How to sell like master – 5 protips for small business owners

The basic and universal skill of every businessperson is the ability to sell. If she fails, the whole business fails. Therefore, today we will talk about the principles of effective sales.

The first rule of selling for small businesses- don’t sell 

None of us like being touted by a salesperson. He feels pressure and closes to buy. Maybe in the case of small or emotional things techniques from the bazaar work, but in the case of b2b not. In addition, on the Internet, we are attacked by intrusive ads everywhere that we ignore subconsciously. As a seller, let’s give a potential customer some slack and let him see a possible buying decision. In the meantime …’

….Being a helpful expert

A good salesperson does not push the customer for solutions that will not be useful to him. He does advice for this, building his credibility in the eyes of the client. By educating the customer, you can make the purchasing decision his decision. Full shopping awareness will limit returns or complaints, bad reviews.

“Thank You Economy” in practice

As part of this idea, in your actions, you focus on helping people with your expert knowledge. You share it using valuable content and a microcontent that you share on various websites. Ultimately, thanks to the education and help of your group of recipients you get dedicated customers. It is a long-term strategy, but it gives great results.

Safe, multipurpose solution –  content marketing for small businesses

Content marketing is a great tool that works long-term and gets stronger over time. Unlike ads, it doesn’t give you big results right away. In the case of a small budget for marketing activities, it is worth choosing content marketing, because it will not be money lost. Unfortunately, it is very easy to lose money on advertising without getting any results.

Once created content can be:

• used many times on different platforms and at different times.
• used in correspondence with clients as guides or elements of building your expertise
• can be divided into microcontent. Thanks to this, you will gain content for posting on social platforms.
• converted into different forms. You can convert the article into long and short videos, presentations and infographics. You’ll use the right type of content on the right social network to get to your audience effectively.

Lead generation for small business

The art of sales nowadays involves conducting effective lead generation, heating leads and optimizing the sales funnel. Such processes can be scaled, automated, but above all are predictable. Unfortunately, but old-fashioned cold calling or malling is not very effective with today’s information noise.

Credibility as a foundation for small businesses

Sales become much simpler if you care about your credibility. I described here how to build credibility. In short, it’s about building and showing your knowledge, experience, and social proof, i.e. what third parties think and say about you.

A small business sales message 

The first impression of a small company

Any sales message you address to your customer will be subject to the ‘first impressions’ of the potential customer. Gaining consumer attention is also important in today’s world. Ultimately, you must ensure that your sales message attracts attention and builds interest, as well as basic trust.

Fast response 

According to research, answering the client’s inquiry as soon as possible, you have the greatest probability of further conversation with the client about the details of the offer. The first contact does not have to be the sending of the full offer. It would be good to make the first contact within a few minutes of a client’s inquiry and therefore it can be a simple thank you message for contacting and information about the next steps and deadlines. The more personalized the response, the better, otherwise the client will think it is an automatic response.

Brief and to the point

Who likes to read long, boring business offers … Few people, especially if you received a lot of such texts. That is why I recommend, based on my own experience, to prepare short, targeted offers for clients. I noticed that with similar queries, a very short offer and also very extensive on several pages brings a similar effect. And even this longer offer is worse.

Use the client’s language

If one of your duties is communication with the client, you have experience in various styles and vocabulary of clients. Sometimes they are careless, make mistakes. Lack of care for good communication may show some negative features of a potential client and give grounds for not cooperating. But if you want to cooperate with a person despite his communication method, it’s worth considering adjusting to the client. In this way, you do not build and emphasize the differences between you. From my own experience when creating websites, I notice that the lack of attention to the client’s language indicates problems and a lack of respect, which is why I do not try to cooperate with such people.

With respect and professionalism

I believe that the basis of every good cooperation I had while creating websites was mutual respect: time, money, work, and expectations. As sellers, we must respect customer expectations, budgets, and knowledge. If we are unable to satisfy any of the elements, we should thank you in a cultural way for your interest.

You can also do it when the client has problems respecting our time and work, as well as ourselves.

Sometimes, it may be that being professional may conflict with advice on using the client’s language. There are nervous, emotional clients who allow themselves to be offended, or are simply illogical, inconsistent in their message. If you see that your potential customer can be, it’s worth, not cooperating. There is a high probability that this cooperation will end badly.

Show your rules right away

During my career as a freelancer and owner of Codenest.co I learned that the lack of rules and compliance leads to problems. Again, certain rules and compliance with them and requiring the same from the other side of the cooperation causes that some customers lose immediately, and problems arise with others already in the course of cooperation.

I certainly noticed a significant financial improvement and comfort of living and working after implementing hard rules. Profits far outweigh losses. Everyone has their own preferences, fears, just their own rules, which being ‘unwritten’ can surprise others. And it must be said that everyone has the right to have their own rules of conduct. But everyone is required to inform the other party before they enter into a private or business relationship. Therefore, to comply with your rules and avoid problems, you should present them to the other party at an earlier stage.

Direct the conversation to your communication channels

An important feature of a good seller is responsiveness and availability. As a small business owner, you are mostly the seller and you do other functions. The multitude of tasks and responsibilities means that you lack time to be everywhere and always to your customers. On the other hand, many experts show that businesses are doing great here, as well as here and here. In practice, a difficult matter to do. Therefore, try to clearly communicate where you are available and where you serve customers. Of course, monitor other channels and don’t feed messages there, but direct the conversation to your permanent channels,

Respect your time

The basis of every business is sales, reasonable sales. Depending on what we sell and the value it depends on how much we have to get involved as a seller. The sale of certain products and services can be automated. However, as in my case of creating websites, each sale requires a lot of involvement in the case of every potential customer. Very often, my very large involvement gives no results and here it is worth being moderate and attempting to automate certain tasks. It is worth remembering, however, that each of us likes to be treated individually, which is why it should be provided to our clients to a reasonable extent.

The strength of follow-ups on sales carried out by small businesses

Following the topic of respect for your own time, it is worth using your sales work more effectively. First of all, it is worth developing and educating as a salesman all the time. And also create materials and tools that will help you sell more effectively. After all, it’s worth remembering one important technique, which is follow-ups, i.e. to remind the customer and watch him a little while he is in our sales funnel. In practice, it would look like that one day you send an offer and after a fixed number of days you remind yourself, ask opinions, questions. These simple actions will make your sales opportunities much greater.