When the Boss is Also the Salesman

PHOTO CREDIT: www.thisismoney.co.uk

When your business just started and you can’t afford to hire your first salesman, you are your first salesman.  You will be the one to line up your prospects, set appointments and make the actual face-to-face presentation to your prospective customers.

Just like any salesman, not all in your list of prospects will see you.  Many will ask their secretaries to screen you and won’t listen to you, unless you are from Apple.

And since you are not from Apple, you really need to think of creative ways to overcome the problem of how to put one foot on the prospect’s door.

Here are some tricks you can use to be on top of the situation.

When setting appointments, it would be to your advantage not to make the call yourself.  Let your staff assistant do it.  If you don’t have one, because you can’t afford to have one yet, ask your wife, your sister or your mother-in-law.  Just make sure that they’ll sound like a professional secretary at the other end of the line, even though they’re in their pajamas while making the calls.

If your prospect or his assistant asks who’s calling, instruct your “secretary” to tell that she’s calling from your office, CEO of ABC Widget Company and that you’d like to come over for a business meeting. This may break the ice and increase your chances of seeing your prospect.  This technique also saves a lot of your time from doing a non-selling task.

Of course, when you are given the chance to say your piece, make sure that you hand out your card with your name and position printed on it as CEO or President.  This gives the impression and psychological advantage that you are on equal footing with the prospect, or appear to be a “superior”, if you are to see a purchaser or department manager.

Since you run a one-salesman company, you also do other paper tasks at the back office.  You fill in the order, keep track of your sales manually (maybe you can’t afford yet to install a sales management software) like making daily sales call reports that shows how many prospects you see in a day, how many bought, how much sales you made and so on.

This document you will later need when analyzing the sales performance of your business when you wear the sales manager’s hat.

Being your own salesman have its advantages. 

For one, you have instant marketing research because you have direct contact with your customers. You’ll have a first-hand feel of what they want, when they want it and how much.

Secondly you keep the salesman’s pay and commission for yourself. This is one practice that you should consider for your business.  If the money you are supposed to make do not actually go to your pocket, it should be at least reflected it in your financial statement, that you spent so much in commissions for sales, even though you generated it yourself. 

You can also do this for other functions in your business so you will have an idea of your costs line by line.

Sales is the lifeblood of any business and if you can’t afford to hire your first salesman, by all means do-it-yourself for your business' sake.