It was great to hear from Mr. Nerlich last week. He had some very good insights on selling, life and family business operation. After class I began to wonder if there were any differences between selling in a family business vs a non-family business. There are a few differences I thought of but one stands out more than others.
Selling yourself as a member of the family entering the family business may be one of the hardest sales to make. When entering a family business as a member of the family you are immediately different in the eyes of all non- family employees. Many will have preconceived notions that you are lazy, spoiled, entitled, and lacking skill and/or experience for the job. You will have a constant battle to prove yourself and everyone will be watching waiting for you to fail.
Starting with such low expectations can be very discouraging to many in the situation. The hope is that with enough hard work and perseverance, trust can be gained from all those who had no faith in your abilities your very long sales pitch for yourself may just work out.
Are there any other ways selling in the family business is different?
BoweryJE22
I think that there are ways to set yourself up before you go into the meeting. This is difficult from a startup perspective, because you have no track record. Still though, team selling might be a great way to mitigate the perceived inexperience or untrustworthiness. For instance, a great way to get a prospect to see your business as more than the individual sales person is to split up the prospecting role from the selling role. That way the prospect can talk up the sales person before they transfer the relationship to that person.
I’m currently thinking about the possibility of entering a family business and this post is a great reminder of the possible skepticism of fellow employees if I do enter the business. Like you said, I think it’s vital for anyone in this situation to work extra hard in order to dissipate any skepticism from employees who probably have been working there much longer than you have.