Entrepreneurs making the transition to sales face a number of challenges that vary depending upon their background.
Making the Transition to Sales
I think the most difficult challenge in sales is maintaining an appropriate perspective and emotional distance from deals: balancing fear, greed, and frustration to maintain empathy and a clear understanding of business objectives.
Some of the technologies employed in the sales process are changing rapidly but they impact the tactics, not the substance. Selling for entrepreneurs is about establishing rapport, project management, and acting as a change agent. The need to listen, communicate clearly, and build trust over time has not changed.
I have been selling my expertise since I started a photography business when I was 16. But I have always looked at myself as an entrepreneur not a salesperson or a consultant–or an employee for that matter. In my own mind I was getting training to be more effective as an entrepreneur in my own business.
To a first order, sales people worry about making quota, entrepreneurs worry about making payroll. It’s a different mindset.
We have two workshops on offer in March, one that’s focused on discovery driven sales and one about lead generation–getting the phone to ring. We have offered both for more than 7 years now and they have each undergone considerable change and improvement.
But what hasn’t changed is that entrepreneurs need to generate leads and close deals if they want to build a business.
| Sold Out | Improve your Sales Pitch with Cohan’s Great Demo! Workshop March 5&6, 2014 “Great Demo!” San Jose, CA |
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| Sold Out | Getting More Customers Workshop March 25, 2014 9am-12:30pm Sunnyvale, CA |
Related Blog Posts
- Customer Care
- In Accidental Learnings from a Journeyman PM by Bill Seitz I observed:”Every change you ask a customer to make involves the loss of the familiar, the proven, and the reliable. It asks them to risk time, money, and status in an effort that may not pay off as you promised, take longer than you propose, and, in the end, may not be superior to their status quo. Map the path to the “New World” in detail and break it up into small steps (“small bets’) that should each yield an incremental improvement. A customer is more likely to embark on a path where each step has a small cost and a small positive payoff than one where they must make a significant investment before seeing any results.”