To work for yourself and be successful does not mean that you have to be a slick salesperson, with more patter than a litter of kittens. It does not mean that you have to develop an oily handshake and a greasy smile. And it does not mean that you have to change your name to Gavin and wear a chunky bracelet with your name on it, in case you forget who you are.
The bad news is that you will have to sell to people, because if you don’t, you wont have a business. You may need to sell your idea to the bank manager to raise some funds; you may have to sell it to your partner to secure his or her emotional support. You may even have to sell it to yourself, to convince yourself that your hare-brained scheme really does have more chance of success than England does of winning football’s World Cup again.
If you are tempted to sidestep this chapter because either:
• You can get by on massive ego alone, or
• You already have a successful sales background, or
• You don’t intend to succeed
then please think again, because help is at hand. Selling does not have to be complicated, or false, or insincere. Wrapped into the mix is also a selling secret that a surprisingly large number of people, most of them professional salespeople, skip past.
The secret of selling is – um, let’s come back to that later on in the book.
I’ll be honest here and say that I am not the best salesperson in the world, but I am the best person to sell my services to others. A friend of mine was running a business which was struggling to find new customers, and he made the cardinal mistake of employing a salesperson to go and get them. This was silly for several reasons, one of which was that it made a massive dent in his cashflow when he could least afford it. Also there is often a six-month time lag between hiring salespeople and their starting to bring in business, so you are adding six months of salary to your working capital. Of course the salesperson might fail to earn a bean, and then you’ve gambled away your cash. It happens.
The best option is for you to sell your products, because you know your business and are more passionate about it than anyone else can hope to be. The person my friend hired had good credentials – he was a salesman, after all – and could sell himself very well. Trouble was, he was useless at selling corporate training services, and my friend learned a very expensive and time-consuming lesson.
If you want to be dazzled with the A-to-Z of selling, please go and buy a book on the subject, because here we are only going to have a gentle snuffle through the key bits. We shall think about marketing later on, a subject which can veer towards the soap-bubble end of intellectual rigour, but compared with this, selling is your wig-wearing bald coot of a brute at the management top table. A hard case with ‘win’ tattooed across his knuckles. However, if you want to make it to the end of your first trading year, then stick on that head rug and listen up.
The best sales lesson I ever learned happened in a crowded and steamy roadside café. It was the sort of place where the sausages were more qualified than the serving staff, and whose reputation for ‘home-cooked food’ suffered a dent when one of the Neanderthal chefs idly commented to a visiting journalist, one deep-fried Thursday, that she couldn’t have an omelette because they hadn’t been delivered yet. However these places can be the backbone of a wandering selfer’s life, and you may wish to swallow your haute cuisine principles and make friends with your local travel café. They’re warm, free to use and handily placed for meeting people. Just avoid the food.
Anyway I was sitting at a tired wooden table, facing my own business coach, a genial fellow by the name of Harry. Mrs Thatcher, the much beloved and much reviled first female prime minister, was once famously quoted as saying, ‘Every prime minister needs a Willie.’ She was not, as it happened, referring to her possible status as a pre-op transvestite, but rather was commenting on Willie Whitelaw, her famously ever-present adviser. In this way I would suggest that everybody needs a Harry. He is my business coach, and is there to straighten me out when I get crumpled, and to top up my business teacup when it runs dry. Some people seem surprised that I have a business coach, but there is no need to be. Nobody is born with allround business acumen. Look closely at the top dudes and they all have advisers lurking in the shadows.
So there I was, facing Harry and about to run through my sales pitch for the first time. The place was packed, the waiting staff avoiding the customers and the customers avoiding the omelettes. I had been up until two in the morning producing a magnificent pitch, in true catherinewheel style, and my eyes felt sore and gritty. In one hand I gripped a bulky ‘welcome pack’, to introduce my business, and in the other I gripped a printout of my 10-minute, 10-slide presentation. Suited and booted for good measure, I was taking no chances and the stage was set for my moment of triumph. Harry had agreed that we would treat the exercise as a genuine meeting, and was now poised and expectant, his eyes watching me with interest.
