Are Your Customers Buying Somewhere Else?

When business owners tell me that people are not spending, my response is usually a challenging one: they are spending, but they may not be spending with you.

There is nearly always a reason why selling feels difficult. Over the years, businesses have faced the credit crunch, austerity, disrupted supply chains and wider economic uncertainty. The circumstances change, but the conclusion often sounds the same: customers have stopped buying.

Yet when I ask businesses to look at how much money is still being spent across their sector, the answer has never been zero. There may be greater caution, longer decision-making processes or more competition for each contract, but somebody is still buying. The task for every business is to make sure it is giving that customer enough reason and reassurance to buy from them.

That requires a broader view of sales than many organisations currently take.

In smaller businesses especially, people rarely perform one tightly defined role. A team member may deal with customer enquiries, process orders, provide technical advice and handle elements of sales, sometimes within the same conversation. That can be a significant advantage, provided they have the confidence and capability to recognise an opening and respond to it.

Some of the people best placed to generate additional business would never describe themselves as salespeople. They may be the person answering the telephone, resolving a problem or explaining how a product works. They already have the customer’s trust and often understand their requirements better than somebody who only becomes involved when a formal sales opportunity has been identified.

The difficulty is that the word “sales” can create an immediate barrier. People worry that they will be expected to become pushy, use artificial techniques or persuade somebody to buy something they do not need.

Good selling is none of those things. It is an extension of good service.

People like to buy, but they do not like to feel sold to. They want to remain in control of the decision while receiving expert guidance from somebody who understands the problem they are trying to solve. The role of the person supporting them is to ask the right questions, address their concerns and help them reach a decision with confidence.

That could be as simple as a customer service colleague hearing about a particular difficulty and saying: “It sounds as though you may also need this. Shall I prepare a quote for you?”

Without that question, the customer may go elsewhere, remain unaware that the business provides the service, or simply take no action. A genuine opportunity then falls into the gap between service, technical delivery and sales.

Businesses should look carefully at how often that happens. Customers do not enjoy being passed from department to department, repeating the same information each time. When one person can manage more of the conversation, the experience becomes smoother, the relationship becomes stronger and there are fewer points at which the opportunity can be lost.

This does not mean placing responsibility for weak sales entirely on employees. When I am brought into a business, leaders will sometimes begin by telling me that their people need to sell more. My starting point is to examine strategy, process and people, in that order.

Once the foundations are in place, upskilling the wider team can have a direct commercial impact. A smaller group of well-rounded people, equipped with useful questions and practical language, can achieve far more than a business might assume.

From my base in Prestatyn, I work with organisations of very different sizes, including technical businesses whose most credible salespeople are often the very people who feel least comfortable with selling. They know the product, understand the customer’s problem and can explain the solution with authority. What they frequently lack is not knowledge, but a framework for turning that knowledge into a constructive commercial conversation.

Small businesses can find it difficult to access conventional training, particularly when they only have one or two people who need support.

That is one reason I have developed SalesSharp, a new resource designed to provide practical guidance at the point when somebody needs it, rather than relying on them to remember a technique from a training course many months earlier.

When trading conditions feel uncertain, the instinct may be to hold back, reduce investment and concentrate entirely on protecting what the business already has. That may preserve cash in the immediate term, but it does not address how the next order will be won.

Every opportunity deserves closer attention. Businesses should know where enquiries are being lost, where conversations are ending too early and where a team member could move the customer forward simply by asking one more useful question.