Sales for Small Businesses

You can get the customer to the counter and still lose the sale.

The work is good. The right people know you exist. And then somebody stands in front of you, wants what you make, and asks how much. And you hear yourself say, "Oh, we can talk about that."

That's not a talent problem. It's four jobs nobody taught you: Ask, Listen, Close, Keep.This book teaches them.

In the Fabled Forest, a squirrel paints beautifully, holds a bark with forty names on it, and can't say a price out loud. A labrador gives away half his waffles and wonders why the till is empty. A monkey explains his hair tonic for eleven minutes and never asks one question. A horse takes forty bookings and gets nineteen surprises. And across the square, a hawk opens a Sales Floor where every shortcut closes the sale and loses the customer. One by one, the owners find their way to Doctor Owl, a careful old consultant who never answers a question without asking one first.

The book is split in two, the way the job is:

• Part One, The Ask. Sales mindset, value exchange, discovery, solution selling, the sales quote, qualifying, consultative selling, negotiation, asking for the order, and closing techniques. This is the conversation at the counter.
• Part Two, The System. Sales pipeline, sales follow-up, objection handling, price objections, the sales agreement, overselling, after-sales service, upselling and cross-selling, sales management, and sales process. This is selling when you are not in the room.

• 20 foundations every owner and manager should know, sorted into Ask, Listen, Close, and Keep
• Stories you can read in about fifteen minutes each, with small, whole-coin numbers you can follow in your head
• The Talon Way: seven shortcuts that close the sale and lose the customer, and what each one costs
• A plain-language glossary of about 100 sales terms
• The Owner's Scorecard, to decide what to fix first