Sales, sales, sales. We all want more sales, and right now.

Yesterday, I described a creative and easy-to-implement solution, utilising Facebook. This time, I want to resort to basics.

First, let me quote Lee Frederiksen, a frequent blogger on organizational strategy.

There are essentially two kinds of growth–organic and inorganic. The former is built on a complex blend of expertise, experience, reputation, capability and visibility. The latter is a little more straightforward and based on cash, liabilities, and assets.

When describing sales through organic growth, he refers to five core strategies:

• Research your clients
• Focus on a niche
• Develop strong differentiators (my favourite)
• Balance out traditional and digital marketing
• Make your expertise available

This is all very valuable. I urge you to read the blog in full. However, there is a downside to this approach.

My experience as a business coach reveals that many people become bogged down with technical discussions about how and what to do. They never move on to the “doing” itself. To be specific, they hold back from trying to make a deal. The objections to this are varied and usually revolve around a “what if”question. “What if such and such goes wrong?”

The subconscious thought process is that if there is a danger of not achieving a target, that can be considered failure. Failure is bad. Therefore, we should not do anything. In fact, it is better to remain where we are today with lowish sales than to risk moving ahead. Ouch!

Time and again, my role has been to “jolt” or to “shove” clients out from behind their computers and onto the ‘frightening’ streets of the market place. In the past two months alone, I have motivated several companies into abandoning internal discussions, while leaving their words for motivating potential customers.

“Just go out there and look for them, assertively” was the philosophy. It may not be stuff of text books for an MBA course, but it did work handsomely. There has been an impressive shift in the numbers in the bank account.

Care to try it yourself?