Creating Value Through Sales

“Best way to sell something: don’t sell anything. Earn the awareness, respect, and trust of those who might buy.” Rand Fishkin

A business that is heavy on sales most likely doesn’t invest that much in marketing. Marketing makes sales easy. They don’t pressure their customers to buy. Their salespeople are not even called salespeople and they are not paid a commission. That way they take the pressure off. They presell their customers through their investment in marketing. I wrote about this in my books, Sell Like Apple, Market Like Apple, and Compete Like Apple.

The one thing that determines whether your business succeeds or fails is sales. Many startup founders believe that the secret of the success of their business is 90 percent based on the kind of products they have. Great products are good. But ultimately, the success of a product boils down to investment in marketing and sales: it is based on 10 percent product quality and 90 percent sales.

That was exactly what caused my first ever business to fail. I had a form of marketing but it wasn’t that convincing enough but it brought in people to my funnel. It created the awareness I needed for the services I was rendering. But my failure to add value to them through sales cost me their business. In less than a year, I was desperate to get a client.

Everything in business starts, is sustained, and ends with sales. You don’t have a business until you make a sale. Sales provide the lifeblood of your business: money is the lifeblood. The business person who can get, keep and cultivate a customer will get paid the most every time.

When you create a sales funnel that adds value to the customer from the very first contact, you won’t have to pressure the customers to buy. Most startups want to start extracting value from the customer from the very first contact. Giving value to the customer from the very first contact is the best way to nurture the customer.

When you create value for the customer, you are investing in a future relationship with the customer. Such a relationship should provide the customer with confidence that you are out to help them rather than you are out to take from them. You can develop either of these relationships with clients:

1. Transactional Sales Relationship: This is a relationship that is based on the moment. You give the customer only what she wants and get your money from her. You don’t wish to go the extra mile for her. The only issue here is that you don’t have a relationship that should be sustained in the future. At any time the customer can decide to go to your competitors to make purchases.

2. Transformational Sales Relationship: This relationship is based on doing more for your client and going the extra mile, that way you make your relationship with the customer future-based. You are investing right now in that future relationship. You are going the extra mile and amazing your customers by meeting other needs that you may not necessarily provide because you care for the customer. Nurture the relationships you have to increase the lifetime value of a customer rather than hoping to make a quick sell.

To create value in sales, you have to consider the following critical points:

1. Sales Is a Conversation In The Mind of Your Customers: You need to understand that sales is a conversation taking place in your customers' minds and you need to be part of it. Some of those conversations may be obstacles and you need to tackle those obstacles and turn them into opportunities. It is your responsibility to be part of these conversations.

2. Be Interest In Your Customer As Person: You can only get to know the conversation going on in your customers' minds and what is happening in their lives if you are interested in them. This is the secret of most mum-&-pop businesses. Most salespeople want people to be interested in what they are offering but the key is to first be interested in them. You can get to know more about your customers when you are interested in them.

3. Ask and Listen Attentively: Everyone wants to feel respected and cared for. People love to talk about themselves. Ask your customers questions and listen attentively to understand the conversations that are ongoing in their minds. You cannot be part of what you know nothing about. Listening is the best form of flattery. It creates a connection with the other person. People will tell you a lot when they know you are listening.

4. Sales Is Helping People Not Selling Your Product: To create value through sales, you have to change your mindset from seeing sales as a means to sell your product to a way to help people with their needs. People are looking for those who will help them not sell to them. When you position yourself as someone who wants to help them, they see you as a friend.

5. Sales Should Make People Feel Good About Themselves: Most selling techniques make the salesperson wiser than the people making the purchase. You need to make people feel that they made the wisest purchase and that they are wise. They need to feel good about themselves if you want to nurture the relationship. If you make them feel less wise, they may make the first purchase but will avoid buying from you. and guess what? They will tell people about how you treat them and made them feel. People hardly forget how they are made to feel.

Ways To Create value In Sales

Dan Sullivan describes sales as “engaging other people intellectually with a desirable future result, and then enabling them to emotionally commit to the achievement of that results.”

Focus On Eliminating Obstacles- You engage them mentally about the results your product will produce for them. You position yourself as someone who will help them achieve bigger results. When they know that you are focused on helping them eliminate obstacles in their lives you provide them with hope. When you eliminate obstacles you make their future results bigger.

Engage Them In The Talk: When your customers get engaged in the solution they become emotionally committed. That means they are excited. When you handle their obstacles and turn them into opportunities you provide them with excitement. People make purchases for emotional reasons. Excitement is emotional.

Demonstrate The Solution: When you involve them in the process and then demonstrate to them how it works for them, you not only make them excited but also confident. Demonstrating the solution with the customers creates in their mind the new capability that the product brings. Confidence means they are fully persuaded and will go on with the sales.

Great salespeople use their products and services to provide hope, excitement, and confidence to their customers. It is not your product or service that will keep your customers coming but the value you provide them that they are unable to get anywhere else. They can get your product or services elsewhere but may not get the value you are creating for them through sales.

Is your business Truly Human? Do you create value throughout your organization? Is there any way we can help you turn your organization into a value-creation machine?