How to get better at selling

Charlie says: “In my experience small business owners tend to concentrate on the product or service they are developing, and they don’t concentrate anywhere near as much as they should on actually selling it. You could have the most amazing product or service but if you don’t have any customers wanting to buy from you, it is a complete waste of time. Small business owners should be spending 80% of their efforts bringing sales into their business and 20% on all the other stuff, because without sales you don’t have a business.”

Charlie says: “As the business owner, you are the best person to make sales because you are passionate about it. As you scale your business you will hopefully need to employ a sales team but at the beginning you are always going to be the best person for the job. Sales is an exchange of energy so all that passion and energy that made you want to set up your business in the first place needs to come through with every sale.”

Charlie says: “When people think about selling they think about car salesmen, but that is the opposite of what makes a good sales person. Selling is about listening to people and solving their problems – if you can do that really well you will become the best salesperson you can possibly be.”

Charlie says: “Small business owners need to be their own biggest cheerleaders. You have got to wholeheartedly believe that what you are selling is amazing, that it solves your customers problems and that it is a no-brainer for them to buy it from you. If you aren’t in that position then the first thing to look at is why – what is the missing piece that is stopping you from believing this? Is it lack of confidence, or is it because you are thinking, actually I don’t know if I would buy this, I don’t know if it is the best, I think there might be someone out there doing this better? If so, address that first.”

Charlie says: “Many business owners worry that if they follow up an enquiry people will think they are pushy. But if a business follows up on your enquiry, you are generally grateful – or you just continue to ignore them. Either way, you don’t blacklist them just because they followed up. You need to do a mindset shift – rather than thinking the customer will think you are too pushy or desperate for sales, you need to think, there is a whole group of people out there who are really struggling and my product or service could solve their problems. So if you don’t tell them about it, you will be doing them a disservice.”

Charlie says: “The mistake I see people making on social media is they are constantly trying to sell. But people get put off by that; they unfollow you or unsubscribe and switch off. Instead social media is about creating content that makes people smile, and about creating a brand that people are interested in. As a rule of thumb, only one in every five social media posts should be about selling – the others should be showing people why they should buy from you, by explaining what problems your product or service is going to solve, and what results they will see. If you can show your customer how they will feel when they buy from you, they are much more likely to do so.”

Charlie says: “Once someone is at the top of your sales funnel, perhaps because they have subscribed or registered their interest, it is up to you to build and nurture that relationship, because these days people want to know who they are buying from. They want to like and trust you, and they want to build up a relationship with the brand before they buy.”