New businesses need more clients which means more sales. But first things first, before all the marketers get up in arms … let me explain.
I love Marketing
Marketing is a great discipline, essential to business. The problem that I see is lots of startups and small businesses spend lots of time (and money) on marketing when they really haven’t understood why their clients buy from them. The result is that they spend money on marketing, which ends up being ineffectual because it does not ‘hit the spot’ with potential customers. The truth is you don’t have a business until you have paying customers,and more sales will deliver more clients. So, before you spend all your marketing budget, here are a few things that you should do.
Talk to people:
The only way to find out what customers want and will pay for is by asking them! I strongly recommend that you do this face to face. Why face to face I hear you ask … with fear in your voice. Here’s why: Words are only 7% of communication, with a whopping 55% body language including eye contact and then 38% from vocal inferences such as tone and speed. If you hold more sales meetings face to face you receive more valuable information about what your customers like and don’t like and what motivates them to potentially buy things from you.
Who do I talk to?
If you have a business then first port of call for more sales is your existing and potential clients. Starting a business? You start with a hypothesis about what you are offering and who your target client is, their problems and what and why they will (or won’t) buy from you. So the next step is to close your eyes and imagine you are a scientist (white lab coat included). Run some more sales experiments to prove (or disprove) and refine your hypothesis. Here are some questions to think about as part of your more sales experiment:
- Do they have the problem that you have identified?
- How does it affect them, their business, their clients, their staff etc
- What have you tried to do about it ~ what happened?
- Find out what they would consider doing about this problem
- What would they pay to have this problem fixed
- Would they let you help them fix it
- What emotions are promoting or inhibiting them from proceeding.
The last and most important question to ask people is to buy from you. If you ask them to buy, they can say yes and you can get a new paying customer! Now you have essential information on your target clients and a new client! So my friends, run your more sales experiment, get out there and talk to people, find out what they want and ask them to buy from you! Let me know how you get on. For the love of selling, Fran.
