If you hate the process of selling to a potential client, you’re about to be let into a huge secret. The reason you hate selling is because your marketing sucks.
Before you get angry at me, please hear me out.
Unfortunately, most of us have quite a negative view of sales. If I had a dollar for every time someone has told me they’re really bad at selling themselves or their business, I would be very well off indeed.
We often associate the word ‘sales’ with someone trying to sell us something we don’t want. So the person doing the selling appears pushy and annoying, and that’s the absolute opposite of how we want our prospective clients to see us.
We want them to genuinely want our services, so we don’t have to convince them that what we offer is the best thing since sliced bread.
Ideally we want them to have come to that conclusion long before we even have our first direct contact with them. We dream of a steady flow of pre-qualified prospects who have already decided they love what we do.
That’s where marketing comes in.
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When I started my first business a few years ago in the UK, I spent far too much time knocking on doors, only to have most of them closed (and sometimes slammed) in my face. Ouch! It wasn’t fun. After a few very discouraging months of experiencing what it’s like to be a failed salesperson, I decided it was time to change my tactics.
As embarrassing as it is to admit, I realised at the time that I’d been completely neglecting the one area I was supposed to be an expert in – marketing! I had great qualifications and experience, and yet it had still taken me months to realise the big mistake I was making.
I needed to create demand for my product, so I decided to spend 90 per cent of my time and efforts on marketing, and put sales on hold completely for a while. The results were dramatic. I began to receive inquiries for my product from all over the world, and the only selling I had to do was closing the deal.
If you dread selling, get really smart about your marketing instead. Spend some time re-connecting with your marketing mojo and formulating a plan that supports your business vision, and then make sure you’re targeting your dream clients with the correct messaging – that is, the messages that show them that you’re the perfect supplier for them.
Then you’ll find out for yourself how much fun closing that sale can be.
Do you love selling or loathe it? Please share your comments below.
