Start Your Own Business (89 page)

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Authors: Inc The Staff of Entrepreneur Media

BOOK: Start Your Own Business
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Now that you know how to network in person, learn the fine art of social media networking in Part 7, Chapter 36.
chapter 32
 
SELL IT!
 
Effective Selling Techniques
 
 
 
 
 
N
o matter what business you’re in, if you’re an entrepreneur, you’re in sales. “But I hate to sell,” you groan. You’re not alone. Many people are intimidated by selling—either because they’re not sure how to proceed or they think they don’t have the “right” personality to sell.
Well, guess what? Anyone can sell—anyone, that is, who can learn to connect with the customer, listen to his or her needs and offer the right solutions. In fact, as your business’s founder, you’re better positioned than anyone else to sell your products and services. Even if you have a team of crack salespeople, there’s no one else who has the same passion for, understanding of and enthusiasm about your product as you do. And once you finish reading this chapter, you’ll have plenty of sales skills as well.
 
AHA!
 
Want to boost sales? Offer a 100 percent guarantee. This minimizes customer objections and shows you believe in your product or service. Product guarantees should be unconditional, with no hidden clauses like “guaranteed for 30 days.” Use guarantees for services, too: “Satisfaction guaranteed. You’ll be thrilled with our service, or we’ll redo it at our expense.”
Understanding Your Unique Selling Proposition
 
Before you can begin to sell your product or service to anyone else, you have to sell yourself on it. This is especially important when your product or service is similar to those around you. Very few businesses are one of a kind. Just look around you: How many clothing retailers, hardware stores, air conditioning installers and electricians are truly unique?
The key to effective selling in this situation is what advertising and marketing professionals call a “unique selling proposition” (USP). Unless you can pinpoint what makes your business unique in a world of homogeneous competitors, you cannot target your sales efforts successfully.
Pinpointing your USP requires some hard soul-searching and creativity. One way to start is to analyze how other companies use their USPs to their advantage. This requires careful analysis of other companies’ ads and marketing messages. If you analyze what they say they sell, not just their product or service characteristics, you can learn a great deal about how companies distinguish themselves from competitors.
For example, Charles Revson, founder of Revlon, always used to say he sold
hope
, not makeup. Some airlines sell friendly service, while others sell on-time service. Neiman Marcus sells luxury, while Walmart sells bargains.
Each of these is an example of a company that has found a USP “peg” on which to hang its marketing strategy. A business can peg its USP on
product
characteristics,
price
structure,
placement
strategy (location and distribution) or
promotional
strategy. These are what marketers call the “four P’s” of marketing. They are manipulated to give a business a market position that sets it apart from the competition.
STAR POWER
 
Y
ou can find salespeople of all ranges, temperaments and styles of selling. Some are more aggressive than others. Some are more consultative. Some are highly educated, some not so. But they’re all champs because they’re the ones who consistently build the business, keep the territory and retain their customers. And they share these three traits:
1.
Attitude
. Attitude makes all the difference. Sales champs set priorities and keep things moving forward, ending each day with a sense of accomplishment. Sales champs don’t let losing a deal get them down. If they can’t change a situation, they change their attitude about it. In sales, you’ve got to make things happen for your business—and the best salespeople can’t wait to get started every day.
2.
Tenacity
. When sales champs know they have something of value for a prospect or client, they don’t give up. They learn more about the situation, the potential customer and the customer’s company. They study what went wrong and improve their approach for the next time so they can come back with new ideas. They are not easily defeated. However, sales champs understand when they’re wasting time and when it’s best to move on to the next tactic or even the next sale. If you get smarter each time you come back, you will succeed. When prospects see how much you believe in your vision and in their goals they, too, will be enthusiastic about what you have to offer.
3.
Follow-through
. A broken promise makes it extremely difficult to regain a customer’s trust. Sales champs don’t make promises they can’t keep. They don’t try to be everything to everybody. But once they give their word, they stick to it.
A sales champ doesn’t exhibit all these traits all the time. Sales champs have the same flaws as everyone else. But they know that in the end, the harder they work at sharpening these traits, the better these traits will work for them.
 
