Some folks may think that sales are not important. “If I have a great product it will sell itself”. While the product or service is key to long term success, sales ensures that you have good quality relationships with the customers and that you have consistent revenue. Let’s take a closer look at each one of these.
Quality Relationships with customers
Why do you need quality relationships with customers?
Once they have the product or service isn’t that the end of it?
Sure that could be the end of the cycle, but that assumes everything is perfect the first time around. As we all know that is not the case. Thus, a good quality relationship with your customer is important for feedback and process improvements. Your sales responsibilities can lead this charge.
In a lot of your time is spent following up with customers. Making sure the product met their needs, understanding if they need support, and determining if they will be a repeat customer. Thus the reason that you get requests for surveys and ratings all the time after a purchase. That’s one way to ensure that you are getting feedback.
As a small business owner or entrepreneur I would recommend a quick phone call. Face to face is even better if you can get back in front of the customer. But at a minimum give them a quick call and ask a couple of open ended questions. Something like:
Did the product or service met your needs?
How would you improve the product or service?
Would you purchase again?
Simple questions like this will be a great start to building your quality relationship. This is also really important. Once you ask the question… LISTEN. Do not justify anything just take notes and thank the customer for the feedback. Over the next couple of days review the notes from each customer and see if there are any trends you can address.
Consistent Revenue
Developing a good sales process will ensure consistent revenue. It will drive contact with current and potential customers. That will will to regular sales, which is consistent revenue. This is important because with consistent revenue you can plan and grow your business. That will allow you to hire, invest in new products and services. All these things will be driven based on the fact that you have consistent revenue coming in the door. You do not have to cold call to drive your sales process either, however it can speed up the process. But if you do not want to cold call there are other ways to build a solid sales process. We’ll cover more on that later.
How are you building quality relationships?
Do you have consistent revenue or is it inconsistent?