EO Accelerator Sales Day

Today we had our quarterly EO Accelerator education event on sales and marketing. It was an all-day session from 7:30am – 4:30pm held at my office in Buckhead. Our expert instructor was Jim Ryerson of salesOctane, and he did a fantastic job.

One part of the class was about persuasion and communication techniques to aid in the selling process. Here are a few takeaways:

• Don’t talk — spend more time listening
• Use short questions
• Start questions with who, what, why, where, when, and how
• Don’t ask yes/no questions
• Offer alternate choices (e.g. do you want to start sooner or later?)
• Always set an agenda for the next meeting at the end of a call, make sure both sides have homework, and promptly follow-up with an email reiterating everything

In my experience, sales is the number one area entrepreneurs fail to do as well as things that come more naturally like product development and team building. I highly recommend making sales a top priority for entrepreneurs and really understanding how to create a repeatable process.