Selling what's never been sold before

How do you sell what’s never been sold before? That’s the question that was in my mind when I went to see my first potential peupe client today, never mind that I’m the techie in the company so sales isn’t my strong point.

You have to understand that what we are attempting to do as a business/company is revolutionary in nature bearing in mind the prevailing business landscape, the current trend is for mass produced average websites (ranging from good to mediocre) being sold off by the dozens by established web companies and individuals, what this has done is create a blanket effect or perception of a web presence that when you approach a client the first thought that goes through their heads is "another website with a different name".

Invest time and money in educating your market, every cent you spend and every email that you send is worth the effort. Make the effort to write the articles and email them to the market, as we say “one fish must bite”.

To change this perception we've had to spend considerable time and money educating the businesses and organisations in Kenya about the changing trends in the internet, we've actually gone as far as detailing the history of the internet up to its eventual web 2.0 (forgive me for the use of this word/buzzword) status and then highlighting the value of building a relationship/community with people out there. Take today as an example, I was explaining to a client the value of blogging and the comment I got was "we don't want to discuss scientific papers with people" this after I'd mentioned that the blog would allow them to discuss interesting articles and engage the community in healthy debate. We keep communicating our values as a business to the market and community to ensure that our message is engrained in the minds of people, when you think Web 2.0 applications we’d like the first thought in your mind to be Multiple Choices, tough but possible one email, Blogpost and article at a time.

Educate yourself as you educate your market.

The product is yours and you probably understand it more than anybody else but this shouldn’t stop you from reading far and wide. Peupe is our blogging application but we take every opportunity to read up on wordpress and other applications that already in the community. Clients will always appreciate an in depth understanding of all aspects of the technology and business you are trying to stake a claim to. “Why should I buy Peupe and not Wordpress?” the only way I can answer this question is by understanding what wordpress is about and highlighting what Peupe is about as a better option for this continent.

Making mistakes and learning from them is important especially when you don’t have anybody ahead of you to learn from.

The challenge has been and continues to be that businesses/organizations do not see the value of an online presence leave alone the value of building an online relationship and a community. We’ve had to approach the market very carefully so that we don’t get tagged as the “another website” company and this has meant that we have had to align ourselves with a new trend in technology, but since there are no failures or successes to learn from its meant that we’ve had to go along making our own mistakes and learning from them, now don’t get me wrong this isn’t a bad thing in fact it’s quite good because we don’t suffer the fate of having to be compared with other businesses that have come before us.

Be consistent in your approach and don’t compromise on your beliefs as business, consistency is an invaluable currency There are times when the very thought of compromise has crossed our minds, where we’ve thought of crossing over to the “website realm” but we realize that pioneers never have it easy, they face rejection from the masses and acceptance from the minority but eventually the few influence the masses and eventually change the landscape in a radical manner.

Give attention to detail and always reaffirm the message with every opportunity you get.

One lesson I learned while working as a web developer for several companies was the lack of attention to detail and uniqueness especially when it came to proposal. Instead of every proposal of being given attention it wasn’t hard to find situations where the same proposal was used for different clients and only the client name was changed at the top. Always take the time to understand the needs of the client and give them a proposal that is unique to their needs and their business. Take us for example every proposal we do we add our business profile at the end and ensure that it reaffirms our message of being a cut above rest, it lengthens the presentation by a few pages but it also ensures that the message sticks.

One last thing sell with confidence even when you fear they will not buy it, deals are closed one phone call at a time, one email at a time.

To learn more about this author, visit John Wesonga's Website.

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