How to sell promotional items?

Drop by the target offices or send them a sample bag with a letter and your business card. Explain who you are and what your company offers, and give your . Explain who you are and what your company offers, and provide your contact information. If you visit in person, give the receptionist free samples.

Ask for a contact name for future reference. As you learned in your basic business course, it is five times more expensive to get a new customer than to keep an existing one. Even more convincingly, you have a much higher success rate selling to a customer you already have on board (60 is 70%) than selling to a buyer whose brand is new to you (5 is 20%). For example, if a company is hosting a summer barbecue for its employees, suggest a gift bag with a T-shirt, sunglasses, sunscreen and a Frisbee.

Or suggest a T-shirt, scarf, water bottle and lip balm to participants in a charity run. You can even add a logoed bag to hold all the gifts, and the recipients will use the bag several times. Suddenly, you're not just taking an order for 200 T-shirts. You are a solution provider offering a customized mix of products that your clients' employees, customers and event-goers will love and use for months or longer.

This may be sales 101, but few salespeople do this before they start a sales pitch. And the few who do research may not have realized that there are little nuggets that mean opportunity when you put the pieces together. Yes, research the usual, such as the background of the company, its structure and so on. But also think about individual opportunities.

Some call this unnecessary, others call it Sales 102, but either way you should give some importance to industry research. You can come up with a portfolio that is tailored to the industry and understand the timing for products. Please, please don't walk in the door and start a sales conversation right away. A sales call should be a conversation.

Listen to the customer's problems and think about how you can help them. When you have a real conversation, you get a deep understanding of the customer's goals, needs and wants. Not only is a conversation refreshing for the potential customer, but it also teaches you more about the company. People remember those who treat them as people and not as a money clip.

During the conversation, you build knowledge and a relationship. If the prospect decides to continue with you, you now know better who they are and what their needs are, so you can recommend more targeted solutions. No, having a conversation does not mean interrupting every few sentences and starting with the lowest price from a foreign sweatshop. Listen to what your prospect actually wants to talk about.

You may have ideas about products X, Y and Z, but your interlocutor may be looking more for F, G or H. Learn to listen and be prepared to shift in order to best help him. Active listening is one of the most difficult but important skills to develop. It involves everything from eye contact and other non-verbal cues to actually listening and not just waiting to speak again.

By actually listening to what your prospect has to say, you can determine if you can build a mutually beneficial relationship and understand enough to recommend useful and viable products. When you listen to your customer, you suddenly don't take the risk of recommending a completely customized product; you have confidence in your relationship and your recommendations and have built a relationship that is sufficient for your customer to consider your recommendation. Selling promotional products is a great way to earn some extra money or start a new career. Like many other work-from-home businesses, selling promotional products to businesses can be either a part-time or full-time job.

Fortunately, modern tools make it easier than ever to set up and run an e-commerce shop, and if you sell promotional products, you need one. Below we take a closer look at what you need to do to set up an online promotional products shop. By choosing just one or two areas to focus on, you narrow down your target audience to a manageable size so that you can concentrate on marketing your promotional products tailored to their specific needs. Buying promotional products is not at the top of a company's to-do list, so it's up to you to remind your contacts of offers and deadlines.

Clay Hall, who has been with AIA for four years and recently took over as director of owner success, says the team was created largely in response to today's increasingly transactional promotional products market. If you're going to be selling promotional items for fundraisers for months or years, it might be better to choose something that has your brand as a theme. To compete in the promotional products market, you need to stand out from the competition, whether it's cost, product or both. But opening an online shop seems to be too much of a challenge for many traders and retailers selling promotional products.

Promotional products can help companies increase sales, boost employee morale and increase brand awareness. The billions companies already spend on promotional products (yes, that goes for apparel too) continues to grow every year. The truth is: if you offer your customers real added value, custom promotional products spread positive awareness of your business and can even make you a little money. If a promotional item is useful enough, you can even charge a little money for people to buy it, even if it has your company name on it.

Many branded promotional items make great giveaways; the consumer gets a free (and often practical) item, while the company gets its name out in front of potential customers, increasing brand awareness. With the help of Sellers Commerce, you can quickly set up and effortlessly manage your shop to capitalize on the demand for online promotional items. Kaeser & Blair is a family-owned promotional products distribution company that has been in business for over 100 years. If a potential customer is large enough, you can print out several options to give to a promotional products decision maker.

Many people who are new to the complex world of promotional products find getting started a daunting task.