Today I’m talking about one of the biggest mistakes that I see small businesses make in their sales. This mistake should give you a perspective shift because it’s something that you can take and go and apply it to your business is.
If you are more focused on yourself, on making the sale, and doing all of the things that you have to do to sell – then you’re not focused on the environment and the relationships that you are building. You are going about sales in 100% the most backward way.
You are thinking about yourself; you’re making it about you. You are focusing too much on what you have to do to move the needle forward. But really, sales is about the environment, the relationship, the rapport, and the experience that you are creating with your people.
We think there’s some secret out there. That there is some 45 step method that is going to work. And yes, maybe the methods and strategies work, but you’re not going to succeed with any sales strategy if you are not focusing first on the environment and the relationship. It’s this environment ecosystem that’s going to yield easy sales for your people.
The First Extreme
The first is feeling like you have to skill up and perfect every single thing before you’re ready to show up. You are too fixated on nailing every single 45 step point process.
You start thinking, “Okay, well, I have to go ahead and get perfect over here in my sales.” Meaning, you’re thinking of yourself in lack. You’re thinking of yourself, not as an expert, but as somebody who’s not yet qualified to do the thing.
Meanwhile, all of your audience has gone somewhere else because you haven’t been there to nurture the relationship. Your customers – who have a problem that needs to be solved – are like, “Great, well, I can’t find you anywhere, so I’m going to just go ahead and find the person who is available, who is showing up and providing me a value and building a relationship with me. They’re the person that I’m going to buy from. They’re the person that I’m going to go to their the person that’s making me feel connected to them.”
They can’t do that with you if you’re not showing them you and if you are unwilling to put yourself out there and develop that relationship with them.
The Second Extreme
The second extreme is showing up as a BFF for your audience and just being like, “Oh hey girl, hey. Of course, I’ll have a 25-minute conversation in DMS with you. Of course, we’ll go back and forth like this and not only give all my free value in the content that I put out but also give you all this personalized attention.”
This second option doesn’t make your audience feel like they have to buy from you. Why would your audience feel like they had to reach into their pocket and buy something from you? You aren’t creating an environment for them to buy; you’re creating an environment where they just get to be BFFs with you.
That might feel good from a friend’s perspective, but does that actually help them with the issue that they have? Does that actually help them get the result that they want? Does that actually serve them at a deeper level?
Stepping Into Leadership
This is where real leaders are made. This is where real results are formed. This is you being willing to get outside your comfort zone, which might be relating to somebody at a level where you can call them out and truthfully say, “I hear that you’re super interested in this. Thank you so much for asking these questions in my DMs. The best thing for us to do is hop on a call and see if I can help you with this thing that you’re struggling with.”
Name it. Assume the role of the person who’s here to serve. Because if you’re just here, dishing out free little tidbits of info left, right, and center, guess what?
Avoiding Exhaustion & Making The Sale
First of all, You’re going to feel exhausted and resentful. And when you feel exhausted and resentful, you’re not going to show up as energized to create the free value in content that you do, which is so important in your business.
Secondly, you’re not going to be making sales because your people are just getting enough from you to feel like they don’t have to do anything else.
You’re not giving them that next thing to do. So if you’re resentful, you’re not going to show up to your business. The longevity that you feel is going to start to fade when you start to notice that resentment, when you start to notice, “Oh, I wish she wouldn’t do that.”
That’s a sign that we need to have a look at how much you’re giving away, how much you’re allowing yourself to be drained by this. Because you’re not assuming that expert role, you’re not assuming that thought leader position, which is the thing that your people need you to do.
Serving Your Audience
If you want to truly, truly serve them, there’s a level of transformation that you can provide by showing up one to many. This means sharing a bit of information and wisdom, giving motivation, inspiration, practical guidance to grow your business.
But guess what? If they want to do this over the long haul and not just one-off on a Friday afternoon (they want to work through a curriculum that’s going to help them get results), they already know that the best way to do that is to work with you for a certain period.
Perfecting The Sales Process
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t give your audience value. We want to avoid getting yourself into a trap and feeling like you have to stay in the friendzone. Because that’s not giving your people the call to actually go out there and make a decision that’s going to change the game for them, that’s what you’re here to do.
That’s what selling is. And if you aren’t focused on establishing that relationship, then you’re going to continue to feel really, really, really frustrated when it comes to sales.
It will look like not getting discovery calls, not having people interested in your programs, or people who are interested in getting on a call with you, and it is going nowhere.
It could have been a really good call, but you froze. You didn’t know how to ask for the sale, or didn’t know how to make the sale, or didn’t know how to transition from delivering value to selling.
When you have a sales process and are so clear about what you offer and how you serve people, making that transition is as natural as stringing two sentences together. It’s as natural as – If This, Then That. It’s not complicated, but it feels hard when we’re overthinking it or when we’re not allowing ourselves to move from that generous friend zone to being a leader.
If you are struggling with either one of those dynamics, that’s okay; that’s not bad. But it’s time to recognize what’s going on. Because when you recognize it, you have the power to change it. You have the power to do something different.
Psychology of Selling
If you think that you can skip over the psychology of selling pieces and just get to the nuts and the bolts – that’s why you’re in this spot in the first place. You’re not embodying the leader that your people need. Your mind is already fixated and focused on lack.
Inside of Module One of Sales Accelerator Course, we go so deeply into the principles that you need to learn to sell and start focusing on the environment that your people need to experience that will convince them to buy.
That distinction is the game-changer. I guarantee you that up until now, you’ve been scrambling after “How do I sell? How do I do that? How do I make money? How do I pull a quick move and get a result?”
When that’s your focus, you make it almost impossible to have sales come easy. You need to focus on getting an environment in your business – an environment that makes it feel easy and good for people to buy over and over again. It feels good for you, and it feels good for them. That is the foundation that you need to be able to create those consistent sales over and over and over again.
I think the real missing part of the conversation around sales and sustainable business growth is that we need to be looking at this entire ecosystem and that ecosystem is built on your psychology and then the decisions that you make that stem from that.
