Let’s talk about a common issue faced by many professional consultants.
A fear of selling. Maybe even an absolute dislike or hatred. You think selling is manipulative. That you have to convince people to buy. Images of used car salesmen putting the hard word on prospects, using sleazy tactics flash in front of your eyes.
Actually, nothing could be further from the truth!
Watch why or read the full transcript below the video.
Transcript:
This is Rashid Kotwal. Let’s talk about a common issue faced by many professional consultants.
A fear of selling. Maybe even an absolute dislike or hatred. You think selling is manipulative. That you have to convince people to buy. Images of used car salesmen putting the hard word on prospects, using sleazy tactics flash in front of your eyes.
Which leads to an internal conflict.
Sales brings in clients who pay your bills. Which means that like it or not, you have to get good at it.
Now it may be a stretch to suggest you might ever love sales, but what I’m going to suggest may well help change your opinion.
The word sales comes from the Norwegian word selje which means to serve.
Put another way, when selling, you move from trying to convince someone who may well feel sceptical about you to proposing a course of action that helps them solve an issue.
Which is a completely different mindset. You go from a feeling of manipulation, where you win and they lose, to a win win where you’re serving them and they happily pay you to do so.
Try that mindset on for size and see how you now feel.
Now I know that not everyone is going to like selling, no matter what. Reaching out to cold prospects is difficult at the best of times. Then you have to qualify and have them move down the sales funnel. Most of the people you reach won’t be the right fit or at the right time in their buying journey. Ergo, you’ll waste a lot of time and effort on people who won’t buy.
There is a better way. Legendary business guru Peter Drucker put it succinctly when he said the purpose of marketing is to make selling redundant.
An efficient marketing system allows prospects to seek you out, educate themselves as to your value and become predisposed to working with you almost makes the act of selling superfluous.
I say almost because unless you’re selling a commodity item, at some point every prospect will want to engage with you live to ensure you’re kosher.
Which brings me to another point.
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you need more leads before addressing and improving your sales process.
Every lead into the business costs money. There are advertising costs (even if the lead is a referral), sales meetings, and proposal follow up time and effort.
Therefore, when working with clients, one of the first areas we address is their sales conversion rate. i.e. The percentage of qualified leads you speak to who becomes profitable clients.
Raising this percentage is one of the greatest efficiency levers you have.
On that note, we’ve written a book on sales strategies. It’s an easy read and will give you lots of practical advice on improving your conversion rate. It’s yours free. Just drop me a note in the comments below or email me at rk@revealedresources.com.
Till next time, this is Rashid Kotwal.
