The Suit Magazine

Many an entrepreneur has launched a new company and then faced a standstill, and not because of an unsatisfactory product or service offering. Sometimes new business owners simply have no idea how to sell their work, and start-ups can rarely afford a dedicated marketing team.

But when it comes to sales, an entrepreneur has one significant advantage—he knows his product inside and out. According to Tom Hopkins, author of “Selling for Dummies,” product knowledge is critical to sales success. “If you don't know the product, you come across lacking confidence,” Hopkins said. “If I managed any sales team, I would write down 50—maybe 100—of the key points on why our product exists, what it does for the people who own it and what benefits it brings.”

But knowledge is only a starting point. Entrepreneurs with little sales experience still need some basic training. “They need to study the art of selling—not only my book, of course. There are a lot of great books in libraries and in the business section of bookstores,” Hopkins said. “They need to really become a student. Many people don't attack selling like they would another job. They've got to get a training manual; they have to study it.”

The next step is to pursue each goal with relentless tenacity. “I've found that the most successful people I've ever met are highly disciplined,” Hopkins explained. “They do what they don't want to do, even when the motivation is gone. They're goal-oriented. They have their short-term and long-term goals committed to paper, and they know exactly what they're going to earn this week, this month and this year, because they've put it in writing.”

Hopkins tells small business owners to remember that at the end of the day, it's the bottom line that determines a company's success or failure. “Larger is not better, and I'm always trying to tell the people I teach that it's not how much you make, it's what you keep. In a game of money, that is what's really going to count,” he said. “Many people are great at prospecting, they're great at time management, but they all seem to have a challenge—that's going for the money, and doing it in such a way that it's not high-pressure or pushy, but still works.”

One of the toughest aspects of selling, even for professional salespeople, is picking up the phone and calling strangers. Most salespeople dread cold calling, but it is still one of the most effective ways to reach out to prospective customers. The trick to successful cold calling is to remember that a prospect who says 'no' is not rejecting the caller; he's simply rejecting the idea of buying right now.

“The biggest challenge will always be handling rejection, or the fear of failure,” Hopkins said. “It is not abnormal to not want to be rejected. I mean, this is the way we are as human beings.” In his Sales Training Boot Camp, held each year in August, Hopkins teaches what he calls the Champion's Creed to help salespeople overcome that fear: 'I'm not judged by the number of times I fail but by the number of times I succeed, and the number of times I succeed is in direct proportion to the number of times I can fail and keep trying.' As Hopkins puts it, “The game of selling is to change your attitude by releasing the stress and anxiety that rejection and failure bring.”

A positive attitude is one of the most important qualities of the successful salesperson. Most professional salespeople think of each 'no' as bringing them one call closer to the 'yes' they need to make a sale. Hopkins suggests that salespeople think of each ‘no’ as a chance to hone their skills and learn what they need to change. “It’s about getting the feedback necessary to change course, to get to a 'yes' and close a sale,” he said.

And when all else fails, just have fun with the presentation. Hopkins explains, “I believe that humor and laughter are so important in our world today, especially in selling. You've got to lighten it up, you have to say, 'Hey, I just got thrown out of an office, but I'm gonna laugh all the way to the bank because I'm going out to see more people today.'”

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