Sales is more than just a salesperson
Andy Barden
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How many people do you know that hate the word sales? I bet you can think of 5 people right now that have said in the past.
“I could never do sales”
Every organisation on the planet, requires a sales strategy. Whether you like it or not, everything you do is selling your business.
By providing amazing customer service, you are selling. By writing engaging content, you are selling. By creating unmissable video how to’s, you are selling.
The misconception around the word sales has gone on for far too long. If you want to be financially successful, you have to engage every element of your business in the sales process.
Tell your customer service team how amazing they are at sales. Tell your copy writer how amazing they are at sales. Tell your video guy, how amazing they are at sales. It is not just about those front line people with a sales badge going out pitching. Everyone plays an important role.
The crazy thing is, without all those people that say they hate sales, doing what they do to a high standard, the ‘actual’ sales people can only ever work at 20 or 30% capacity. What use is an amazing pitch if the first thing your customer does is look at your digital presence and it’s negative, or worse still... You don’t have one!
- Do you encourage people to leave testimonials?
- Do you sponsor local events in your sector?
- Are your team encouraged to build their personal brand online?
- Do you action poor feedback?
- Do you know what other people in your sector are doing to improve their digital footprint?
Everything you do sends a message to your customer base.
- If you answer the phone poorly, you effect sales.
- If you take days to respond to people, you effect sales.
- If you don’t produce content that influences the industry, you effect sales.
- If your business has no personality, you effect sales.
- If your displays are not on point, you effect sales.
- If you have a disconnect within your organisation between salespeople and everyone else (as most businesses do), you are effecting sales.
It doesn’t matter if you have 100 sales people or just 1. They can only do so much if all the other departments fail to accept their role in the sales process. With an effective strategy that incorporates brand, customer support, content, direction and education, you can give your sales people the much needed backup they require.
You are always selling… You just don’t know it!
Chief Operating Officer - Delivering results by empowering people.
4 年Excellent article highlighting the “sales ecosystem”. There’s a continual need for businesses to adapt their internal marketing strategies and maintain that customer success focus. It’s nothing new though. I learnt about it as an engineer in the 90’s as part of the TQM (Total Quality Management) philosophy.
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5 年Sales is just a conversation that leads to someone using your services, if you provide a compelling solution that solves their problem then no Selling is involved. Being convincing rather than trying to convince works every time in my book.
Course Director - Civil Engineering Apprenticeships at Coventry University
5 年Nice article Andy and this brings up something I learnt yesterday - ZMOT (zero moment of truth). Thanks for sharing with some great points about the all team members being involved in the sales process. You can include finance (poor experience = unhappy customer), R&D (new products must have the customers needs in mind) the list goes on. Businesses that create a culture with the customer in mind will always be successful.