‘Good morning Harry,’ I began earnestly, in my politest tones, ‘and thank you for seeing me today. I would like to start by running through a short presentation, and then I will take you through the welcome pack, all of which will last no more than 20 minutes.’ I felt my adrenalin surge and lift me. This was going to be easy.
Harry leaned forwards. The corners of his mouth twitched and a small but discernible cloud scudded across his brow. ‘Would you like me to make a comment now, or shall I save it until you’ve finished?’ he asked in a genial way, but with the unmistakable force of a steel tent peg being casually shoved into a party balloon.
‘Leave it to the end,’ I croaked through tight lips, my heart flopping about with worry. My adrenalin was now pooling on the floor.
‘Fair enough then, Richard. Do carry on,’ he smiled generously, but it was too late. What was his comment? I had asked him to give me feedback, but doing so a mere 10 seconds into my impressively constructed and minutely detailed presentation was surely taking the piss? I sailed on, but my heart was now comatose and my tiredness returned. Twenty minutes later Harry nodded wisely and then gave me a piece of advice which had clearly been on his mind for at least 19 minutes and 50 seconds. ‘The art of selling,’ he said in deep, polished and not unfriendly tones, ‘is to listen.’
So, sitting there in my suit and with my bits of paper, hot and sweaty and being eyed by a clump of fly-specked waiting staff, I learned my lesson.
Shut up. Shut up and listen.
Listen or don’t bother selling. Indeed it shouldn’t really even be called ‘selling’, it should be called ‘listening’, and we should hire listenpeople instead of salespeople. If we did that, the world would be a better place and we would look forward to the next sales visit from some footsore doorknocker as it would give us a chance to be listened to.
‘People really like it when they are talking,’ Harry continued, smoothly ice-skating his way to more sales gems, ‘they really do. They feel good about themselves. So, instead of you talking, your job is to get me talking. Then you can listen out for my problems and needs, and then’ – he paused, just because he has the sort of voice that needs a few good pauses for the listener to fully appreciate his resonant timbre – ‘and then you can answer those needs with the products or services your business supplies. It’s as simple as that.’
I nodded, like a child who has just learned that one plus one is two, and who feels a bit stupid for not realizing this before. Out of the corner of my eye I could have sworn that I saw some people hovering near the next table, nodding at me as if to say, ‘Stupid prick. Even we knew that and we’re just fly-specked waiting staff.’
After this humbling experience I ditched my slides and my ostentatious ‘welcome pack’ and made sure that I had a couple of really informative leaflets in my briefcase. Two weeks later I made a sales call to a friend who ran a PR business. He was a good chap and knew I was starting out as a selfer, so was happy to see me. Just as I parked and switched off the car’s ignition, I was struck hard by a thought. He wasn’t my friend. He was a businessman whom I knew. Big difference. He wasn’t seeing me to be nice, he was seeing me because I might be of use to him, and therefore he would treat me in the same way as he would any other rep coming in to waste his time, drink his coffee and clutter up his office – that is, with bored disdain.
Sitting in his meeting room we exchanged a few pleasantries about the weather and the likelihood of rain, then he said, ‘So, Richard, what’s your business all about?’
Avoiding the obvious waffle-trap, I countered with, ‘Coaching and profiling and personal development work, but as we haven’t met for a while I’m interested to know more about your business. How many people do you have working for you now?’
I then listened to him for half an hour, and was able to link some of his concerns about one of his new starters to the usefulness of coaching. We had a productive conversation. Although he didn’t buy anything from me, he had given me a great opportunity to practise my listening skills, which is easily done if you ask questions. When I left the meeting I knew that I had cracked it, and stopped on the way home to buy a take-out Chinese dinner. I also bought a take-out Thai dinner (I was fairly pleased with myself ) and was promptly given a tough time by my wife for spending more money than was necessary. She was right, and it never hurts to be reminded that the best place for your money is in your pocket and not someone else’s. Rubbish salespeople drone on about their products; great salespeople ask you questions to get you talking. You then feel good about yourself, and are more receptive when they magically answer a need you have just expressed. ‘Wow!’ You will find yourself replying, ‘that’s amazing! Because I was wondering where I could buy a Sugar Lump 2000 personal computer, complete with a rough-rider mouse and a handsomely proportioned microphone for oral pleasure over the internet.’ And the sales-whiz will smile and know he has done a great job of listening.
