Back to School

Being aware that school is starting again for most of our nation’s youth, got me thinking about our own education as it relates to running our businesses.  In my work as a business coach, it is painfully obvious to me that our educational upbringing includes very little of the skills useful to starting, running and exiting a business successfully.  Instead, small business owners (for that matter large business owners, too) are often relegated to learning business skills by “osmosis”, on-the-job-training, or trial-and-error.  Fortunately, that is slowly changing as Entrepreneurship courses and degrees are now popping up in our universities, and business leaders are becoming more comfortable engaging coaches, mentors, and advisors to augment the skills they find lacking.

A basic tenet of success in any field is the commitment to life-long learning.  For business owners, that means more than just being expert at the thing that our business does.  It should mean being expert at owning and running a business.  Those are two very different things.  In Michael Gerber’s book, “The E-Myth Revisited”, he discusses the three hats that business owners often wear, Technician, Manager, and Entrepreneur. Most business owners focus on their Technician expertise, and may brush up their continuing education as the engineer, hair dresser, auto mechanic, plumber, or doctor they are.  But that effort may not result in business success.  Being committed to ongoing learning about being a better Manager or Entrepreneur is rare.

How committed are you to improving your skills as a business owner?  Is your commitment leading to actions that will make you more knowledgeable and give you better results?  Let’s take a look at some simple ways you could start immediately to engage yourself in a better program of continuing education:

• Read – There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of great books about success in business.  When was the last time you read one?
• Online forums, blogs, podcasts.
• Seminars
• Networking – simply engaging with others who face similar challenges can be educational
• Work with a business coach.
• Sign up for a class at your local university or tech school.

Carving our time and investment in your personal development as a business owner is deceivingly critical for business success.  Embrace a continuing education mentality, and you’ll become more competent and effective as a leader.

Reluctant to Sell

In my work as a business coach, I often work with the owner of the business and their sales team to educate and improve the performance of their sales approach and activity.  Sales is arguably the most valuable function within any business, and yet it has always perplexed me that Sales is rarely taught in formal business school setting.  Think about it… you can receive a degree in every business function imaginable… Management, Accounting, Finance, Operations, HR, Quality, Supply Chain, and Marketing… but not Sales!  Instead, sales is either learned through “tribal knowledge”, or “on-the-job-training”, or by working with “our best salesperson” to see how they do it.  Or it is assumed that one is either born or gifted with sales talent, or not, sadly, due to poor luck or bad genes.

Thus, when I find myself coaching in the sales function, I almost always detect a strong discomfort with this topic.  On the one hand, the business owner and any committed sales people know they should improve their skills, and deep down inside I believe they want to do so.  They often readily admit that they don’t always know how to go about selling their wares.  They can also easily see how valuable it would be for the business, and themselves personally (think commissioned sales people), if their sales techniques could double their conversion rates.  “And yet… I don’t know… there’s something about that sales thing… (deep sigh)… that just doesn’t feel right to me.  I don’t want people to think of me as being pushy.”

Perhaps it is our old paradigms about sales that lead to Sales Reluctance.  Certainly, there is nothing in modern sales techniques that are pushy.  Successful sales people instead base their approach on building relationships, educating, providing resources, solving problems and learning how to help.  They listen way more than they talk.  They have a positive, pleasant attitude that makes people want to be in their sphere of influence.  And they work hard, leveraging and supporting the marketing tactics of the business to create a strong, consistent brand in synch with the culture and purpose of the business they represent.

The pervasive desire of business owners, and their salespeople is to have more volume… more sales.  And yet there is a discomfort about reaching out to prospects and referral sources, and even to existing customers in many cases!  We really have to ask ourselves what we are afraid of, don’t we?  Is it that they might not like us?  Do we think we may not like them?  Is it fear of rejection?  Or are we just embarrassed that our sales approach is not very good?  Perhaps it is just a lack of knowledge about how to go about it, and lack of confidence that our approach will work.

We humans are uncomfortable with change, and committing ourselves to learn how to sell better, is a commitment to change.  Since sales is seldom taught in traditional educational settings, it may feel even more uncomfortable to seek out non-traditional ways to become a better sales person.  But if we don’t change, we won’t get better results, will we?  If you want to achieve higher sales levels, seek out sales education. There are lots of fine seminars, books, and videos on the topic.  Of course, a business coach might also be the answer, helping you to push past the discomfort and embrace an effective, pleasant, and professional way to sell.