Why Can’t Most Small Businesses do Sales?

If you put a group of small business owners into a room together and ask how many of them are sales people, what answer will you get? Most people will say that they don’t do sales. And yet if you run your own business, or work for a small one, then guess what? You have to do sales! If you don’t, who will?

I love selling, even though I’m a Marketing Consultant, so in this blog I thought I’d share some of my selling secrets with you.

Don’t waste time on ‘suspects’. You could spend a great deal of time chasing sales leads that aren’t real leads – people who are just wasting your time and who are never going to buy from you. Your service is not suitable to everyone; you can’t work for absolutely every person and you need to be targeted. I know that anyone who asks me how much marketing costs will never buy from me.

Follow a process. You need a process for carrying out effective sales meetings, just turning up and hoping for the best won’t work. The process I use involves asking certain questions to help me find out exactly how I can help a prospect, how much help they’re looking for and how much they want to invest. I’ve used this process successfully on sales consultants without them knowing it!

Talking versus listening. Do you spend more time listening to what your prospects are saying, or more time talking about how brilliant your business is? Successful selling is about asking questions to find out what problems your prospects face. Only when you know what issues they’re struggling with can you create a solution that will solve that issue. One size does not fit all, so you can’t try to sell one solution to solve every problem.

Promote the value. Too many small businesses try to compete on price. But if you’re not the cheapest and you don’t want to keep dropping your prices to win a sale, you need to promote the value of what you do. When you tell someone a benefit of working with you, then ask yourself “so what?” to make sure you’re really telling them benefits and not just features. If your prospect can see the real value they will get from working with you, they won’t be so worried about the price.

Ask for the sale! This sounds obvious, but so many people don’t do it. Don’t leave your prospect to tell you that they want to buy, because they’ll be waiting for you to ask. “Does that sound like the right solution for you?” is a good question to ask. “When would you like me to start working on your marketing?” is one of my favourites.

There’s a lot more to selling than just this, but I believe that if you get your marketing right, you’ll generate the right leads for your business. Then you just need to get the sales part right and you’ll find yourself with a steady flow of new clients coming into your business.

Who’s Paying for Lunch?

There are dozens of books that have been written about selling. But most of them are written for big businesses, or for businesses outside the UK. They talk about the theory of selling, but they don’t focus on the practical aspects of it.

There is one book that has been written especially for the UK small business market. It’s called ‘Who’s Paying for Lunch?’ and is really good – I know, because I’ve read it! It’s written by Dr Tamara Howard who has many years of experience of selling and helping other businesses to sell. It’s very well written – easy to read and full of great, practical advice.

The book goes on sale in September 2014, but if you want to order a copy now, go to Tamara’s website by clicking here.