Knowing how to effective sell is probably the most underrated skill an entrepreneur needs.
We need to know how to sell to the customer — products or services rarely “sell themselves”. It takes hard work and perseverance to get the connected to our customers.
We need to know how to sell to sources of money. Bankers (if there are any left who lend money these days) and investors need to be sold on you and your business.
We need to sell to potential employees. Going to work in an entrepreneurial venture, especially if it is still a start-up, is a risky move. Most potential employees are more risk adverse than we are — that is often why they are not entrepreneurs.
In an article at Smart Money, Diana Ransom examines the art of selling to the customer for a new start-up business in interviews with Don Kuratko from Indiana University, Stan Mandel at Wake Forest, and me.
The first step is to recognize that challenges you face as a new venture:
Many novice entrepreneurs stumble when trying to win over their first few clients. Besides just making simple mistakes during the presentation, start-up entrepreneurs have few, if any, success stories that they can point to, says Jeffrey Cornwall, the director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn. The lack of an established track record can really hurt a business’s chances of landing a client, especially when the client is already working with a more-established competitor.
Ransom then identifies six key elements that lead to an effective pitch:
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Know what you are selling
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Customize the pitch
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Back up claims
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Create a client base
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Offer free or limited use trials
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Enlist an advocate