For reasons unknown to science, florists tend to provide free master classes in selling. Perhaps this is because they are used to dealing with ignorant blokey types, like me, who think that Flowers is just a type of beer. Usually I creep nervously into the local petal palace and try to look confident. Usually I fail.
‘I’d like to buy some flowers please,’ is my cunningly vague opening gambit.
Instead of replying, ‘Here, take these,’ the florist complicates matters considerably by being helpful and asking, ‘What sort of flowers would you like?’
‘White ones’, I tend to reply, trying to avoid her fiendish mind games.
‘Would you like some lilies?’
‘No thanks, I want white flowers.’
‘Lilies are white.’
‘Then I would like some lilies, please. What do they look like?’
‘Like this.’
‘Oh! So that’s a lily, is it!’ (I am now an expert in one flower.)
Then having established a sales bridgehead, the florist breaks out and goes rumbling into the low countries for ultimate victory, by asking a range of supplementary questions, to do with packaging, ribbons, weird green foliage and whether I would like a card. All of this means I have to think about what I want. However, the end result of the surgically precise flower power quiz is that I feel well serviced, and come away with a lighter wallet, but a deeper sense of security than when I ambled in. I feel looked after.
Spend time asking questions, and only when you have made the other party feel good by listening to him or her can you offer a couple of options from your portfolio. Never just bang the answer on the table, as it can make people feel either stupid, for not knowing it already, or resentful at having something thrust at them against their will.
People love choice, so give your potential customers a choice, and they will feel part of the process and forget that they are being sold to. One of the choices might seem worthless to you, but that’s not the point. The point is that they will be leading the decision making, and of course will be making the decision for themselves, which is the best way to get the decision to stick. Your job is simply to listen, offer a choice, outline what differentiates you from the competition, and then let nature take its course. This isn’t manipulation and it’s not insincerity. It’s simply a great way to talk to people and a great way to earn income, which builds cashflow.
People buy people. It’s been said before and it’s worth repeating. If they like the look of you and you listen well, they might buy from you. If you look like a bank robber, or leave mud on their carpet, they won’t.
Years ago I was looking for a house to rent while working away from home. I had slogged round the local area, to which I was new, and had seen a number of over-priced flats and houses which I wouldn’t have let to a cat. My last appointment was to see a clean bungalow in a street dominated by retired folk. The joke was that residents arrived in a removal van and left in an ambulance, which later turned out to be only slightly untrue. The estate agent looked at me with pity in her eyes, and said, with a heavy sigh that she was keen to see the place go, but that it was owned by an old lady who lived next door and who hated people. In particular she hated young men, and had sent a number of them packing.
‘No problem,’ I said, with my friendliest young-man smile, ‘I’ll get on with her.’ Then, before I rang the doorbell for the appointment, I had a brainwave and phoned my wife. ‘Quick question dear,’ I said. ‘How do you charm old ladies?’ She thought for a minute and then replied, ‘Be nice to them. Talk about flowers. They like flowers.’
Shit. Not my best subject. I only do lilies.
After I had smiled my way through the introduction, my potential landlady escorted me next door to her spare bungalow. I spied some rose bushes growing in the front garden. Aha! Salvation! We used to have rose bushes when I was a kid, and the buggers always tried to reach out and scratch you as you walked past.
‘Lovely roses,’ I purred. ‘I do like flowers. Did you have to work hard to get them this looking this good?’
The old witch stopped looking at me as if I was about to mug her and smiled. ‘Not really,’ she said with pride, ‘but I do water them every day.’
After that it was plain sailing. I charmed my way round two bedrooms, a bathroom, a small kitchen and a shed, admiring the furniture and the décor as each door was opened. I rented the property, which was a great place to live, paid my bills on time, and even did a deal with her to buy the television set when we swapped her furniture for ours.
Now you might think I was being cheeky, but if you want to sell yourself to people it pays to take an interest in them. When the estate agent handed me the keys she was surprised that I had secured the property, and happily told me that the landlady was insistent that it be rented to that ‘nice young man’.
