Selling Is Your Business

Selling is not a 9 to 5 job; it's a business. It always has been and always will be.

Many salespeople fail to make money in sales because they have either misunderstood this or refuse to believe it. Average salespeople will always make a living. Business salespeople make money.

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Growing Business Strategically

The business salesperson understands that it is his or her duty to grow the business. There are only three ways to do this.

1. Bring in new customers

2. Sell more to existing customers

3. Retain customers

All three ways can be done strategically. But rather than leave these to chance, the business salesperson creates strategies to accomplish them.

Business salespeople develop sales business plans, set targets and create strategies to hit those targets. This sets them apart from the average salesperson who has targets set for him and who defaults the achievement of these targets to others.

Leveraging Business Assets

The business salesperson is always looking for ways to grow the business. He realizes that, like every business in the world, he has limited resources. So he looks for ways to leverage his assets to get more from them.

What are assets that can be leveraged? Customers, referrals, territory, time, and sales presentations are just some assets of the business salesperson. Even objections are assets because they can lead to sales. The business salesperson is constantly looking for ways to get more from each asset by proper leveraging.

How does one leverage customers? Wouldn't it be nice if they could help you make sales to other people? Here are two ways to leverage customers.

1. Ask for referrals--and then leverage the referrals to deliver more.

2. Have them talk about you but be sure they are saying the right things to the right people. You can and should control this so you get the desired results.

Unfolding

One of the techniques I teach business salespeople is the concept of "unfolding." Most salespeople get so excited when making a sale, they do not see other selling opportunities. "Unfolding" is the process of looking for the next sale as you make the present sale and laying the seeds for it.

Business salespeople realize the customer is likely to buy other stuff and practices "opportunity listening" to uncover those additional sales. They already have this sale so they ask themselves, "what else?"

They think in terms of replacement. Whatever piece the customer buys, there will come a time when he will need to replace it. This replacement time can be calculated when the sale is made. It depends on customer buying history, the useful life of the piece and when it makes sense to replace it.

What if this replacement time is five years away? Put it in your calendar! You're going to be around five years from now, are you not? What if you made 10 such sales this year? That means you have 10 very strong selling opportunities five years from now.

Understand the Business of Your Customer

Business salespeople know they will be in business as long as they keep their customers in business and they will grow their businesses when they help their customers grow their businesses. So they do whatever they can to accomplish this.

This requires them to have a much deeper knowledge not only of their customers' businesses but also of the industries the customers are in. Business salespeople spend a great deal of time learning, understanding and then applying their knowledge to helping their customers do better business.

In a recent presentation, my friend Stan Jackson pointed out that salespeople in the Ag industry are not in the tractor business but in the knowledge business.

Good business salespeople understand this. They continuously and constantly improve their own knowledge so they have better value to sell.

Stick Around

Very few people go into business with the intention of closing up shop after a short time. Most go into business intending to stay for a long time. The business salesperson is no different. He intends to be around for many years making money in his business. He develops long-term business relationships with the customers he chooses to keep around. Everything he does is long term.

He thinks long term. The average salesperson thinks short term. That's the difference.

Ezine

I cover this subject and others in my Monthly Ezine for Managers, a newsletter sent via email to people who request it. It goes to thousands of sales managers and salespeople in 16 countries. It's free. To receive it, simply email me at franklee@sales-academy.com and put "Subscribe" in the message line, and I will add you to the list.