Getting Comfortable with Selling

Many entrepreneurs feel uneasy about selling—whether it’s because you’re introverted, shy, or you have a negative image of salespeople as pushy. The truth is, selling is part of running a successful business, and learning to embrace it is critical. As an entrepreneur, you are constantly selling in different ways:

• Selling your products or services directly to customers

• Selling your business idea to investors

• Selling your vision to employees or partners

• Convincing a supplier to offer favorable terms

• Persuading a government official to grant a license, permit, or variance

• Encouraging a store or distributor to carry your product

• Partnering with organizations to expand your reach

Selling isn’t just about talking—it’s about building relationships, understanding needs, and presenting solutions that make others say “yes.” In business-to-business markets, selling becomes even more critical: you may need to reach out to factories, schools, government offices, churches, or other organizations to get your product or service in front of the right people.

Example: A local entrepreneur who makes eco-friendly cleaning products struggled to pitch her items to local schools. With guidance, she learned to frame her pitch around how her products save money and improve health, which helped her land multiple contracts.

Action Tip: Start by practicing small sales conversations in low-pressure settings—like explaining your product to a friend or neighbor—and gradually work up to calls and pitches with larger organizations. Confidence builds with experience, and every conversation is a chance to improve.

Mastering the Overall Selling Process

Selling is not just talking—it’s a process that moves a potential customer from awareness to a decision. Let’s look at an example: imagine you run a screen printing business and are trying to convince restaurants, lawn care companies, and other local businesses to order branded t-shirts and polos for their employees. Your sales process can be broken down into four key stages:

1. Prospecting – finding and qualifying leads
Start by identifying potential buyers and qualifying them. Who has a real need for your product? Who is willing and able to buy? You can group prospects into “hot,” “warm,” and “cold” categories and prioritize your outreach. Early adopters—those who are open to trying new solutions—are often your best first customers. Over time, you’ll notice patterns in who actually buys from you, which helps refine your approach.

2. Preparation – knowing before you call
Do your homework before you meet a potential client. Research the organization and the people involved. Key questions include: Who is the decision-maker? Who else influences the decision? What products or services are they currently using? What challenges or competitors do they face? When is their busy season? How is their business performing? Preparing thoroughly ensures your pitch is relevant and targeted.

3. Presentation – delivering your pitch effectively
Your sales presentation should be concise, energetic, and tailored to the customer. Listen carefully, understand what motivates them, and guide the conversation without over-pressuring. Avoid common mistakes like asking for the sale too soon, presenting to the wrong person, or giving a generic, rote pitch. A well-structured presentation flows logically, demonstrates value, and motivates the customer to act.

4. Post-sale – following up and building relationships
After the pitch, follow up promptly, especially on any promises you made. This step is crucial—it’s the start of a long-term relationship. If the customer buys, help them feel confident they made the right choice, and capture all relevant details in a customer database or CRM software like Constant Contact. Documenting customer preferences, interactions, and timing allows you to refine future pitches and maintain strong, ongoing relationships.

Example: A local entrepreneur selling eco-friendly coffee mugs followed up after each sale with personalized thank-you emails, tips for care, and occasional discounts. This not only built loyalty but generated repeat orders and referrals.

Action Tip: Treat every interaction—before, during, and after the sale—as an opportunity to learn and strengthen your relationship. Selling is a journey, and the more structured your process, the more consistent your results will be.

Here is a flow diagram illustrating selling as a process.

The Process of Making a Sales Call

When you reach out to a potential customer, you’re not just trying to sell—you’re helping them understand how your solution makes their life or business better. A strong sales call follows a simple structure you can practice and master. Here are the six parts you’ll want to incorporate every time:

1. The Opening – Start strong. Capture attention quickly with a surprising fact, relatable insight, or a clear statement of value.

2. Clarify Needs (and who decides) – Ask smart questions. Before you pitch anything, you need to understand the customer’s real problems, priorities, and who makes the final decision.

