Dear Farillio member,

On 9th April 2021, you asked our amazing expert Carl Reader on the Go Far Fast Show:

"Can you recommend a good starting point for creating a sales strategy? I don't know where to start and I've read loads, but nothing seems to be that relevant or detailed enough and I've got so many questions."

And Carl said:

Be mighty always, Farillio

Transcript:

“For me, sales is actually really simple once you've got a clear understanding of who your customer is, how you're going to reach them, and the value that you can bring to them. I think they are the three key components. First of all, who is your customer? Hopefully, I'm not teaching you how to suck eggs here, but you need to design what's called your customer avatar. What do they look like? What do they want? You need to go into more depth than perhaps you might think you need to. Rather than just thinking ‘my ideal customer is a business with 10 to 20 employees that is looking for HR support’, you need to really drill into the person who is the buyer. Who is the buyer? Well in that business with 10 to 20 employees, the buyer is either the founder, the partner or the general manager. So, the founder is typically a 40-year-old female; she will be interested in reading Country Living, she'll be interested in holidays to Spain and Portugal, when she's on holiday she'll do this and that, she'll drive this car, she’ll have this handbag. Really go into depth about how your potential buyer conducts their day-to-day life. It might sound discriminatory, and it might sound like you're becoming laser-focused. How on earth are you going to find this lady aged 43 he goes on holiday to this hotel in this region of Spain and so on? That might sound far too detailed, but actually what you're doing is creating an avatar of the wider group that you're looking to focus on. By looking at the brands that speak to them, you will understand what messages they are receptive to, what they're not receptive to, how they make their buying decisions. Do they make them on price? Do they make them on logic? Do they buy products based on speed and efficiency? Do they buy them based on prestige? What is it that they are looking for as an individual? This allows you then to tailor every bit of messaging. When I say messaging, I don't mean marketing, I mean every single communication around. That probably is the key takeaway. From there you look at your value proposition. I can't tell you in a two-minute answer what your value proposition is, but you need to know it. If you don't, then get to know it, it is absolutely vital. When it comes to delivery, just be out there. The problem when it comes to sales for a lot of business nowadays, and I'm certainly not accusing the questioner of this, but a lot of businesses rely on automation of a sales process. They rely on things called funnels and email marketing and all of this stuff that hopefully takes away the awkward conversations. The reality that I’ve found when it comes to sales is that the very best way of selling is wearing out the shoe leather. It's a really old fashioned saying but it means knocking on doors, it's speaking to people, it’s going to networking events, it's having those conversations. When I'm asked about the best marketing investment when I was scaling up my business, the answer is red wine. It's as simple as that. It's about sharing a glass of wine with someone and getting to know them on that human to human basis. I'd know them personally. I’d know their kids' names, I’d know where they go on holiday, I’d know what their interests were. We would become good friends and then it would just naturally happen that they would want to do business with us. We would convert it from a combination of knowing exactly who they are and also being thought leaders in the fields they are looking at. We convert it from a sales process to a buying process and then it becomes easy.”

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If you have any questions that you'd like us to ask in a future Go Far Fast Show, send us a DM on Twitter or on LinkedIn. We'd love to hear from you!

Want more from Carl?

You can also find Carl’s answers to other questions being asked by you and your community in our Dear Farillio Expert section on our blog site, and Carl’s great guidance on business here.

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