Whether you’re a first-time entrepreneur who has just set foot into the world of business ownership or you’ve been in the entrepreneurial world for years, a few things will be certain as you build your company:
- You’ll need a business model or idea
- You’ll require a source of revenue
- The business will have to be promoted
- You’ll need sales
- You hope that your business will scale
Among these, the most important point in your business’ future is typically “making sales.” If you aren’t selling, you aren’t making money, and if you are not making enough sales and profits, you are likely to go under sooner or later.
To ensure that you can optimize your odds of making the maximum number of sales, consider checking out one of the following four books, which offer tips and strategies for boosting your sales success.
Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount
In today’s landscape, people sell/pitch/solicit by talking to others. Gone are the days when you had a service or product and clients simply gravitated toward you because you were the only game in town. Now it’s on you to search for potential customers, have conversations with them, and share your capabilities. In this book, Blount talks about the way you can start a dialogue with your prospective clients, how to maintain a record, and the processes associated with this process. He also does a great job showing you how to go about prospecting new clients for yourself and your business.
Influence: The Power of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
Ask anybody who has sold something, and they’ll tell you that selling isn’t an easy task. It involves striking up conversations, often unwarranted, then convincing the other person that what you have will deliver a great value for them and their life; convincing them further to buy it from you. In the end, all you are looking for is an approval from them. Cialdini offers tips from his 35 years in the field, showcasing how you can persuade clients to buy your products and services, and also get that elusive approval in the first place to take a sale forward. He uses an approach that involves six simple steps from introduction to closing the deal that can help any entrepreneur understand the sales process.
Blue Ocean Shift: Beyond Competing by W. Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne
Sometimes growth doesn’t come from a hard sell. Growth can also happen when you’re expanding in your own sphere and working to be the best in your field. This eventually helps you attain your final goal of getting more sales, and in turn, growth. The writers of this book have tried to harness the knowledge of a hundred years from 150 different business moves. It’s the sequel to the book Blue Ocean Strategy, wherein they initially outlined the idea of a ”blue ocean” (untapped markets that are ripe for growth). Blue Ocean Shift contains tools and ideas that were first outlined in the Blue Ocean Strategy book, along with a step-by-step guide on how to create new market spaces and tap the ”human psyche.” Along with this process, you’ll be able to give yourself and your company more confidence and growth. It has all the resources necessary to steer you away from a “red ocean” scenario.
Ten Types of Innovation: The Discipline of Building Breakthroughs by Larry Keeley
Sometimes innovation is what’s needed to get you to the next level. A highly innovative environment and product will always get you new customers, and help to grow your business dramatically. Innovation should never stop, and complacency can kill new businesses. In this book, Keeley stresses how traditional thinking about innovation needs to be turned on its head, and provides a foundation for a broader point of view. The book provides a guide to identify new sources and practical ways to pinpoint innovation. The text contains 2,000 instances of ideas that have been classified into ten categories, and serves as a great guidebook to innovation, which in turn will help increase sales at your business.
