Questions

Thank you for asking this question. Impossible to do this question enough justice: It is a good question.. but there is so much to this game that the answers are discovered in a continuous and consistent daily, weekly, monthly and yearly set of practices.

a. Develop your network: both online and offline. This does not mean just merely develop dyadic (one on one relationships) but triadic (factor of three) or more kinds of relationships e.g. joint ventures, cross promotions, indirect connections between several parties. This involves new skills and a new mindset - necessary to grow and innovate over time.

b. Continue fine tuning your message and branding. In my estimate, branding is never a static (and now you are done) phenomenon. It is consistently upgraded and finetuned. As you sell, fine tune your branding. As you brand, fine tune your selling.

c. The concept of consistency is key: this involves developing the ability to focus. This involves two areas
a. The ability to keep and account for promises
b. The ability to manage your communications promptly and effectively. This has to be practiced realistically: over ambitious (a euphemism for unrealistic) declarations and promises should be treated with capital punishment :-) Reward the realistic attainment of win-nable promises that make sense and win the war.. not merely short term battles. This is key and so basic that most teams fail at it. It is the ah-duh.. not the ah-ha that gets the team and business moving.

* Train everyone in the team to sell - today's soccer teams have players on the team that can play mostly all if not most of the positions on the field. You never know when a critical call comes into the office - if your frontline person has no clue on what questions to ask and how to listen and have a sales conversation, you are leaving money on the table potentially and increasing your risk while avoiding a simple and low cost investment of training.

* Build up the relationship with discipline and accountability - not as a Nazi policeman - but develop the art and science of effective, graceful and straight forward accountability for numbers and promises for sales and marketing projects.

Hope that helps!


Answered 9 years ago

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