I speak frequently to groups of business owners and professional service providers for businesses. There is a disease, a crippling sort of disease, that has spread throughout to a large percentage of our business owner population.
Many years ago, I had a keynote speech I used to do called “Sales is just a noun.”
What I mean by that is that Sales are everything you have done, are doing, and will do in your business.
It started when you either had the idea to start the business or when you decided to buy it. It is every single action and person in your company because, after all, sales are how we measure our success… they are the lifeblood or poison.
So many business owners, much like the group I spoke to recently in SC, keep trying to redefine sales as the smallest part of the sales process. This part is what I sarcastically call the ‘asking for the business’ part of the sales process. That is only how we handle transactions.
Remember, there are three main questions that, when answered correctly, will run your business at a high level (if you are sophisticated enough to drill down):
- Why should I meet with you (or your salesperson)?
- Why should I buy from you (or your salesperson)?
- Why should I refer you (or your salesperson)?
Marketing, my fellow business owners, is a part of the sales process. I don’t care what some academic told you in your MBA program. This blog is for real people who don’t feel like deluding themselves about how it really works. Don’t get me wrong: I love marketing and make a lot of money helping people do it better…but I am a salesperson who owns a sales organization and understands that it is all sales.
Do you? Or, are you lying to yourselves, your team and your clients when you say you aren’t in ‘sales’. What a worthless and disingenuous statement at best. At the worst, it is malignantly false and weak.
Want to run a better company? Move sales from a part of the process to the entire process. Yes, you will no longer hide behind your marketing campaign (is it really working…seriously?!?) for why you aren’t growing fast enough and/or why you stopped growing at all.
Instead, embrace reality and lower friction by admitting that you are a sales organization and then start acting accordingly. Some qualities of great sales organizations are:
- Great culture. All employees embrace excellence in communication internally and externally and are committed to spectacular client results so that the business and their careers continue to grow.
- Great discipline. Sales isn’t a personality game. It is a research, reflective, and responsive process of following a system, evaluating the results (both profit and impact on other humans), and pursuing continuous improvement.
- Lots of referrals. The safest drivers (people who treat referrals like gold and don’t wreck the car and/or relationship) are employees of sales organizations. They feel intimately connected to customer outcomes no matter what level they are in the company and act accordingly. Btw, if your employees aren’t referring clients to the business, that is on you, and you need to take a long and deep look at your leadership and culture.
One more thing. Great sales organizations sell for better multiples because the prospective buyer can see exactly how they can make their investment back and more. Usually, they are buying talent and looking to expand it.
What are your thoughts?
All the best and tight lines,
Mike
