The Best Way to Sell Is to Tell a Great Story

A question I get asked a lot has to do with selling. People who are starting their own side hustle or business ofter aren’t comfortable selling. In the minds of most people selling is a hard, forceful act that involves being brave enough to sit in front of a complete stranger and sell them a product or service by talking about the product features, price and then closing the sale. That’s not how I sell. That’s not how I’ve ever sold anything because I don’t have the guts to do cold sales.

I am not a salesperson. I am a person who likes to solve problems and that’s where the story starts.

If you have a side hustle and you’re wondering how to sell your product or service without irritating your friends, family and the fools around you (what I call the “3 F’s”) then you need to get your story straight. Literally, you need to work on your story.

Selling is a form of storytelling.

You probably sit on Facebook all day telling small stories. Moaning about something or someone. Talking about your children and their experience at school (pre-lockdown) or some other tiny little gem you feel the world of Facebook needs to know.

Let’s translate that storytelling skill into a sale.

Here’s the basic structure of any good story sell:

1. Present your problem statement

2. Love your product or service (people can tell when you do)

3. Truly believe in your solution (people can tell when you don’t)

4. Talk about your solution

If you’re struggling to sell, just tell a story about the problem and why you believe in your solution so much.

That’s really what I have been doing for the last 19 years in each business I’ve ever built. I find a problem that I want to solve, I tell the world why the problem needs to be solved, I solve the problem and then I tell the world about the solution.

Many years back I realised that there was massive interest from Western businesses to work on the African continent. The key markets were Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa. The problem was none of the Western businesses wanted to send their staff to work in the continent without having any experience. The solution was to use an intermediary, my company called Forefront Africa, to engage in an initial tour of the city and introduce the business representative to the local market.

The story was simple:

1. Problem statement: You don’t know Nigeria (Kenya/Ghana/South Africa) but want to do business there.

2. I love travelling on the continent and doing business in Africa.

3. I believe I am best positioned to take your businesses into key markets through my network and experience.

4. Solution: Talk through the incredible countries, businesses and people that Forefront Africa can introduce to the company.

If you can't break your sale into these four simple steps then you don't have your story right and won’t be able to sell anyways.

The middle two steps seem like the most obvious but are often the ones that trip most people up.

If you do not love and believe in your solution then your story is going to lack the enthusiasm and authenticity required to make this method of selling really work. You can’t fake authenticity, people can tell. If they don’t notice upfront they will notice as soon as they scratch below the surface and realise how little you care for the problem and the solution.

So if you’re struggling to start selling your side hustle just use the template above and work on your problem statement, your belief in your product and the solution you present.

Happy Side Hustlin’!

Starting a business makes you a sales person

Whether you like it or not when you start your own business you immediately become a sales person.No one is going to promote your company for you. No one is going to sell your products harder than you will. No one should know your business better than you do.With the popularising of social media it has become even more important that everyone understand that social media like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are being used as a sales tool whether you acknowledge it or not. Customers are looking for you, finding you, reading your content and you are missing out on sales if you're not thinking like a sales person.So if you haven't realised it yet and you're sitting around waiting for the sales to pour in, ask yourself, when was the last time you peddled your own product?

A Phoenix Sale: Failed orders turned into sales

I absolutely love ecommerce but I cannot stand losing a sale.It's an extremely frustrating thing: Watching orders come in, process and then fail in the end.I was told that a business that earns money while you sleep is the best kind. The converse of that statement is also true: A Business that earns money while you sleep can create problems while you dream of money.One of the problems that I've been experiencing is that orders fail at a certain point and I can't tell why. So I decided to start emailing potential customers who don't complete their purchases on NicSocks. The replies are often simple and mundane ranging from forgetting that the tab was open, forgetting a credit card number or simply changing their mind about the purchase.What I have discovered is that no one is ever angry at me for asking them about their experiences and more often that not the problems that the customer is having can be rectified. I'll solve their problem with a little bit of customer TLC and close the deal.The end result is what I'd like to call a Phoenix Sale: A sale that was closed out of a failed order on your website.Talk to your customers. Every email could be a Phoenix Sale waiting to happen. 

Sell, sell, sell and other startup stumbling blocks

I was fortunate to be invited to mentor a group of startups at the 88mph work space. I sat with each startup for 20 minutes (timed) and asked them about their businesses, the problems they were encountering and the help they thought I could provide.Here are some of the main issues that came up.

