How Important is The Ability to Sell?

Are sales skills necessary in order to be successful in your business?

I don’t think there is any right or wrong answer for that. In many cases, it depends on the type of business you are involved with. I would say that you have to be able to talk to people, even though you may not be selling them anything.

For example, if you’re in a retail business, your merchandise pretty much sells itself. However, you will still do your fair share of customer relations no matter what. Customers will have questions and concerns about your product, and you need to have, at least, basic customer skills to talk to them.

If your business relies on face-to-face sales, obviously your success will be dependent upon how well you can sell your product or service.

When I was actively looking for customers in my residential window cleaning business, I was reluctant to engage in direct sales. Direct sales in this case would involve cold calling and knocking on doors. I decided to go the flier route instead.

I know of many window cleaning entrepreneurs that use direct sales and they are very successful at it. In fact, many of them have more work than they can handle. So, I suppose it comes down to getting up enough nerve to go knocking on doors, or spending endless hours delivering flyers. From a business standpoint, it’s much more efficient to go knocking on doors.

The reason for this is because people will be more likely to buy on the spot when they can talk to you directly. The problem with flyers, is that many people tend to procrastinate, and even though they would love to have their windows cleaned, they never get around to calling. When you’re able to talk to them face-to-face, it takes much less effort on their part to book their cleaning.

The other advantage of knocking on doors is that I can do a free estimate on the spot – and many times, that’s all it takes to make the sale. Once people know exactly what they will be paying, they’re much more likely to buy. Also, people love to have things right away – and many respond favorably to having an instant quote. On the other hand, by using flyers, I had to receive the initial phone call, talk to the customer, arrange a time to do a free quote, physically drive to the location, and then wait to hear back from them. That’s a lot more work.

Of course, the biggest drawback to knocking on doors is that you will hear many no’s before you finally get to a yes. In fact, some people take great offense to door-to-door sales and you may also have a few doors slammed in your face. If you’re the type that really takes rejection personally, then obviously this is not for you.

The good news is that, even though having sales ability can boost your revenue in almost every business, it’s not absolutely critical to your success.

I am the farthest thing from a sales type that you can imagine, yet I am still able to get a decent amount of work for my window cleaning and gutter cleaning businesses. It just takes a little longer to build a client base.