scalable with your business, but it is paramount to getting your business off of the ground floor. Prioritizing a physical way of advertising rather than relying on social media made their business grow at an affordable level.
2. Get people to put their money where their mouth is
The second strategy is to get people to put their money where their mouth is. When Storage Squad was looking to open on campuses, they put out surveys asking if people would pay $100 to have their stuff moved and stored. They were thrilled to see that more than 30% answered YES. The bad news is that when they launched the business onto the campus, less than 1% actually signed up to have their stuff stored.
An important lesson Nick learned from that experience is that anyone can say “yes” on a survey or theoretical question, but numbers aren’t certain until money is paid. In order to make use of this strategy, try any way possible to get a transaction for your business. This could mean putting a deposit down for a service, signing a contract, or just making sure you have as many customers as you can as early on who actually buy. Then you can trust the numbers you get from real customers, and get a more accurate representation of supply and demand.
3. Sales extends past business into all aspects of life- Get people to buy in
The third strategy is simple: Remember that sales extends past transactions and goes into all of life. This means that you will have to “sell” your thought process, your vision, your credibility, to people. If no one is on board with your mission and your business, then you will most likely fail. Practicing this strategy will make your person-to-person interactions, customer buy-in, and investor trust better and more consistent.
Early on in Storage Squad, Nick and his partner had to sell each other on their ideas. From there, they had to sell their business plan to potential employees and partners. An employee who is happy and excited about the job they work are much more likely to help your business succeed. This goes for investors and vendors as well. Storage Squad had to be a credible, reliable, and sustainable business for investors and vendors to trust their resources in it.
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