Such is the way of sales. You just need to find something to be interested in, ask simple questions, listen to the answers and then give people a choice. In my case, for the old lady, the choice was that I paid full rent or that she gave me a discount. She opted for the full whack, but by then I was in. Hooray!
The skill with asking good questions is to ask ones that help potential customers reveal the features and benefits they need from your products, which you can then deliver up to them. At a basic level, just get them talking. A good opener is simply:
Tell me about your business?
This is usefully vague, and invites people to tell you all sorts of things. If they waffle on, just indulge them. You can always ask sharper follow-up questions, such as:
• How many people work for you?
• What issues do you have that you would like to resolve?
• What training needs to do you currently have?
• Which features of this product are more important to you?
• What occasion are the flowers for?
The question about training needs is clearly aimed at me selling training workshops. If potential clients reply ‘none’, I show them a leaflet and ask, ‘If you had a need, which option would it most likely be for?’ That keeps the conversation moving. Sometimes I ask about the ordering process, as I need to check that I am in fact sitting in front of the right person. Plenty of people have sat in front of a personnel manager trying to flog training, only to be told that none is needed, when around the corner in the same building an operational manager is tearing her hair out at the lack of communication skills, and wondering why nobody ever gets trained.
Make sure you are sitting in front of the decision maker and have not been fobbed off with a bored junior, who has been despatched to keep you warm for a few minutes before spitting you out into the winter snow.
There are two basic question types to play with, open and closed. Both have value, and both sorts can be used to shepherd the sales conversation into a little wooden sheep-pen.
Closed questions are ones that can only be answered with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or with a choice, such as ‘How do you like your steak? Crisped, medium, or so blue it has an x-certificate?’ These are useful for closing down avenues of exploration, or for establishing a definite answer.
Open questions elicit a general answer, and encourage people to think. Damp squibs and fountains may have problems answering these, given that thinking is not their strong point, so if they block your question with an answer that does not relate to it, simply smile and say, ‘That’s interesting. Who would have thought the floods of ‘66 would have caused so much damage! Now I wonder if you could tell me which style of uPVC conservatory you most prefer?’
If you get stuck, a tip to remember is this. Closed questions tend to begin with
‘Do you ...?’
while open questions tend to begin with
‘What do you ...?’,
‘How do you ...’,
‘When would you ...?’,
‘What sort?’,
‘How many?’,
‘Where will you ...?’
and so on. The person answering them has to think for a moment, before revealing some useful information to you.
Harry advised me that when calling to make an appointment, I should ask for only half an hour and go for a point just before lunch, as that is when people tend to be near their office and can squeeze in some time. Most people can fit a quick 30 minutes into their day, so your pitch is designed only to get to see them. Like a boiled toffee, selling doesn’t like to be hurried. An easy pace wins more customers than a desperate ‘buy now’ plea.
I have used this tactic on a number of occasions and it has always delivered results. Sometimes I’ve had a useful 30 minutes and then booked a second meeting to discuss things in more detail. Other times the potential customer has been happy to overrun (always a good sign) and we have chatted on.
Overrunning, asking you questions, fiddling with your samples, taking leaflets and talking about costs are known as buying signals. Watch out for them and log them when they occur, as they can help you to work out how well the meeting is going.
Lots of people, in my experience, are frightened by ringing up to make an appointment, but there is no need to be. Accept the fact that you will get rejected many times. They are not rejecting you, because they don’t know you. They are rejecting what they think you are offering, and you remain, as ever, a happy whole person. I have coached a few people round this issue of avoiding ‘cold calling’, as they like to call it, and have discovered there are two key ways to keep sane.
The first is that when the other person answers the telephone, ask them if they have a minute to talk, and if not, book a time with the person later in the day. This avoids them feeling hassled, and it respects the fact that they are likely to be busy. When you do get to talk, state your case in a minute (which we shall cover in a subsequent chapter) and then end by asking an open question, such as ‘Tell me something about your business?’ At the end of the conversation, use a classic closed question to move to an appointment, such as ‘What times do you prefer, morning or afternoon?’