3. Core Pitch/Demo – Connect your product or service directly to their needs. Focus on benefits, not features. Make it obvious why you’re the right solution.

4. Handling Objections – Customers will raise concerns—price, timing, uncertainty. Expect them. Prepare for them. Many objections can actually become opportunities to reinforce your value.

5. Close the Sale – You must ask for the business. Many entrepreneurs skip this step out of discomfort, but closing is essential.

6. Commit to Follow-Up – Whether they buy or not, set clear next steps. Follow-up is where relationships grow and repeat business begins.

This process works for any type of business—from selling lunches, candles, haircare services, cleaning contracts, or retail products, to pitching your services to schools, churches, funeral homes, or local companies.

For example, one business owner we worked with, who provides musical services for funerals, had to build relationships with funeral homes and churches. Because these decisions often happen quickly and under pressure, she needed a strong, structured pitch and a reliable follow-up plan. That approach helped her get consistent referrals and grow her business.

If you’re ready to strengthen your sales skills and feel more confident on every call,click here to see a sample sales script and practical tips for handling rejections and closing sales.

A sales pitch is a brief, persuasive presentation that a business or entrepreneur uses to convince potential customers, investors, or partners to take a desired action—whether it’s buying a product, signing up for a service, or investing in a business idea. A strong sales pitch highlights the value of what you’re offering, addresses the audience’s needs, and motivates them to act.

Explanation

The goal of a sales pitch is not just to present your product or service, but to connect with the audience, show that you understand their challenges, and demonstrate how your solution can make their life or business better. A well-crafted pitch is concise, clear, and tailored to the audience’s priorities.

Types of Sales Pitches

1. Elevator Pitch – A very short, 30–60 second pitch that explains your product or service and its value. Perfect for quick introductions or networking events.

2. Product Demonstration Pitch – Focuses on showing the product in action, highlighting features and benefits in a hands-on or visual way.

3. Problem-Solution Pitch – Begins by identifying a problem the audience faces and then presents your product or service as the solution.

4. Storytelling Pitch – Uses a narrative to illustrate how your product or service helped a customer or solved a challenge, making the pitch relatable and memorable.

5. Consultative Pitch – Focuses on understanding the customer’s needs through questions, then recommending your product or service as the tailored solution.

6. Competitive Pitch – Emphasizes why your solution is better than competitors’ offerings, highlighting unique benefits, features, or pricing advantages.

Here’s a real sales pitch example, plus key tips to help you deliver a winning pitch.

When opening a business, many entrepreneurs become focused on what it takes to provide their product or service. They concentrate on making their candles, baby bibs, or perfecting their hair cutting or car detailing approach. You certainly do want to be sure you can produce a good product or service and provide it when the customer wants it. But from the very start you must be obsessed with figuring out how to make sales happen

Whether you love to sell or hate selling, promoting your business is a constant. You need to be selling all the time. Yet, selling can be frustrating. It is filled with rejection. Why don’t people want my product? Why are they buying from someone else? It takes time and thoughtfulness to figure out who you should be targeting and which market segments are more likely to buy from you. It takes time to become a reputable, known brand name.

Making those early sales, and then building on that foundation, is especially difficult when you have little money to spend on marketing. But this just means you need to be smarter and more creative to make sales happen. Part of this is the use of guerrilla marketing (see STEP 51). Much of it tends to be using social media to market your business (see STEP 49). Depending on the type of business, you might try to make sales at farmers markets or pop-up markets in the local community. If you are selling to businesses, you might just be making sales calls to local companies. Many of our entrepreneurs initially concentrate on getting friends and family and people in their local networks to buy from them. While all of this is fine, it is critical that you think more strategically about how to make sales happen.

Selling is about moving a customer though some steps. One way to capture this is with the popular AIDA model. It involves moving the customer as follows:

1. Attention—Getting the customer’s attention—getting them to focus on you and your sales message.

2. Interest —Why should the prospective customer listen to you? What unique value does your product or service meet?

3. Desire—Show the prospect how your product or service will solve a problem they may not have realized they have, or better than a competitor’s product.