Sometimes a company focuses on one particular “peg,” which also drives the strategy in other areas. A classic example is Hanes L’Eggs hosiery. Back in an era when hosiery was sold primarily in department stores, Hanes opened a new distribution channel for hosiery sales. The idea: Since hosiery was a consumer staple, why not sell it where other staples were sold—in grocery stores?
That placement strategy then drove the company’s selection of product packaging (a plastic egg) so the pantyhose did not seem incongruent in the supermarket. And because the product did not have to be pressed and wrapped in tissue and boxes, it could be priced lower than other brands.
Here’s how to uncover your USP and use it to power up your sales:
•
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes.
Too often, entrepreneurs fall in love with their product or service and forget that it is the customer’s needs, not their own, that they must satisfy. Step back from your daily operations and carefully scrutinize what your customers really want. Suppose you own a pizza parlor. Sure, customers come into your pizza place for food. But is food all they want? What could make them come back again and again and ignore your competition? The answer might be quality, convenience, reliability, friendliness, cleanliness, courtesy or customer service.
 
WARNING
 
Want to know the best way to talk yourself out of a sale? Overselling—pushing your features and benefits too hard—is a common problem for salespeople. The problem is that you aren’t hearing the customer’s needs. Shut up and listen. Then start asking questions. Keep asking questions until you can explain how your product or service meets the customer’s needs.
Remember, price is never the only reason people buy. If your competition is beating you on pricing because they are larger, you have to find another sales feature that addresses the customer’s needs and then build your sales and promotional efforts around that feature.
•
Know what motivates your customers’ behavior and buying decisions.
Effective marketing requires you to be an amateur psychologist. You need to know what drives and motivates customers. Go beyond the traditional customer demographics, such as age, gender, race, income and geographic location, that most businesses collect to analyze their sales trends. For our pizza shop example, it is not enough to know that 75 percent of your customers are in the 18-to-25 age range. You need to look at their motives for buying pizza—taste, peer pressure, convenience and so on.
Cosmetics and liquor companies are great examples of industries that know the value of psychologically oriented promotion. People buy these products based on their desires (for pretty women, luxury, glamour and so on), not on their needs.
•
Uncover the real reasons customers buy your product instead of a competitor’s.
As your business grows, you’ll be able to ask your best source of information: your customers. For example, the pizza entrepreneur could ask them why they like his pizza over others, plus ask them to rate the importance of the features he offers, such as taste, size, ingredients, atmosphere and service. You will be surprised how honest people are when you ask how you can improve your service.
Since your business is just starting out, you won’t have a lot of customers to ask yet, so “shop” your competition instead. Many retailers routinely drop into their competitors’ stores to see what and how they are selling. If you are really brave, try asking a few of the customers after they leave the premises what they like and dislike about the competitors’ products and services.
Once you have gone through this three-step market intelligence process, you need to take the next—and hardest—step: clearing your mind of any preconceived ideas about your product or service and being brutally honest. What features of your business jump out at you as something that sets you apart? What can you promote that will make customers want to patronize your business? How can you position your business to highlight your USP?
 
TIP
 
Tips for better cold calls: Stand up when you talk on the phone. It puts power and confidence in your voice. Smile when you say hello. It makes you sound relaxed and confident. Prospects can’t see these telephone tricks, but they’ll hear and feel the difference in your tone—and in your persuasive powers.
Do not get discouraged. Successful business ownership is not about having a unique product or service; it’s about making your product stand out—even in a market filled with similar items.
Cold-Calling
 
The aspect of selling that strikes the greatest fear in people’s hearts is usually cold calls. A good way to make cold calls more appealing is to stop thinking of them as “cold” calls. Try thinking of them as “introductory” calls instead. All you are trying to do is introduce yourself and your business to the prospect.

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