Make A New Year Resolution To Be A Sellerpreneur
There’s a fairly long established disparaging term for those that think they’re an entrepreneur. Yet they never fully become one. They are all talk, no action. Even milling around trendy, supposed “trep” hangouts. But no plunge ever gets taken.
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Publications as august as the WSJ have exposed such scourge. Their biting sub-heading; “Their Time and Others’ Money, Wannabe Entrepreneurs Threaten the Whole Sector”.
A general dismiss, is that such afflicted also solve ‘non-problems’.
A true entrepreneur knows precisely the glaring problem that they resolve. And they relentlessly pursue its eradication.
I am naturally reminded of all those (sometimes well-meaning) salespeople whose activity is either sadly limited or conducted in areas set never to yield any harvest.
Even upon graduation, I knew running my own show was my destiny. I made no secret of that with potential early employers. The one that first secured my boundless energy did so in large part because of a conversation at a nearby Waterside drinking hole, ale in hand, sunshine beating down.
Selling here is the closest thing you can get to running your own business, I was told. With an arm ’round the shoulder and knowing wink.
A stepping stone? Wow. I was sold.
Just as every entrepreneur at some point must stop merely talking and begin doing, any future Sales winner must likely stop relying on inbound leads and get out there themselves.
Inbound leads. There’s a whole site’s worth of postings on that topic alone, hey.
So why not take the time right now – in that possible vacuum between year-end and when your prospects return after their jollies – to pull together your plan to be a …
sellerpreneur
What is it you can do around the edges that will give you a pulsating, pumping pipeline? The envy of the team and propel your commissions Plutowards?
Which relationships can you seek to cultivate? What actions can you kick in now that may take an entire year to flourish, but when they do….bang!
Plenty of cold-call instructionals (most of which I totally deride) talk of the power of the little bit extra. Imagine making, say, two extra cold calls first thing each morning before you’d traditionally start. And two further before you leave the office at night. Over the course of a year that’d mean a thousand extra calls. Whoa, they exclaim. Imagine how much more business comes your way as a result, even at your current close rates…
Although this is one tactic I have a small piece of affection for, this isn’t being a sellerpreneur.
A true sellerpreneur genuinely treats their patch as their own business. Yes. There are myriad uncontrollables. Pricing, product, people, pr, promotion, production, privilege.
But there is something you can directly control. And that is your approach to setting you apart. Intelligent conversation with those who might suffer from connection to the problem you fix. A tweaked approach to referrals. Up your prospecting game.
Foundation step: embrace process thinking.
Sellerpreneur consolidation: hatch a plan to generate those extra, potentially priceless, additional leads.
Treat your patch like it’s your own business.