by Steve Wright - SBDC Boise, ID

All business owners I know are always selling, every waking moment, seven days a week.  They figure the more people they talk to the more prospects they identify and the more sales they will make.  Efficient, no, but yet so many owners do it.

I recently had a small business owner come see me at our community’s Small Business Development Center (SBDC) office.  At the SBDC you can get counsel and terrific answers to your most troublesome business questions from experience professionals, and it is FREE.

This owner did a lot of things well in his business but wanted help on how he could increase his sales.  His business was selling and installing above and in-ground pools.  He had a marketing idea and was looking for someone to tell him he was not crazy.  His idea, use his slowest time of the year (winter) to go door to door dressed for a day by the pool.  We spoke for about an hour about his sales pitch, what he could expect to hear, how to overcome objections, and how to stay warm in his swim suit and hawaiian shirt when it is freezing outside.   Mostly he just wanted to get and an honest opinion.  “It was a terrific idea” I told him.

Six weeks later he came back to our office with a catered lunch.  He now had scheduled jobs starting March 15 through the end of May.  In addition, his potential sales pipeline was quite full and he was forecasting to have his best year ever with sales more than double his prior year.   He was already planning to do the same thing this coming year, only this time he planned on renting a truck that would have all kinds of pool gear dangling from it and he planned to go door to door in his swim suit with a duck float around his stomach and googles on his head.

This kind is guerilla marketing, when an owner jumps right into the trenches, instead of hiring somebody who would not have the same passion. So if you are a small business owner, ask yourself this question - when was the last time you were on the streets doing sales?

One thing for sure, in almost all businesses, no one comes close to selling the company better than the owner. Donning the sales hat (or swimsuit, as the case may be) often makes strategic sense for business owners because of their edge in marketing their company's value proposition.

"What makes an entrepreneur a good salesperson is their passionate, unassailable, unshakeable belief inside, that the prospect needs whatever they're selling," says Tom Moore, a local sales consultant.  Moore added "No one other than the owner is able to communicate that same level of belief in the product or service. It's just part of who they are.”

However, because there's much more to running a business than just sales, it's important that business owners pick their spots. "I think prospecting in particular is really tough [for a business owner] because it takes a lot of time," observes Theo Camsil, founder and CEO of C-Class Marketing, an online marketing firm in Seattle. "Also, I'm not sure you want the owner of a company making cold calls. That might not give the right impression. Maybe it's better to hire a sales professional and have the owner deal with warm prospects or assist in closing sales."

Tactical Prospecting

That is not to suggest small-business owners avoid prospecting altogether. They just need to go about it tactfully--and with more subtlety. A keen eye for opportunity is perhaps the owner's best prospecting weapon. For many owners, that means keeping the radar on at all time. "Every connection, whether in a business or personal setting, could be the next business opportunity," says Teresa Minera, president and founder of Marketing Genie, a sales and marketing firm in Austin, Tx. "Small-business owners must be open to the opportunity and mindful of their business at all times, but not enter into a sales pitch with every single introduction."

“Don't take people for granted," adds Camsil. "You never know who you're talking to, so withhold judgment. That guy in jeans and t-shirt sitting next to you on the plane might own a $100 million company."

Fruitful prospecting often comes down to data quality. "Invest in solid data," says Minera. "Buying lists might not always be the best strategy." Instead, she says, "make a few good guesses as to the markets where your message will resonate best," identify individual companies and people within those markets to target, then invest in a custom list.

Nurturing the Sale

With warm prospects in the pipeline, there's plenty a small-business owner can do to close the sale. However, rather than an owner spending valuable time with repetitive follow-up, Camsil recommends outsourcing those kinds of responsibilities. "The outsource organization makes the calls to get to conversations, then the business owner enters the picture as the strategic sales resource to move the dialogue along and help close."

E-mail provides a multi-touch vehicle for pushing the sales process forward, with a minimal investment of time and resources, says Tiffany Abbot of a local e-mail marketing firm in Dallas, Tx.  From newsletters to product news to dynamic, custom content, automated e-mail communications that ostensibly originate from the owner give prospects and customers the impression "they have a direct line with the top influencer," she says. Tracking how recipients handle those e-mail messages reveals the strongest leads and tells the owner when it's time to place a direct phone call to especially hot prospects.

In a business not known for groundbreaking sales tactics, Camsil says he's always looking for nontraditional ways to turn prospects into customers. Each proposal he sends out comes with a USB flash drive bearing his company's logo and loaded with a short promotional video.  Sometimes it takes an incentive or guarantee to warm up a prospect. "We've had situations," says Minera, "where the only way to get a deal is to guarantee results-- to take the risk out of the equation for them, at least in the short term, with something like a pilot program, where they don't have to pay for the service if the results aren't there."

Target a single industry or segment, then offer a product or service free or at a deep discount to several of the top companies in that industry or segment, suggests Camsil. In exchange, ask their permission to issue a press release and add their logos to your website. "By bagging some of the big guys, a lot of the other companies in that niche will follow," he says.

Sealing the Deal

Now comes the toughest part: the close. “Once your sales people have filled the pipeline and moved prospects through it, it's time to bring the owner’s passion and status to bear once again,” says Minera.  With the prospect on the brink of a decision, the owner steps in with a phone call or face-to-face visit at an opportune moment--"to seal the deal." As the "rock star" of the business, she points out; the owner has the power and passion to get commitments in cases where anyone else might come up empty. The true rock stars not only know they have that power, they also know how and when to wield it.

Steve Wright is a business marketing counselor in the SBDC office in Boise, Idaho.  The Boise SBDC office is located on the campus of Boise State University at 1910 University Drive, Boise, ID 83725.  Their phone numbers are 208-426-1640 or 1-800-225-3815.