4. Action—Make a case for immediate action—cost savings, better quality of life, more effective operations, etc.

When you are making a sales pitch, it is helpful to approach it as a process. Here is a sample set of steps in this process:

1. The opening [quickly get attention, create energy]

2. Clarify needs [this is about asking key questions]

3. Core pitch/demo [selling benefits and selling fit to needs]

4. Handling objections [you must anticipate the reasons prospects will give for not buying]

5. Close the sale [you have to ask for the deal]

6. Commit to follow up [managing expectations and building the relationship]

Let’s consider an example. This is a sample sales pitch for an entrepreneur who provides music and singing at funerals. We’ll call the company Comfort Musical Experiences (or CME). CME is a start-up venture that provides musical services for funerals. Below is a sales pitch designed for the entrepreneur to pitch to funeral homes and churches. It is organized around six steps: the opening, clarifying needs, the pitch, the close, handling objections, and the follow-up.

*************************************************** 1. The Opening Hi, I’m ______________, thank you for meeting with me today. I wanted to share my passion and how I believe it could add value to your funerals. Did you know that music is one of the most effective means of processing emotion? At CMS, we use music to help the grieving connect to their loved ones through the funeral experience. ****************************************************

2. Clarifying Needs (asking questions) Could I ask you a couple of questions?

• In your personal experience, what is the most memorable music performance that you have experienced at a memorial service? What made it so?

• What are some of the biggest challenges that you or other funeral directors you know struggle with when it comes to music coordination?

• Do you mind me asking what percentage of your funeral services involve coordination with a church? *****************************************************

3. The pitch Thanks. Let me tell you about what we do. Comfort’s is built on three core principles:

• Taking the stress out of identifying high quality, flexible musicians who understand the unique needs of grieving families.
• Customizing the music selections to reflect the family’s needs and their memories of their loved one.

• Transforming a traumatic situation into a comforting experience.

Here’s how it works:

We can design the performance to reflect different themes: solemnity, hope, celebration of life, and spirituality.

Our musical selections are customizable and include hymns, classical, contemporary worship, light gospel, and spirituals. We can also include favorite songs of the deceased.

We provide both a capella performances and accompaniment with keyboards or guitar. We can also do either a solo performance or lead congregational worship.

In a typical service, I will sing 3 songs (congregational or solo) accompanied along with providing prelude and ceremony music for a total of 90 minutes.

Finally, CMS provides a packaged USB of a commemorative song for families to hold on to after the service is finished.

I have a number of recordings of our performances on my website, but would love to do a demo for you. Could I do a short demo for you? [do a selected song]

(ASK FUNERAL HOME DIRECTOR) “Can I answer any questions?”

*****************************************************

4. Handling Objections

a. If they say: “I don’t really have the authority to make a call on this” … You say: “Could I potentially speak to your [owner, funeral director]?” or “Can you please pass this information along to your [owner, funeral director]?”

b. If they say: “Your services are too expensive” … You say: Given the overall cost of a funeral, $500 is a small investment for creating truly customized and comforting memories for the family and friends.

c. If they say: “Why would I use live music when I could just use Apple Music over a speaker?”... You say: “Live music adds something to a service that pre-recorded just cannot—especially when it is customized. It creates a space that brings people together in memory of the loved one.”

d. If they say: “We already have a live musician”... You say: “I would love it if you could hold on to my card in case they are unavailable to do a particular service.”

5. The Close

We would love to work with name of funeral home. Would you consider making CMS a musical option when you are planning future funerals?

Given the number of services you do in coordination with churches, would you recommend us as a musical option for the services involving particular churches?

6. Commitment to Follow up

Thank you for your time and consideration. Would it be okay if I follow up with you in a week or so? I’d also like to leave some business cards and brochures detailing CMS’s services, website, and contact information.

