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ShareIT presentation on Sales
March 26th, 2007 under Business Development, Ideal Client, Partners and Alliances, Sales and Marketing. [ Comments: 1 ]

ShareIT is a free seminar for small businesses. Damien Mulley organised the first session for UCC last Saturday, with strong feedback from participants.

My powerpoint presentation on Sales Generation is attached here.
Understand the Customer Needs
March 26th, 2007 under Sales and Marketing. [ Comments: 3 ]

Don’t talk about what you’ve got.

Don’t talk about what you do.

Listen to what the customer needs. Understand what the customer needs. Talk around and all about their needs, even if you don’t provide all of it. You might refer them to someone to resolves some of their needs while you resolve others. Be a person their seek objective advice from.

Then talk about solutions, in order of the priority to the customer.

Customers want to know that you:
1) Understand, (be passionate about understanding the real pain and problems)
2) are knowledgeable in solving their needs (you know more that your customers on the topic as you solve it for the industry)
3) Have the capacity to deliver a solution
4) Take responsibility to “Make it Happen”
5) Deliver value for money, (providing greater comfort/guarantees commands greater price)
Small Businesses - Next Saturday, UCC - BusinessAdvisory.ie
March 20th, 2007 under Business Development. [ Comments: 1 ]

Damien Mulley has organised a Business Advisory for small businesses. see BusinessAdvisory.ie

Damien asked me to speak about Sales, while others are covering
-> Bootstrapping a small independent software vendor.
-> Effective communications
-> How to use outsourcing to grow a small IT business.
-> Marketing research for Tech Startups
-> Search Engine Optimisation for your website
-> Managing web projects.

see full session details on BusinessAdvisory.ie
Technology is easy, Changing behavior takes time
March 10th, 2007 under Sales and Marketing. [ Comments: 1 ]

Relatively speaking creating and implementing a technology solution is easy compared to changing peoples’ behavior.

If you are selling new or better ways of doing things present a baby-steps transition from the old to the new.

Don’t expect your customers to take the big-bang approach. It’s may just be percieved as too much of a risk.

“Make it easy for them to say yes.”, Larry Quinn at Enterprise Ireland Class of 2006 showcase.

“Brave was the man who bought the first fax”, ???