If You’re In Business, You Need To Understand The Business Of Sales

IMG_2329In my work as a business coach and mentor to early stage companies, I get to meet and work with a ton of great folks. Their businesses couldn’t be more different from one another, from the kinds of products and services they offer to the sizes of their staff and their target markets. There’s a huge amount of diversity in my work, but there’s also some common threads.

One of those common threads are the mistakes. This incredible collection of entrepreneurs, owners and executives I serve all seem to have the same blind spots when it comes to the business of sales. What is that blind spot? They don’t give their sales the same level of attention and focus that they give other areas of their businesses. Continue reading

Sales As A Core Business Competency, Part 5: Sales Staff

SIBP-2Let’s say you’re really far along in creating your business model. You understand exactly what your customers’ needs are, and you’ve crafted an outstanding value proposition for them. After a long decision-making process, you’ve decided that the best course of action for your business is to dive in with both feet and sell to your customers directly.

You’ve also decided that you’re not going to sell through your website, or rely on something passive like a kickstarter campaign. You’re actually going to hire people.

Hiring a sales staff is a big step. It’s time to ask yourself a big question: “How much will I have to pay in order to set someone else to sell for me?” Continue reading

Sales As A Core Business Competency, Part 4: Economics

SIBP-1What exactly does it mean to professionalize your sales process? It means making your sales activities a core function of your business. If you do it correctly, your business will be much more profitable, and you will make a lot more money.

In the earlier posts, I’ve explained the foundation of a professionalized sales structure: customers, value propositions and channels. Now it’s time to construct the larger framework that foundation supports. That means talking about costs and profits. In other words, we’re talking about the economics of your business. Continue reading

Sales As A Core Business Competency, Part 3: Channels

SIBP-2I’m a process guy. I like to break down complex systems into their most basic structures, looking for places where things can be improved or made more efficient. In my work with entrepreneurs and small businesses, I often see the biggest process bottlenecks in the early stages of sales process. And there’s no place this is more obvious than in how a business approaches their channels.

A channel is simply another way of saying “Places to sell your stuff.” You can also look at channels as a series of branching paths, almost like branches on a tree, with each one reaching out to a specific kind of customer. Just like a tree, you can often get the best results by knowing which branches to prune.

Right off the bat, most businesses need to make a big decision in which branch to prune. Will they focus on direct or indirect sales? Direct sales means selling directly to the customer or end user, while indirect sales means that your customers aren’t the final customer, and instead they sell to the final customer as middlemen. Continue reading

Sales As A Core Business Competency, Part 2: The Value Proposition

SIBP-2How well do you know your customers? Do you know what they really care about? And, most importantly, do you know why they buy from you?

You don’t need to be a genius to realize the best way to get candid feedback from customers is to simply ask them. You’ll be amazed and how much you’ll learn if you actually talk to your customers.

You might learn, for instance, that the biggest problems your customers are trying to solve isn’t the one you thought it was. Perhaps you’ve been pitching your product on its price point, but your customers are more compelled to sign on the dotted line by your service plan. There are countless factors that go into making a sale, and the only way to determine the decisive ones are to go straight to the source. Continue reading

Sales As A Core Business Competency, Part 1: The Customer

SIBP-3Creating a professional sales competency in your business is the single biggest success hack there is. I’ve seen firsthand the impact that a professionalized sales process can make. Not only can it make you a lot of money, it can also completely change how your company is seen by investors, competitors and potential customers.

It’s easy to tell when a business hasn’t developed its sales core competency. They give off the impression that they are just “winging it,” reinventing the process for every prospect and opportunity as they go. At best, this is in inefficient and wildly inconsistent way to generate sales. At worst, it can prevent real traction and turn off both prospective customers and investors, contributing to premature failure. Continue reading

Ep. 052 – The Alignment-Based Sales Approach

SIB-Blog-2How exactly does the “Always Be Aligning” approach to sales work? In this episode, host Tom Ryan explains the three fundamental building blocks of alignment-based sales, from creating a strong alignment statement and confirming interests to qualifying leads and learning when to pull the plug.

Not only can this technique build more sustainable and long-term relationships with customers, it also prevents the unnatural and high-pressure conversations of traditional methods. As always, Tom is joined by co-host and fellow podcaster Jason Pyles. Continue reading

The 10 Core Elements of Sales Competency

SIBP-1No matter what kind of company you build, sales should be a core business function. If there’s one mistake I see entrepreneurs consistently make, it’s giving the sales side of their companies the short end of the stick. As a result, the sales processes tend to be treated as afterthoughts, rather than top-level priorities.

That’s always struck me as a strange attitude for an entrepreneur to have. After all, the most important thing for any growing business is traction, and there’s no faster way to grow traction than having truly professionalized sales process. When a company is “winging it” with their sales process, it shows. It’s only when a business develops a truly professionalized sales competency that the bulk of investors start to pay attention.

The tricky part for many entrepreneurs is lack of experience with a truly competent sales process. Even those with a background in sales might not know how a professional sales process works at the higher levels. And even when you do know how it works, implementing it can be a challenge. Continue reading

Ep. 051 – The “Always Be Aligning” Approach To Sales

IMG_2523Sales doesn’t have to be the high-pressure, trust-destroying experience from the “ABCs of Sales” scene in Glengarry Glen Ross. Not only is it a terrible approach for building a long-term, sustainable relationship with your customers, it’s also not very effective in day-to-day sales.

In today’s episode, host Tom Ryan explores a more cooperative sales philosophy he calls “Always Be Aligning.” It’s a disqualification-focused approach that favors strong, mutually beneficial connections with customers over simply getting them to sign on the dotted line. As always, Tom is joined by co-host and fellow podcaster Jason Pyles. Continue reading

Ep. 050 – Why the Sales Philosophy “Always Be Closing” Is Problematic

350x350-5What better way is there to celebrate the 50th episode of the Success In Business Podcast than by changing things up? Host Tom Ryan presses pause on the discussion of building a core competency in sales, and instead focuses on one of the most interesting topics in the sales and marketing culture: “Always Be Closing.”

Made famous by the 1992 film version of Glengarry Glen Ross, the ABC of Sales approach isn’t exactly what it’s cracked up to be. As Tom explains, it almost always does far more harm than good. As always, Tom is joined by co-host and fellow podcaster Jason Pyles. Continue reading