Last week, I talked about the fact that whatever situation you are in, you are always “selling”. You can read YES, YOU ARE A SALESPERSON here if you missed it. If you are an entrepreneur, parent, spouse, friend, or wear any title that would require you to influence people, you may want to shift one major limiting belief: “Sales People are Bad”. Switch it to: “Sales People are Serving”. When helping clients or other businesses from a strategic perspective, you have better chances of growing your business than when you are working to make money alone. A strategic focus allows for long term profitability for both your client and your business. By putting the other person first and focusing on their benefit, you will be able to optimize your mindset around why and how you sell, better aligning your personal values with your actions so that you can sell in a genuine way that is authentic to you. Coming from a new mindset perspective will show you that selling can actually be fun and even easy!

IF YOU ARE IN BUSINESS, YOU ARE SELLING

“Sales” is the only direct generator of business revenues. Whether you want to admit it or not, without a strong sales effort, you do not have a business. You will realize that the sales department is the only department that is not pure overhead. Whether you are a solopreneur, are an employee in an organization or have people on your payroll, you will realize how everybody in every company is involved in the sales process. Even if selling is not your ‘favourite thing’, it is the only skill that allows you to do that ‘favourite thing’.

You have a gift, there is one thing that you LOVE doing and that you don’t even consider to be work. Unfortunately, it doesn’t pay the bills. Not because you are not good at it. Simply because you are not equipped yet with the skills you need to be able to sell your gift.

Most of us see our business life go by year after year and we wake up one day and, we say: “Why am I not more successful?” “Why is everybody else making more money than me?” “Why did I waste so much time on details and not spend enough time on actually selling my services?”

I coached a very confident entrepreneur who was extremely qualified in her work. She even had written fourteen books in her field and was an undeniable expert. There was one problem. She did not like to sell her services and had a limiting belief that selling was bad and that salespeople were always trying to extort money from her. After the fifth session with me, cleaning up and transforming her limiting beliefs around sales and her confidence about selling herself, she sold a six-figure contract.

Start thinking of yourself as SOLVING, instead of SELLING. You are offering a solution to people who have a problem.

IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT SALES TOOLS

Sales skills, scripts, responses to objections, charm, and motivation are tools that one can use in order to convince someone. They are useful of course. Being prepared is always an empowering way to build your confidence and embark on a selling journey. However, none of these will close a sale.

In Matt’s example last week, although he was prepared, convincing, determined and motivated, he lacked one element; he applied a cookie-cutter approach and did not consider the personality style of the person in front of him.

In Mary’s example, she applied the same rules to all three of her children. The same way of raising a child will generate as many different results are there are individuals involved. Because every kid is different, they need to be approached differently. If you are a parent, this is not news to you. Without knowing the extent of it and having identified or tested your children to know their STYLE-L.I.S.T., you do know that some tricks work better than others, depending on who you are interacting with.

In THINK Yourself® A RELATIONSHIPS PRO, Maureen Hagan and myself have dedicated four chapters on how to sell to each of the styles according to the STYLE-L.I.S.T. assessment tool! Grab your copy today to find out how to “sell” to those around you depending on their personality.

Stay tuned for our new online course THINK Yourself® A RELATIONSHIPS PRO coming up soon.