As a small business owner, you wear many hats. Chances are you are doing the hiring, and taking care of payroll and marketing. Maybe you’re taking on every role because you don’t think you have the budget for employees or because your business is your baby, and you don’t trust anyone else to care about it the way you do.
Running a tight budget is good but running a business without a dedicated sales team isn’t a good use of your resources. Here are five benefits you’ll reap from hiring a sales specialist.
Focus on Your Strengths
Sales are at the core of your business. When you try to do it yourself, you’re not only losing time you could dedicate to other aspects of the business, you’re taking on something at which you probably don’t excel. A great salesperson has empathy with the customer, is focused on making sales and loves to win, but a great salesperson also has a high degree of optimism. They must be able to stay positive even after dealing with consistent rejection.
Salespeople always say you must hear “no” nine times for every time you hear “yes.” It takes a special kind of person to keep plugging away at sales with those odds. That means that sales take a huge swath of your time. On average, your salesperson will make the same cold sales call eight times before reaching a potential customer. For 80 percent of sales, you need to call the customer five times after you first meet to close the deal.
Make More Sales
Because of the time-intensive nature of sales, when you take it on with all your other roles, you simply don’t have the time available to close the sales. The statistics above show how much time your sales team has to dedicate to getting even one sale. Combine that with the fact that almost half of sales go to the company that responds first to an inquiry, and sales aren’t just about making the time to pursue customers but the time to respond quickly when an opportunity presents itself.
Build Relationship with Your Customers
Not only can your sales team devote the time to finding customers, but they are also your key to building a relationship with those customers. It cost less to maintain your existing customers, and repeat customers spend more with your business. Repeat customers:
- spend 60 percent more on each sale,
- buy 90 percent more often compared to new sales, and
- provide 23 percent more bottom-line revenue to your business.
A dedicated sales team can spend time with each customer, finding out their needs and presenting solutions. It’s about more than a single transaction.
Get Feedback
That relationship building leads to valuable feedback your company can use in multiple ways. First, your sales team hears about what customers love, what they hate and what additional features they’d like to see. Use that feedback to help your product development solve the problems your customers have. Your sales team can integrate with your customer service team to follow up leads and check back in with customers who call in for support.
Expand Your Business Exposure
Finally, you may feel like your service or product sells itself, but that’s not how it works. Your sales team is there to take your marketing materials and distribute information about your products to the widest audience possible. Instead of wasting time waiting for organic growth, your sales team jump-starts your business. They’re educated on how your products work, the problems they solve and their long-term value. They’re able to spend time with customers to push the value proposition of your company. Don’t leave your exposure to chance or to someone who is less than professional.
So, does your small business need a dedicated sales team? Even if it is a sales team of one, the answer is clearly “yes.”
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