Make Room for Direct and Indirect Sales

: Direct and Indirect Sales Picture by Stilfehler at Wikimedia Commons

Information technology (IT) firms are receiving larger portions of their product revenues through indirect sales. If you’ve ever went to a local office or department store and purchased a computer that was made by a particular manufacturer (e.g. Hewlett Packard, Dell), you were helping the manufacturer to increase its indirect sales. Additionally, as a creative business leader selling books, whether you’re a major book publisher or an independent publisher, each time you sell books through vendors like Amazon.com, Cushcity.com, Walmart, Barnes and Noble or another online or offline store, you are making indirect sales. Larger numbers of indirect and direct sales (sales made directly from your company to consumers) can spell “success” or “more challenges ahead” for your creative business endeavors.

Support for Your Creative Business Direct Sales

You can find support for your direct selling business efforts through organizations like the Direct Selling Association. Professional associations and organizations like the Better Business Bureau, National Writers’ Union and the National Association of Independent Artists also host direct selling events that you can attend. Some of these events are open to the general business public, while others are only open to members of the organizations.

Attending these and similar events might be well worth it. After all, companies like Avon and Mary Kay have generated millions of dollars in revenues solely through direct sales. There are also independent book publishers (e.g. Zane, Amanda Hocking) who have gained a sizable following through their direct sales and marketing efforts. Set up a website, posts excerpts from your latest novels, non-fiction “how to” books or other educational books and you can start attracting more book buying readers to your work, even before you spend one cent on book printing. If you sell other types of products you can use video and audio to allow your website visitors to take your products or services for a test run. Colleges and universities do this today with some of their courses. Video game manufacturers and retailers also let consumers test drive their products to encourage final direct or indirect sales.

Strategies to Increase Your Creative Business Indirect Sales

To increase your indirect sales always create a great product or service, one that gets folks talking. The more people talk about your products and services, the more positive attention your creative business can receive. You can also increase your indirect business sales by:

Establishing affiliate sales teams to market and sell your products (certainly worked for Amazon.com)
Asking your family, friends, colleagues (just about everyone you know) to tell 5 to 10 other people about your products and/or services, including where people can find your business products and/or services
Creating accounts with resellers (e.g. distributors and bookstores if you’re a book publisher)
Offering discounts to other companies (e.g. gift shops, airport vendors) who sell your products
Encouraging users of your business products or services to post reviews about the products and services at retail websites, discussion forums, social networks (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, Black Planet)
Soliciting feedback from your customers to post at your website, on your brick and mortar business waiting room walls, in advertisements you run, etc.

When it comes to direct sales, attending targeted seminars, conferences and festivals are effective ways to get before your target audience and increase your face-to-face (or direct) sales. By publicizing your brick and mortar stores and websites, you can also increase the amount of direct sales you receive. Go where your customers are and sell your products to them there, making it easy for them to place orders.

Keep in mind that as your direct and indirect sales increase in order to continue to satisfy customers you must keep your products in stock, that is, unless you’ll selling products like e-books that can be downloaded for buying consumers to enjoy. A shortage of products could cause the momentum of your sales to slack off, so keep sufficient supplies on hand and make sure that you can readily ship your business products to customers within one to three days. You might even consider sweetening the deal by offering customers discounts on shipping and handling or even free shipping and handling.

Get into Spiral online at: https://www.ebookit.com/books/0000000841/Spiral.html

Check out Long Walk Up online at: https://www.ebookit.com/books/0000000531/Long-Walk-Up.html

Sources:

http://www.dsa.org (Direct Selling Association)

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1001112 (Gartner)

http://www.naia-artists.org (National Association of Independent Artists)