Starting your own business is exciting, and challenging, and very hard work. Made much harder by the fact that small business owners are invariably strong in their particular expertise but weak in business management skills, particularly in sales. They need training, and especially sales training.
Building a small business is even harder, because the sales skills needed change as the business grows. Consistently winning new customers at profitable rates takes a professionalism even the most capable consultant finds hard.
The new business start up will find life a lot easier and a lot more fun if one of the earliest steps is getting some training, preferably before pressing the launch button. And particularly in sales. That's both the hardest part of setting up a small business, and the most critical. Sales training is undoubtedly expensive, and hard on the ego, but not as expensive as startup failure, and not as hard on the ego as recognising the cause.
Thirty years ago I started a business with two other guys. My role was managing the money and the business, but the guy supposed to do the selling couldn't cut it, so I took up the challenge without the faintest idea of what I was doing. We sold stuff, but more by luck than judgement.
The business didn't work out and I ended up in a job where they trained me properly, and kept doing it. For the next 10 years I learned from colleagues and courses. It was the training which made me a sales professional.
To cut a long story short, a couple of years ago, working with a young partner, we started negotiating with a new client. My partner's usual rate for development and sysadmin was $85/hour.
He was astounded when the client agreed to pay $200/hour.
My sales training and years of experience helped me find out where the deal was. The client wasn't going to commit to a long term deal, but needed ad-hoc support. And faced with the choice between extended contract and premium rates, he agreed to pay our price.
That's what sales training does for small business owners. It puts them on the front foot negotiating the best rates, instead of the back foot hoping for the deal at lowest rates.