Nov 06, 2013 By Donal Daly

3 Rules of a Winning Sales Entrepreneur

in Sales, Small Business

I’ve been involved in running businesses pretty much all of my professional career. Some of these were bootstrapped start-ups without any customers; others were larger enterprises where I had a team to run and customers to satisfy. There was the consulting business, the software development tools business, the online research company and the email marketing business. I’ve had the opportunity to make many mistakes, but I hope I’ve learned something along the way.

Being old enough to have seen a few down cycles and their corresponding upturns, I believe some truths that remain constant when things get tough. The sales entrepreneur is king.

As a sales entrepreneur you get to take control. You’ve got no one to blame except yourself, but that’s OK. It provides a level of clarity that’s liberating. To succeed, you must accept that you need to take control of your own destiny. That implies treating your territory as your market, making risk/reward decisions about where you spend your time, building your own brand with your customers, and leveraging the network you have to gain access to new customers and markets.

Here are my 3 rules.

1. Get it right first time

As a sales entrepreneur, you rarely get a second chance. You don’t get the luxury of making too many mistakes. You can’t afford a re-do, and your brand is not strong enough to have a customer consider you a second time if you have not put your best foot forward the first time.

In recent times, selling is harder. It’s harder to get budgets released and decisions made. More people are involved in getting any sale completed. As budgets get axed or reduced, time is not your friend. Remember you don't get a second shot at getting your message across, or fixing your proposal, or rethinking your competitive strategy – you just won’t get the opportunity.

2. Prepare a business plan

When you’re running a business, you need to have goals and targets – and a plan – which means you have visualized how you are going to succeed and identified what you need to achieve to avoid failure. You’ve made assumptions that you constantly check and refine – but most importantly, you’ve charted a course. That way you know which way to head when you get up in the morning. It’s necessary for survival.

I’m a HUGE fan of structured sales planning – and that’s not because planning is fun, it’s not – it’s because when you plan, you sell more. But it is not just about following a sales process, or using a sales methodology to close the current deal – that’s just the basic requirement. Now you need to own your own marketplace, fill your pipeline and manage your own sales forecast. You have to have a plan.

3. Be the very best at something

Being a ‘me too’ is not sustainable. As a sales entrepreneur, never underestimate the power of passion.

When a customer buys something from you, they’re typically buying not just your company’s product:

They’re buying because of the product’s features and price
They're buying because your company has a proven track record and a powerful brand
They are buying because of you

They are buying because of the trust and belief you have developed, the effort you have made to understand how your product can solve their business problem, and because you, as the face of your company and product, have convinced them that it’s the best thing to do.

That’s what it takes to win – and coming second is just a waste of time.

Donal is CEO and Founder of The TAS Group, which is his fifth global business enterprise. Combining his expertise in enterprise software applications, artificial intelligence and sales methodology, he continues to revolutionize the sales effectiveness industry. Donal is author of four books including his recent #1 Amazon Bestseller, Account Planning in Salesforce, and the best selling Select Selling Sales Fieldbook.