Switching gears from last week… This week is my favorite, juicy topic. It is the lifeblood of every organization, from little baby companies to mass companies like General Motors. Sales!

Without sales, accountants can’t track their successes, janitors can’t keep cleaning floors, and lawyers can’t keep legal documentation. The business world relies on revenue to keep the wheels turning. Chances are, as an entrepreneur or small business, you’ve recognized this and are asking yourself, “How do I turn my big dream into revenue?”

Here’s an idea: what if you could leverage a VA in your business to do the “selling” for you? Don’t get me wrong, I was born with the gift to gab (and listen!) and sales run in my blood but I’ve found that it follows the 80/20 rule, 80% listening and 20% talking.

I was paired with a VA that compliments my business strategy. Her name is Mylene and she’s my full-time sales rep with my company TechLok. She’s followed my guidance and does a lot of the heavy admin work behind what goes into sales. 80-85 % of the time in sales, you’re emailing, reporting, creating Excel spreadsheets, and forecasting. These are all things you can tag your VA in to assist you.

My whole philosophy is to do only the things that only you can do. I found a really good systematic way to have my sales associate VAs from SAS to do 80% of the sales work for me. Our pivotal event was CES which had many moving parts. We knocked it out of the park as a team. Now I am currently having my sales VA build a CRM (customer relationship management) database. I had Mylene research 5 top-fitting options for small businesses with consumer-facing opportunities, and we ended up selecting Hubspot. She did all the homework to find them, talking to sales associates and consultants to find me the best price. I typically have my VAs create a presentation for me to review these selections. Now, she is taking all of our lists, data, and future buyers’ information to create our CRM, which is a lot of manual work. When we have inventory in a couple of months, Mylene will be finished and we will have a clean, buttoned-up CRM database to use as our prospecting-deal closing hub.

On the sales front, yes, I’m going to handle the major sales opportunities with the larger accounts but there are a lot of small to medium accounts that I will delegate to her. When an inbound lead comes in, I see it, and boom! I can take that call or I can delegate it to somebody else in the organization with our pre-prepared scripted approach. I can say, “Ask these questions. Send this video. We want to close this deal. Send these specific 200 companies a personalized note as me.”

So those are some of the great ways that I’ve leveraged SAS sales associates to not only sell but to aid in sales management i.e. building a CRM, pulling reports, building databases, etc. Happy selling and remember, if you’re a big game hunter salesperson, make sure you leverage your time so all you are doing is closing deals, not the 80% administrative work behind the closing.