Sell

Almost every startup I spoke to out of the nine were battling with one common issue - sales. It seems as though we're hellbent on building tech and improving it forever without focusing on either the business model or the selling of the business model. I was no different in many of my first startups but eventually you realise that your product is good enough to sell (not perfect) and that you need to go out and do this.Selling is scary for a few reasons:

1. What if I fail and no one wants what I'm selling?
2. What if I succeed and actually have to start building a business?
3. The embarrassment of the hard sell - this is an South African issue, we're too polite to tell people how amazing we are.
4. No understanding of sales tactics and/or sales cycles.

Once you understand the issues they are easy to overcome because they are simply not issues. If you don't know how to sell, learn. How do you learn? By selling. If you are fearful of failure you get over it by trying and failing or succeeding and vice versa for success. You wont be afraid of success once you are succeeding.Being afraid to hard sell your product means one of two things: You don't know how to do it or you don't think your product is good enough to sell. The best founders sell their products in their sleep, they just don't know it's called sales. If you love your product, if it's solving a problem and if it actually works, it's an easy sell for anyone.

Launch

The myth of the MVP is one that I am seeing pop up all over the place. Many entrepreneurs believe that an MVP is the worst possible acceptable version of your final product. This is sort of true but ultimately incorrect in my view. An MVP is the minimum viable product that you can put into a specific (and forgiving) market like early adopters that will allow you to gather valuable data and insight into the next iteration of your product.In short an MVP needs to help you deploy, learn, analyse and iterate. It's not a shittier version of your final product. It's a learning tool helping you move towards your final product.So what you need to do is plan and launch.

Growth

There is a buzz-phrase floating about the infamous tech blogs abroad and that buzz-phrase is "growth hacking". This is a painful phrase for me to hear. This phrase and concept is misleading and over simplistic leading founders and entrepreneurs to believe that growing a customer base is simply a matter of hacking, spending, developing and repeating.This might be true when you've got 10 developers, R1m to spend on marketing and A/B testing set up already but getting those things going takes time and effort (let alone money).Growth can occur in many ways with many different affects on your business.

• Rushing growth can destroy your service and flood it with spam, errors and server issues.
• Growing too slowly can tarnish the reputation of your community and stagnate growth further.
• Faking growth by buying users on advertising networks can provide the short-term illusion of growth but long term closure for your business.
• Growth without a plan, scaling in place and a revenue model will upset you, your investors, your customers and leave them searching for an alternative service.

I am a firm believer in organic growth especially if you are looking for those users to pay you for a service. It's tough to advertise blindly and expect a customer to pay you for something they've only seen through marketing. Organic word of mouth and peer-endorsement is often the best way to create viral growth. Although this type of growth requires a fantastic product and time to evolve. I met with nine startups who all believed they were fundamentally different to one another when in truth their problems were almost all the same. Business is business and problems persist no matter what business you're in. Learn to share your weaknesses and strengths and learn from the businesses around you. The best way to learn is to observe those around you.

Jobs of the future are hard to predict. ...

Jobs of the future are hard to predict.

What will we all be doing in 5 years? Who can tell.I studied to be a journalist. No, I studied to be a print journalist. And now I work in and around mobile social networking strategy and development.Let's just quickly repeat that: Mobile social networking strategy and development. I am almost 100% certain that when I started studying at Rhodes University in 2003 that my current job didn't even exist.There is one job in particular that is going to need a lot more focus in the coming years:New media sales and advertising.The reason that I think this job is becoming increasingly important and increasingly neglected is because there is a marked lack of skilled and experienced people to fill this position.

What does this position entail?

Sales and advertising has traditionally (back in the old days) been about selling and advertising products. Getting people to buy in to your product or getting advertisers to place an advert in to your publication, on to your store walls or on your car and so on.Sales and advertising is becoming a much more complicated and intricate art. You cannot just sell banners, text links, full page adverts, splash screens, in-video sponsorships or product placements. Social networks and new media businesses need to have a salesperson who understands every aspect of the business. This person needs to be able to cross sell, integrate campaigns, work on new media, old media and media that might not exist yet.

What does this person need to succeed?

This person needs to understand CPC, CPA, CPM, CPSA and how to make these models work. This person needs to not only know what CRM stands for but what it actually is and how to make it relevant to the client.This person needs to know who the client is or should be and how that clients business or latest campaign fits in to the business of a new media business.Sales is shifting as fast as media is shifting and technology is growing and developing. The trick here is that technology, websites, mobile content and advancements can push forward as fast as they like but if there is no team able to monetize the products, there may as well not even be a product.It's time start thinking about integrated salespeople, sales teams, sales in relation to your core business and if sales actually might be your companies core business.