**********************************************************************

Here are some common mistakes made when trying to make a sale:

• Not listening

• Not understanding what makes the buyer tick, what motivates them

• Trying to quickly to fill the quiet voids

• Asking for the sale too soon

• Not actually asking for the sale

• Coming across as a rote presentation rather than tailored to the customer

• Selling to the wrong person—not understanding who the real decision-maker and influencers are

• Over-pressuring the prospect

• Continuing to sell when you have the customer convinced and ready to buy—over-selling

Selling is something you get better at with practice. Some of the keys include:

• Empathy – Try to walk in the shoes of the customer. Deal with the prospective client as a person, not as a means to an end, and tailor any responses to the person as an individual.

• Preparation – Be prepared in terms of your sales pitch or approach, but also in terms of any research on the prospect, their needs, what they have purchased before, and their experience with your product or service

• Adaptation – Adapt your messaging and approach based on what you are hearing from the prospect.

• Play on commonalities – Look for common ground: children, pets, vacations, hobbies etc. to build relationships.

Finally, selling does not end with the sale. What you do after a customer has bought from you has big implications for future sales and the kind of word of mouth customers share about your business. Taking time to develop a strategy for customer follow up is the key. When doing so:

• You are trying to maintain an ongoing conversation with customers

• You are helping the customer convince themselves they made a great decision

• You are establishing groundwork for an ongoing relationship

• Remember to keep reminders of when to follow up and notes on things to follow up on

• You now know much more about the customer—document this knowledge

• You are continuing to collect information on the customer—building a database

• Constant Contacts or other customer relationship management (CRM) software can be helpful

It is always surprising when we have entrepreneurs in the program—and they may have been in business for six months or a year and have made a number of sales—but they have no real record of who bought from them, when and what they bought, and how many times they returned. These businesses are missing a major opportunity. A key competitive tool involves maintaining a good customer database.

A key purpose of a customer database is to have all of your customer information in one place for marketing purposes. It will help you identify key markets segments, and can give you a sense of who is buying what and how often. Having your customer information handy will allow you to create marketing tactics and strategies that align with your target audience. Depending on the information you track, you can use the database to get customer feedback and testimonials, wish them a happy birthday, remind them to repurchase products, and get customer referrals. This information can also enable you to see which products are your best sellers, which customers are likely to purchase which types of products, and help you think strategically about how you want to enhance your product mix in the future and/or sell additional items to these customers.

Below is a simple customer database for a company that makes and sells personal care products. As you can see, it is a set of rows and columns, where each row is a customer or customer transaction, and each column is a piece of information about the customer. This example represents the entrepreneur’s first month of operations. This example includes eight key columns, although fewer or more are certainly possible. Here, the “Seller” column will allow you to see who sold the product, which can be important if you decide to incentivize employees based on product sales in the future.  

In this example, we have focused on critical information to include the customer’s name and email, what they bought and how much they spend. Other kinds of things you might want to track could include demographic information, such as gender or age, the address or zip code of the client, their birthday, and a column where you make general comments and reminders, such as the client’s preferences. If it were a lawn care business, you might include a column for notes regarding the time and day of the week they prefer the service, and special instructions regarding sprinklers or where not to do edging.

The more data you collect, the more it can help you grow your business. However, more data means more work, and collecting data can be time consuming when you are trying to run a business. You need an efficient system for collecting client information. Some of it can come from keeping copies of customer receipts invoices. If customers pay with credit cards, or through a payment processing system, then the transaction history may be a source of data. Some of it you may need to ask the customer at the time of purchase. Another option is a simple (very short) survey that you email customers, or ask them to complete when they are on your website, or ask them to access through a QR code. While it is a powerful tool, a database is not useful if it is not updated on a regular basis (e.g., weekly). It might be best to schedule a weekly time to enter data, and a monthly time to review the data. You’ll want to regularly review and update the information to ensure accuracy.

