Module 6 - Making it Happen
4. Approach to sales
It may seem obvious that sales are important for your business but developing a strong and effective sales process may not. You need to be thoughtful and deliberate about the kind of sales process you build and the approach you take. Here are a few ways to think about it and good practice to get in the habit of.
- Sales as a discipline: define your process in line with the type of customer you are after. Do you need to work from referrals? Will cold calls work? Do you need to speak to people in person? Make your life easier by creating templates and scripts. Keep updating the customer prospect list. Know that prospecting and sales are different processes. Keep tracking progress and what you learn along the way. You need to be disciplined about this and make sure that you are putting in the legwork. Sales require a constant effort.
- Fast v slow sales: one way to look at the sales process is to compare it to slow vs fast food. This analogy (credit to Tom Chi, yes the rapid prototyping guru!) starts from the point of view that slow food is considerate and caters to the individual whilst fast food caters to everyone. Similarly, “slow sales” is a type of sales that is collaborative and takes time. In this approach, you (as the salesperson) take time to understand your customers’ world and what really matters to them (B2C) or their business (B2B).
- Slow sales is collaborative
- Spend time understanding their world/what really matters to their business
- Then think about if what you do has total, some or no overlap with their world.
- If there is no overlap, think of ways can you still serve them from a personal perspective as you never know when contact might be useful
- Sales should be a win-win for both parties
- Being prepared: the more prepared you are, the easier your life will be when it comes to selling.
You also want to make things as easy as possible for your potential customer. Consider what information they need in order to make a purchasing decision and then make this information easily accessible to them. You also need to know what trading terms (pricing, payment terms, delivery schedule, level of service) you can trade under if you are going to be negotiating. Before engaging with a potential customer, always be clear on what you want from the interaction. And make sure you follow up afterwards, always follow up! - Customer retention: keeping the right customers is likely to be more valuable to your startup than continuously trying to win new customers.