Honesty is the best business policy when selling online

Honesty in business, sales, marketing and advertising is by no means a fresh new concept. Yet it is fast becoming an integral one in the world that we inhabit.There are many posts that discuss transparency online in a personal sense. Don't lie, cheat, steal, defraud or do anything that might dent your reputation online. But I am referring more to the concept of honesty when selling online to the less knowledgeable.This has become an absolutely imperative part of selling and talking about online with people. Many companies and agencies are interested and intrigued by online at the moment because it is the direction in which the world is moving. But there are dangers.The main danger that I have come across is the overselling of the potential of online right now. Many companies almost have their finger on the pulse of things. But this means that they know of Facebook, Youtube and other sites that they can use in a social arena to promote their products. Yet many of them think that the viral nature of the social web world wide applies directly to South Africa. It doesn't. Viral in SA probably means, if you're lucky, a few thousand views of a video and a couple of blog posts. In the Western world viral translates to a few million views of a video and a few hundred thousand links to or embeds of a video. Those are the cold hard facts and expectations should be readjusted accordingly.Unfortunately the "people in the know" often oversell the potential of social media in South Africa to get the hype up and the profit margins higher. This is bad. This sort of selling is doing detrimental damage to the truth and success of the market in SA. This sort of selling makes it very difficult to create a consistent and successful stream of clients, revenue and business in the online industry. People are being burned and are staying away from spending money online because of misleading sales and delivery pitches. Return of investment (ROI) is being oversold and underdeliverd. Again, this is bad.Honesty is key. Clients need to know the truth and still want to go forward with a campaign and experiment, play in the space and engage with one or two hundred people in stead of hoping to gain one or two million. It wont happen so don't sell it that way.

Don't Preach...Sell

I have been in meeting after meeting this week. People pitching me ideas, concepts, website, companies, organisations and people pitching people who know people who can possible do something for me.If there is one thing that I cannot stand it's when people don't know when to stop selling. Learn this lesson quickly: Pitch me your product, tell me about what you do but then stop. Finish. End. Quit and let me think about what you are telling or selling me. Do not try to resell and rephrase and re re re re re. I got it. I'm a quick learner (or so I've been told).Another thing that has irritated me beyond belief is self proclaimed experts from abroad who have learnt how to "fix" our "problems" here in SA. Do not preach to me about the airs and graces of the United States of America (said with a pseudo-American-twang). Do not go in to a meeting with a South African entrepreneur and tell him that South Africa is 20+ years behind America technologically. That is not a good way to sell me on your product or concept.The next thing is research. In today's day and age it is possible to gather a vast amount of information about someone from the internet. Look at this blog. I have my personal details on here, I have links to things that can help you clue together my background. Go and visit my LinkedIn profile, its all there. Then come in to a meeting knowing about who I am, what my company does and where we are planning on going. Research, research, research.These are basics that I have seen in maybe two of the eight meetings I have had this week. How can people still be missing this stuff? It's simple. If you haven't thought about this before, then you are hearing it now. Think about it and you will soon realise that if you do not prepare you will not be successful. You can't invade a country without weapons, you can't sell yourself without research.

Sales skills to remember

I attended an interesting course today. Clive Price from the Peers Group gave a great talk today on how to alter your approach to sales.Some brief pointers:

• You can't close on sale until you've pointed out the need for your service.
• Cold Calling (CC) sucks, but it can work.
• Your goal for a CC is to GET AN APPOINTMENT
• Once in a meeting or appointment make sure you show interest in your potential client and their company. Do not focus on your product. Repeat, do not focus on your product, yet.
• Identify gaps for your product/company to take advantage of while getting to know your client.
• When gaps are identified, summarise them for your client.
• Try to make them acknowledge their shortfalls or gaps.
• This acknowledgment allows you to then suggest solutions (your product/company)
• When you have all the above achieved, begin to fill the identified gaps with products or services that you can offer.
• If all the above has gone successfully, close your deal.

Remember to use open ended questions. Stay away from yes or no, true or false or two option answers. The answer will inevitably not be the one you want to hear.For more great tips and sales assistance get over to the Peer Group website and contact Clive Price!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License.

Away all day

I will be in a sales conference for the whole of Thursday. Freelance job one has subsidised the course for me. Hopefully I will learn some interesting things regarding marketing and sales and can pass on the knowledge. Woop woop for large corporations paying freelancers to learn interesting stuff they wouldn't normally pay for!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License.