Great entrepreneurs know their customers. They understand that success is built on loyal customers who come back, and customers who will refer your business to others. So having a strategy for building relationships with customers can significantly improve profits. The database (and continually updating it) is the centerpiece of a customer relationship management program.

When you are first starting out, you might maintain your customer database with a simple spreadsheet like the one above, or with written notes. However, there are a number easy to use software products available. Some are free and others involve a fee after a trial period. A number of these are called customer relationship management (CRM) software platforms. A CRM is a software package that enables a company to organize and optimize its customer relations. In addition to keeping records, it can send you reminders, and allow you to analyze the data. Examples include:

Hubspot — HubSpot CRM

Pipedrive — Pipedrive gets your sales organized | Pipedrive

Monday Sales CRM — Manage every aspect of your sales process. | monday sales

CRM Salesforce.com — Manage sales - Salesforce.com FreshSales — CRM Software |

Freshsales CRM (freshworks.com)

Zoho CRM — https://www.zoho.com/crm/

Zendesk Sell — https://www.zendesk.com/

Insightly — https://www.insightly.com/

Customer feedback can be uncomfortable. It is in our nature to become defensive when something we are proud of is critiqued. Owning a business forces you to act otherwise. Entrepreneurs have to have thick skins. Instead of feeling angry or irritated or depressed about your negative customer feedback, and instead of taking it personally, look at feedback as free consulting. Customers are telling you exactly what they like and dislike, free of charge! Whether they intended to do so or not, they are helping you improve your business.

Feedback from customers can be eye-opening for the entrepreneur who is willing to accept and analyze it. It can highlight things that customers want or expect that you did not think were important (or that prove to be important to you but not to customers). It can help you learn new things about your products, location, employees, website, or parking lot you did not know. It can make you more aware of what your competitors are doing. And, it can be a source of new ideas regarding what you sell and how you operate that can save money or enhance value.

Of course, not all customer feedback is negative. Feedback can tell you what you are doing well, and what you might want to do even more of. It is a source or reinforcement, and can help you realize which employees are the most valuable. Moreover, feedback can help you prioritize everything from how you allocate resources to your operating model and operating procedures.

At the same time, people tend to complain about things that bother them more than they complement you on things they like. As such, the entrepreneur is more likely to hear about what is wrong in the business than what is right. Be prepared for this as it is human nature. A bigger concern, though, is that feedback tends to come from people who are very happy or very unhappy. The large majority of customers fall between these two extremes, and this is a problem. It creates a challenge because these silent customers simply “vote with their feet” —they either come back or they do not come back. This means they may simply stop buying from you and you do not notice it until it is too late.

It is also true that not all customer feedback is accurate or relevant. While customers should always be encouraged to provide feedback and they must be listened to, some of their expectations or demands may be unrealistic. They can also misinterpret what they witness in your business. As the business owner, you learn to appreciate which feedback you should take more seriously and which you take more lightly. Alternatively, if you are getting the same complaints repeatedly, it may be a signal that your expectations are off the mark and customers know or perceive something that you are failing to appreciate.

Finally, keep in mind that the general trend over time is that customer expectations rise. With time, customers expect more—particularly as competitors show up with new offerings or capabilities and technology improves. As a result, the bar keeps rising. What was a customer complaint or demand two years ago that you could ignore becomes something you have to address today.

There are multiple ways to obtain customer feedback.

• Provide a short customer survey at the time the customer receives the product or service.

• Send a follow-up email, survey, or NPS survey to your customers after they purchase or use your product or service.

• Offer live chat support, feedback boxes, or social media channels to interact with your customers and ask for their opinions or suggestions.

• Call your customers or conduct interviews or focus groups to get more in-depth feedback and insights.

• Analyze your website analytics or user activity to track customer behavior and satisfaction.

Tradeoffs exist in the different approaches to getting feedback. Some take more time and collect more information, while some are quick with limited information. Some are more simple and some are more complex. Some provide information immediately after the customer has been served, and some receive the feedback after the customer has had more time to reflect (but also more time to forget aspects of the experience).

