Sales Skills for Small Business Owners

Selling is a very important aspect of any business and although many small business owners don't like to consider themselves as 'sales people' per se in reality small business owners are actually key sales people who know their business and product or service offering better than anyone else in most instances. Let's identify what some key sales skills are and discuss how they can be further developed.

In a nutshell the key 'must have' sales skills include:

• Confidence
• Relationship building skills
• Listening
• Persuasion
• Product / service knowledge

Most of the skills listed above will be familiar to you, but I bet you are wondering, how can I apply this and learn to become a better sales person?

How To Convert Customers To CLIENTS

Business owners and managers are often confronted with being able to differentiate between obtaining customers, as opposed to maintaining and servicing clients. Basically, a customer is someone who purchases something, or uses some service, without commitment or serious consideration of maintaining any type of serious commitment or allegiance.

On the other hand, a client generally feels a greater kinship and connection, and therefore, often becomes the type of word-of-mouth ambassador, who is usually one's greatest source of referrals and references. Great management realises how important it is, to transform customers to clients, in order to become sustainable and profitable.

Whether a product or a service is being offered, clients become repeat customers, and this conversion process eases the process of constantly searching, spending time, money and other resources, because the lifetime revenue per client, is significantly greater than per customer. Here is a mnemonic approach to developing CLIENTS.