Dale Berkebile

If you are an inexperienced sales person or even a longtime sales veteran, you may become frustrated with your sales because it seems like every sales call/meeting is completely different. This is one of the things I hated about selling. I felt out of control and struggled with finding new prospects, tried to sell current contacts and usually delivered long thought out and well designed proposals. What a waste of time! Especially when each time was different in how we approached the sale.

If you are a CEO of a smaller business it is very important to look into the future and make a game plan for how and when you will retire. Depending on the size of your firm you may need a few things in place in order to leave or sell the company. The first and probably the most important thing you need to do is figure out a way to replicate YOU. If your company can not function without you, it is worth nothing to anyone else. So putting systems in place documenting how you do what you do is important.

If you are a CEO of a larger corporation you probably know the issues with aligning the sales and marketing team. If you are a smaller business, you have probably had to make the tough call between making an investment in either sales or in marketing. If you have been around for a while, you may have invested in both. Maybe you invested in sales people first, and if that did not meet your expectations, you may have taken a break to recoup your losses. Then a few years later, you figure maybe we need marketing since sales idea didn’t work.

If I asked you the number one problem businesses have, what would you say it was? Sales? Marketing? Something else? Well many times people will guess low sales or ineffective marketing, but could it be something else? Before starting Brandwise some 13 years ago I worked for a large corporation. One thing I noticed was the sales team and the marketing team did not communicate and work together for the betterment of the company.

Ok, by this time you surely know about Facebook and twitter, right? Are you still riding the fence on jumping in and using these tools for your business? If so, you are falling behind and very quickly. The early adopters are gaining so much ground through social media that it is going to be hard to catch up. So now is the time get on board!

I talk to a lot of CEOs and it’s interesting but sad to see entrepreneurs in denial. You know the ones who say, “Nah, I do not need any help in the sales department”. This is after a 20 minute conversation about how bad business is. Look, I am an expert in this area. I have run a business for the last 13 years and 12 of those years I sucked at sales. I can relate, trust me!