An example of a simpler source of feedback that will usually generate lots of responses, but will only give you the big picture would be something like this example.

This could be given to customers as the time of payment or as they leave your business. Something more intermediate might be a short (less than one full page and less than ten questions) survey that you hand out or send to customers via email or through a QR code. More extensive information could be collected with a detailed survey that you send to customers, often with some sort of incentive, like a 50% off coupon for use on their next visit. This might include questions about satisfaction, areas where customers would like to see improvements, how they feel about your prices, their future purchase intentions, how they heard about you, and products or services they would like to see you add, among other possibilities. These longer surveys are typically done less frequently, such as once a year.

Another popular approach for assessing how customers feel about your business was developed by Fred Reichheld, who was a partner at Bain and Company, a highly respected consulting company. It is called the Net Promoter Score. You simply ask customers the following question, where they are rating your business on a scale of 0-10.

Based on their responses, customers are then categorized into three categories. Customer who gave you a score of 9 or 10 are called promoters, those who gave you a score of 7 or 8 are called passives (7-8). Those scoring you anywhere between 0 and 6 are called detractors. Each group can be explained as follows:

♦ Promoters (score 9-10) tend to be customers who are loyal and enthusiastic customers. They will share positive word of mouth about your business and post positive reviews online. Think of these happy customers as missionaries that help promote your business.

♦ Passives (score 7-8) are reasonably satisfied with your business, but not enthusiastic. They are less likely to be loyal and would easily switch to a competitor.

♦ Detractors (score 0-6) are customers who are unhappy with you, and will probably not return. They are also likely to spread negative word of mouth about your business.

Your interest is in how many total customers fall into each of the three categories. To determine how you are doing overall, you subtract the percentage of detractors from promoters. This produces your Net Promoter Score. So, in the example above, if 59% of your customers were promoters and 5% were detractors, that gives you a score of 54%. Now, what how do you interpret this score?

At a minimum, you want to at least have a positive score. However, a general suggestion is that a score of 0-30 is acceptable, 50+ is considered well above average, and 70+ suggests customers love you and are big supporters of your business. The implication is that you set a goal for your Net Promoter Score, and you might regularly compare it to what is generally considered good across all industries (e.g., a score of 30), and how you compare to other companies in your own industry. Sample industry scores can be found at: https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/xmi-customer-ratings-benchmark-data/. Also, a benchmarking tool for making comparisons across industries can be found at: https://delighted.com/nps-benchmarks.

In terms of assistance when designing and implementing customer satisfaction surveys, there are number of free or lowcost tools available. Examples include:

• SurveyMonkey (https://www.surveymonkey.com/) • Google Forms (https://workspace.google.com/) • Jotform (https://www.jotform.com/) • Typeform (https://typeform.com)

You should have clear objectives in mind when seeking customer feedback. What are you trying to learn? For instance, do you want to measure customer satisfaction, identify areas for improvement, or gather testimonials for marketing purposes? Based on your objective, decide which information collection approach is the best fit: online surveys, a phone survey, feedback forms, email inquiries, phone interviews, suggestion boxes, or even face-to-face interviews. Consider what would make the most sense for your business. Don’t forget to check Google reviews and Yelp reviews for feedback from customers. Whatever you choose, make sure it is user friendly and convenient for your customer. And again, the easier it is for customers to give you feedback, the more feedback you’ll get!

Once you have feedback, how do you analyze it? You want to get a sense of overall averages on the questions you ask, but also how much variance or difference there is among the responses you get. Do answers tend to range very widely, or is the range smaller (more general agreement among your customers)? Beyond this, are there certain problem areas that are recurring, such as food being cold, employees being rude, or the selection being too limited. Depending on what data you collect, you are also looking for patterns in terms of who is unhappy with particular aspects of your business. Do they tend to be older or younger, male or female, or share some other descriptor?