Tips for Winning Those First Sales

Generating initial sales is among the toughest challenges for new businesses. We asked Neil Platt, vice president of sales and business development at six-year-old CashEdge Inc., for tips on attracting customers and building a sales force. He faced this task in 2000 on joining the New York-based provider of online financial applications for banks, credit unions and wealth-management firms. The privately held company now has more than 450 customers and eight full-time sales professionals.

• How do you gain the trust of first-time customers?

If someone is uncomfortable doing business with you because you are new and untested, ask them what it would take to make them comfortable, and try and work with them to implement those changes.

One of our earliest prospects was very interested in our services, but felt that we didn't have the operational and security infrastructure to support such a large institution. We were a small, untested company at the time. We asked what it would take for them to do business with us. They gave us a list of changes, which helped us build security systems and procedures to support any size financial institution, and we made the sale.

• What do you do to build client relationships?

We've tried very hard to establish deep ongoing relationships with our clients. Each of our major clients has a dedicated relationship manager, who is responsible for being the voice of the customer within the company. That person also represents the face of the company to the client and is responsible and compensated for growing the client relationship over time. You cannot underestimate the value of relationships and service. There's no question that our best clients keep coming back to us because of the strength of our relationships and the value we have provided them in the past. The biggest challenge here is successfully institutionalizing your relationships. For the first or second sale, the CEO or founder might be more involved than he or she will be in the future. He or she might be building on a previous relationship, for example. But when a company gets bigger, it will be impossible for it to give same level of personal service or attention to its 100th customer as it did for its first.

• Tell us about a sales mistake you made when starting out.

I failed to understand all of the steps necessary to get closure. If you are dealing with a person at a prospect company who seems over-eager, then you can get the impression that you're moving faster than you really are. But if you haven't completed the steps, you're not going to close the sale. I once spent a lot of time with a prospect who was very interested in our products, but had no way of getting a budget for them. Had I determined this up front by asking whether the products were budgeted for, I could've more effectively used our time.

• Can you give a tip for closing a sale?

The best way to close a sale is to maintain a tight control on the process and continually get feedback from the prospect as to where you are in the sales process. Early in a sales process you want to ask questions like: "What kind of steps are we going to have to go through for you to make a decision as to whether or not you will buy our product?" You may agree you have to pass steps "A," "B," and "C," and come to a decision.

In my industry, before we can sell a complex piece of software to a bank, we first need to develop a shared business case. Then we need to get approval from the prospect's internal technology, risk-management and compliance units. Then we need budget sign-off. If we haven't completed all the steps, we can't close the sale. I encourage our salespeople to develop a relationship with a "coach" inside the prospect to help us make sure we are covering the appropriate steps. If you follow that process, you should know roughly when sales are ready to close. The most difficult part of this is the back-and-forth communication and making sure you're always moving forward. Sales like this can involve an enormous commitment of time and effort. If you're not in control of the process, it's easy to lose sight of the whole game plan.

• When a customer isn't interested in buying, how far should you go when trying to find out why?

You need to find out what the problem is as early as possible. At the end of the day, anyone can talk about the features and benefits of your product or service. What makes a truly effectively salesperson is the ability to ferret out and address customer objections throughout the sales process.We learned this lesson when a potential customer professed to liking everything about our product and service, but then ultimately decided not to do business with us. Had we been able to unearth the problem earlier on in the process, we could've addressed it effectively. But we didn't, and, as a result, the business when to a competitor. Eventually, we asked what went wrong, and he said he felt our company was too small and potentially unstable. No question it was our responsibility to get that out in the open sooner.

• When did you know it was time to hire a full-time salesperson?

At some point, you'll realize that there's more demand than you can meet with your existing staff -- whether that's one person or a team of a dozen. A good time to think about it is after you've got an initial one or two satisfied customers. A new product or service often develops around them. Until the product is fully developed and your initial customers are satisfied and willing to serve as references, you may not need additional salespeople. Salespeople tend to be very entrepreneurial by nature, and, in my experience, good salespeople are always scouring the market, even if they're not explicitly looking for a new job. We've had success with the online job boards. If anything, the only risk you run with those is you get piles of resumes, and it's a little bit of work sorting through them. I don't think it's necessary to use a search firm, unless you're searching for something very specific, such as a salesperson who sold a particular kind of engineering part. Good salespeople strike a balance between being motivated to bring in a commission and meet the company's goals. Not all salespeople are natural team players, but I believe that is ultimately an important characteristic.