Do your palms get sweaty, your heart starts racing, you can’t quite find the words when you think about ‘closing’ a sale.
Is there a sense of dread and avoidance when you have to talk price to a potential new client?
Chances are, when you think of selling and sales, images of pushy used-car salesmen come to mind.
You probably have memories of feeling forced into saying yes to something. Or have heard horror stories about icky salespeople using icky sales techniques.
What if I told you it doesn’t have to be this way?
This type of selling is very (unresourcefully) masculine in its approach. And it’s a one-trick pony that’s fast becoming out of date.
Trying to be slick, hustling, smashing it… are all very push focused and as buyers, we’ve become more attuned to the BS in front of us.
HEADS UP! Be aware you can go too far the other way from sheer avoidance of not wanting to be too pushy. This becomes too (unresourcefully) feminine in your approach to onboarding and signing new clients.
You’ll know if this is you if you don’t like talking about price, you’re not asking enough questions to uncover the real need, you’re not working through the potential client’s concerns for fear of being pushy or overall, you’re not making it easy for them to say yes.
What I’m about to tell you will change your world…
Think of sales like a dance. *Cue Dancing With The Stars visuals here.
An expert is leading the dance and a celebrity is being guided and learning as they go along.
Mic Drop: You’re the expert dancer and your clients are the celebrities.
As the expert, you want to make sure they’re taken care of, you’re moving at their pace whilst still guiding them along towards an outcome ie. the end of the dance.
Consider what would happen in each of these scenarios:
- You’re leading the dance too aggressively and quickly, so quickly that your celebrity partner can’t keep up. How does that make them feel?
- You don’t start the dance at all. Do you end up just standing there staring at each other, waiting for someone to make a move? #awks Of course, they’ll be waiting for you to make the first move. You’re the expert, they don’t know what the first step is.
- You start the dance beautifully together. You’re leading, your partner is having a great time and then just before you get to the end of the song, you suddenly stop.
Top Tip: the last scenario is an example of you having a great sales conversation with a client and then not asking if they’d like to work with you or buy your beautiful product.
If you think of sales like a dance, you’ll organically have the perfect flow of masculine and feminine energies to guide your potential clients to their ideal outcome.
Sales can be really enjoyable when you focus on a win/win instead of ‘not being pushy’. In fact, focusing on not being pushy is a way of making it all about you, not your client. This is one of the number one sales mistakes people make.
The problem is that you’re focusing on yourself when you’re worried about how you’re coming across, not genuinely understanding if there’s a need you can help fulfil.
So ask yourself:
- Does your potential (or existing) client have a need or problem they’d like solved?
- Is your product or service a great fit to help with this?
If you got 2 yes’s, you’re doing your clients a disservice by not selling to them.
Stop worrying about being fake and too salesy, and start focusing on how you can help them. In other words, start leading that dance baby 💃
If you want to uncover what else could be holding you back from creating a wildly profitable business you love, without having to sacrifice life, let’s chat!