Make Special Offers Work and Discounts Effective With a Sales Technique

Make special offers work and get great sales results by using your discounts, deals, and incentives in effective combinations and applying them in a sequence that persuades customers to buy from you.

You probably have deals and discounts that you can offer prospects to entice them to start their journey from towards becoming a customer and placeing their first order.

How good are the results that you get from them?

You may have discounts that make your products competitive, especially if you are in direct sales or retail sales.

Seasonal offers could be available for you to use, or discounts based on number of products purchased.

If you’re selling a service in the B2B market you might have a free trial period to show your prospect how good your service is.

But do you really get the results that you should from these selling tools?

By using a sales technique so that your discounts and offers are in the right sequence, and with the right timing, you can get great results from them.

Here’s an example to show you what I mean:

Example of Using Special Offers in Combination

That’s special offer No 1. A free trial to get me to take the first action.

The trial gives me so many emails, or marketing postcards free of charge. The idea is if I like the service I’ll sign up and start using it regularly at the full price.

A free trial has always been a good selling technique, give the prospect the puppy and they won’t want to give it back. Let the prospect see how good your product is and they will want to buy it.

As my free trial was coming to an end I received an email from the company with details of a further special offer. They offered a discount of 40% if I start using their services within 30 days of the end of my free trial. A fare offer and one I would certainly consider.

Special offer No2. 40% discount with a condition I sign up within 30 days.

I then got well worded reminders from the marketing company throughout the 30 days and a phone call asking me what I thought of their service while I was on the trial. The phone call was very professional and done from a customer service perspective, rather than a sales call, with just a gentle reminder about the 40% discount and the time limit.

How this Combination can Make Special Offers Work

The job of the sales person is to influence people to take that big step. One way to make it easier is to use special offers to make the steps smaller.

The step from being a non-customer to agreeing to a free trial is a much smaller step than agreeing to become a paying customer. The step then from being on a free trial to becoming a paying customer is again a relatively small one.

When you add the incentive of the 40% discount as a motivator to take that step it becomes even smaller. By using two discounts in combination with the right timing you can make special offers work to increase your sales results from them.

How Can You Adapt This Sales Training to Increase Your Sales

Then put them into a sequence that will make them most effective. In our example above there were two special offers used.

Offer No1 was used to get the prospect to use the service.

Offer No2 to influence the prospcet to take the step to buy the service.

Supporting Actions: Added to that were actions such as the customer service call asking for feedback on the free trial and the email reminders throughout the 30 day discount period.

So in what sequence should your offers and discounts be to get the best effect?

And what supporting actions should you take to make the steps towards becoming a customer appear to be very small ones.

Draw a Timeline

It might help to draw a timeline starting at the point a prospect takes up an offer, like the free service. Mark off the points on the timeline where you will make the next offer and take the supporting actions.

Plan Your Sequence of Offers and Discounts

As part of the sales training I present free online on my website, and when presenting live training sessions, I always recommend that to make special offers work use combinations in a planned sequence and you will get much improved rewards from them.

Weave Offers and Discounts into Your Sales Process

The offers you use to influence prospects to become customers should be woven into every stage of your sales process and they can become very powerful when used in your sales Introduction stage. Take a look at this section on our website and look at how you can use your best special offer as a reason for meeting a prospect: Go to the section on the Sales Process...

This ezine is published by the website www.provensalestraining.com

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I'm Stephen Craine from the website Sales-Training-Sales-Tips.com

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