Business Sales

Key Sales Skills for Owner Managed Businesses

When you manage your own business, there are many different skills that you need in order to thrive in a changing economy. Among those skills are marketing and sales-related attributes that the best owners will learn to master. The fact of the matter is that most people aren’t born with natural marketing and sales abilities, so the different techniques have to be learned.

Marketing, in its most basic form, is the art of promoting the goods or services of your company. Sales is a more direct application of this, and it includes working directly with clients to actually execute the transactions.

So what are the key skills in these two areas that forward thinkers need to know all about?

Key Marketing Skills

Planning – One of the most important skills that any individual will learn is putting together a comprehensive marketing plan. This planning stage is one where business owners need to consider their brand placement, their available marketing means, and their goals. The planning process also includes marketing research, so you will know who your target market is exactly. With this knowledge, owners can design advertisements and marketing campaigns, especially for the people who will be most likely to respond to them.

Principles of ROI – One of the most important principles that will power any marketing plan is an understanding of ROI. This is return on investment and is at the core of any business. Marketing is an investment in the future of your business and it can only be effective when it’s managed properly from a cost standpoint. Getting the most possible value out of various marketing techniques will help a business grow in a dynamic world.

Direct Contact Campaigns – One of the pillars of marketing is making direct contact with potential customers through a host of different mediums. This might include direct mailing, wherein businesses send out their promotional materials. It might also include an email marketing campaign or contact through social media. The best plan is one that includes lots of different contact points, because it will help establish a relationship between the business and clientele.

Key Sales Skills

Relationship Building – At the heart of any good sales plan is a plan to build better relationships. If you are going to effectively handle the sales process, you have to build a rapport with your customers. That is, they have to be willing to communicate with you to the point where some trust is built. This type of trust is important, because it will allow them to believe your advertising campaigns and it will allow them to trust your judgments. Another part of this relationship building is loyalty. When you are honest with a customer, they are much more likely to show loyalty to your brand. Though honesty is an essential part of building loyalty, supplying customers with a consistently high performing product will build loyalty as well.

Unique Selling Point (USP) – Providing customers with a USP is important when you are in competition with other businesses. For most business owners, your goal is not just to convince a potential customer to buy your product cold. You might also have to convince them to switch from a competing product. By providing and highlighting a unique selling point, you will give customers something to base their decision upon. This is especially important if your potential customers have a long standing relationship with a competitor.

Collecting on Sales – Selling a product is no good unless you actually collect on that sale. Some business owners collect up front, while others using a billing process. When they bill, they will send out invoices and receive payments there in.

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