In my role as an advisor to startups, I often have to remind entrepreneurs to think more like sales people from day one, in finding a real problem to solve and designing the solution. Even the best technology won’t sell itself. Everyone on your team needs a regular update on the latest insights for sales people, like the classic book, “Heart and Sell,” by sales training expert Shari Levitin.
Levitin outlines ten universal truths about selling, and the customer decision process, which every business needs to address in their product, business model, and their whole customer experience. Just think of your whole business as the sales engine, rather than just the sales reps:
- Success requires continuous learning and improvement. No matter how certain you are that your solution perfectly matches customer needs, you will be wrong. Success requires a willingness to take responsibility for shortcomings, better understand customer needs, and the ability to quickly learn and adapt. This is the growth equation for a startup.
- Emotions drive customer decision-making. Your ability as a business to uncover and capitalize on customers emotional motivators will dictate your success. That’s why Steve Jobs spent as much time on “insanely great design” as technology, and marketed to customer emotions. The lowest price is not always the real customer motivator.
- Every growth business must have a repeatable process. Just like good sales people have a repeatable process they follow, every startup has to overcome the chaos of a new business, put structure in place, document their processes, and focus on scaling up the engine. Everyone on the team must adopt the same culture and recipe for success.
- Resilience is the life skill of a business. Setbacks are inevitable, but good businesses and good sales people always bounce back. Both should assume that “no” never means “never.” A good entrepreneur actually gets stronger as he or she learns from each growth failure, and responds ever more effectively to customer needs and expectations.
- Business brand trust begins with customer empathy. Empathy is about being fully engaged with your customers, through interactive social media, and taking the time to listen to real customers face-to-face. You have to demonstrate common ground and shared values with your customers over the entire customer experience.
- Integrity matters in all aspects of a business. A business has to demonstrate integrity, reliability, and competency, just like a good sales team member. Integrity means doing what you say you’re going to do as a business, being responsive to changing needs, and making the right kind of promises to your target customer segment.
- Grow by helping customers rather than pushing a message. If you ask customers how you can help, you will uncover what matters most. This is more effective in directing their thinking and actions than selling technology. Well-crafted questions pull in customers. Good questions create change. Great questions can change the world.
- Emotional commitment precedes economic commitment. Don’t try to create a sense of urgency by appealing to greed. Your business and your team need to understand and demonstrate how your product connects precisely to what motivates your customer. These days, that includes a memorable total experience and testimonials from friends.
- Removing customer resistance takes persistence. All customers are prone to raising objections, because change is hard, there are many competitors, and decisions take time to make. As a new business trying to grow, you need to be able to isolate the toughest customer objections, and adapt your solution or business model to eliminate them.
- Looking for wrongs never makes you right. Every entrepreneur struggling with business growth has the urge to blame it on a lack of funding, an economic downturn, or unfair competitor. Instead, look for what has worked, and what you haven’t yet tried with your customers, to get it right. Focus on the real purpose that customers seek.