The ultimate five basics to selling

In my first sales job I worked for a multibillion-dollar communications company. If you think a company that big had plentiful resources to help me — you’d be very wrong.

There was very little training. I was thrown into the water, full of alligators and other hidden dangers, and told to sink or swim. This shaped my attitudes about selling and marketing.

I quickly figured out that no one knew my customers and their problems better than me. I also discovered that “selling” strains the connection with prospects and many times, fails to build rapport. However, when people feel they are getting education and value, solid relationships are built, which leads to revenue.

It finally hit me that marketing is the key to successful selling. Too many businesses never realize that and end up getting stuck on the revenue roller coaster.

Here are the 5 core principles that I live by and that will serve you well too.

• If you focus on your customer, all else will follow. All successful marketing and sales begins with the audience. You need to know a lot about your target market and the people who make it up. The more you know, the better you’ll be able to decide how you can help your audience — and find more people and companies like them;
• An education-based marketing approach opens doors faster and closes more sales. Information educates, has worth, and builds relationships. The key is to find what your audience values. Then put a strategy in place to genuinely demonstrate the value your company adds with education. It helps you become a trusted expert in their eyes. It’s an easy way to build credibility and a powerful way to stand apart from your competition. The best part — there’s no selling involved!
• Stop thinking about sales and marketing as separate functions. There is only one team — the revenue generation department. Successful companies understand this. Everything goes much smoother when marketing people think about revenue and sales people think about marketing. Make sure both sides are at the table and part of the process. The result will be more revenue with less effort;
• A well-crafted message is the centerpiece of your marketing and selling effort. It gets attention, differentiates you from your competition, builds rapport, and buys you the opportunity to keep talking. A great message resonates with your specific target audience and tells your audience, “We work with people like you, with this kind of problem, who want this kind of result." Demonstrate to your audience that you’ve walked in their shoes;
• There are rules to the marketing and sales game - understand them. Customers don’t move from initial contact to revenue by themselves. You need to help them. Recognize where your prospect is in the customer cycle and what they need from you to get to the next step. From initially getting a stranger’s attention to closing the sale, there is a time to market and a time to sell. Develop a system and use it. Your product or service will practically sell itself — this is the smart way to sell.

Have a marketing strategy that positions your company as more of an expert than your competitors. Find a way to effectively use valuable information in your activities. This is a much better way to sell than “pitching” your offering.

Ron Stein is the founder and President of FastPath Marketing (www.marketing-strategies-guide.com). He has more than 20 years experience in sales, marketing, and business development, working positions ranging from salesman to vice president of sales and marketing to CEO of startups with industry leaders such as Motorola, VideoServer, Paradyne, and SercoNet. Ron is a member of the advisory team at the Tampa Bay Innovation Center, a nationally recognized entrepreneurial and startup accelerator for the state of Florida. He can be reached at 727-398-1855 or Ron@FastPathMarketing.com