WHY EVERY ENTREPRENEUR SHOULD START IN SALES

To be honest, it's not all about the idea, its all about how you sell the idea. Most entrepreneurs believe that all they need is a knockout product that is way ahead of the competition and then boom like sharks drawn to blood, the customers will come rushing in. Sorry to say this but reverse is the trend in this era.

Get to know your clients, then build a product around them when you know that there is a ready market to sell it in. Be a smart entrepreneur and test the waters before diving into it by going into sales first, it'll save you time, money and energy.

Until now, CEOs have given little attention to how they are able to sell their services to customers, and this is not entirely their fault. There's been no other important aspect of any business that is able to match the worth of products themselves than the sales.

In this present age of heated competition in marketing, we frequently get to answer a big question from companies asking why it is necessary for entrepreneurs to start out in sales today. In case you haven't noticed, a good number of successful business owners today started in sales.

It's a no-brainer trying to figure out why they stand out among others because doubling as an active salesperson makes the entrepreneur gain a lot of positive qualities. There's no better place to become well aware of the intricacies of market competition and cash-flow than in the sales department.

When all other sectors aren't aware, people in sales are taking the forefront of the company and settling deals with their customers. Who gets to make initial contact with the potential customers? I’m sure you guessed right!

You can hardly name any industry that's not eating the fruits of the labor of their salespeople from food & beverage, to healthcare, from automotive to biotech.

Sales bring out the best in entrepreneurs. They get to know how to make things work out in favor of their company.

All the qualities required of a successful entrepreneur are best acquired if they make sales a starting point in their business career. Here are some crucial reasons why sales is a good starting point for every entrepreneur out there.

YOU WILL GAIN BUSINESS SKILLS

Many of the challenges faced in the business world are best solved by making the right choices. That was quite obvious, right?

Problems are tests that can only be changed by our choices. By starting in sales, you can overcome basically the significant challenges of entrepreneurship, as you'd have gained the necessary skills to deal with it. Experiences in the sales world build up a well of skills that you'll eventually need when you become your own boss.

One of the very first things you will have to learn as an entrepreneur is that your success or failure as an entrepreneur depends 100% on your sales. All significant achievements started small, be it moving from door to door to sell products and services to strangers and living off commissions.

All these are perpetual training grounds for the next big thing. You want to show the world that you can make it big as an entrepreneur? Show them by riding the waters of sales.

The most critical business skill to gain as an entrepreneur when you start in sales is the “Persuasion Skill”. In a recent study, this skill was ranked as the number one skill to have under your belt as an entrepreneur, and the most fantastic thing is that the sales department is the best place to find it.

The ability to get people to see things the way you see it and to agree with you is a major and vital skill in business. One can never be perfect at it, but hey! The goal was never to be perfect, the goal was to be efficient.

Practice makes perfect, and for that, the skill of persuasion can be mastered. Persuasion is not the same thing as manipulation, and should not be mistaken for it. In the art of persuading, you focus less on yourself and more on what's important to your prospects.

Persuasion taps into the norm of reciprocity. How? By focusing on what's important to your prospects, you go out of your way to see them fulfilled. Prospects value the act and would feel indebted to you as an entrepreneur.

Furthermore, you get to learn leadership skills. It is a business skill learned from sales that is important to entrepreneurship. Being in sales puts you in a position of brainstorming for the right ideas and the right approach to sell your goods and services.

Your ability to provide solutions, solving problems with innovative, insightful and exciting concepts is one sure way to build up your business.

YOU WILL GAIN THE EXPERTISE NEEDED FOR YOUR ENTERPRISE

As an entrepreneur, you need to know the ins and outs of your business, knowing this will save your business and give you that much-needed breakthrough.

The only place to gain the expertise of industry is in sales. Starting up in sales you interact with a lot of customers who boost your business and your technical knowledge.

Sales help you gain that intimate relationship between you and your customers, letting you know the challenges, the feedback, the results, and also the opportunities for a new product brand or business idea.

By going into sales before starting your enterprise helps you gain insight into the market, you know which product is selling, how it is selling, why it is selling when it is best sold, and also how the market is responding to its sales.

You learn about the product's competitors, and it is also useful by helping improve the standards and overcome the challenges that it faces.

IT HELPS YOU SELL YOUR IDEA

Selling your idea is the primary purpose of entrepreneurship, and the only way to get it sold is if you have a place in the sales department. This is one of the significant reasons entrepreneurs must start out in sales. Let me broaden this a little bit more.

