So here is what I (re)learned about developing, marketing and selling a proposition, from putting on an exhibition of my ceramics this month, which I think has real relevance in business.

1. Make things easy to buy

I sell pieces I’ve made off my own bat, and I also take commissions.

I thought that people would buy into a concept that they could have any shape in pretty much any colour.

I was completely wrong, because the majority of visitors couldn’t get their head round it. For them it’s a tyranny of choice.

They either wanted ‘another one like that’, or ‘one like that, but with a pink stripe’. A maximum of one variable, if that.

2. Don’t forget they’re buying a bit of you, too

My visitors didn’t want to make all the decisions. They want me to make some for them. In the case of ceramics, they might have liked the ability to decide a colour, but other than that, they were buying into my decision on shape and design.

In any business, there are some decisions a client or customer wants to make, and others they are expecting you to make as supplier or service provider. You need to understand which decisions are which.

In fact, one of my consultancy clients, the CEO of a wealth management firm, immediately concurred when I shared this insight: “So true, too many people in sales forget that — we definitely need to make our website simpler, and start to offer clients what we think is the right thing for them.

3. You have to be in in to win it

I spent a couple of days of our exhibition week in the gallery.

Out of the many conversations I had on those days, a small number went beyond passing interest into commissioning work.

One has to assume that had I been around on the other days, that a few more conversations might have materialised into commissions.

At Positive Momentum, we measure sales effectiveness at three levels: effort (your activity), skill (at converting conversations to commissions) and confidence (when it comes to setting a price). It’s a three-layered conversion funnel which starts with having the conversations (in this case, and many others!).

4. Take every opportunity to gather feedback (but for goodness sake, keep it simple!)

The private view was a great opportunity to get some constructive feedback from people I trust, and they helped me learn points 1, 2 and 3.

I also set up a visual poll so people could vote for their favourite pieces by scanning a QR code on their phone.

5 responses. Too fancy — too complicated.

Much easier to talk to people face to face!

5. Be agile and adapt quickly

Back to my commissioning conundrum. After some conversations at the Friday Private View, I made some new signs to put up next to pieces to show that I could make another just like the one which sold.

My fellow artists told me about the code of ethics for printing, whereby if you say you will only do 10 prints of a painting, you must not do any more — it’s unethical. It’s also made its way into law in California, for example.

I thought about the idea of creating limited editions, and adding something like ‘1 of 10’ next to pieces to show that there were more where that piece came from (even if it hadn’t been made yet).

In the end I went for the multiple red dot approach: there were visitors who asked me to make another piece just like the one just sold. They got it. So I added a second red dot to show how one piece could be sold twice (or in the case of one commission, 6 dots!).

It was a fabulous experience, firmly in the spirit of ‘Full time to Fulfilled’ (the Positive Momentum podcast celebrating the jump from corporate to independent consulting.)

You’ll definitely see me at Oxfordshire Artweeks again next year, but there’s no risk of me packing in business consulting any time soon!