Selling isn’t about getting in the face of the consumer and reeling off a long list of product benefits and features.

Door to door sales techniques are fast and dirty and most people don’t respond well to the cold-call nature of any salesperson with wide eyes and a big smile who looks like they want you to join a cult. That’s like fishing with a very small net. Sure, you might catch a few fish that way, but casting out a hundred worms on the end of a hundred hooks is far easier – let them come to you.

With so many online opportunities available to help business owners to communicate with potential customers, we can (if we’re smart) help to drive future sales by planting the seed today.

Consumer engagement – hit them in the mailbox

Email outreach is a simple method of gaining leads. Email titles that contain words like “newsletter free” will get the attention of certain people at certain times throughout the year.

What do we mean?

Well, we all get emails from brands we forgot we’d signed up to (usually we sign up to get 10% off our first order and then simply forget to unsubscribe). This means that not only does the consumer already know how good the product is (having purchased from you previously), but they are known to buy the product at certain times of the month or year. This could be in relation to a pay day, a season, a birthday, a public holiday, an annual niche event… only by reaching out to let them know you still exist do you keep the door open for further business at a time that suits the customer.

Respond to every online comment

This sounds like an immense amount of work and effort. But if you are a start-up, you won’t have that many online comments flying your way week to week anyway, and the bigger you get, the bigger your staff (which can release the pressure from you in terms of finding the time to reply to every comment).

The benefit is that each client feels supported. Even if they have a bad experience, their takeaway from that experience will be that despite the commotion, your brand did everything possible to rectify the situation. This is word-of-mouth brand positivity that you cannot buy.

Witty and fun strategies or responses can also gain you notoriety outside of your niche.