How can a new local start up business connect to sales?

A majority of local start-up businesses begin as a one-man-band or as a small group of people who feel they have synergy between each other either via friendship, knowledge and/or business or industry experience.

Some start businesses because they have the urge, and are impulsive and creative, others because they want to be their own boss; some even start because they’ve been forced to by being made redundant.

Whatever the reason the one thing which is needed for a local business to succeed is how they connect to sales both inside and outside the West Midlands region, exactly how do they go about selling their product or service.

Not only new but existing businesses including the likes of sole traders, partnerships and limited companies think that sales to other local businesses and consumers in the West Midlands will be easy.

Thinking and believing that if they’re happy and excited by their business offerings so will everybody else and sales will storm. The reality is no they won’t, sales is one of the hardest things to do because it’s unnatural for a lot of people.

Many start-up businesses cannot afford to employ people to undertake the sales role of their business even though it’s a very important one.

One way around this is looking at dealing with salespeople who are taken on a commission-only basis.

The plus points could be no employment liability with their PAYE, no ongoing staff costs such as basic pay, only pay commissions on successful sales and no liabilities in regard to holiday and sickness pay.

The problem with going along the commission-only sales route could be that such salespeople may have the same set-up with multiple businesses which mean their actively selling other businesses products at the same time as yours.

Some salespeople can often be full of hot air and think they are a lot better than they actually are, and have you tweaking your administration and systems to compensate for them not selling...for instance “if only I had a PowerPoint presentation I get loads of sales”, “if only they could pay by direct debit you’d see a marked increase”.

Now whilst such points could well be valid, consideration has to be given to the fact that, it could be just nothing more than excuses.

It’s easy to always look for reasons not to sell than to look for a reason to sell.

Years ago I worked in the motor industry and you go get them sales type people would just be focusing on the sales because that’s their job, whether there was actually profit in the sale had nothing to do with them or so they would think! It was sales units that mattered...... Such practices would have now changed I hasten to add...

If you don’t go down the specific salesperson route, you may wish to consider something similar but which is referred to as ‘introducers’ or ‘affiliates’ which operates in a way. They could actively look to tag your products or services on to what they already offer and sell to their new and existing customers.