I would put Listen on top of the list before anything in sales. The colder the sales get, the harder it gets and the better you need to listen. Give your product away, for free to each and every SME you know. Demo it, let them use it, and get many, many feedback rounds.
Also, look at other angles to approaching market segments. Door to door sales in non primary products just isn’t feasible at scale. The conversion rate is too small. Remember that many SME pretty much shit on their software, but they got it via their IT-support, or bookkeeper/ accountant or professional association. Those are angles to sell that could get you a better effort to conversion ratio.
1. First, disassociate. Most of the time, rejection is about the subject (doing the rejection) being closed to something new rather than some notion of the object (of the rejection) being undesirable.
2. Gain confidence in the object. Understand that the object has its own merits. The object isn't undesirable, rather, you're looking for subjects who appreciate what the object has to offer. That a given subject doesn't appreciate the object, has no bearing on the object. Move on and find other potential subjects.
3. As potential subjects polarize and reject the object for reasons that are to be expected - because the object is what it is, and does not attempt to be what is not - recognize rejection as an affirmation of the object's qualities.
Most of the loop between (2) and (3) is about improving the clarity of communication, such that subjects do not make mistaken rejections, either because (a) the values of the object are not clear to the subjects or (b) the unsuitability of the subject is not clear to the object.
The goal is fast streamlined rejection. You want an enormous list of well defined rejections. Doing one more isn't a challenge. Getting rejected faster, more efficiently, more accurately and for better reasons.
Pretend you run their business, would the product be as useful as it was designed to be? To answer that question you need some information.
If your software is going to be super useful for an event that happens only 1 time per year and doesn't take much time to do manually you don't have to wait for them to explain this to you in their complex polite way.
If it is useful to them, can they afford locking themselves into the service? What happens if the product is discontinued? What will it cost to clean up behind you?
If there is a way out and they cant afford it you can still gain a free user but it might be better not to.
Every second you spend is a second not spend on the next prospect who might badly need your product. You want to waste as little of their time as necessary, when the task is completed it is completed for both parties. The goal was to figure out if it fits. When done you thank them for successfully completing the task.
You have to dial down your clock cycle to their working speed. It is your moment of relaxation. The real work is moving between such interactions as fast as humanly possible.
This is REALLY hard when you built the thing you are selling by the way.
This is the main reason why it is often good to have a salesperson working with you that doesn't take the ego hit when the product is rejected, because they didn't build it themselves.
Be aware of that. It's hard and one way you can get stuck is to not find a way to get past that.
100% correct.
1. Get a demo ready that you can show on a laptop. Focus on features.
2. Smile and dial. Set a meeting with the business owner or manager to show the demo.
3. Listen. The things they say (mostly objections) will guide your product development.
4. Accept rejection. You will get meetings from 10% of your calls. You will make sales on 2% of your meetings if the customer even needs the product.
Reading is a good way to forestall the heartache of actual sales, but that's it. Everything you need to know you'll learn in meetings.