Throughout your life you are always going to be selling stuff. When you get a job, or a new job if you already have one, you will be selling your abilities and skills to an employer. When you’re tired of your car, you will be selling it to another person. And when your family gets too big for your house, you will be selling it to someone else so that you can move into an even bigger house.

When you sell stuff, you always want to get the most out of it. You don’t want to get the bad end of a deal, do you? But that’s where many people wind up, because they don’t know how to sell stuff properly. So they don’t make as much as they could have. They don’t make as much money when they sell their house, car, books, etc, as they wanted to. During the course of someone’s lifetime, these small losses from selling stuff for less than its worth add up to a staggering amount of money.

As you may have gathered by now, this article is about how to sell stuff. It doesn’t matter what you’re selling. It could be cars, homes, boats, skills, products, or yourself even. These are general tactics and techniques that can be applied to selling anything.

Ready to learn how to sell stuff to make a lot of money? Okay, let’s go.

Identify Customer Needs

Old men don’t want to buy bikinis for themselves. They don’t need them. What they hell would an old man do with a bikini anyway? Perhaps they can give them to their granddaughter. But what if they don’t want their granddaughter wearing something so revealing?

One of the simplest and most common mistakes people make when selling stuff is they forget to investigate the needs of the customer first. All business exchanges are centered around the basic concept of meeting the needs of a customer. Whether the customer is another business, the average joe, or your grandpa, you always have to figure out what they need first. Because if you don’t know what the customer needs, then you’re going to wind up trying to sell bikinis to an old man.

And old men don’t want bikinis. They want boxers, or perhaps Viagra. But they don’t really have a need for bikinis. So how much money do you think they will pay for your bikinis? Yep, you guessed it. Not very much.

Identifying customer needs is all about asking the right questions and getting to know your customers. What do they need? What are they going to use it for? What are their likes and dislikes? What kind of personality do they have?

By asking questions you can figure out what the customer needs. And it’s a lot easier to sell something to someone when they actually need and want what you’re selling them. You don’t want to be the one stuck selling bikinis to old men, do you?

After you have identified the needs of your customer, now it’s time to sell them something. But before you do that, you need to…

Create A Desirable Image

When you are selling something to a customer, you are not selling them a product. You are selling them an image of the product.

When you are selling a car, you are not just selling a car. You are selling a reliable car. You are selling an efficient car. You are selling a fast car. You are selling a car that will get them the woman of their dreams. You are selling them a car that will make them feel rich.

You have to create a desirable image around your product or service in order to create more desire for what you’re offering. If your customer really really wants what you’re offering them, and believes that it is valuable, then they will pay you well for it.

The jewelry industry is a prime example of this. What in the world are you really going to do with a piece of metal around your finger, or around your neck? Is it going to feed you, clothe you, or keep you warm? No, of course not. The functionality of jewelry is virtually nonexistent.

Yet people will pay good money for a diamond ring or a gold necklace. Not because they want the jewelry itself, but because they want what the jewelry will bring them.

A man does not buy a gold necklace because he needs a gold necklace. A man buys a gold necklace because he wants what the necklace can bring him. Maybe he wants to feel important, to show people that he is rich, or maybe he wants to look nice so that he can attract a female.

In all of these cases, a man is not buying a gold necklace. A man is buying the image of a gold necklace. And if you present him with a good image, he will pay you very well for that gold necklace.

Everything that you sell comes with an image attached to it. If you know what you’re doing, you can create a good image for the stuff that you’re selling, and get paid accordingly. But how exactly do you go about doing that?

Well, the answer isn’t so simple. There is no one size fits all method here. It depends on what you’re selling, who you’re selling it to, and a variety of other factors. While I don’t know your unique sales situation, I can show you some examples of how people create images in real life in order to sell stuff.

Sometimes companies will compare their products to a competitor’s product to show the consumer that their product is more valuable and priced better. This creates a good image of their product in comparison to the alternatives, which creates strong desire for their product.

