***The Six Stages of Sales Growth: Where Are You?

After working with hundreds of business owners in every level of development, from: “How do I monetize my passion?” to “How do I scale to $5 million next year?” I’ve identified six common stages of growth entrepreneurs pass through in their goal to build a lasting and sustainable business.

Stage 1: Learn How to Sell

I spent three years earning my MBA at a prestigious private university, and never took a class on sales. Marketing, yes - plenty of those! But none on “How to Sell.” Which was a significant disadvantage when I became an entrepreneur, because learning how to sell is necessary for every entrepreneur when growing their business. To paraphrase Zig Ziglar, “nothing happens until you get your first sale”. Publishers will tell you that after you’ve written your book, you’ve done 5% of the work. Sales are the heart-blood of any business and even non-profits need to generate revenue. You have no business until you start selling and consistently closing deals.

Not only do you need to sell your services to fund your mission and lifestyle; you will find that the emotional intelligence you gain in learning how to sell empowers you to become a better leader in your company and personal life. I tell my clients that leadership is communicating vision in a compelling manner that inspires people to take action; sales is communicating value in a compelling manner that inspires people to take action. You need to learn how to sell -- not just your product to your customers -- but your vision to your employees, vendors and future investors, if you hope to grow your company.

Click here to learn: “Sales 2.0: Closing High End Deals through Authenticity”

Stage 2: Sell More

Once you’ve mastered the art of selling, it’s time to sell MORE -- increase your volume to increase your revenue. After you’ve closed the first couple of deals, you should have a much clearer picture of what your target client wants, needs and values. Make sure that all of your messaging, from marketing to your sales scripts, are in alignment.

Always be aware of your Cost of Goods Sold - make sure that you are earning a profit, even after paying yourself a reasonable wage, otherwise this is not scalable. If you’re losing money on every deal, you can’t make it up in volume.

There are two ways to sell more: Sell the same product or service to new people or sell a new product or service to your old people. Your best source of new revenue is typically past clients. Use my sales survey template to reconnect with former purchasers and find out what they need now >> Access my Sales Survey now. <<

Stage 3: Sell Higher

After working with me, most of my clients double their rates immediately (sometimes there’s a 10x increase!).

What changed?

Usually, not the content. What changed was: (1) their product positioning improved; they were better able to articulate the value of their services in such a way that there was a much higher FELT value for their offerings; and (2) their confidence increased: they viewed themselves as the experts, were able to build credibility on a subconscious level and gained a deep-seated conviction that selling their services at a higher rate was in their clients’ best interests.

Why is that?

We have found that there is a direct correlation in the expense of the program and the results it delivers. This happens for several reasons. First, the coach or consultant is finally being paid what they’re worth, so they are energized by providing their service at its highest quality level. Second, the client has paid a significant sum of money and is committed to doing the work -- they want to earn that money back!

We often devalue our own products or services when we are just starting out. It’s often necessary in the beginning to prove that you can achieve the results you are marketing. Essentially, in the first two stages you are discounting your services in exchange for testimonials. However, now it is time to own your worth!

One of the primary objections I hear from new business owners is that they will lose clients if they increase their prices. This may happen. However, if you did your due diligence in Stage 2 and really increased your volume then it is worth losing a few clients to ensure you are only working with those who truly value your products or services in the long run. Remember, short-term clients are necessary in the beginning, but for a lasting and sustainable business, we want lifetime clients!

Stage 3 is a critical step in your sales evolution, and gives you the necessary profit margins to facilitate the next stage of growth.

Stage 4: Automate Sales

The biggest trap entrepreneurs face is trading dollars for hours.

As you’ll discover in Stage 3, you’ll only be able to increase your hourly rate so far before there’s either push-back from your clients, or push-back from yourself -- you don’t care if someone pays you $1000 an hour, you just can’t take on another client!!

The key here is to build a cohesive, and preferably self-funding, marketing funnel that will simultaneously Engage, Educate and Qualify more leads than ever before. You need to develop a systemized approach to your sales process for increased and predictable conversion rates.

The question you need to ask yourself at Stage 4 is “Can I achieve a predictable number of closed deals per day based on the quantity of leads I put through the sales process?” Ideally, you are tracking your metrics at every step in the sales funnel so that you can easily identify any gaps that appear. You should have this process down to a science -- for example, “I know if I spend $2.40 for a lead, I can average $50 worth of new revenue within 60 days.”

If you don’t already have a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, it’s time to invest in one. If you don’t feel up to building your own automated sales funnel, send me a quick email and I’ll connect you with several colleagues who have excellent reputations in the industry.

Stage 5. Recruit Sales Support

If you have successfully made it through Stage 4, then it is time to duplicate yourself by hiring sales teams to do the selling for you. Hopefully, it is clear that there is no reason to pursue Stage 5, if you have not successfully made it through Stage 4. You absolutely need to have an automated sales process in place that will consistently generate qualified leads because your sales team needs to eat! At this stage in the game, real money and real people’s livelihoods are at stake. In general, I recommend you generate at least 100 phone leads each month to keep an outbound caller busy.

I find that most entrepreneurs fall into two categories at this level.

The first entrepreneurs, The Closers, pride themselves on their ability to sell, love the thrill of the close, and hesitate to place the crux of their business in someone else’s hands. Their danger is letting go of this piece too late in the game, and leaving money on the table because they can’t reach everyone personally; they are the bottleneck, because their focus is on short-term revenue generation rather than long-term growth initiatives.

The second entrepreneurs, The Coaches, love the work itself and would really rather focus on fulfilling orders all day long. Too often they outsource their sales too early, with little or no direction and accountability; they do not feel confident in their ability to close and thus are insecure in managing a closer. They frequently pay too much money to someone who lets them down.

Stage 6: Hire Sales Management

This is the most natural progression if you’ve done the first five stages well. You recognize that it’s time for you to work ON your business, rather than IN it and become the CEO who sets the vision for your managers to execute.

Typically, companies promote their best sales rep into a sales management role, but I would caution against this for two reasons. First, good closers love the thrill of the hunt and may not be well-suited for managing a team and being responsible for the results of others. They often find themselves wanting to “jump back in” as a means of fixing the numbers, which places them into competition with their own reps.

Bottom Line: Selling and Managing Salespeople are two VERY DIFFERENT skill sets and competence in one area does not necessarily translate to the other. While I require all my Team Leaders to have closing experience, I have usually “pegged” them for leadership from the beginning and their closing results are not necessarily a determining factor in their promotion.

Second, even if you luck out and your best closer happens to be gifted at sales management, there’s still a snag. If your best closer is no longer closing, you are going to see a sharp reduction in your sales volume while you ramp up their replacement. They will also likely see a drop in their paycheck because their commissions are based on team performance rather than personal closes. This is often a deterrent for our best closers when they are considering moving into a leadership role.

Most people are not aware of their options when hiring a sales manager and don’t know where to look. If you’d like to schedule a complimentary consult to review your situation and lay out a list of options best suited for you, please send me a quick email .

Sales is the lifeblood of your business and needs to be your focus at each stage in your development. Revenue growth is not enough; you need to focus on profitability and maintaining adequate cash reserves to invest in that growth. As many as 80% of new businesses fail in the first three years of business, and often the inability to attract and close new sales lies at the heart of those failures. Belie the statistic and become the market leader in your industry by making sales a priority at every stage of growth.