Selling Strategies that Boost Customer Acquisition

These days, entrepreneurs have more ways than ever to sell their products or services, including directly to consumers online. The trick is to identify which selling strategies will yield the right mix of profits and market share.

While using direct sales methods enables you to pocket more of the margin and establish direct connections with your customers, indirect sales methods can spread your products far and wide quickly and help your brand gain a foothold fast.

We also cover how to more effectively sell in this multichannel world we live in. You must sell where your customer expects to find you, otherwise they will go somewhere else.

Introduction

No sales means no customers, which means no company. Selling your products and services is essential! In this course, Ken provides an overview of direct and indirect selling models and tips for how to choose the right models for your particular business. Direct selling models include retail, catalog/direct marketing, direct sales, and network marketing, whereas indirect selling models include 3rd party distributors, resellers, partners, manufacturers' reps, OEM or white label, and licensing.

Selling Strategies Explained

There are two types of selling models, direct and indirect. Learn the difference between the two and how to apply them to your business. Let's take a look at some well known companies and see what selling model they use.

We review a series of questions that will help show you why your selling strategy matters in the success of your business.

Learn how to choose the ideal selling model (or models) for your business based on an easy-to-use selling strategy framework. It is critical that you do a feasibility check to make sure your business can support your selling model. Ask yourself, do you have the product or service margins to support a particular selling model?

Learn exactly what investors want to know about your selling strategy and the questions they might ask you.

Here are the keys to success in putting together your selling strategy. Make certain you understand each of these keys to success.

We live in a multichannel world. No longer do manufacturers sell only through retail to avoid "channel conflict". Today, everyone is using every channel they can to reach customers. This video provides an overview of the multichannel concept and the various channels that exist — whether direct sales, indirect sales, or both — so that you can utilize sales channels that best suit your business.

Determine Your Selling Model(s)

The first step is determining which selling model (or models) are optimal for your business. Ken will take you through 8 selling models in upcoming videos.  

The online channel is probably the most important selling channel for just about every business. We will review how to build your online presence.

Retail can be a very powerful sales channel for many business, but you must also be certain you can make money using it. Retail is not for everyone.

Building a sales team can work great for B to B type businesses and some B to C businesses. However, building a sales team is expensive and requires a lot of sales knowledge.

Using distributors in your business can work really well if you are trying to gain access to particular selling channels. However, there are lots of hidden costs with distributors, so be careful. 

Resellers can be a great way to get your product or service out to lots of buyers very quickly, but again comes at a high cost.

The partner channel can be extremely profitable, but it has to be managed very carefully by your organization.

Sometimes an independent or manufacturer rep is the only way to gain access to a sales channel. Know whether your business requires this.  

Want to make a lot of money fast? Then using an OEM or White Label selling model might be just the thing you are looking for.  

The Selling Strategy Framework

Sales is all about the hustle. This video provides an overview of the framework used for choosing selling models; it begins with choosing your models, examining what the competition is up to, then examining your costs and checking for consistency between your business strategies and selling models, and solidifying the models you'll use.

The first step is determining which selling model (or models) are optimal for your business. 

Here is a list of the eight different selling models:

1. Online / Direct to Consumer
2. Retail
3. Direct Sales (Inside and outside sales)
4. Distributors
5. Resellers
6. Partners
7. Manufacturers Rep / Independent Rep
8. OEM / White Label

For detailed information on each of these eight selling models, please watch our course called, "Determine the Optimal Sales Channel for Your Business". This course goes though in-depth the eight selling models and looks at the following:

1. Why you would use that channel
2. Keys to success
3. Examples of popular companies using these channels
4. Financial considerations
5. How to measure success 

If you don't want to watch the course mentioned above, we have included detailed information on each of the channels in your course guide.  

When building a robust selling strategy, you must understand what your competitor is doing. This is a great starting point when deciding the best model or models for your business to use.

Most entrepreneurs miss this step. Sales channels are expensive, so you need to know the economics around each one of them. This video will help you understand that.

Making certain your selling strategy is consistent with all your strategies is wildly important. All your strategies must work together in order for you to be effective.

Part of selecting effective selling strategies involves analyzing what your competition is doing with their sales models, as well as looking at what it will cost you to sell your product. It's important to assess the financial impact your selling models will have on your revenue as well as what model you choose. This video walks through methods for studying your competition's sales approaches, from what they do best to sales opportunities they may be missing, as well as cost considerations.

Workshop

Time to put pen to paper — or fingers to keyboard. Take a look inside the planning worksheet prepares you to write the selling strategies section of your business plan. The key to success is taking the time necessary to deeply understand your business and be prepared to run it — use this workshop and planning worksheet to do just that.

Course Guide

I recommend that you download this handy course guide to aid your journey through the course as well as great reference materials for the future.

1. I'm not graduate from economic bachelor and English is not my mother tongue. But this course and how Mr. Ken explained the content is really easy to understand for beginner like me. Thanks to Mr. Ken for answered all of my question with a fast and easy understandable answer! ~ Diantini S
2. Perfect timing and the insights till now are those that I was exactly looking for.... Excited to learn more ~ Yogen P
3. Such an amazing course. You'll be able to understand and create your own business plan and you'll get a lot of valuable advices ~ A Cerimagic
4. Lot’s of info in this course. Ken really takes you from A to Z . Just what I needed for my business to take off. Thanks ~ Hugo M
5. I'm new to the business world and have been looking for courses with practical guidance. This course definitely provides that and so much more ~ S Slawinski
6. So far so good! A lot of challenges I'm facing in my work place Ken has highlighted the root course, which I was not expecting. He is clear, very engaging and breaks down the jargon. He is straight talking, right down to business attitude. I've just completed the first chapter and he's restoring a little faith in me so quite excited to keep learning (I know, I sound like a nerd) ~ Harrie T
7. This course is the right match for me as I know some about business but believe in always improving. I also want to make sure I have a solid foundation for my business so I'm positioned right for the new year, and growth ~ E Jollymore

1. How can I determine the best sales channel for my business?
2. Which are better, direct or indirect sales?
3. How does my company’ eventual scale affect which selling strategies to use?
4. Why do investors care which selling strategies I use?