#12. Sales Successful sales has a lot in common with courtship: It’s one thing to turn someone’s head, but it’s quite another thing to start a relationship together.
In order to survive, you need to generate revenue, and the only way to generate revenue is to close sales. Many people are uncomfortable with the idea of having to sell, but you’re not going to make any money unless you’re bringing customers through your door. Earning a sale requires moving people through three different stages:
Awareness: A potential customer first needs to know that your product, service, or company is available.Understanding: Second, they need to clearly understand your unique value proposition, and how it applies to their needs.Belief: Finally, you need to induce a belief that what you are offering is the correct investment of their resources. Moving through each of these stages requires three basic, traditional sales methods: lead generation, courtship, and closing.
Lead Generation Sales begin with lead generation: identifying potential customers for the product or service you’re trying to sell. The goal is twofold: You want to raise general awareness of your brand in order to encourage customers to come to you, and you want to go to the market with targeted messaging to get customers who aren’t aware or connected to you.
For small and lightly funded companies, networking and viral marketing are the most cost-effective means to generate leads. Most of us who have developed a new product or company have ample personal and extended networks that can help us get the word out. In order to properly leverage these networks, we need to be thoughtful about our messaging and what we are trying to communicate. Be very systematic in how you approach your contacts, clearly spelling out why what you offer has value and suggesting some simple ways they can help get the word out.
In order to achieve viral effects, consider the practice of Web 2.0 software companies: along with clear-and-simple messaging, the best ones typically have an attractive and even fun package of goodies that creates interest and intrigue around their company and offering. IconBuffet’s Free Delivery program is a terrific example of generating buzz around a product, and leveraging your customers (and even potential customers) to push your company and message forward.
Targeted direct-mail marketing is another potential route to consider, although up-front printing and per-piece postage costs can pretty quickly make this an expensive proposition. Sending a small run of high-quality pieces to people whom you already know can provide a strong impression, communicating the quality and seriousness of what you are offering.
For those with more money or who need to generate a large number of leads quickly, consider using a public relations firm. The right public relations firm is worth its weight in gold, as they will not only help broadcast your message to large numbers of people in the appropriate industries or geographic areas, they also have strong networks within the news media—and with other clients—that can generate considerable unpaid press opportunities for you. The reason that many new businesspeople are showing up in major newspapers or trade publications is likely the legwork of their public relations firms. If you’re ready for the big time, this outlet can provide you with a lot of exposure. While the cost can vary wildly based on how much work they do for you, expect to spend in the neighborhood of a few thousand dollars a month for good, consistent support and coverage, or even up to $10,000 for a heavier, more short-term blitz. As with all marketing efforts, long-term success will be more the product of consistency over a long period of time than making a big splash.
Advertising is generally the most expensive way to generate leads, and most mass advertising is not worth the money—at least not for a small company. However, online advertising can provide some effective opportunities. Services such as Google AdWords provide you with a relatively high percentage of good, qualified leads that are very targeted to exactly what you are trying to sell. However, you probably need to be specific: The biggest and most general terms are now quite expensive. If you can get more specific than just web design, or even include a precise geographic location, you can both reduce your costs and increase the quality of the leads you earn.
Finally, there’s always cold calling. In this day and age, between the people that we know and the information publicly available on the internet, we can get in personal contact with just about anyone we really want, if we’re determined enough. For a software company, this might mean a key influencer in a specific industry; for a services company this might mean the VPs of product development at all of the companies in a particular vertical market. Most of us don’t like cold-calling, but if we can get over our fear or dislike of doing it, the results can be powerful and surprising.
If you’re lucky and persistent, you’ll be able to build a strong brand that leads potential clients right to your door. Until you’ve developed a critical mass of awareness, though, you’ll need to put a lot of effort into getting the word out there and letting people know that you exist, and have something compelling to offer. But raising awareness is simply the first step; no matter how you get leads, you need to convince them that you’re the right choice.
Courtship Successful sales has a lot in common with courtship: It’s one thing to turn someone’s head, but it’s quite another thing to start a relationship together. The space between the two is the courtship period, when you attempt to turn awareness of your company into a serious consideration of purchasing what you have to offer. There are four basic ways that this is accomplished: