The Loose Robes of Small Business Sales (and Selling a Small Business)

We recently read Philip Delves Broughton’s Book, The Art of the Sale and enjoyed the stories of the master salespeople he profiled from all over the globe. Broughton’s analysis of successful salespeople showed that a large range of personality types and selling styles could find success with sales despite the common trope of the salesperson as the “Alpha Male.” He posited that there was no homogenous sales style that was better than another, which squares with what we believed was true from years of working with different sales organizations (but it is always good to be validated by external evidence). That said, there was one characteristic that threaded the personality and style of all successful salespeople that we want to share. Here’s Broughton’s interview with NPR talking about that key success characteristic for all salespeople in small and large businesses alike.

Broughton says successful salespeople are like baseball players; They’re comfortable striking out a lot to get a few good hits (closed deals). That rings very true with our experience and we think this is even better said in the book by master salesman, Abdelmajid Rais El Fenni. He deals with the inevitable frustrations of striking out in sales this way (lightly edited for clarity):

“You are like a beggar in sales, asking again and again all day,” he said. “The salesman should have loose robes. You never get upset…”

…His ability to brush off the insults, [lost deals], and press ahead, to have “loose robes”, enabled him to do what he really enjoyed, which was trading in beautiful objects with people he liked.

Most small business owners know this frustration well.  Before you hired your first salesperson, you were the sales team, accounting team, and so on. You, the small business owner, dealt daily with rejection from potential customers that didn’t want to give you time or respect. To be successful in small business sales, you had to confront rejection and negative reactions often and let those roll off your back like so much water or flow past you like wind through loose robes. Your small business is successful because you innately understood this and were tenacious enough to push past those moments towards success.  You may not have known it at the time, but you had the “loose robes” of a very successful salesperson. When sales gets hard (as it does), we love the “loose robes” mantra to remind us that we need to push past the negative emotions to focus on the success to come.

This also applies to selling your small business. Most small business owners do not think about selling their small business as sales, but it is. There are customers (the buyers of your small business) and salespeople (you and the small business broker). For a successful small business sale to happen, both the buyer and the seller must have “loose robes” to deal with the inevitable frustration and time commitment that comes with selling a small business. Keeping this in mind, will help make sure the sale and transition of your business goes off without a hitch.  If you’re looking for a “loose robes” sale of your small business, we’d love to talk.