Selling is a dirty word in most circles. They picture the sleazy greasy second hand car salesperson slithering along with catchy one-liners trying to entrap a potential unknowing client. Well today I want to redefine Selling.
- Does the thought of meeting with a client fill you with nervous tension?
- Does the thought of figuring out what to say cause you to lose sleep?
That’s because you don’t know what Selling really is.
Understanding this helped me many years ago nearly top the sales for a company while being the only part time sales representative amongst all full timers. I could not and still cannot, SELL, but I can identify problems and provide solutions.
Let me illustrate…
You own an ice tea stand in the middle of a desert. A man approaches looking hot and bothered, sunburnt, shoulders slouched. Now you don’t even have to speak the same language – how hard would it be to sell a drink?
Obvious answer. What’s important is WHY? Because you have what he needs.
So applying that to your services – When you meet with a client you should not even concern yourself with prices, services, etc etc. That is like trying to plan your wedding on the first date.
You should be finding out everything you can about the client, here are some good places to start:
- What are you biggest time wasters in a day?
- What are the tasks you are doing that would like to get rid of?
- What are the things working in your business?
- What are the things not working in your business?
The thing is, the client usually DOES NOT know what they need. They just know they need help.
When you can understand what the pain in your clients business is, AND you can demonstrate (not sell) that you can solve their woes – you will sell services without even trying.
Here are the benefits:
- Your mind will also be freed during the client meeting to see other opportunities like “areas that they think are working” but that you could greatly improve.
- You will differentiate your business from all of the others trying to “sell” services and not solutions
- This will form the basis of your proposal, the PROBLEMS you can identify and what SOLUTIONS you can provide.
- You will sleep at night 🙂
Keep the communications going by sharing below what challenges you have in this area OR what has helped you overcome a fearing of selling.