Thursday, July 30, 2009
Jack Daly's sales tips for entrepreneurs
- Your job is to grow sales – not do sales
Entrepreneurs are often too involved in deal making and selling. A sales leader's job (and if you're the owner of the business, you are the sales leader) – is not to grow sales yourself; it is to grow your salespeople in quantity and quality so they in turn will grow your sales for you.
- Research your customers
"Old school" selling meant spending time with prospects learning more about their business and asking them a lot of questions. Yes, you still need to ask questions, but the availability of information on the internet means you should have so much information about the client before you meet, that you ask them questions about what you've learned – and show them how informed and professional you are.
- It's about the customer
Do you really understand the customer, and are you offering something that they actually have a desire and a need for? A salesperson's job is to do a lot less selling and a lot more helping people to buy. If you can't help them, then the right thing to do is to refer them where they can find the right solution for their needs. - What is your perceived value?
In order to retain your customers you obviously need to have a product or a service that creates real genuine value. But, the very first time a customer buys from you they don't buy real value, because the only time they can buy real value is on the second and subsequent purchases. Initially, what they are buying is their perception of your value. You need to understand how to effectively sell this perception.
