Reaching new customers is not an easy thing to do, especially when you have little experience in direct sales or don’t have a huge database. First of all, you have to know your product very well, understand business needs and mostly important – make your potential customer’s life easier. Here is a piece of good advice from my side:

1. Define your market and potential customer – your time is limited, as Steve Jobs said. If you feel that you are losing time without result, just let it go. Either you lose time, and wait until solution will come, or you take responsibility and focus more on new, valuable leads.  The more precision and focus, the better deals will be closed.
2. Try to contact CEO – it’s a high level, but if you are able to convince the CEO (in most cases they are the decision maker or at least can sell your solution internally) of the company, then they will direct you to the right person to talk to.
3. Use LinkedIn, Twitter, about.me, Facebook – all of those services are unique and everyone has their own best communication channel. More experienced people use LinkedIn, while start up owners (especially in the USA) quite often communicate via Twitter. Using social media will save your valuable time.
4. Use connections – you probably have many connections in business. Let them work for you, ask for recommendations, tell your friend how you can help them and why your product/service is worth considering. Then make a promise and surprise your customer by giving them more than they expected.
5. Stay charming – whether you lose or win always say “thank you” if someone offered their time. You never know when they will meet another business partner and say “You know what, there was a nice guy calling me last time, I didn’t use his service but I think it’s a great solution for you. I will get you in touch with him”.
6. Never give up – there are better and worse times. You can have the greatest product in the world, but there are hundreds of reasons, why they might reject you. You are too small (we don’t trust you), we don’t need such a solution (they need, but they don’t know it yet), you are too expensive etc. No one promised that it is going to be easy. That’s the challenge for you as a sales person to dig in and cut the cake piece by piece.
7. Stay professional, but have FUN – people like nice people. When you create trust, reliability and have a great sense of humor you can always make a deal or at least make a good impression so you will be remembered as an expert with great relationship-building skills.

Do you know any more skills that help sell your product in the B2B world? Let us know!

photo source: SXC.hu

Damian

Damian is an open minded guy, interested in positive psychology, coaching and self developement. And in his free time, he sails. Aye aye, Captain Salesman!