From start-up to exit – the life of a business Summing up 2014 – Part III

“The future is still under construction” – Ikutaro Kakehashi

Sell, sell, sell!!!

          Planning, analysis, building and all the actions you take in order to have your own business turn to be useless unless you can sell your products and services. After all the main goal of a business is profit. And when all is said and done if there is no profit, you have no business. We talked in the startup part of the article about being able to monetize your idea; you make money if you sell.

            From all my opinions of 2014, the articles referring to sales have to be my favorite. And the reason is a simple one. I have 10 years experience in the field, I love doing this and I don’t think I want to change a thing. There have been good years and there have been 2014 like years. But in the long run, the adrenalin of a big sale and the joy of helping someone by giving the best solution make it all worth it.

            First step on the road to success in business is that you need to understand is about the customer and not about you. Yes you know better most of the times, but he is the one with the money. And what better way of making it the customer feels important if not telling a story about him? Keep this in mind if nothing else: “One thing hasn’t changed in thousands of years…there’s still no better way to stir emotions than a good story” – Boxer Creative, UK. And emotions sell my friends!

            A good story, one you can use in sales has always the client as the hero. At the end of that journey the hero reaches his goals, finds answers, solutions. The quest in this case can be increased profit at the end of the year or maybe creating a better brand on the market. Along the way the hero will encounter obstacles. Late deliveries, increase in prices, decrease in quality. All these obstacles make the journey more difficult, sometimes even impossible to finish. All obstacles can be overcome with the right help or inspiration. You have to make sure that what you can do for the hero of the story, your customer, is that inspiration he is looking for. Offer him the solution to his problems in your story, be there along the way and offer your support. Your help makes the hero reach the end of his journey. The customer you helped reaches his goals easier and faster.

Telling the right story is not the easiest thing to do but with practice you can improve and reach your goals. A great story will give you powers not even you knew you had, that moment when the client makes the connections and decides to take action is great. My advice will be to never improvise, do your due diligence and gather the information you need to make the story sell, do this and you will never have to sell your products and services again. Make it personal, make it real and stand out of the crowd.

A good story tells, but you also need some skills to make you successful. There is no general plan that you can apply and be successful in sales. You have to persevere and try and try again. There are some tips that can make your transition smoother to the diamond stage, not eliminating the pressure. You can find my favorite 7 below, verified and tested.

• · Don’t sell out of hunger. You have to keep yourself in a relaxed state of mind. Think of this as a game of poker. If you lose your concentration and forget to keep your poker face you can have a full house every hand, but you will never win a hand.
• · Choose your battles. They say you can sell some things to everyone, everything to some of the people, but you will never be able to sell everything to everyone. Pareto’s principle applies also in sales, 80% of your earnings come from 20% of your clients.

• · Sell only if you would be a customer. The story you are going to sell will be more believable if you believe in it. You cannot tell a story that doesn’t work for you too, for a long period of time. Find something you can believe in, add passion and persuasion and wait for the inevitable success.

• · Don’t take your “mother” to a sales pitch. Supposition is the mother of all mistakes. I learned that the hard way. You know that moment when you talk to a customer and you feel like you know him? And you suppose you know what he wants. Don’t do it again, there is no harm in asking him what he wants. Don’t guess, don’t suppose, just find out exactly how things are and you will gain a long term customer.

• · Don’t sell, let them buy. One common mistake is going into the meeting aggressive and trying to make them buy, transforming everything into a fight. If you are at that meeting you know that they are interested in buying your product/services. Just ask the right questions and let them give the answers, let them be the ones who buy and I assure you they will want more.

• · Good is giving what they want; great is adding a bonus they didn’t expect. When you meet your clients ‘expectations he will be satisfied, maybe even contact you again sometimes. When you exceed their expectations and not necessarily by offering something material, they will always contact you because they remember the great experience they had. Be great sale people and leave them wanting more.

• · Believe in you. What all those people around you mistaken for arrogance is actually confidence. You know what you know. You are what you are. And that should be enough for you to become what you are supposed to be. Set your own path, follow it with passion and confidence, there is no way that you will not make it. If you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will. “The greatest danger for most of us is not that we aim too high and we miss it, but that it is to low and we reach it” – Michelangelo.

            One of the most important topics in sales is choosing the right people. Since we don’t have a general path to follow towards success, also the way we sell differs from people to people, from personality to personality. The most known types are Hunter and Farmer. The names say it all. Sometimes the right person in the right situation will make the difference between success and failure.

For as long as people did sales and the hunter and farmer types were recognized we had a battle started from the question “which one is better as a sales person?” Arguments from both sides were right and from time to time one of the groups looked like winning the battle. Depending on economic situation, market changes or internal organizational changes the abilities of the two groups can make one of them look more successful. Keep in mind the fact that sales persons are rarely 100% hunter or farmer but they are definitely influenced by the personality they have and in time they will get closer and closer to 100%.

After 10 years of sales or sales related activities my conclusion is that they both have an important role. You need both even in the same company because if you can build a functional team with both hunters and farmers you increase your chance of success. Sometimes companies complain because the sales department doesn’t perform but you have to get together the right team. If you only have hunters in the team, you will get a lot of new customers but no one will implement a loyalty strategy because the hunter brings you the pray and goes after another. After 10 years of sales or sales related activities my conclusion is that they both have an important role. You need both even in the same company because if you can build a functional team with both hunters and farmers you increase your chance of success. Sometimes companies complain because the sales department doesn’t perform but you have to get together the right team. If you only have hunters in the team, you will get a lot of new customers but no one will implement a loyalty strategy because the hunter brings you the pray and goes after another.

Farmer versus hunter is a fight on the sales battlefield that will never have a winner in my mind. Start a business with hunters, bring some farmers alongside and find a way for them to work together and you will have a successful team. Pick one side and assume the fact that you will either get big deals from time to time or a couple of loyal clients that may not be there forever and might even disappear when a hunter from your competition will take him in his sights.

In the end one more thing should complete the picture. You need diplomacy, or as they call it in sales, negotiation skills. In business you don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate”(Chester L. Karrass). Be prepared to play the game, know your value and stick to the plan. Being in Romania there is also an upside to the negotiation game. There isn’t a modern Romanian negotiation culture, we only have real negotiations for about 20 years and the business culture was brought by the companies that invested in Romania. Because of this and the internal trainings their employees adopted the company culture so if you work for an American company you do business as they do and so on. But this makes Romania the country where you can meet each day a different negotiation style thus becoming an expert negotiator.