By Rieva Lesonsky
Sales are a perennial challenge for every small business owner. If you’re struggling to keep your small business’s sales surging and you feel like the sales methods that used to work in the past are no longer effective, you need to read Zero-Time Selling: 10 Essential Steps to Accelerate Every Company’s Sales, by Andy Paul.
Paul, the founder of consulting firm Sales Action Group with over 30 years of experience in sales and sales management, has written a no-nonsense guide that will help any small business owner or sales manager increase their company’s sales immediately, using the sales team they already have in place. Here’s how.
The biggest takeaway from Zero-Time Selling? As the title implies, it’s that how you sell is as important as what you sell. Today, customers and prospects can go online to find out most of what they need to know about your company without ever contacting you. So when they do contact you, it means they’re almost ready to buy. Unless you respond in “zero time,” they’ll move on to the competition.
If responding to every customer immediately seems impossible, don’t stress. Paul offers a 10-step system for achieving what he dubs “MILT: Maximum Impact in Least Time.” Instead of relying on a long, drawn-out process of following up and building relationships, MILT focuses on quick, simple steps that eliminate many of the problems plaguing the typical small business’s sales process.
For instance, Paul sets out a way you can follow up on every lead within 30 minutes. I’m not kidding, and if you can already imagine how your salespeople will scoff at this idea, Paul’s got the answers for you. Zero-Time Selling shows you exactly how to deal with the type of pushback your sales staff is likely to show when you try to implement his system.
Making Zero-Time Selling a quick read, Paul ends each chapter by rounding up the main points he just covered. Still not convinced MILT can work for you? Read the detailed case study at the end of the book, highlighting an actual client who implemented Paul’s system and how the company overcame the challenges. The business’s sales grew steadily, rising 20 percent per year. The same can happen to you if you apply the lessons in this book.
