Business Marketing Small Business Selling Essentials


by MEGAN TOUGH - Date: 2007-03-29 - Word Count: 416 Share This!

The success of your business is inextricably linked to the success of your marketing. And one critical component of marketing is your sales process. It's not something we often consider at great length, but well thought out practices and consistency can be the difference between moderate and significant profits.

How do you know if you are making the most of your sales and pre-sales processes?

Try this mini assessment and see how you go. Out of 10 questions, you can decide how many you ought to be scoring on (70% sounds good to me).

Sales and pre-Sales Assessment

We have effective and attractive risk-reversal strategies and guarantees in place. We make it easy for prospects to buy from us because we take the risk out of it for them to do so.

We have documented our effective pre-sales process (i.e, scripts, checklists, etc.). Everyone who is involved in the presales process knows how our process works and their part in it.

We only let those who have been trained in our sales process engage in sales conversations with prospects. The steps in our sales conversation are clearly understood. We do not move on to the next step until it is time.

Each sale is recognized and celebrated. We keep our sales folks motivated, happy, and inspired.

We have upselling strategies and our sales folks are trained in using them.

We have both front-end (i.e., primary services/products) and back-end (follow-up or upselling) sales opportunities.

Everyone knows how and when to close a sale. And we close in accordance with our client-satisfaction policies.

Everyone knows our credit and payment policies.

We have made maximum use of technology in our sales and payment systems (i.e., credit card payments, ecommerce sales, etc.)

So how did your business shape up? Take the time to complete all of these activities so that your sales process becomes as automated and successful as possible. It's equally as important to do this if you are a solo operator. After all, consistent, repeatable systems are what give you the capacity for growth.

Megan Tough is director of complete potential, a leadership and HR consultancy based in Sydney, Australia.

At complete potential we understand people - what engages them, what encourages them to perform, and what drives them away. With over 20 years experience working on HR issues in business, our job is to help you make the most of your investment in people. To learn more visit www.completepotential.com

HREF="http://www.completepotential.com">Submit your articles to AMAZINES.COM business coaching service


Related Tags: marketing, profits, selling, practices, guarantees, consistency, essentials, significant, inextricably, pre-sales assessment, risk reversal strategies

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