Do you consider yourself to be an exceptional sales person in your business? Or do you loathe selling as a necessary evil to survive?
Most business owners have great technical skills in their business – whether as a florist, plumber or accountant – and yet don’t see themselves as a salesperson and sometimes have an aversion to selling.
We’ve all had bad experiences as unwilling targets of brash salespeople who put us off because they show no respect for us, the buyer. There are the pushy sales types who “sell ice to eskimos in winter” and don’t you just dread the sales call from a foreign telemarketer just while you’re sitting down to dinner? Such poorly thought-out sales approaches give sales a bad reputation.
Sometimes these poor experiences create a mental block against selling in the minds of business owners and their staff. Yet as business owners we find ourselves in a bind because we’re dependent on sales to build our businesses.
Many business owners outsource the selling function to another company or hire an in-house person to do it for them. Yet the success (or not) of these options is dependent on the principles underlying the sales proposition and the selling process, which brings us back to the responsibility of the business owner in the first place. Somehow, we business owners have to master the sales function within our own businesses before we can successfully outsource it.
A great step towards creating a successful sales strategy is to review the values you’d like to uphold in the sales function of your business. Key values in sales (and in fact all walks of life) include:
- Respect
- Courtesy
- Honesty
- Loyalty
- Friendliness
- Willingness
- Efficiency
- Appropriateness
- Fun
- Commitment
- Creativity
- Diligence
- Enthusiasm
- Expertise
- Fairness
- Reliability
- Punctuality
- Understanding
- Professionalism
Pick the top five or so values that you will strive to live up to when selling in your business. In this way you can integrate your personal integrity and likable personal characteristics into your sales strategy. So if your values are “respect” and “honesty”, then develop a sales function around the value of respecting and being honest with your prospects.
Salespeople who know and uphold their values, have nothing to be ashamed of. We all need to purchase products and services and there is no shame in promoting yours with potential customers if you do so with integrity. Hold your head high and promote your products and services with respect, honesty and whatever other values make up the essence of your customer relationship promise.