Your business teeters on what happens on a sales call

If your company doesn’t do sales calls, then it teeters on what happens at the point of sale – retail store, website, dining room – wherever.

What does happen?  Do people say “I want it!”

How good is your offer?  Your salespeople?  Your communication?

Do you create “psychological safety”?

Have you lead by fear and control, or by trust and openness?

Do your people feel safe taking risks, speaking up and being honest?

If not, your team is playing small and you are not getting real feedback.

No matter what you do, you serve people.

I tell my team, we are not servicing a house, we are servicing a person who owns that house.

No matter what you do, or service, you are serving a person.

Ask questions, listen, build a relationship, and please or thrill that person, and they will come back and bring their friends.

The long road of business.

An entrepreneur doesn’t get paid in tidy little one-year taxable packages.

Being a business owner is a cycle that pays (or not) over ten or twenty-year cycles – and that’s IF you don’t quit and IF you get it right.  Those are big IF’s.

An entrepreneur spends the first part of their career desperately underpaid, in hopes of spending the last part of their career wildly overpaid.

Here are some reasons why – 

In the beginning, you have no resources.  You have to invest in everything.  Equipment, software, facility, paper clips – all of it.

In the beginning, you don’t have any employees who know exactly how to help you and how to do their jobs well.  You hire people and invest in their education.  Some don’t work out and leave.  You start all over again.  Some make mistakes you have to pay for.  They are always less productive and inefficient in the beginning.  And new employees take more management and oversight.

You have to invest in marketing.  At first, your marketing doesn’t work as well since it is new.  Besides you figuring it out and becoming a better marketer, it’s cheaper to remind people who you are than to educate them in the first place.

You don’t have referrals or repeat business.  You have to pay for each customer.

You have to invest in inventory.  You have to make a profit to buy stuff that people have not bought yet.  No money for you.

You have to invest in receivables.  Some people won’t pay you right away.  Heck, some won’t pay you at all.  No money for you.

Let’s say you stick with it for 15 years.  Then all the above is paid for, and you start making a profit.  Is that profit from the activities of that year, or from all the years before it?

Of course, money is not the only result we are looking for or only benefit we can realize.

When you start a business, you have to buckle in for a long ride.  Is it worth it?  It can be.  That’s up to you.

Don’t hire salespeople with RBF.

Don’t hire salespeople who have to overcome their natural vibe.

People buy from people they like.

Are your salespeople naturally “likable”?

When people meet them do they decide they like them in the first 60 seconds?

Do they still feel that way after 10 minutes?

 

Hire friendly people

Customers care for how they are cared for.

In one survey customers said what they value most – 

19% said best price

36% said high quality

45% said friendly service

Don’t try to hire people and teach them to be friendly.

Hire friendly people for jobs where they interact with your customers.

Equilibrium?

If demand and production match you have some peace in your business.  Things are going smoothly and your problems are small.

But if demand (commitments) are higher and production isn’t keeping up, there is stress.  You are trying to hire, buy machinery, expand or move your facility and it’s a challenge.

If your company is used to higher sales and now demand has fallen, there is stress there too.  You are having trouble paying the bills, you have to downsize – people and physical resources and anything that costs money each month.

The first situation is growing.  The second is responding to change.  Years where there is equilibrium are the best.

What cycle is your business in now?

Do you need more offense or a stronger defense?

If your company does what you do well, but you just need to grow, then you need more offense.

If your company has lots of sales, but lots of quality or production problems, or if you aren’t making money, then you need more defense.

Offense – marketing and sales.  Get more leads or people in the door and sell them what you have.  And don’t blow it when it comes to phone service, sales service or follow-up.

Defense – Produce and deliver what you sell efficiently and control costs.  I have seen companies with lots of sales lose money.  You have to run a clean, tight ship.  Accounting has to know the numbers and tell the tale to leadership.

Which is more important for you right now?

What should you do about it?

Everybody sells

In many companies, salespeople sell and get paid commission.

Well, why wouldn’t everyone in your company be eligible for a commission if they sell your products or services?

You might say, “Well, they get paid a salary or hourly, so I don’t want to pay them more.”

But don’t you want more sales?  Don’t you want ALL your people looking out for prospects?

Deputize everyone in your company to be a salesperson.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

I’m not a hard core student of this, but here is my observation. 

You know how you use Chat GPT to get answers without all the ads?  Well, those days are numbered.

The rush to spend trillions on huge energy sucking data centers by the giants is not to make our lives better out of benevolence.  It’s for profit.

No surprise there, and I wouldn’t expect them to spend that kind of money as a gift.

It’s all about advertising.  Whoever has the audience gets to charge the money.

Right now, Google has a toll booth in front of every business.  Imagine someone setting up a toll booth in front of your business, charging everyone who wants to come in and do business with you.  If someone searches your name and they click on almost any of the results that Google shows, they get paid by that business.  And the price of the toll is mostly set by auction – whoever pays the most, sets the price.  That’s how it is now.

The AI race from this viewpoint, it would seem, is about big companies figuring out a way to dethrone Google and get the money they are getting, and Google defending.

Chat GPT is from a company called Open AI (“Open?”) and the largest investor is Microsoft.  Chat GPT will start showing sponsored results soon.  Companies will have to pay to be in the top results.  Google’s Gemini will be the same. 

It won’t be about information untainted by advertising anymore. 

AI has incredible benefits.  But it seems pure search results won’t be one of them for long.

I’m disappointed.