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I’ve been doing sales for startups for 20 years now. In this time, I’ve learned quite a bit about how to make sales happen. In particular, I’ve learned a lot about how NOT to do something, and also how to read situations well so that I can come to win-win solutions.
Sometimes, I’ve learned these lessons through failing and picking myself up again.
Other times, I’ve learned from talking to people more experienced than me. My sales mentor has been an incredible resource to me.
There is a big difference between being a salesperson and being a person in sales. What actually makes you a salesperson instead of just a person in sales? You CLOSE deals.
A true salesperson does what needs to be done to get the deal done. Sometimes that means sweetening the offer. Sometimes it means dropping the price. Sometimes it means explaining the benefits better, or comparing yourself against the alternatives. But a good salesperson always figures out whats holding up a deal and then looks for ways to overcome that obstacle/objection and get the deal done.
One of the nicest things about being in sales is getting to travel to interesting places that you probably wouldn’t go to normally. In my career, I’ve seen nearly the entire US and several countries. Last week, I got the opportunity to travel to Istanbul and it was an amazing experience. I am very intriqued by historic sites, and in particular the events that shaped the world we live in today, but actually planning a trip to Turkey wasn’t high on my list. My family would much rather travel to more relaxed and vacation sites that require less thinking. And… as a salesperson that travels, we are often at the mercy of where our families want to go when we do get fun travel.
Sales is hard.
Anyone who has done sales in a start-up can attest to that fact. Great salespeople make it look easy – or at least hide the struggle well from non-salespeople. Once a great salesperson builds their pipeline, gets down their pitch and starts rolling with it, they can easily bring companies on the pipeline, and move them through, and can often do it with, what looks like, ease and finesse – and often with amazing predictability.
The essential but horrible sounding named murder board. Every time I bring it up with a new person, I get confused stares – yet I think its an essential tool for both salespeople and entrepreneurs.
Dear Prospect,
Good salespeople build their entire career based on one of integrity. We believe, that every step of the way, we should be open and honest with you about our product, about its limitations, about how and where we are better and worse than our competition. We even try to be completely transparent and honest with you about our sales process so that we can start our relationship on the right footing.
Everyone buys things… and everyone has opinions on where they like to buy, how they like to buy, and what makes them buy? Why then… do so many companies forget these experiences when they plan out their own sales strategy and pricing models?
Up-selling, despite what some people believe, is not a sneaky or dishonest sales strategy. In fact is is an essential strategy for start-ups. I do, however, understand, how many people can see it this way.
At the bagel store near my house, a bagel costs $0.49. Yet, order that bagel with $0.03 worth of butter, and the bagel is suddenly $1.69. Why does the store do this? Because its great to advertise bagels that cost only $0.49, but who comes into the store and only orders 1 bagel with nothing on it? The upsell is the critical method of driving profit into the store.
Its worth repeating my post from last December about the December Sales Problem.
December is a hard sales month for companies for several reasons: The month is really only 2.5 weeks long before your prospects shut down. Budgets are often used up. Vacations make it hard to get deals done. Prospects are more focused on their Holiday party then they are on your solution, etc. The list is long, and very intuitive why its hard to get sales done. However, as I’ve posted before, December can actually be an amazing month for sales.
Recently, I replied to a HARO request for the top 5 lessons for a new sales rep. Happily, one of my items was selected for the article. (Yes, the article is referring to an idea from me despite the fact that my name is massacred <grin> ). The resulting list that author, Brandon Mendelson, compiled is actually quite good and I’m honored to be one of the items in his list. I decided to post my entire top 5 here and provide links to my old articles that explain them in more detail:
