Kuvio started without a sales team. Our employees took on that role by sharing our work with our existing networks. That was how we found our first clients and then those clients referred us to additional contacts. This worked well for a long span of time, but there came a point when we realized if we wanted to keep growing we may need to expand our tactics. However, we wanted to do this without losing sight of who we are. It isn’t in our nature to use aggressive sales tactics. We just love chatting with potential clients and if its a good fit we love working with them. In times when it’s not, we love referring them to the right place. Could we really achieve this while building a sales team? We decided to find out! To do this, we brought on our first sales associate, Emily, who has masterfully developed an ethical sales program. 

Now your probably asking, ethical sales? What is that? As a guiding principle, our sales team does not sell our services, they provide solutions to client problems. This means that our sales teams are willing to suggest solutions that cause us to lose money if it is what is better for the client because we want to be successful, but not at their expense. It also means that all of our sales-related outreach is highly targeted, we follow-up with people who have exposed interested and we make suggestions to people we think we can help. We never send large batches of spam emails. 

Once we connect with potential clients we like to put together a proposal that outlines the scope of the project, our deliverables, and an estimated cost. When estimating, we also try to be as accurate and open as possible. We never want to over-promise and underperform. This is one of the ways we can begin to build trust. This helps us to form long-term relationships with our clients because to us they are so much more than a price tag. 

We prefer ethical sales techniques over other methods. It is true, mass emailing hundreds of companies could bring us more income in the short-term. But in the long-term, we want to work with clients that we can best help, provide creative solutions and allow our employees to work on projects that will be fulfilling to them and ethical sales allow us to do this. 

So, does this method work? Our answer is yes! The best part of our approach is that often because our clients are a good fit, short projects turn into ongoing partnerships and they refer their connections to us. We have used trial and error to develop our sales process and allowed room to experiment and fail. This led us to be creative in our approach. 

There are also tools that we use to make our sales process easier. To keep track of our contacts and interactions, we use HubSpot CRM. This free tool allows us to be collaborative because all team members can track information together. We also use Slack in order to work together across departments to quickly create proposals for prospective clients. This helps us to be accurate in the scope we provide. Finally, we rely on Google Meet because we like to have at least one conversation with clients before providing a proposal. We have found that this allows us to get to what the core of what our clients are looking for more quickly than simply emailing back and forth.

Overall, we have been able to develop an ethical sales process that allows us to connect with clients and creating lasting partnerships. Want to learn more? Drop us a line at marketing@kuviocreative.com.

Kuvio Creative is a web design and development company that provides creative solutions while working to have a positive impact on our communities across the globe. Get to know us at www.kuv.io.