Ask any businessman, which one is more important: Their product or how it is sold?
You’ll probably have one full-day explanation of why the product is mostly the priority. You have no business if nothing has to be sold, right?
I agree with it, but not absolute!
As we approach an age of hyper-competition, how we market a product becomes more essential, if not more crucial. In fact, the primary reason businesses fail to survive their first several years is because of poor sales cash flow.
Our customers have limitless choices, ranging from healthcare to IT to food. A basic search on Crunchbase for SaaS companies alone yields almost 9,600 results.
Salespeople Create Opportunities by Doing, not Simply Wanting
My first commission-based payment was only 700 dollars. Not bad for a 19-year-old in a completely new job in his first week.
Before that, my life had had the highest payday at $300, and it took an overnight shift to break a banquet and clean petrified cheese off catering plates.
Sales are not commitments of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. job; neither is entrepreneurship. It may take up to 10 to 14 hours a day, including the odd weekend and holidays.
They feel like calls rather than just jobs. People in them may become lost. And although I don’t tolerate workaholism, it ignites me to hustle and succeed.
Back then, I understood that my value was not restricted to hours a day as a salesperson. It depends on my determination and creativity.
And I don’t feel this myself!
The Global Enterprise Monitor 2015/2016 study showed that 31% of entrepreneurs questioned identified innovation and creativity as the most crucial element of their activity.
Sales, like entrepreneurship, is a professional path.
“You are restricted only by yourself.”
As soon as you begin to think about how much value you can offer, you will notice innovation possibilities everywhere. You begin to think: ‘There should be an application,’ ‘this should be simpler,’ or ‘Mankind would better be served if…’ and so on.
Why should entrepreneurs think like salespeople?
Selling is essential for so many entrepreneurial elements. Instead of defending your prestige, the entrepreneur should embrace the challenge as salespeople did.
Here’s the benefit from thinking like salespeople if you are entrepreneurs:
#1 You Do Your Business All Out
A salesperson will do the work at all hours because he knows it’s going to sell. You get rid of the on/off switch when you work on sales.
Or, as the character of Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross has put it memorably, salesmen have to “always close.”
Frequently, the most effective sales start happening outside of the office and beyond the conventional working time, whether over dinner, at the golf course, in a game or a given setting. Anybody who works in sales understands what ABC stands for (Always-Be-Closing) and accepts it to a certain extent.
Similarly, an entrepreneur should evangelize their business if there is one item at all times. It is essential to adopt the ABC attitude, whether you communicate with your clients, hire new workers, keep existing staff happy, get in touch with investors, speak to the media or do many things business requires.
There are no business hours for entrepreneurs since all hours of the day may and frequently work. As an entrepreneur, I have always established and nurtured commercial connections and situations.
One of the great things about owning several companies is that almost everyone can be helpful in some manner.
#2 You Adapt Customer-Centered Mentality
There are few things salespeople value more than carefully focused client lists. It’s a tedious but essential procedure to learn as much as you can about the person and business you attempt to sell.
The client itself!
Information is power, and the more you know your client, the better placed you are to conclude a transaction effectively. Good salespeople also understand the significance of happy customers since the acquisition process is typically much more complex and costly than retaining clients.
Even if the transaction is completed, client happiness must be paramount.
In the same vein, entrepreneurs have to embrace a customer-centric strategy or will not be in business for a long time.
Without clients, you have no business, and if you don’t cater, customers won’t do business with you. Entrepreneurs should take time to learn more about their consumers and adapt their companies to meet the requirements and needs of their customers.
We also get to know our customers intimately in every company. Over the years, we have learnt who you are, what you enjoy, what you don’t like and what you care about.
Our extensive consumer insights enabled us to build our offers to serve our audience better and more successfully. For example, we have added and deleted some chairs from our product mix throughout the years and keep up with the process. You can never become too familiar with your client.
#3 Accept Rejection – No matter How Much You Get
Nobody wants to be rejected. It may be annoying and disheartening if you do not desire anything.
But salespeople realize that rejections are inevitable and that they are continually taught that they can handle them. Those who are unable to deal with refusal can’t stay on the ground.
Similarly, companies must be acclimatized by being rejected down. In so many respects, failure is inevitable, but the reaction to the failures ultimately determines whether or not the firm does.
Like the most excellent salesmen, the best entrepreneurs are not just extraordinarily brilliant and competent in their particular skills – they are very resilient.
If you believe that being rejected is no problem, it’s much simpler for you to get to “yes!”.
Takeaway
I knew it’d be different when I started as a salesperson. And it was.
However, I didn’t realize how well that lesson would equip me, and few of my successful clients got their major business leap.
Of course, not every successful entrepreneur has a track record in sales. But salespeople are learning to practice discipline, to nurture opportunities and to pursue these changes.
These characteristics are essential for those of us committed to the difficulties and opportunities of the business world.
