A question I get asked a lot is, “What is the simplest way to find a good product or service to sell?” Well, there is no “simple” way to come up with something that one can both believe in and convince others to believe in enough to buy it. There have been many great products that have sold poorly, and just as many impractical or inferior products have flown off the shelves . There is no sure-fire way to test whether a product will be successful, no matter how much you believe in it. The only way you are ever going to learn whether a product is going to sell is by jumping in and selling it.
Running studies to test out whether a product will succeed is not a novel idea. People give away products as gifts, or even (in the extreme internet case) sell things on eBay to figure out what markets well. Introducing a new product or service into any market is hard and downright scary – most people want some kind of assurance that they will be successful. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to get any amount of reasonable and reliable “assurance”. A product or service may test just fine, but run into problems in the real world when competing with something of equal or lesser quality that simply seems better because of how it is being marketed. The best marketed product often is the highest-selling product, whether it is superior in function or not.
One may think that introducing a new and unique product may guarantee success. This works only sometimes. As certain as you may be that a new product is exactly what people need, new concepts or products can backfire on you. If a great new product comes to the market, and people have nothing like it to compare it to, sales typically do not take off until a later version or a competitor’s version has come along. This is counter-intuitive, but it is how people make shopping decisions – they want to make the best choice, and to do so, there need to have choices.
If a product or service does not sell well at first, you have options. First, do not be afraid to slightly alter what you are offering. Slight alterations provide one way to repackage a product as a new, different product. You must also consider presenting it in a new way. A different marketing campaign, the addition of incentives and targeting consumers in subtle ways are all viable ways to boost sales if they might be lagging. You may also try and ask your customers and fans about what to do next. This can be through surveys, polls, and even services like SitePal.
Remember that anyone can sell anything. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.
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