The second point is to not call it ‘cold calling’. Instead call it ‘cold listening’. This approach helped a consultant to overcome his fear, because listening is a non-threatening entity. Your job is then simply to ring up, ask a couple of open questions and listen to the answers. Try it; it can work for you. With this simple change my consultant colleague has now chalked up a number of sales successes.
Selling is also a numbers game, so we’ll take a pass at some numbers here, numbers which any self-respecting selfer needs to know. If you don’t do your maths you are highly likely to trip and fall, and spend a small bag of groats with your accountant, just for him to tell you that ‘Yes, you have gone bust.’
When I began my business, once I had pulled myself out of catherine-wheel mode and got active, I filled my diary each week with visits. It didn’t matter if I drove 200 miles for a half-hour appointment. That was still 100 per cent more useful than sitting at home.
Generally speaking 95 per cent of all selling effort is wasted, but only hindsight can tell you which is your happy 5 per cent. Then you can refine the customers you are targeting, although effort and more effort is needed.
Think about it. If you could get a hit rate of 50 per cent everybody would set up in business – if it was that easy, and it isn’t.
In order to decide what you will be selling, every business needs a sales forecast, and every forecast is really just a bad guess written down, but at least it’s better than a wet finger up your backside. When compiling your rubbish guesses – sorry, forecasts – remember that it can take up to six months to make a sale, for a consultancy job, corporate training work or interim management project. The process of introducing yourself, having a first meeting, having a second meeting, waiting for a decision and then actually doing the work can easy slip and slide through a whole half year. Then you may need to wait two months for your money, so it doesn’t take a room full of PhD students to work out why lots of consultancy businesses can go bust dead quick. They over-estimate the speed and size of their sales successes, and run out of cash, while muttering to themselves that next month will be the biggie that sets everything right.
It won’t.
It never goes like this, unless you’re in Hollywood. Selling is a slow process, and if your estimates are not cautious, your business moth will soon burn itself to a frazzle on the glowing light bulb of insane over-optimism.
Selling bacon rolls does not require six months to get going, or you would be sitting on bacon chairs and sleeping in a bacon bed. However, don’t assume that because your product is simpler, you will be slicing and serving a pig a week from the word go. It will take time to find loyal customers and to ramp up your output. Be conservative with your guesses, and work hard to sell to a wide range of people.
Whilst I was planning my self-employed life, I worked out how much I needed to earn each month to cover my costs, and divided this by my daily fee rate to find out how many days I needed to work. The first number I arrived at was slightly more days than the average month actually contains, which was a bit of a bugger.
I was then advised by a consultant friend that lots of people doing this kind of work tend to invoice every other day on average, the rest being taken up by selling and admin activities. This meant that I would only have half the capacity I thought I had in order to make hay, which meant that I needed to double my daily fee rate to recover enough income to pay the bills. Not only was this a massive shock, but it reinforced the need to really know your business numbers. If you don’t, you could find yourself selling £10 notes for £9.00, and even boy scouts aren’t that slow.
For consultant types the ‘half time’ equation seems to work out. Excluding weekends and bank holidays, there is a maximum of 253 invoiceable days in any given year. Assuming you will actually book work for half this amount, the total we quickly get to is 125 chargeable days. (If you want to argue about odd days here, then you have a problem, you catherine-wheel you.) Given that 125 days is now 100 per cent of your capacity it’s foolish to base your calculations on such a high booking rate. Better to go for something realistic such as 80 per cent, which gives a figure of 100 days in which to make enough money to pay all the bills.
However, a quick way to work out your daily fee rate is to take your existing salary and trim off the last two noughts. For people earning £30,000 a year and wishing to set themselves up as consultant types, their daily fee rate needs to be around £300 to return roughly the same level of income. Multiply it by 100 days to get back to your original salary if you want to work in both directions.
Know your numbers so you know at what level to pitch yourself. Add to this the fabulous differentiating factors you will be dreaming up in the next chapter, and stir in your effortless questioning technique, and there is no need to sell on price. If you do, you just leave yourself exposed to the next person who will come along and undercut you. Value yourself, and if you feel your rate is fair and justifiable (which it is), stick with it.
