Sales

I couldn’t help but laugh last week. Gareth (co-founder at BLAM Partners) told me that a potential partner who had been on one of our screen share demo’s didn’t want to go ahead because he thought he was being sold to! He then took umbrage when Gareth found that funny and used “lol” in his email message. I’m relieved it wasn’t me that replied as I would have used “LMAO", as I found the statement hilarious, maybe I’m a bit jaded?

As businesses owners, we are always selling our businesses whether people like it or not. If we weren’t, we wouldn’t sell hardly anything and then there would be no business to sell in the first place. In our BLAM world of helping people take the first steps into business we have heard every reason in the book as to why people don’t want to take the plunge. It really was a shock to me when I first started dealing with wannabe business owners, how much procrastination there is in the world.


This could be construed as "hard selling”


So, here at BLAM, we have a philosophy that we use called “go for the no”. It means we are pretty direct when it comes “helping” people make a decision. This could be construed as "hard selling” but for us it means that when we sign a partner up (a big step for most of them) they get given a choice, and a "maybe" is not one of those choices. In our business, statistically a “maybe" is very often a no, but with lots of extra time involved chasing up the prospect before they finally admit it’s not for them. Lots of people just genuinely find it hard to just say no!

So when Gareth gets “pushy” he’s pushing people to go for the no. Our view is that they are absolutely right to say no if they don’t like that style of selling. If they are so put off that they need to make an excuse like “I don’t like to feel like I’m being sold to” then running their own business probably just isn’t for them. An honest, "your business just isn't for me" is fair enough.

Some would argue that a great sales pitch should not feel like a sales pitch, and I do agree with this to a certain extent. Tactics such as telling people that it’s not for them can often have the reverse effect, but most sales people are not brave enough to try it. Sales people that pussy foot around and are afraid to ask for the money never get the kind of results a dynamic “closer” gets, this is just a fact.

In our world of BLAM, we have a products and service package that we are totally confident in. We believe it is by the far the easiest and most cost effective way of getting into the business of selling websites and apps that there is. If we come across as pushy, or “salesy” we don’t have a problem with that. We’re selling something we believe in passionately and it’s hard not to be enthusiastic and pushy when that’s the case. Our most successful partners have also found this to be the case and they too go for the no, a "no" is no problem, lol.