Many potential employees will dress up for interviews and highlight their previous experience, education, and unique skills in order to create a desirable image of themselves. If they really know what they’re doing they’ll even point out how their unique skills and experiences will benefit the company and how they are especially suited for the given job. Or they will sell their personality by expressing confidence, happiness, and an eagerness to work. Coincidently, this is also why some people will pretend like they currently have a job when they are unemployed. It’s all done to create a desirable image of yourself that the the new employer will pay top dollar for.

Some companies will create desirable images by piggybacking on various psychological drives, fears, and desires of people in order to help sell their product. There are several entire industries just centered around the psychological drive for sex. Axe sells deodorant using commercials that show women surrounding the man who wears Axe deodorant. Godaddy.com sells web sites using an attractive female model as their main focus. Jewelry companies around the world secretly give men the impression that if they buy women jewelry, they will get something special in return. And of course, there is the entire fashion and make up industry which is focused primarily on making people look good in order to attract a sexual mate. These companies all use the psychological drive for sex and love in order to create desire for, and sell, their products. And they pull it off very well.

So in short, you should always strive to create a strong desire for your product or service by presenting the customer with a desirable image. If you show your customer why they should pay you good money for your product or service, then they probably will.

Negotiate A Good Deal

If you already have identified the customer’s need, have a product that meets that need, and have created a desirable image for that product, then this part shouldn’t be too terribly difficult. It’s mostly just a matter of figuring out what your customer is willing to pay you for something, and then charging them that amount for it.

Of course, this is easier for some products than others. If you’re running a Made In China discount store next to a Wal-Mart, then you’re shit out of luck. Your negotiating power is zero. If you try to charge the customer a high price for anything, they’re just going to leave and walk next door to Wal-Mart.

On the other hand, if you’re running a company offering multi-million dollar one of a kind custom products, and there isn’t anyone else offering the same thing, then your power of negotiation is pretty high.

There are a lot of books and articles in the world that will give you negotiating advice. There are actually entire books written just on how to negotiate a higher salary, or how to negotiate a cheaper price for a car. While some of this advice is decent, much of it can be fairly deceptive and can be damaging to your relationship with the customer. Thus, while deceptive and forceful tactics may give you a temporary boost in sales in the short term, in the long term they are guaranteed to lead to your demise.

Instead of trying to rip people off and use deceptive tactics, you should strive to recognize how much they truly value your product or service and how much they are really expecting and willing to pay for it.

In order to do this, you have to really know your customer. By knowing your customer, you can get a general feel for about how much they expect to pay for something, and you can get a feel for how much they value your product or service. Then you just price it at about what you think they would be willing to pay for it, and try to keep the price around that same amount.

By doing it this way, you can give your customer a fair price and keep them coming back for more. Another way to keep them happy is to…

Fulfill Customer Expectations

While the above tactics work great for selling something once, in order to truly succeed you will likely have to sell something to customers over and over again. You have to generate repeat customers, people who will keep coming back for more, because they like what you have to offer.

For example, if you go to work at one company and perform an excellent job, you can use their referral or the work that you did in order to find a better job in the future. Likewise, if you go to a store and find great products at great prices, then you are more likely to go back to that same store in the future.

Fulfilling customer expectations is very important in business for several reasons. First, it creates repeat business. If they liked your product once, then they are likely to try it again. Second, it creates referrals. If someone likes your product or service a lot, then they are likely to tell their friends or family about it. And finally, if you have a safe product that works as advertised, it reduces lawsuits.

Discussion

Many people have the tendency to think that marketing skills are something that only marketers use. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Throughout your life, you are always going to be selling stuff. When you get a job, you will be selling your skills and abilities in exchange for cash. When you want to move, you will have to sell your house. Even little things, like selling your stuff at a garage sale, can bring in a lot of cash.

So you always want to remember how to sell stuff effectively, no matter what it is. Remember to find the need of your customer, create a desirable image for what you’re selling, negotiate a fair price, and fulfill their expectations to make sure they keep coming back for more and more.

Speaking of selling stuff, if you’ve learned something useful from this article, feel free to send a link to a friend who you think may be interested in how to sell stuff as well. Hopefully, if anything, I have at least “sold” this article to you.

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