The value of a sale

The most important part of any business is the sale.

I don’t think that’s any revelation there, honestly. However, most people don’t truly understand what a sale means for your business. Yes, it does mean revenue NOW, which, you know, we all have bills to pay, but that’s not the real value of the sale.

The value of the sale is that once you sell somebody something, you have lowered their defenses, and it becomes much easier to sell them again. I’ve seen this in every business I have ever started.

The original sale is brutally and monumentally hard. Getting somebody to part with even one dollar is nearly impossible. However, once you have sold them, you have an opportunity, because you have chipped away at their defenses until they agreed to give you money.

That is not easy.

I very rarely give money to new vendors, and I know most people are like me. They don’t have unlimited funds to throw around. Once a new company has “won” my money, it is because I have a deep-seated pain point that I think they can solve.

That pain point might be my desire to read an amazing comic, or build my email list, or learn marketing, or do my taxes. Whatever it is, they have earned the opportunity to win me over with their product.

Most businesses fail when presented with this opportunity though. Their product are pedestrian, or poor. While I rarely ask for a refund, I also put a mental note not to buy from them again.

They have wasted the most valuable part of the sale, which is the returning customer. The one who comes back again and again because they know you are the best, and because you take care in your work.

The returning customer is what will make or break your business, honestly. The wider your pool of returning customers, the more of a monetary base you have when launching a new product. If people are eagerly waiting to buy, then you could break even or even make a profit at launch, instead of launching to crickets.

I see people launching to crickets all the time, even established creators, and I know it is because they did not nurture their most precious resource; their existing customers.

Whenever I launch a new product, I first go to my existing customers and ask what they want me to make, and then I go into the marketplace and see if there is a growing market for that product.

In doing that, I was able to grow my launches from dozens to hundreds to thousands over the year. With each launch, I have a core of customers that will buy my products when they first launch.

Every time I launch a new product line, this same process has been true. At first, it’s brutally hard, because nobody wants to take a chance on somebody new. Over time they grow to like me, then they try one of my products, and then another, and eventually I have developed a small core of rabid fans.

This was true in comics, in novels, in marketing, and in online courses. Each time it felt equally impossible at first, but then people tried my products, and grew to love them. Once they were happy with my products, they started to buy on autopilot.

However, that only happened because I OVERDELIVER on value. No matter the price point, my goal with any product is to blow them away and create the best product they have ever seen at that price point.

Almost no company does this for their customers, at least with any consistency. I can only think of a handful of companies that have earned my repeat business based on the quality and value of the products. That is why most products, and businesses, fail. They focus on the single sale instead of the lifetime value of the customer.

If you build your business on overdelivering, you will always have rabid customers coming back for more. They will talk up your product and drag other people into your ecosystem, making it a virtuous cycle.

That is why it’s not good enough to launch a book, or a course, and expect to have a huge number of sales at first.

At first, you have to develop a baseline of customers who love your work and will eagerly anticipate your next launch. If you can keep launching great products and finding new fans, your business will grow over time.

Remember though, your customers aren’t eagerly anticipating it because they are foolish with their money. They are eagerly anticipating it because when they lowered their guard down and allowed you into their lives, you didn’t take advantage of them like so many others.

Instead, you overdelivered on value, delighted them, and so they became rabid consumers of your work, because they know they won’t get screwed. That trust is a gift you have to keep earning time and time again.