15 sales tips to grow your business
In the early days of starting my business, I attended a business sales course with Monkey’s Paw, based in Exeter.
Although I have a background in sales, having been a Mortgage Consultant for part of my career, I found it very useful to attend this course to refresh this knowledge and bring it up to date, but also as a new business owner, I was looking at the topic through different eyes. Here are some of the tips I learned on the course.
Here are 15 sales tips to grow your business, that I gained from the seminar.
- 30% of your prospective customers will do business with you, 30% won’t, so concentrate on the other 40%;
- Body language is 55% of communication;
- When trying to find new clients, if you use LinkedIn, it’s also worth looking at Xing, which is a similar network;
- Don’t chase a fake sales pipeline – never have anyone in your pipeline who is a ‘maybe’;
- Don’t leave a message when you call people, just keep trying to get them on the phone. Leaving messages may be perceived as you pestering them – especially if you have to leave a message more than once;
- Use your preparation time before the meeting to profile them and tailor your style to theirs during the meeting. DISC profiling is good for this;
- Don’t preconceive ideas of what the client wants – make an effort to find out what they want;
- Keep asking the customer ‘why’ to get to the route cause of their problems and then match their needs with your services. Don’t go in too early, as you may not be addressing the real issue and you may end up trying to sell them something which does not address their real need;
- Ask your customer for a temperature check near the end of your meeting. Ask where you are at on scale of 1 to 10 for doing business with them. If below 7 you can say ‘I have obviously not explained myself very well’ and explore why. If 7-10, ask ‘what do we need to get you to a 10?’
- Ensure that at the end of a client meeting you both agree the next steps. This may be when you will next call, or even that you don’t think you can work together and will leave it there – either way, don’t leave it open! Know where you stand;
- Be happy to compromise, if the client has a budget and it is lower than what you charge and you want their business, you could suggest that as you are confident that they will be happy with your service, you will initially work with them on an introductory rate, but make sure that they are aware that after the initial period if they are happy with your work, it will revert to your standard rate;
- Send handwritten thank you card to customers to thank them for doing business with you – they will be more likely to remember you and mention you to others;
- Ask for referrals from happy customers;
- When asking for referrals, help the client by narrowing down what you are looking for e.g. ‘do you know anyone aged 30-40 who is getting married next year in Devon?’
- The conversion rate on referrals is 67%, compared to 3% for cold calling.
Of course, these take-aways barely scratch the surface of the useful and easy to apply tips that Oliver gave us. For more information on his courses, click here.
If you have any sales tips that work for you, please share them in the comments box below.
For details on how we can help you to find the space to grow your business, call us on 07814 218142 or email joanne@joannemanville.co.uk