When you first start a business you often have no money and no customers, face-to-face or ‘door knocking’ contact is a powerful tool and often the most economical. It also gives you an opportunity to meet your potential customer in person and showcase your talents and unique selling points.
A lot of people send a quick email or call as it is easier and faster than meeting in person. However it is much easier for your potential customer to ignore your email or call, or worse it go straight to junk and not pass the gate keeper. Stand out from the crowd and take them for a coffee or take in morning tea for the team.
Given that doing face to face will take up more time than a quick email, preparation is key to success.
Here are 4 tips to ensure that you nail the sale.
1. Research the company and person that you are meeting
At The Van That Can, we have built our business on relationships and knowing all about the company and the products that they are selling. Researching the company and person before hand, leads to a great first impression and shows understanding of their business.
Using this information, we are then able to target our ‘pitch’ to them in a way that is helpful, meaningful and valuable to them and their team. By showing thing them what outstanding value and service they can expect from us, nailing the sale is easy.
2. Presentation is key
First impressions are made within seven seconds of meeting someone, presenting yourself in a way that fully representing you and your product or service is vital. This is not just limited to your uniform, it includes attitude, posture, maintaining eye contact and smiling whilst talking and listening. Shaking hands is the fastest way to build a rapport with someone.
Leveraging from the first impression is what differentiates our team from any other removals and delivery company, as the industry is rife with sloppy characters that you wouldn’t want to let into your home.
3. Stop trying to do ‘sales’
The word ‘sales’ has negative connotations, often people think ‘pressure’. The days of high-pressure sales are gone, the days of the ‘hard close’ are gone. You don’t want to go out and do ‘sales’… that’s stressful and you’re probably not a ‘salesperson’.
Richard Barker, from Timeless Car Cleaning knew this from day one of his business and took a different approach. “Selling is simply a process: Make contact -> Build a relationship -> Find & Solve a problem -> Make purchasing easy.”
None of this can be fake. If you don’t genuinely believe you have a solution then you won’t do any sales. If you can’t genuinely build a rapport or relationship, you won’t do sales.”
4. It’s a numbers game
Barker takes a no nonsense approach to sales. “The easiest way to take the pressure of you doing ‘sales’ is to take the emotional side out of it. If you start the day saying “I NEED to sell 10 packages today” the pressure is on immediately, what happens when you get to midday and no-one has bought one? How are your pressure levels now?
“Here’s how to nullify that…. Break it down. When we started our car cleaning business, our average customer spend was $65. After a couple of days out and about I knew that if I could talk to 20 people then I would get a sale averaging $65.
“So… If my goal for the day was to do $250 per day (which at the time of building a business was ok) then what do I need to do? 4 sales? NO, I need to talk to 80 people.”
By taking a targeted approach to sales and speaking to people who would get value from your product or service, will overtime increase the amount of people that are buying from you.
5. Place a value on “No”
Following on from above, place a value on the “NO”. Firstly, learn to understand the word NO, there are THOUSANDS of reasons someone will say no, it’s usually not you.
To name just a few;
Might just be too busy to listen.
Might have just got a nasty bill in the mail.
Might have just dropped their sandwich in the bin.
You just never know… don’t take it personally.
But how do you place value on that? “From above, we need to talk to 20 people to get $65.” Barker says. “Don’t see that as one person is worth $65. See 20 people as worth $3.25. That way, when they say no, that’s $3.25 in our back pocket. How good is that?! Making money from the NO.”
There is no magic formula or shortcut to creating success. You just need to work smarter than your competitor.
