6 Sales Solutions for SME’s (without selling your soul)

Sales without selling

There's every chance you're an absolute expert at what it is you do. So good at it, in fact, you decided to make a business out of it. You may even have managed to grow that business beyond yourself to a few other people. Perhaps you've started to employ others to really maximise the growth.

This is where things start getting more difficult. Now you need to learn things that you're not good at and bring them into the business as well as the natural skills you were born with.

Things like sales and marketing, social media, policies and procedures, CRM systems - there's a whole host of stuff that goes along with being a bigger business that you know nothing about because you're a ‘functional specialist’.

Now you need to kick on. Now you need to multiply yourself through others. Now you need to start to generalise into any number of roles, and that is really difficult.

But nothing makes it harder to scale than the lack of consistent revenue.

• Cash is king

• Profit may well be a sanity

• But revenue keeps you alive, keeps you afloat, keeps you paying the salaries of those people that you've employed

• Which makes one of the functions you're not very good at extremely important

That function? That's right, sales.

To people who aren't sellers, sales seems like some sort of mystical ability - it seems like some sort of magic that you can find to turn people from non-buyers into buyers. It seems like a set of skills that you can only aspire to and never achieve.

Maybe you just can't see yourself doing it, maybe you've got that feeling that you don't want to be a salesperson. You want to be a trusted advisor and you don't like picking up the phone or reaching out via email, attending networking events, and starting conversations with people for the first time. And why would you?

Speaking as a salesperson myself, one of the things I hate doing the most is cold calling people. Yuck!

Why on earth would strangers want to talk to you anyway?

Why don't you talk to strangers?

What I do like doing is teaching SMEs how to bring the best of sales into their business.

So here are some tips from Tony on how to bring sales solutions into the business without selling your soul.

Ask for referrals

Instead of talking to people you don't know or don't like, why not talk to people that you do know and you do like, and who like you?

Why not spend some time talking to your customers, your friends, connections on LinkedIn, people that you network with, and ask them for a referral for you and your business. Ask them if there's anyone they think would be interested in your work that they could introduce you to.

Even better, check out their backgrounds on LinkedIn and find people you want to be introduced to. Fantastically powerful tool that doesn't feel like selling.

Cross sell and up sell

The easiest person to sell to is someone who's just bought from you. It may feel counter-intuitive - you may feel like you just want to run to the hills when someone's finally said yes and decided to give you money for your product or service. But really that's when the relationship is at its strongest.

Take the opportunity to make sure you are selling them the full package - everything that you can do to help them and everything that you can do to bring them success in the long run.

They will appreciate you for it, and you never know, you may find out that your average order values grow alongside

Put your prices up

There's every chance you're undercharging for whatever it is you do. There's an old saying in sales, "If asking for money doesn't make you uncomfortable, you're not asking for enough."

Try this experiment: For the next customer who comes across your doorstep or reaches out to you over email or telephone call, put your price up and see what happens. Double it! Now there's a challenge.

The easiest way to make more money is by putting your prices up.

The inability to ask for what you are worth says more about your personal timidity than it does about your customers.

Sell further in advance

This is especially good if you're selling professional services. Are you asking for 30 day contracts or 3 month contracts? Why not 6 months? Why not 12 months? Why not 24 months?

The buyer has no idea how long they should be buying your service for, so why not tell them? If you think it's going to take you 6 months to help the customer you're trying to sell to, then ask them for 6 months.

Be on the safe side and ask for 9 months. Asking for longer commitments means two things:

1. You're going to get better results for your customers

2. You'll end up further ahead

As you roll into the following months, you'll find that your pre-booked business is increasing all the time simply by asking for a longer commitment.

Create loyalty schemes for your existing customers

Be open and honest with your customers. If you're grateful for them, show them. Don't just give them a great service, don't just provide them with the best value. Add something on top. Maybe give them points they can cash in for discounts or money-can't-buy experiences. At the very least, recognize the fact that you love them and you love working with them.

Adding things like loyalty schemes to your customers means they will buy from you for longer and they'll buy at the higher prices that you're going to be asking for as your confidence increases.

The second best thing to selling a ‘new business’ is adding and maintaining your ‘existing business’.

Everyone is a salesperson

The last tip for now: Don't forget that everyone in your business is a salesperson.

Everyone in your business is most likely customer-focused. Everyone is all about doing a great job for your customer. Get them talking to your customers. Get them talking to their friends and their networks.

Put on an incentive scheme for people in your business if you like. If they bring sales into the business, reward them with commissions. More importantly, empower everybody in your business to appreciate that they can sell too. Selling is about serving the customer. It's not about doing magic or spiriting business out of nowhere. It's about making sure you do a great job for your customer. Everybody does that, therefore everyone is a salesperson.

There are loads more tips that I have about sales solutions for SMEs. And I really look forward to talking to you about them.

If you'd like to learn more, book a meeting with me, drop me an email, or even comment on this post. I'd love to chat with you.