If you want to become a successful solopreneur, then you have to figure out how to make sales for your business. Hate it or love it (shout out @ 50 Cent?), it might just be the most important part of your solopreneur business – because if you don’t make sales, you don’t make money.
And unless you’re already rolling in stacks, you likely need money to continue running your business (and living your life). Like many aspects of business, starting or growing your sales needs to start with setting goals or objectives.
Why?
Because if you don’t know what you want, you won’t be able to create a good plan to get there.
“If you don’t know where you’re going, you might wind up someplace else”
– Yogi Berra
Great quote for business and in life.
Anyway, do you have specific sales goals for your solopreneur business?
Do you think it’d be easier to create a sales plan if you knew you wanted to make $100,000 this year, or if you don’t have any target at all?
With a goal of $100,000, you know you have to make around $8-9,000 per month (after expenses). How much is your product or service? If it’s $1,000, you now have to sell 8-9 per month – that’s 2-3 per week. Can you plan for that?
My guess is yes, but creating that plan will depend on your product/service/company/industry/niche.
Action item: create a sales goal for the year, then break it down into quarters, months and weeks. From there it will be much easier to create an action plan.
In fact, I’m doing this right now for my law firm – listen to my approach in more detail here:
Once you figure out what your sales goals are, the next step is to determine how to meet those goals.
The problem is there are thousands of ways… maybe more. You could cold call, cold email, cold outreach on LinkedIn, Facebook, join Facebook groups, run paid ads, etc. etc. etc. In fact there seem to be more ways than ever before, with new sales strategies or opportunities popping up every day – especially thanks to technology.
Unfortunately I can’t tell you exactly which sales tactics to use, but I can guide you to finding the answer for yourself.
Start by asking yourself: who is my ideal target, where are they “hanging out” and how can I start a conversation with them?
As an example: my target market for my law firm is tech companies looking to hire foreign workers (notice that the more niche your company is, the easier it is to define your target).
So a great strategy has been using LinkedIn to search for HR/Recruitment/Talent professionals working at companies in Canada with more than 10 employees (the bigger companies are more willing to sponsor foreign workers from my experience).
Then I just add them with a custom message. Or scrape emails and cold email them. Or cold call the office. Heck, I could even walk into their office if they’re located in Toronto and I felt like changing out of my sweatpants for a day!
And all of that is just within LinkedIn, I haven’t even touched on my blog or other content marketing strategies. The key is to define your target and then test outreach methods to see which works best because you never know until you try.
I hope this has given you some guidance, and if you want more solopreneur sales tips, including my free PDF on how to start making your first sales as a solopreneur, make sure to sign up for the email list here!
