Friday, 8.10pm
Sheffield, U.K.
Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says, ‘Make me feel important.’ Not only will you succeed in sales, you will succeed in life. – Mary Kay Ash
I’ve had a few conversations the last few weeks that have got me thinking about sales.
Sales… what does that mean to you?
I wrote a post last year about how we all dance for someone. It might be a boss, a customer – it’s hard to think of someone that isn’t working for someone else.
Those who aren’t fall into one of two camps: they are rich enough not to; or they haven’t learned how to sell.
You sell yourself into a job, you sell your company into a contract, and you sell your partner on committing to you.
Sales matters, it’s what makes it possible to make money and live a life.
When we start a career we don’t know how important sales are – we send out hundreds of CVs, wait to be selected – and perhaps don’t realise that if we get through to an interview you’re really going to a sales pitch.
When you’ve been in a job for a while and then start looking around for a new one it’s easy to forget that you’re starting a sales process again.
If you’ve been selling yourself for a while then maybe you’ve forgotten just how long it took you to learn these skills that you now take for granted.
So, in order to do good work you first need to sell yourself as the person who can do the work.
But, before you can sell you have to get the chance to do so.
How do you get the chance to go in front of someone and pitch what you do?
Cold calling? Marketing? Tendering?
All these methods work for different organisations in different ways. Cold calling is a thankless enterprise but it gets results if you’re willing to play the odds. As does marketing and respond to tenders.
But the single most useful tool for anyone starting a business or looking for a job is a referral.
If someone introduces you to someone that you might be able to help that’s the best way to cross the chasm – to get across the gap between you and a customer.
This isn’t new information – of course – referral based approaches have been around for centuries.
That’s how most religions took off.
More practically, however, if you run a business the best thing you can do if you want to talk to customers is get some help.
You’ve probably got someone in your contact book who is a connector – who knows everyone.
Those connectors have spent time building their connections and their network – and that has value.
Value that’s worth paying for.
If you’re starting a business now, especially one based on knowledge and skills, put an incentive program in place for referrals – pay your introducer well if their introduction leads to a contract.
And if you’re a connector, team up with a business that needs your help.
Cheers,
Karthik Suresh
Handcrafted insight 