Why Understanding Your Purpose Will Boost Your SalesPurpose, clarity and self-belief are the secret ingredients to building a sales message that resonates with your customers.
You're reading Entrepreneur South Africa, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
Vital Stats
Player:Shelley Walters
Company:The Sales Counsel
Visit:Thesalescounsel.co.za
Q. What are many business owners just not getting right when it comes to sales?
The most persuasive people are persuasive becausetheyare fully persuaded. They know their audience and they understand how to enhance meaningful person-to-person connection. Get this right and sales will fall into place.
Q. What is sales through the lens of The Sales Counsel?
We listen to speakers, read books and agree with the findings that reflect the undeniable link between purpose and profit.
Yet when we ask business owners, entrepreneurs and sales people what their purpose is, most are not able to answer the question convincingly.
We are not investing enough time and energy into identifying our purpose in the market. Quite simply, we focus on product features and benefits without communicating the "why' of our business.
Related:The 15 Characteristics of People Who Succeed at Sales
Understanding why your business exists is essential to communicating the problem that you are positioned to solve and the value you are able to deliver.
Q. Who does a good understanding of purpose impact?
This impacts your sales people, whether that is you as an entrepreneur, an agent representing your product or even a professional sales force. A lack of understanding your purpose will affect your ability to persuade.
This is because we are all more persuasive when we have clarity, conviction and competence. Most of the time we focus on the competence, but not on the personal conviction.
As if that is not bad enough, this impacts your customers too, as they struggle to identify your differentiator in a "me too' commercial environment.
Lacking in clarity and failing to deliver our message with a high level of personal conviction means we look and sound the same as everyone else and unintentionally find ourselves drowning in a "sea of sameness'. A sea we have helped to create.
Q. Why is personal belief so important?
We all know that charisma and the ability to persuade are essential to making your message stand out.
Related:7 Reasons Why Nerds Rule The (Business) World
In an effort to address this, we focus on skills to deliver messaging in a manner that is more persuasive, yet all too often we overlook the very important aspect of building personal belief in our message.
To combat this, take the time to reflect on your personal values as a business owner. Ask your customers for the real-world benefits of doing business with you, using your products or relying on your services.
Do this so that you are able to increase your confidence in your offering. You will find your message infused with energy and passion that will contribute to both your staff and your customers' confidence in you.
Q. What are the dangers of not having clarity of purpose?
When we do not have clarity on purpose and our impact, we rely on corporate jargon that makes us look and sound exactly like our competitors.
This unintentionally commoditises our offering and we end up drawing ourselves into a price war with our competitors. The price war is an unintended consequence of commoditizing our offering, because when a client thinks they are comparing apples with apples they will want the cheapest apples.
