Are you self employed? Your number one job for your company is sales – creating revenue. Sales is a full time job and when you’re the owner, the buck always stops with you. Even if you have sales people, your number one goal and job is creating cash for your company.
I think the number one quality that make a small business owner successful at prospecting and sales is PERSISTENCE. You can’t take the first ‘no’ for an answer. You just say, “Golly gee, that’s more information than I had before and every no leads me closer to the yes.” Then, you move on to the next prospect and keep working your way through your list.
The next quality that is important is FOLLOW-THROUGH. That first prospect that said “No”? Make sure you contact them again in 6 weeks – not with a sales pitch necessarily, just with a simple message of “Hi, hello, here’s something I found interesting” and make that ‘interesting’ thing something they really would find interesting. If it’s a blog post, an industry magazine article or even a new product debut in a category you’re not in – just something that keeps you top of mind in their head AND gets them to identify you as helpful (not always pitching and wanting something).
The final quality for making sales as an entrepreneur is CURIOSITY. Why didn’t you get that sale? You genuinely want to know (and not in a salesy-sales way – you really really are curious). The phrase “Under what circumstances would you put my soap in your shop?” must become your friend. There is no way around it – you’ve got to ask the tough questions, “Why didn’t I get the sale? How can I improve? And, under what circumstances would you consider giving me the sale?”
What’s holding YOU back from creating the company of your dreams, with revenue flowing in from multiple stores and sources? Get honest with yourself and make a plan to overcome your fear of selling. Your company can’t succeed without YOU out there selling every single day.
