Who sells for your business? - 5 Strategies to get others selling for you.
If you are in business on your own or are a very small business, you may not have the critical mass to employ specialist sales people.
But you have a lot of other things to do, so who is going to sell for your business? In this article I am gong to address this dilemma.
In talking to solo-practioners, the biggest barrier to a faster growing business and the income they deserve is the ability to make time to sell the next deal. If you are not practiced at selling or it doesn’t come naturally it will of course take you longer and therefore more time is needed. This just adds to the problem of keeping your revenue stream at the level you desire.
As must be obvious, the number one person to sell for your business is of course you. I could tell you to make the time, to set aside a specific time-slot in your day, to be more organized and many other ‘banal’ tips. But at the end of the day, when running your own business, you are all too often forced to what is ‘urgent’ and not only what is ‘important’.
The solution is to spread the sales load. Get others to help in the process or indeed do some selling for you.
1 Endorsements & testimonials. Lets start with the easy ones. Any and every client or customer, past and present should be able to say something nice about you. If not, separate issue…see my previous articles about annoying your customers…!
What is the difference between an ‘endorsement’ and a ‘testimonial’? Well they are pretty much interchangeable in normal selling and marketing situations, but strictly speaking, an endorsement carries the weight of ‘who’ is saying it. So celebrities and famous people ‘endorse’ products, whereas the likes of you and me just give testimonials. The effect is almost the same, depending on how awe-struck you are by Hollywood I guess.
How do you get a busy person to write something nice about you? You don’t, you write it and ask them to agree or change it. Think back to the interactions you had with that person and consider what aspects of your process, solution or delivery you think they most liked. Match this with an aspect you wish to promote and write a short line of two. Ideally, you will come up with 2 or 3 separate potential quotes.
When do you ask? This depends on your service, but at a time when the buyer is most exhilarated by their decision to buy. At the time of purchase if the result of the product use is predictable, after initial use if the result is likely to be awe-inspiring, or if it is a service, when it has had a chance to show an effect. If there is any doubt about how satisfied the customer is, then the pre-cursor is of course to check on this aspect first and rectify any shortcomings or doubts.
2 Introductions & referrals. In most businesses, customers who are happy with what they got from you will be happy to pass their intelligent choice on to friends and colleagues.
I say ‘most’ businesses as there are occasional examples where customers may prefer to stay tight-lipped about your service. If you run a sexually-transmitted disease clinic, your patients may not wish to advertise you services to all their friends.
But even if your business is quite sensitive, such as a therapist or healer, the referral doesn’t have to go into any detail of what solution you offered, but merely that you were helpful, sensitive, knowledgeable, professional etc.. In fact all the attributes you wish to be known for.
The trick to getting a strong stream of referrals is two-fold. How to ask and how they pass on your information.
Both these aspects should be scripted and your part rehearsed carefully. “Do you know anybody who would like to buy my product?”, will receive a no more readily than a yes.
Now what do you ask your customer to say to the referral? As little as possible. “I wanted to let you know that I have recently done business with a fantastic guy called Terry Murphy, and I think you would like him and what he does. I took the liberty of giving him your contact details, I’m sure he will be in touch shortly.” John Doe might then say “And if he asks more about you, what shall I say?” Your response is “Just say something like…’well its best for him to explain, but I trust him so do give him the time of day’ that saves you getting into a long conversation about what we did together, which might not be applicable anyway.”
Timing, as always, is everything. The best time to ask is immediately after they have made the decision to buy as this is the time they have the greatest confidence in you. As long as you can maintain their confidence in you, getting more referrals from them will become quite routine.
3 Full case study & press release. This is really just an extension of ‘1’ above. But when buying, people love to know what others have experienced. A strong testimonial is good, but not as good as a blow-by-blow account of how the whole deal evolved.
Inevitably, a case study takes considerably more work, but is well worth the effort. This is particularly true if your product or service has intangible elements. These can be described in advance, but the case study proves what you have been saying is actually true by experience.
You can cover from the initial contact and why they were interested in talking to you, through the sales and then of course the delivery of your solution. But don’t forget the last and most important section will then be how your solution has positively affected the customer. Don’t skimp in this section as it is the eventual benefit that is the key to every sale and every penny of revenue you earn.
Case studies can also form great press releases for both you and your customer, if they are a business. This offers a win-win which will encourage more input and commitment.
For the case study, but even more importantly for the press release, you will need a strong, benefit headline. Something like “How £567 judiciously spent, saved a Pet Grooming business from certain ruin.” The customer’s version of the press release may have a different spin on the headline.
It should not be difficult to agree an outline for the case study with your customer, you can then fill in the detail and get a final approval. You may find that the time and effort required makes it worth using your PR wizard, especially as then it will be almost ready to be re-purposed as a press release.
4 Partnering & centres of influence. Traditionally, mortgage advisors have partnered with real estate agents to pass each other business. This is an example of completely complimentary businesses and makes perfect sense for both parties. However, there are similarly suitable complimentary businesses to yours out there. What are they? This may take some creative thinking or it may be apparent already.
Either way, there will be some out there, and they are probably also interested in more business. Most of us are, right?
You may find a competitor who offers a subtly different service that actually compliments yours. If what you offer is not exactly right for a prospect, you would want to back away from the sale wouldn’t you? Well if this happens, who would you or could you recommend to the prospect or pass the lead on to? This other business may understand this situation and willingly exchange leads with you.
You can approach partnering on a number of levels. At the simplest level, an agreement to mention each other’s business if the occasion arises or at the other end of the scale, co-branding bundled products from both of you.
Basically, if your partner business passes you a lead and business results, some sort of compensation should be paid. This may be in the form of cash or kind. The variations are endless and will depend on your level of association with the other party. Advice, start small, you can always build. But if the relationship proves one sided, the smaller it is the easier it will be to unravel if this finally proves necessary.
Partnering has many other benefits apart from the potential to broaden your customer and lead base. It can offer the camaraderie of working together without the imposition of working for someone else.
5 Affiliate marketing. A big topic, but a very lucrative way to extend your reach. Affiliate marketing is really a specialized variation on partnering. You appoint other people to specifically promote your business, rather like free lance sales or marketing people. The difference is, nowadays it typically refers to efforts on the internet.
Affiliate marketers find products they wish to promote online and once an agreement is in place, they will promote using internet marketing techniques including article writing, social media promotion and even adwords and pay-per-click methods.
As in partnering in ‘4’ above, compensation is payable to your affiliate, but sometimes only for a lead not even a sale. It is then down to you to close the business.
A link on an affiliate’s site may seem simple enough, but as this is happening in cyberspace, it is important to be able to electronically track which leads or business are resulting from which links. To understand this technology is quite possibly outside the scope of many small business owners. Affiliate management is a specialist role and if you become big enough, it is likely you would wish to employ a specialist.
I mention this avenue as it can be extremely powerful, but it may be something to be considered after 1 to 4 are in process and working well. I will however be writing more about Affiliate Marketing in later articles.
Getting others to sell for you, promote you and provide you with hot leads is a way of spreading the load and becoming more efficient with the limited hours in the day.
Monday, August 9, 2010 at 12:37PM
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