Create Demand for What You Sell: The 7 High-Impact Strategies

By Steven Robert Young

Create Demand for What You Sell was written for everyone interested in sales, from novice salespeople to business owners. Whatever your business, however you sell—from complex service providers to e-commerce—you'll find the 7 high-impact strategies (though, you'll only need ONE for rapid sales growth!) inside these pages.

 

This book is a must-read for greater sales success!  Inside, you'll find:

 

• 7 Empowering Strategies: Learn how to diverge from the competition, build strategic partnerships, and attract clients through alignment. Discover the power of peripheral selling, a new perspective on perceived value, and the Stage and Position strategy for motivating prospects. You'll also learn how to create and leverage a powerful sales narrative.
• Gain a fresh perspective on the psychology behind why people actually buy and learn how to leverage that knowledge to turn prospects into buyers.
• Actionable Insights: Learn how to turn valuable strategies into concrete steps that achieve results.

 

Interact with this book! Take time to pause your reading to jot down any questions and document ideas that occur. Think through any insights, strategies, and processes inspired by what you learn and decide how you'll apply them.

 

Create Demand for What You Sell is a game-changer for sustainable sales success!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steven Robert Young
• Release date: Apr 18, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224182077

Steven Robert Young

Steven Robert Young's career path is anything but ordinary. At 19, he defied expectations by landing a sales role at a top-ranked jobbership for Fortune 500 company. Though lacking requisite experience, he achieved remarkable results. Over his tenure, he quadrupled sales. Before the age of 30, Steven was leading a multi-million dollar division within the company, setting the foundation of what would evolve into his own methodology.  Leveraging his experience with industry giants (Estee Lauder, Intel, Viacom, AOL, just to name a small few), Steven founded his own consultancy in 2008 to empower more businesses. His insights culminated in IDEAL, his proprietary five-step process for achieving ambitious goals. Today, Steven's passion lies in coaching and guiding individuals and businesses.  In addition to working with his clients, Steven is a top-rated trainer at an international academy. His articles are published by the award-winning magazine TrainingIndustry.com. Explore his insights, read testimonials, and SUBSCRIBE at https://www.stevenrobertyoung.com. ***

Book preview

Preface

Imagine a situation where your customers or clients pursue you, excited to buy from you! This isn’t wishful thinking. I’ve experienced this reality firsthand in my career. While this book covers the 7 strategies I recommend for creating buyer demand, you only need one to create demand for what you sell. Alongside these strategies, I’ll also share IDEAL, my 5-step process for achieving ambitious goals, such as reaching your sales potential!

Create Demand for What You Sell is tailored for sales professionals at every level—from managers to representatives—as well as business owners, sales consultants, and anyone seeking practical, bottom-line solutions for sales growth. It empowers various business models, including direct service providers with intricate sales processes and non-customer-facing businesses that sell through websites. Even those in highly competitive commodity markets will find useful insights within these pages.

Pause to jot down your questions, document ideas, and think through strategies and processes inspired by what you’ve read.

Get the most out of this book! As you read, jot down questions, brainstorm ideas, and document insights that occur to you. Pause to reflect and think through the strategies and processes that are worth further consideration. This active engagement will ensure you gain the most value for your time and from the information presented here.

Considering the wide range of applications this book covers, not every suggestion may directly apply to your unique circumstances. Therefore, I encourage you to be discerning and concentrate on the information that aligns most with your needs and goals.

Introduction

There are realities about sales that are important to understand. They are considerations that are commonly addressed, due to their intricate and complex nature. However, to advance sales achievements, sellers must move beyond the fundamentals. Considering and responding to these sales realities is essential for achieving greater sales success.

Three of the realities involved with selling a product or service are:

Sales are not spontaneous; they result from a process

Sales are not accidental; they are purposeful and goal-oriented

Sales are not isolated; they involve some kind of interaction

The realities of sales are important to acknowledge because they provide a foundation from which to create sales strategies. They prompt us to account for their relationship to sales and appropriate application.

The next point to consider is their common denominator: buyer motivation. Ultimately, sales result from a buyer’s motivation to take action. Motivation may be a combination of inherent drivers and external influences, such as those created by a seller’s effort to understand and connect with buyers.

The challenge for sellers who want to improve sales and achieve demand for their offering is to discover how to increase a buyer’s motivation. There are four areas to consider:

(1)  Process: how you sell

(2)  Purpose: why you sell

(3)  Persuasion: how you communicate

(4)  Perception: how a buyer experiences you

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The Challenge

A common misstep among sellers is the belief that they must "sell the result," a notion that often misses the mark. Buyers don’t need to be convinced of results they already desire; instead, they need to be persuaded about the means—the bridge—to achieving those results. This challenge can be significant for sellers, as effectively selling the means demands greater skillfulness and understanding of buyer motivations.

Secondly, since modern buyers are well-informed, they have high expectations. They seek more personalized solutions for their interests. As a result, buying criteria now encompass intangible factors alongside tangible ones. Sellers must earn the favor and confidence of buyers not only by meeting their interests with their products or services but also by considering how the buyer perceives or may feel about them and their business.

It’s not enough to simply tout whatever benefits you assume your buyer will enjoy from your product or service; you must impact buyer motivation to buy from you. In order to accomplish this, it’s important to understand and cross each phase of buyer interest:

(1)  Awareness: How a buyer comes to know of you as an option for their interest. This is best achieved when sellers can intrigue a buyer or appeal to their curiosity or interests.

(2)  Alignment: The emotional connection or sense of likeness that inspires a buyer to trust, have confidence in, and appreciate a seller. This is essential for gaining a buyer’s favor and advancing the buying process.

(3)  Consideration: The rational connection that justifies the buyer’s decision-making process, where the perceived value of a product or service influences their assessment and comparison of competitors.

(4)  The culmination of the preceding phases of buyer interest, where expectations are weighed against the available options to make a choice that is perceived as providing the most benefit.

To achieve demand for what you sell, be clear about (1) how sales actually occur, and (2) what the buyer actually (not merely ostensibly) wants. Start by considering yourself.

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Action Item

Reflect on your past purchases and surface-level reasons for choosing a particular resource, brand, or service. Identify the emotions, underlying motivations, and needs that influenced your decisions. Consider how factors such as associations, perceived value, confidence, and expectations shaped your shopping experience, even if they were unrelated to the specific item purchased. Lastly, recognize the variations in importance, attitude, and level of interest you had toward your purchases.

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By diving into your own buying behavior, you can gain useful insights into the complexities of the buyer-seller dynamic and understand how sales truly occur. This book will examine these insights and their implications to help you more effectively market and create demand for what you sell.

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The Solution

The solution to the challenge begins with clarity about your goal: developing buyer interest. Achieve this by understanding the realities of sales and the phases of buyer interest. Then, from there, consider the seven strategies you’ll learn for creating demand. Apply and test those most relevant to your business.

The Strategies:

(1)  Divergence: demand through market improvement or innovation

(2)