When I first started my business, we put little thought into matters like selling strategies and sales skills. We felt like selling skill was for companies that didn’t have confidence in their products. We did have confidence in what we were making.
Selling skills seemed immaterial, as we are quite sure that we have the best custom computers on the market, for the lowest prices. This might sound like a sales pitch, but it really is true. I had some great people working for me, and we had some great connections to get us the parts that we needed.
No matter what we did, sales would be stagnant. We were just earning enough to keep us afloat. I started to see signs that some of our best people were looking to move elsewhere if things didn’t pick up and that would be the beginning of a downhill slide. So I had to make a tough decision and bring in a professoinal sales skills consultant.
Although my employees were initially against sales skills training, they agreed to try it on a trial basis. They thought of themselves as technical professionals, not salesmen, and did not want anything to do with what they saw as a manipulative, backwards profession.
Nevertheless, the trainer did his job. It took awhile because my employees tend to be a bit awkward employees, but in the long run, they were given the tool and how to produce a good sales call and close the sale.
I did not want to hire sales representatives like most companies do. I have a different philosophy. You see, our companies are for high-end computer users ? people who know the product very well. Selling skills is not enough.
What I salesman need above all its technical knowledge. Selling skills has to come second, but it is required. By giving our computer builders and designers the selling skills they needed, we were able to allow them to deal with the customers in a professional yet friendly manner.
Acquiring these selling skills cannot be underestimated. We were just a business that no one had even heard of and now people are calling us.
During this phase, every sale was life or death, if we would have been short any one month, we might have had to close shop. Since we have the selling skills that are demanded in business, we are now profitable beyond our wildest dreams.
Article by Chris B, you can find more about him on his profile.
