The Art of Selling
Every business looks to achieve success. If you have a flush sales pipeline and can actually close deals, you are off to a great start. Finding the right combination of sales methodology for your customers, your product, and your philosophies helps you sa
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The Art of Selling Ross Perot should be writing this chapter. But he’s been too busy building two MSPs that he sold for over 10 billion dollars between them—and making a bold run to become the president of the United States. As such, he wasn’t available for comment. But, his story is a pretty good one about selling managed services, as well as how easy it can be to lose your path when selling anything, including something so simple to discuss as managed services. Ross Perot was a top salesman at IBM in 1962, when he left to start Electronic Data Systems (EDS). His sales background enabled him to build the company into a $2.4 billion behemoth when he sold the company in 1984. He was later an angel investor in NeXT, and then started Perot Systems in 1989, which later sold to Dell for $3.9 billion. The important aspect of his story for the purposes of this chapter is that Perot was a salesman. He knew how to build a sales organization but not the technology. Many Apple consultancies are started by technical people. To the hyper-technical business owners, sales is a necessary evil. To those savvy with business, sales is the foundation required for any organization to succeed. In this chapter, we’ll look at building a sales organization, as this is one of the biggest gaps that needs closing in Apple service providers today. And it starts with choosing a methodology that works for your organization.
© Charles Edge 2018 C. Edge, Build, Run, and Sell Your Apple Consulting Practice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3835-6_10
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Chapter 10
The Art of Selling
Choosing a Sales Methodology Sales is the air that a company breathes. Not getting enough sales stagnates growth and can end the life of an organization prematurely. Many an entrepreneur is good enough at sales to make it to the point where it’s time to scale up. This is because there’s legitimate authority. But what’s next? There are probably about as many correct answers here as there are organizations that have effectively built sales teams, and all of those answers are correct. But one item that every sales organization needs at some point is a sales methodology that best represents their product, values, market, and goals. And choosing one early means you don’t have to retrain undisciplined sellers in how to represent your company.
Why Sales Methodologies Companies need to be efficient, creative, and unique to capture new customers. You also need a good product to get brand recognition and build customer loyalty. But if no one uses a product or service in the first place, you never get the chance to build that loyalty and hopefully that magical word of mouth that comes with happy customers. Most of the businesses I talk to do engage in passive marketing and word of mouth as their only sales tools. So the ability to close every incoming sale is paramount. Scratch that, the ability to close every qualified lead is critical. Many argue that how you close sales deals has one of the greatest impacts on increasing sales and promoting your business. Closing sma
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