How Modern Sales Techniques Help You Transform Your E-Commerce Business (2024)

For e-commerce companies, much of the traditional advice for sales teams about positive body language, active listening, and effective presentations no longer applies. Modern, leaner companies often don’t have formal sales teams. Instead, they attract prospects through marketing, not sales calls or sales presentations. In fact, many don’t talk directly to their customers to close deals.

Effective sales techniques are different for e-commerce businesses, which must attract their customers and effectively present the product and the needs it addresses—sometimes without a single face-to-face conversation. Here’s a look at traditional sales techniques and how to use aspects of them to promote your e-commerce business.

What are sales techniques?

Sales techniques refer to the strategies, methods, and approaches you or your salespeople use to convince prospects to buy your product or service. They often focus on understanding the customer’s needs and guiding them to decide that your solution is the right one.

For many e-commerce businesses, effective selling means communicating this information through marketing means, including eye-catching website design, high-quality product descriptions, interactive resources, and more.

Effective sales techniques

“No single method is going to work for every business, or even every situation within a company,” says Shawn Khemsurov, co-founder of Electric Eye, an agency that helps e-commerce brands increase sales through strategic design and development.

“At the heart of most of these processes comes down to an important core concept,” says Shawn. “You should always be guided by the needs of your customers. Focus on that, and you won’t get overwhelmed.”

While there is no one-size-fits-all method, here are some of the most effective sales techniques:

SPIN sales technique

Sales consultant Neil Rackham coined the term SPIN in his 1988 book. SPIN Sales. This method involves asking prospects about their Situation, Problem, Implications, and Need-Reward (SPIN) questions, which reveals their objections to buying your product. This technique includes the following elements:

• Ask them to describe their current situation.
• Focus on the main problem they are facing.
• Think about the consequences of not solving the problem.
• Encourage the client to think about how the situation would improve if they found a solution. (What is the need-reward?)

The goal is to guide the potential buyer to recognize their need for your product. As a salesperson, you can take a conversational and fact-based approach rather than resorting to hard selling.

SNAP Sales Technique

Sales strategist Jill Konrath describes this sales technique in her 2010 book: SNAP Sales. Focuses on making the sales process more transparent and effective. SNAP stands for “simple, invaluable, align, priority” and encourages the following actions:

• Keep your sales message simple.
• Demonstrate why your solution is invaluable.
• Always align with the buyer’s goals.
• Help the buyer understand why solving this problem should be a priority.

NEAT Sales Technique

Harris Consulting Group and Sales Hacker developed this system that focuses on identifying a customer’s core needs and pain points. This makes it clear which prospects aren’t a good fit for your product, ensuring only qualified leads make it to the top of the sales funnel.

The NEAT (Needs, Economic Impact, Authority, Timeline) method requires the sales team to gain a deep understanding of the buyer’s perspective at the first meeting in order to do the following:

• Understand their basic needs and challenges.
• Demonstrate the economic impact of your product or service.
• Convince your prospect to present this solution to authorities or final decision makers.
• Establish a timeline for the decision-making process.

Sales of solutions

Like the NEAT method, solution selling emphasizes the importance of understanding the needs and challenges of your prospects, not just promoting your product or service. By understanding their pain points, you can offer them customized solutions built around your products.

With this approach, your sales team members act more like knowledgeable consultants, demonstrating the value and benefits your products can bring to the lives or businesses of potential customers.

Tips for selling effectively

Even if you decide to use a specific sales method, many other factors can affect how you formulate your sales pitch. Here are some sales tips:

Offer solutions

From your landing page to your product descriptions, your website copy should engage potential customers based on their needs and highlight how your solution can help them.

“Depending on the product, the description could be bullet points, two paragraphs, or more,” says Shawn. “The idea is to concisely explain what your product will do for your customer and what problem it will solve. This is the foundation of selling, so it’s important to get it right. Stop and think about what questions your customer might have and what they need to know most.”

Invest in your website

Optimize your site’s user experience with responsive design on desktop and mobile devices. Storefront designs should be eye-catching, but your site also needs to be easy to navigate.

“E-commerce sales are so much about making people feel comfortable,” says Shawn. “There are so many trust factors—areas where trust can be gained or lost. Your site needs to look professional. Customers need to understand what they’re buying and from whom. If something seems suspicious, people won’t buy.”

Streamline your sales process with intuitive navigation, clear calls to action, and a user-friendly checkout process. A professional-looking design will strengthen your brand’s credibility and inspire trust.

Use visual assets

Text is key for descriptions, but many product and service sales pages also use visuals. Close-ups of a product’s texture or videos of a product or service in action help e-commerce customers better understand the sales pitch.

You don’t necessarily need a professional photographer, but quality does matter. Your photos and videos should be clear and sharp.

Highlight customer reviews

Reach out to customers to encourage them to leave reviews about their purchases. Consider adding an incentive, such as a $5 discount code for their next purchase. Highlight customer reviews and testimonials on your site to build credibility with potential buyers.

“Seeing other customers’ reviews is a huge validation: it’s a trust factor because I can see that other people have bought it and received their product,” Shawn says. “Social proof is huge in e-commerce.”

While positive reviews are ideal, negative ones give you an opportunity to show that you care about customer satisfaction. “Replying publicly to a review shows that someone reads it, that someone cares, and that the company is working to fix it,” says Shawn. “It goes a long way in showing that there’s a human behind the brand.”

Provide personalized recommendations

Personalization makes the shopping experience more enjoyable and engaging for customers, increasing the chance of upselling additional products and services.

Some platforms, such as the Shopify Search & Discovery app, display recommended products that are complementary or related to products that customers have already searched for on your product pages. You can also deliver product recommendations through targeted emails.

Use digital marketing tools

In addition to product recommendations, use email marketing campaigns to stay in touch with customers, nurturing relationships and sales potential. Promote new products, offer targeted or general promotions, and follow up with customers who have abandoned their shopping carts.

To attract new customers, search engine optimization (SEO)—incorporating popular keywords into your site’s content and metadata—is a powerful tool for improving your site’s visibility. “Platforms like Shopify have SEO features built in, and it’s an organic and free way to boost your site’s rankings in search results,” Shawn says.

Also consider using retargeting ads, which websites show to customers who have visited your site but not made a purchase. They will see these ads as they navigate the web, potentially encouraging them to return to your site and complete their purchase.

“You can try one of these tools at a time,” Shawn says. “And then once you get the hang of it, you move on to the next one. There are a lot of tools that can help you, but taking it one step at a time can help you stay focused.”

Analyze, test and optimize

Selling doesn’t work best as a “set it and forget it” strategy. There’s a lot of competition for the buyer’s attention, and you may need to change your selling techniques over time.

Consider A/B testing to compare how different pricing or positioning affects shoppers’ purchasing decisions, or experiment with a new SEO software solution. The key is to closely track your sales data, which will help you improve your sales process for current customers and attract new prospects.

“If people are visiting your site but not many are making purchases, you should focus on improving your conversion rate,” says Shawn. “If you have a lot of customer sales but not many of them are making purchases, you might want to try improving your average order value. Your sales goals should align with your business goals.”