A colleague of mine was aghast when we were discussing rates and we discovered that mine was over double hers. She asked me, her eyes wide with disbelief, ‘But what happens when people can’t afford your rate?’ ‘Simple,’ I replied with a grin. ‘I don’t work for them.’
Despite my bullish pricing policy I will vary my price a bit if I really want to work for someone and they simply don’t have the funds available, such as a charity. I’m also aware though, that if you drop the price too low, people are suspicious that there must be something wrong for it to be that cheap.
Conversely, people are happy to pay more if they perceive good service comes with the package, or there is a sense of exclusivity. People buy from florists because they have choice and service. If their buying decision was based solely on price, all flowers would be picked up from the local supermarket or garage forecourt.
Think about all the things you have stuffed into your shopping bags over the last month. How many of them were the cheapest of their kind? How many of them had the right brand name stitched into the seam?
The internet hasn’t quite wiped out our vast shopping malls yet, although it’s well on the way to doing more for our industrial landscape than global warming is. Despite the high-tech advances, people still buy from places they trust, and Amazon’s business philosophy is simply ‘we deliver’. Nobody is going to buy cheaply if the goods fail to turn up and you don’t need too many delivery failures to cause your shiny new web-shop to implode. Amazon’s philosophy underpins its whole business success, and it means that people buy on a combination of price and service and not just price alone.
Scarcity, or lack of it, can have a big impact on the price you charge. A local bistro I visited charged £15 for a lunchtime meal, when across the road its competition only charged £10. Both were equal in terms of quality and service, so the bistro lost out and soon had to reduce its prices. There was no shortage of good-quality food on offer, so abundance helped to fix the selling price.
A close friend of mine used to work as a Saturday boy, selling electrical goodies to the unwary. The wily manager who employed him knew all about scarcity. On one particularly grey and drizzly day, just before closing time, a damp and worried-looking customer burst into the shop waving a lump of mangled metal.
‘Do you have a spare washing machine motor to replace this?’ he asked anxiously.
The manager took the lump and examined it carefully. ‘Yes, sir. We do, sir,’ the manager informed him politely. ‘We have one left.’
‘Oh, great! Thank you,’ replied the happy customer, with evident relief. ‘How much is it?’
‘£100,’ replied the manager.
‘What? But they’re only £50 down the road at the discount warehouse!’
‘And do they have any in stock?’
‘No.’
‘Well then,’ the manager smiled, ‘when they have some and we don’t, we only charge £50 as well.’
Selling is about asking questions, listening for opportunities and meeting people’s needs. It all begins with knowing your numbers, so that you know where to set your price. If you need help with maths then see your accountant, because that is his speciality. Yours is to be a star, in whatever field you choose.
Selling does not have to be difficult, but people make it hard for themselves by either knowing nothing about it or saying, ‘I couldn’t do that.’ I have fallen into both camps, and now realize that I could have done a bit better to begin with, had I not been quite so scared. When it goes well it’s great fun, and now even I look forward to meeting potential customers and having the chance to listen to their story.
It’s OK to be nervous and to book a couple of easy sales meetings to cut your teeth, or to invite a friend to help in your shop for a couple of days. It’s also OK to have had no prior experience and to peddle hard to make a success of your business. Working for myself has improved my selling skills by at least 300 per cent, which is the minimum number I needed to improve by, in order to avoid starving. If I can do it, anyone can do it. There’s no magic in it, just a few basic principles and dogged slog.
So now we’re fully armed with a battery of useful numbers and two large well-trained ears, we can move on to the perennial question of:
But what do I actually say to secure a sale?
To answer this question we shall look at three things, over the next three chapters: marketing, the big secret and contracting for success. However, before we get to our sumptuous feast of usefulness, there are two small hors d’oeuvres to wrap our tongue round and savour. Here they are:
One: A big selling mistake that lots of people make is to forget to ask for the order. If you don’t ask, then the answer is always no!
Two: Remember also that the old sales sweats pounding the motorways in their climate-controlled mobile homes have the following engraved on their heart:
A sale is never really a sale until the money is in the bank.