Badassery Magazine February 2018 Issue 21 | Page 35

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hear so many clients and business owners with very specific and heart felt goals to grow their business , but so few pair it with the desire to get better at making the sale . There is no exchange of commodity or time that doesn ' t start with someone selling something . It doesn ' t matter if it ' s for a charity , a business , a social group ... someone is convincing the other party to agree to a decision . Money simply doesn ' t move unless something is sold .
Grab a piece of paper and pen . For the next 10 seconds , I want you to write down every thought that pops up when you read this list of words :
Sales Pitch Cold call Payment Sales person Closing
There are so many layers hidden in your answer .
First , look at how you perceive sales . Is it shady ? Stressful ? Hard ? Exciting ?
Second , there are your feelings about your current approach to sales . Do you feel guilty you don ' t do it ? Or that you do ? Are you worried you suck at it ?
And third , there ' s what you believe about your potential client ' s feelings about it . Are you worried they ' re offended ? Do you feel like they ' re suspicious ? Can you tell they can ' t wait to sign on the dotted line ?
Feelings are just feelings . There ' s nothing wrong with feeling any particular way , but how you allow it to influence your actions is on you . You can push through anyway . You can train your mind to settle on new feelings by creating situations that result in the kind of feeling you want to foster . You are in charge of you , period .
Which takes us back to how your clients feel . You can ' t control how someone receives something . You should be thoughtful , but other people ' s responses are based on decades of life experiences . You have about a fingernail ' s width of influence on the overall paradigm they function in on a daily basis . Your 5 minute conversation isn ' t the real cause of their emotions around sales .
This means you have a load of inner work to do to start pursuing sales in a positive , authentic , and get-serious-and-grow kind of way . So you need to STOP WOR- RYING ABOUT BEING TOO SALESY . There ' s no such thing . There ' s being in service or being selfish . Sales is just an exchange . If you are helping the people you work with , you better damn well be trying to do it as often as possible . If you ' re just pounding prospects with things that benefit you at their expense , you ' re being selfish . But that ' s not sales ' s fault , it ' s yours . Sales is a noun . It ' s an event . The good vs bad of it comes from your intention , your integrity , and the value of your delivery of the goods .
We avoid sales so constantly because of money mindset issues buried deep down in our being . We ' re not sold on our own worth 100 % of the time . And sometimes we ' re just lazy . We ' ve been told over and over again that helping isn ' t helping if it ' s paid for ( which is BS ). We ' re taking everyone else ' s highlights and we ' re comparing it to our deepest , darkest bits and pieces and wondering where we get off trying to set ourselves up as a professional anything .
Can you imagine applying those hang ups in the " real " world ? Getting up in the grocery store clerks ' face and demanding why the apple costs money when your kid needs to eat ? Or telling the farmer who quit a corporate job to grow potatoes that his potatoes aren ' t worth charging for until he ' s been in the industry longer , even though they look and taste exactly the same ?
If you are putting time , resources , or talent into creating something , you deserve to be paid .
Any possible plan you write down to build your income will involve selling sooner or later and sales conversations go better the more you practice them . That means you should be selling . Get out there . Post about it , make calls , and send messages . Ask people who believe in you to refer people you can HELP , because you are helping them . If you aren ' t , you shouldn ' t be figuring out how to sell better . You should be figuring out how to sell a better something .
If you are convinced your product will make someone happier , healthier , solve a problem , or bring them more income , you ought to tell them , right ? Remind yourself of that .
The key to getting really good at authentic sales is to study and put it in action regularly . Learn how to help people move past the hang ups that have been programmed into them for years to see with
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