As business owners, we have to sell our products and services in order to generate revenue, get paid and ultimately succeed.
It is a fundamental part of every small business. No sales means no business!
The problem is that unless you are fortunate enough to have been trained in sales (I estimate less than 5% of small business owners have), most are either frightened of it, not very good at it or both.
This causes a mental blockage.
You don’t pick the phone up as you fear rejection because you are not good at ‘sales’.
You don’t close the sale when in discussion for the same reason.
You don’t chase up the proposal.
You convince yourself that you cannot sell and either don’t sell and hope for the best or worse still, delegate it to a newly recruited sales person who you don’t educate what you want because you don’t know yourself. Six months later, zero results.
If I had a £1 for every conversation similar to the above that I’d had in the last few years, I could retire (my wife says not yet though).
How about changing your approach?
You are good at developing relationships right? Friends, spouse, kids, neighbours etc. You do this every day and never have an issue.
How about developing a relationship with your prospective client? Have a conversation? Get to know them? Do not sell.
Get them to know, like and trust you without you having to sell. Easy right?
Yes, if you just be you and stop worrying about having to ‘sell’.
When they are ready, they will buy.
When they are wanting to buy, the door is already open and you don’t need to sell.
Change the language and take the pressure off. Be you and just develop trusted relationships and the anxiety will lift.
I’d love to know what irrational fears of selling you have or have had and what strategies you have adopted to overcome them.
Best of luck.
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