Your primary goal is to sell your business idea to your customers, be it goods or services. Sales help you get in touch with the target audience, the ones who are ready to pay for what you have.

The biggest reason why most startups fail is that they are too far from their target audience, or they have a product that no one wants to pay for. As a salesperson you learn the concepts of product advertising as well as product promotion, you are in touch with the customer's evaluation and feedback, the objectives and potential upgrades in the market.

All these are characteristics of a salesperson, but once you have all these mastered before starting up your innovative idea, your path in the business market becomes a little less rough. Going first into sales before starting up your business, opens you to new and innovative ideas yet also retaining you grounded to stay focused on the need of your customers and how to satisfy it.

This also helps you build a good rapport with them when they know that their feedbacks are taken into accounts, and as an entrepreneur, a good rapport with your customer is a good flow of income. Sales just give you that much-needed direction for your innovative ideas.

IT HELPS YOU SET AND ACHIEVE GOALS

Now when I talk about goals, I mean realistic goals, not unrealistic goals, although that's what innovation is about. Sales help you to set goals down and helps you to actualize it not just once, but over time and consistently.

One reason a business start-up fails is that the set goals are either not realistic, not client-aligned, too ambitious or not specific enough. All these boil down to lack of foresight and planning. By being first trained in sales, you learn to avoid the mistakes of the following:

●    Chasing investors instead of customers

A salesperson knows whom he needs to help grow his business, while an entrepreneur with no sales training will just dive right into looking for investors. Thus the significant difference is all that is needed for profit. The more customers you have, the more potential investors you gain into your business.

●    Lack of focus and driven purpose

A sales-oriented entrepreneur is focused not only on the profit but on the feedback, challenges, and goals, he has a clearly mapped out plan on how to achieve all of it.

Producing a product that no one wants to buy including you. If your company can't buy the product you provide, then you've created the wrong product. A product should be designed to satisfy a need or want in a household or a society, a sales-oriented entrepreneur, knows that and does that.

●    Spending too much on things you don't need.

●    Failing to ask for help.

Your customers are your sounding board if you fail to get feedback from them or you get and don't improve on it, you can't really progress.

●    Ignoring social media.

Most of your customers use social media. Hook them up and see what their preferences are.

Failure to execute sales and marketing strategies.

This is quite crucial, because a failed execution of sales and marketing strategies in business, is a failed business.

The SMART approach gives us an insight into that. It states that a sales and marketing strategy that wants to be successful should be:

Specific. This means the plan must be simple to use and easy to explain.

Measurable. This means it should have its worth in values. It should have a starting point and an ending point.

Achievable. This means that the strategy should not be too surreal, it should have a specific goal in mind that is within one's reach.

Relevant. It should play a vital role in the direction your business wants to grow in.

Time conscious. Your strategies should not be too open-ended, there are a lot of risks to be taken between 0 and 1, now think if it's between 0 and infinity.

It benefits you

Anything that doesn't help improve you or make you a better entrepreneur should be cut off, fortunately for you, starting with sales enables you to develop yourself to be a better entrepreneur.

It helps you make the right connection for your business, helping you gain the first-hand knowledge of the insight of business moguls and also how to program yourself to think like them.

You learn to motivate yourself. As an entrepreneur, you are your own boss, the motivation has to come from you. Being sales oriented helps by making you compete with yourself daily, increases your contribution ability and hone your skills, all these builds up your enthusiasm making you draw it up anytime you need motivation. You become your own decision maker, which keeps you in charge of your time and helps you manage your business.

You'll become more creative. Sales orientation change your mindset to adapt to the technical and business expertise around you and also develop a more innovative and market selling idea or product to sell.

It helps in your presentations. Sales help you to present ideas, solutions, tactics, strategies, and problems to customers. This helps to cultivate the sense of presenting a product to your customers.

It builds you. It helps you handle rejection as you will face it a lot. It makes you never back down and gives you that courage to always demand more on your product. It makes life interesting, as you'll never get bored of learning more about more people, more ideas, and ways to overcome challenges.

To be honest, it's not all about the idea, its all about how you sell the idea. Most entrepreneurs believe that all they need is a knockout product that is way ahead of the competition and then boom like sharks drawn to blood, the customers will come rushing in. Sorry to say this but reverse is the trend in this era. Get to know your clients, then build a product around them when you know that there is a ready market to sell it in. Be a smart entrepreneur and test the waters before diving into it by going into sales first, it'll save you time, money and energy.

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