Customer Sales

I’ve worked in customer sales for a fair amount of time either directly for or indirectly.  In a multilevel sales organization with 1,000s of reps, to a sales organization with only a handful of reps, and I’ve also gone door to door personally. I have seen strict metrics enforced down to daily budgets, all the way to budgets that were managed in a wider time frame due to the nature of the sale.  Sales for small businesses in most circumstances can apply a lot of the same methodology and tactics.

Sales Funnels to Organize Customer Sales Process

Customer sales is a numbers game and one thing I’ve seen in common amongst all sales organizations are sales funnels.  Whether they are simple or complex if you’re in sales you’ve got one.  The concept is simple really, you acquire a bunch of prospects by opening a storefront, running an ad, or joining a networking group for example.  Then you funnel (all personality aside) these prospects into a sales process, either manually or digitally.  Your sales process can have many factors, but the idea is to qualify your prospects as buyers, from there if all sides are in agreement you get the sale.

You can easily manage your customer sales funnel in a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system.  There are a whole bunch you can use and they range from free to premium priced.  You should do your research and find one that works well for you.  I’ve worked with the following products personally.

• Salesforce
• Hubspot
• Zoho
• Click Funnels
• Agile

There’s No Such Thing As A Bad Customer

This is a common issue with most sales reps and I’ve heard different perspectives.  There are customers that are easy to work with and there are demanding customers.  You can run your business however you like to run your business, but my point of view is you can’t have the good customers without having the demanding customers.  And what are demanding customers really asking for?  They just want the best results for the money they are paying.  There’s nothing wrong with that in my book.  If your sales qualifying process (sales funnel) is well-built then you should naturally filter out partnerships that won’t work with you and your business.  I have given away free work, given away work for next to nothing, and it’s all in the hope that customers will see my value or will refer me to another potential customer and ultimately more business.  On the other hand, I’m aware that at the end of the day the business has to make revenue so you must always be landing customers regardless of their demanding natures because you need volume with high value as a healthy mix.

Customer Sales Presentations

The nature of my business and the services I provide to my customers require a lot of hypotheticals and impacting variables.  So, I rely heavily on sales presentations to paint the final vision.  Depending on the nature of your business I suggest using sales presentations as a way to enhance your customer sales experience.  Make sure they aren’t too extensive and they really communicate the end goal and where the customer will be and the benefits after you complete your project.  A while back I created a video to help outline your sales presentation video.  Obviously, the outline will change per customer or per product, you would like to sell. 

Exceptional Customer Service

Once you complete a project or a sale, make sure to keep customer touchpoints and continue to market yourself using a newsletter.  This will ensure you are constantly prospecting.  Make sure you give them an opportunity to provide a review or give positive feedback.  And lastly, make sure you leave a positive lasting impression. 

If you need help creating your sales funnel, please fill out the form below.