What are the 16 ways to sell?

There are, of course, more than 16 ways to sell, but if you are having difficulty making your first few sales, we’ve created a list of some of the easiest, lowest cost ways you can sell a product or service.

Best practice: When first starting out, we recommend following the 40/40/20 RULE. While you’re launching or in the early stages of your business, you should aim to spend about 40% of your time selling your product or service, 40% of your time trying to make your product or service better, and 20% working with business mentors or advisors.

Digital vs. Traditional Selling and Marketing

Digital Sales and Marketing is the act of promoting and selling products and services online.

Traditional Marketing is a conventional mode of marketing that helps to reach out to a semi-targeted audience with various offline advertising and promotional methods.

We’ve divided the types of marketing and selling into digital and traditional methods. You’ll notice that we talk about “marketing and sales” as though they are the same thing, but, there is a slight difference. In most contexts, “marketing” refers to mass communication to create awareness of your product or business, while “sales” is more focused on one-to-one communication intended to “close the deal.” However, there is quite a bit of overlap between the two. Marketing can lead to sales and sales can become marketing. For example, a social media marketing campaign can generate sales on an e-commerce site with no additional intervention from you. Likewise, a sale can lead to word-of-mouth marketing of your business.

Use the links to dig into each of the 16 ways to sell.

Some digital marketing and sales channels are:

• Social media

• Online selling platforms

• Email marketing

• Search Engine Marketing and SEM

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

• Viral and guerrilla marketing

• Content marketing

• Blogs

Some traditional marketing and sales channels are:

• Print like physical ads in magazines, newspapers, billboards and fliers

• Broadcast: PR and publicity like TV and radio

• Direct sales and affiliate marketing like catalogues, postcards

• Telephone like telemarketing and text marketing

• Engagement marketing like partnerships, events, speaking engagements, community building and trade shows

How do you use the 16 ways to sell for your business?

As you look at the 16 Ways to Sell your product or service, think of which ones you would use, and when. We’ve also created four key steps to help your marketing and sales strategy succeed.

1. Set your sales goal. You need to set the # of sales (e.g. 10? 100?) you want to make and a deadline date (June 30) that you want to make them by.

2. Brainstorm how you would use each of “16 Ways to Sell” below.

3. Pick the 3 Ways to Sell that you think are best for you and your business.

4. Go out and test each of these 3 Ways to find the best one! Then focus on it.