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Profitable Sales

Avoiding fear to profitably sell

In recent surveys we have been told that competition is becoming more and more of a problem.  We have also been told that you want to make more money.  That means that you not only want to outsell your competition, but you want to do it profitably.  As we all know there isn’t any benefit to you to sell if the sales are not profitable.  Although that seems like an obvious statement, it is often missed.  Many business owners and sales people concentrate so much on closing the deal that they forget that the “deal” must lead to company profits.  I have seen many scenarios where owners have kept sales people on because they are so good at closing in spite of the fact that many of their sales are barely enough to cover direct costs.  I have had clients tell me that they sell for cash flow.  Unfortunately both of these situations result in loss of profit and added stress on the business.

Often what I find in working with our clients is that there is an underlying prevalent fear when it comes to selling, and because of this the sales person drops the price.  Unfortunately when a sales person is or becomes fearful they have also lost control of the whole process.  Part of the reason for this is that a person in fear is so worried about losing the sale that they don’t pay proper attention to the prospect and the prospect’s needs.  Someone worrying about a sale is concentrating their attention and energy inward on themselves instead of outward on the prospect.  With this worry comes the tendency to lower the price to get the sale.

We can probably all think of a time that we were thinking about purchasing something when a sales person approached us to let us know they could do better.  Perhaps you were ready to pay the full price.  Now that the sales person opened the door to negotiation you probably tried to get an even better deal.