Most owners have trouble selling because we don’t feel we have anything to sell. Sure we take orders, wait on customers and even following up on customers’ calls. But, I’m talking about the function of selling, which is to “create demand for existing capacity.” The easiest and best place to start is to have a “focus.”
When we decide to really begin selling, some of us spend time “creating demand for capacity we don’t have.” That’s a rookie mistake resulting in lots of quotes and little business. It also raises risks as we expand our product/service away from our competence zone.
Other owners deliver jobs to customers thinking that is a sales call. It’s not. Or we do customer service activity all day such as pricing or checking on jobs. What should we do? We should sell something to someone. How? Make a sales call.
So, what’s a sales call? A sales call is being in front of a new customer asking for new business; or being in front of an old customer asking for new business. It’s always about asking for new business. It’s never about getting a repeat order, delivering a price or servicing an account. Those things are nice but only asking for new business moves you forward.
Okay, but doesn’t that reduce us to only price competition? Well, everything being equal, price is always the determining factor. Therefore, never let everything be equal. The best way you do that is to develop a “focus.”
Al Ries, says in his classic marketing book, “Focus” that you must be the world’s largest something. I agree. Al’s book is a classic. It uses what are now outdated examples but the principles are perfect for our kinds of businesses.
Pish-posh. How can we be the world’s largest anything? We can be the world’s largest specialty pizza restaurant serving downtown Charleston, West Virginia. Or we can be the world’s largest provider of K-6 home-based educational material in the northeast United States or the country’s largest circus printer who prints exclusively for carnivals, fairs and circuses.
Whatever business you choose, the concept of “world’s largest” provides focus. And focus is everything – it clearly defines our market area, the prospects within the market, equipment we need, the skills our workers need, our specific location, the hours we are open, the way we are organized – in short, our focus is the reason people buy from us instead of the guy down the street.
Begin With Where We Are
Our focus begins with our location even in this Internet age. First sell where you are, not where you’re not. Most of us don’t really have a target market because we never defined it. The reason we haven’t defined it is because we’re too afraid we will lose business if someone outside of our target market wants to buy from us.
Recently a fellow who started a landscaping business told me he had two days a week of regular maintenance (lawn mowing) and a day or so of project work each week and needed more work but was extremely busy. Of course he was. He was taking customers anywhere in the 650+ square mile county.
We focused his territory to the three zip codes. Then we defined the profile of folks who were most likely to buy. He defined a homeowner over 65 with a house valued at $150k or more. We then did a database search and found 2,000+ suspects who fit this profile in the three zip codes. How many weekly contracts did he need to hit capacity? He needed about 30.
Lesson one: sell where you are; not where you’re not. Once you have proven the market isn’t large enough then expand but only after you’ve covered your immediate area.
Lesson two: to focus in a target market requires an active selling effort. Make sure you have one.
How have you done with your focus over the years? Here’s a way to see. Plot your largest customers on a map. If they are scattered all over the place, then it means, for the most part, they came to us, we didn’t go to them. Or they were near us years ago, moved away and continue to buy from us.
What should we do? Begin focusing on our piece of real estate. Set a goal to capture all the business where we are before diffusing our efforts into where we are not and into what we don’t know (expansion).
I’m not saying don’t work with people outside these focus areas. If they want to buy from you, then okay doke. I am saying not to spend time and effort selling over there when your advantage is to sell the same thing right here.
Tom Crouser
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