How to Close Your First Sale as a New Startup

Starting your own business is an exciting time. However, without sales, your excitement will quickly deflate — and so will your business. I’m not saying you need to be able to sell a lady in white gloves a ketchup popsicle, but you need to at least have some sort of foundation for how to get sales.

Let's go over some sales strategies on how to sell to anyone who walks into your storefront. Read through the list and then read through it a second time to ensure you truly understand the concepts so you can begin to grow your business.

1. Get Them in the Door

Now that you've started your LLC or other business structure, you need to get people in the door. You’re going to need to wear your marketing hat for a little bit so you can transition into working a sale once the door to your business is open.

Start off by creating social media accounts (Facebook and Instagram would be preferred) for your business. Set up a Google business page as well so people can easily find you, know your hours of operation and review your business.

Utilize social media as a sales strategy by pushing sales, promotions, discounts, new offerings, etc. Tell customers to stop in for more information or to take advantage of your great offers.

When people engage and leave you a comment on a post, respond to the comment and also message them privately to tell them that you would love to see them in the store and to let you know if they have any questions.

Simply put — do whatever you can to get them in the door so you can help them and make a sale.

2. Find Their Pain Point and Solve the Problem

Why do people purchase products or services? Generally, because it solves a problem for them, right? So, when people walk through the door of your business, they are coming in with a purpose (for the most part). They believe, or hope, that what you are selling can help them.

Ask customers what brought them in today. The first step to selling effectively is to understand your customer and their individual needs. Show them products or certain services you have that can solve their problem or pain points.

3. Don’t Sell Anything

The first rule on how to sell is…not to sell anything at all. Wait, what? Exactly. You shouldn’t be selling anything. You want to be able to have your customers form their own opinion on whether or not your products will solve their problem. Your job is to get your customer to the point where they sell themselves on your product or service. You want them to say, “I NEED THIS.”

People don’t want to be sold, but they’ll buy all day long if they think they are in control and that what they are purchasing is something they need. Which actually leads nicely into our next sales strategy.

4. Bring Out a Sense of Emotion

If you can bring a sense of emotion out of your customer, you should be able to close the sale.

If you sell bug spray and your customer is deathly afraid of spiders, talk about the awful feeling of having a spider problem and trying to fall asleep knowing a spider could be crawling on you. If that doesn’t get an emotional response from the person, check their pulse.

But in all seriousness, people who feel a passion for something or any type of emotion will try to justify to themselves why they need to make the purchase or spend the money.

5. Believe in the Product/Service

This sales strategy is very straightforward. How do you expect someone to believe in your product or service if you don’t believe in it?

You would be surprised by how many people think they will start a business because they see the potential money they can make and, in the end, lose it all because they had no passion for what they were doing. This lack of passion can be seen and felt by customers when they walk into a business.

6. Create Urgency

What gets people moving? What causes people to make decisions?

URGENCY.

A great sales strategy is to create a sense of urgency with your customer. Using the spider example above, talk about how quickly one spider can multiply into more and that they probably don’t want spiders all over their home getting into all of their stuff and laying eggs. Ask them, “How long are you willing to risk it?”

Or if you have a sale on an item someone really wants, remind them that the sale ends tomorrow (or whatever date). This can create the urgency needed to land a sale.

7. Know What Objections You’ll Face and Have the Answer

Every sales book you’ll ever pick up will tell you this one exact sales strategy: know what your objections will be before you ever get them and make sure you have an answer ready.

People will generally tell you the price is too high. Well, why did you price it that way? What extra value does it bring that your competitors do not have?

Some will say they don’t have the money right now. No worries, you have a payment plan so they can walk out of your store with the product today.

The main sales strategy here is to be prepared for anything. Have a friend, family member or spouse come up with objections that you’d need to answer. Role-playing with someone is a great way to get comfortable talking to people and having answers to any questions they throw at you.

If you need help keeping your new business on track, Bizee has a “Start Your Business Checklist” that can help you navigate your way to building the business of your dreams. Check it out along with all of the other resources we have available on our website.