“Try not to become a person of success, but try to become a person of value.” – Albert Einstein”.
Build your business around professionalism, value delivery and consistency. I talk a lot to entrepreneurs, sales professionals, startups and businesspeople. When I have the opportunity to interact with this set of people, I tell them that success in business or sales is about being professional, delivering value in your offerings, and being consistent in pursuing your vision, mission and goals. This is my simple formula for success in professional life. It works for everyone in business and career life. When you sell as a salesperson, ensure you go with the formula.
Sell everywhere within your market
One of the reasons sales professionals fail is because they sell the right products and services in the wrong market. Some salespeople think that going to places they know someone is the only way to sell their products. Sell everywhere within your target market!
Once you are sure of your products and services, the next thing to do is to take it to the right market. The right market is a function of the right buyers and users. The right buyers are people who need your products and can pay for them. The right users are people who know about your products through sales presentation or by marketing activities.
Your duty as a sales professional is to attract customers, retain customers and expand customers. You attract customers by winning new customers. You retain customers by finding smart and productive ways to ensure you keep them when they are attracted. You expand customers by creatively bringing new customers to the fold. This is your first assignment as productive sales professional.
Relatives and friends may not necessarily buy from you
Do you think that friends and relatives must buy from you always? This may not be so. If it is so, sales won’t be tough!
Don’t just depend on the assumption that people you know must patronise you. It’s another form of entitlement mentality to think this way. Don’t get me wrong, please. I want my people to buy from me. It’s beautiful when we sell to relatives, umunna, schoolmates, neighbours, village people, and so on. But the truth is that 80 percent of your friends and people close to you may not patronise your products or business.
I have done several informal studies to confirm my take on this issue. Ask startups and businesspeople to confirm this position. Going into the reasons relatives and friends are not buying from you is a topic for another day.
Let me say that the Pareto Principle applies here too. In your sales activities as a sales professional, know that 80 percent of your sales will come from 20 percent of productive business relationships you developed overtime and not necessarily from family members, classmates and neighbours.
A Facebook friend, who is an author, once posted on Facebook that if 50 percent of his friends bought his books on social media, he would become a success story. I think I agree with him.
I have since learnt that you must expand your circle if you want to be successful in your business or career. You must develop good products and services and reach out to people who will need them. You must create value. You must be outstanding. Attaining excellence is by taking action. This is my belief pattern.
Make giving value an attitude
I believe that the more value you give as a professional, the more you expand your opportunities to receive value. This is what I teach in negotiation skills. Take value along everywhere you go. People flock around folks who bring VALUE!
I don’t believe in doing nothing and waiting for people to patronise my business. We do our best to create value within our target market. We target the right market and sell value to them. This is the way not to notice whether relatives or friends are buying from you or not.
In my book, The 25 Unbreakable Laws of Sales, The 17th Law says: ‘’Some Doors Are Walls, Some Walls Are Doors.’’ This may seem deep but let me explain it a little. Some doors are walls when we believe that our products and services will sell in a place – because we have contacts there; only to be disappointed, for one reason or the other. Some walls could be doors when we succeed in places we know no one.
This is why I tell sales professionals to take their products and services to everywhere within their target market. Show customers and prospects in your market the benefits in your products and services. This is the productive and smart way to sell. It wins all the time.
I have been a sales professional for over 25 years to conclude that success in sales and salesmanship are about strategy. The rule I promote is: SHOW PEOPLE WHY THEY SHOULD BUY YOUR PRODUCT – whether you are selling to your friends or enemies. If you can show them reasons to buy, and the reasons are convincing enough, they will buy and buy again.
Don’t depend so much on relatives or friends. Be a hard working and creative professional who discovers the right market for his or her products and services.
George O. Emetuche, CES, is the convener, Nigeria Sales Conference.
Buy books by George O. Emetuche from popular bookshops near you: Roban Stores nationwide, Alpha Pharmacy and Stores, Jumia; and E-books on: Amazon, Okadabooks, Kobo, and Bambooks. Reach us today on 07060559429 for productive training of your Sales Team. www.thesellingchampionconsulting.com.
