A Sales Nightmare

Sales in a startup can be terrifying, especially when you’re thrown into the fray with no knowledge of what you’re doing. While this situation is very unlikely to happen, it happened to me once, and it felt like I was living the nightmare of coming into class only wearing underwear.

This past summer I was interning at a startup called Anonymous Alerts, a company that develops apps to allow students to alert authorities of sexual misconduct, bullying, underage drinking and more. It’s a great company that continues to grow every year, but as a startup they do run into some issues. One day while working at my desk, the CEO came in and announced that both members of the sales team were out sick and that he needed me to do sales. I had only been working for the company for two weeks, I was in charge of marketing efforts for the company and had never done anything in sales before. He gave me a phone, gave me numbers to call and told me that I was expected to make at least three sales in the few hours that I was working that day. I would normally consider something like this a challenge, but for someone with as little experience as me, It sounded like he was expecting the impossible. I had spent my days creating animations, commercials, remaking the company logo and writing a new mantra and slogan. I knew a fair amount about the company, but not enough to be comfortable making sales. I was thrown into sales with no knowledge of how to handle different situations and questions the customers could potentially have.

Although this situation is unlikely to happen to you, here are my recommendations to be prepared.

1. Know your product
   Knowing your product well and actually believing in your product can help you greatly in a sale. I had been working for the company for a few weeks and had been making videos for them and really didn’t understand the ins and outs of the product I was trying to sell. The customer can tell if you know your product, and it will hurt you if you don’t.
2. Know your customer
   Knowing who I was selling to saved me in a few of these calls. I had small bits of information like the name of the potential client and what area they were from and I did a little bit of my own research to find what kind of people they were. You should be asking yourself why you’re selling to this person and what would drive them to buy.
3. Ask plenty of questions
   In this situation the client and I were similar in our limited knowledge of the product, but I knew what kind of problems the product could solve. If I could understand what the client’s pains were and what problems they faced I could figure out if the product I was trying to sell was right for them.

By the end of the day I hadn’t made any sales, but I did get five of the clients I called to commit to a webinar where we could better explain the product. I worked to peak their interest so that we could eventually get a sale. It was difficult, but I was proud of what I accomplished with the very limited amount of information I had. I hope that you can learn something from this horror story and that this crazy experience was not in vain.