Selling for the Non-sales Professional (Episode 19)

What do you do when you find yourself in a situation where you have to be a salesperson – but you really don’t have the skills, or you really don’t want to – for whatever reason! You may be in a start-up or a small firm where the 1 salesguy or gal just quit, and now you’re the sales person. You may be in a firm where the founder or owner always did the selling — you always handled marketing, or product management. But now the founder wants a break or gets sick — and you’re called on to sell. Or, in this bad economy, your firm may simply not want to hire a professional salesperson — so you get the job. In this podcast we discuss five tenets of successful sales that anyone who’s not used to selling can use to help them — at a minimum — get more comfortable with it, or should be considered, to increase the likelihood of success.

Discussed also is S.M.A.R.T. goal setting — here’s a brief description of this:

• Specific – What is going to be accomplished is sufficiently detailed and focused to provide direction.
• Measurable – The results can be measured in terms of quality, quantity, time, cost, etc., and can be used as a standard for comparison with a built-in feedback process
• Action-oriented – Accomplishing the objective requires performing in ways that produce results
• Realistic – The objectives are practical, reasonable, and achievable
• Time- and resource bounded – Specific deadlines and parameters are set for accomplishing the objectives

Podcast: Play in new window | Download