Posted by Along the way, I have seen no shortage of entrepreneurs dreading the sales process. Facing it as an evil that ideally would not be necessary to pursue their dream of having their business or product out there. Only last week, a founder I am connected to went out openly on LinkedIn about how she disliked that process but she had no choice.
You have a choice
The truth of the matter is, that you have a choice. I would argue you have a few choices even:
Option 1: you can choose not to grow and scale a business. Most businesses that I have come across in the world need customers and therefore unless you have a “killer product” that sells itself, there is little option to get your product out there.
Option 2: hire someone to do it for you. I must say, this works in a second instance but, as you launch and build, being part of the sales process is a key part of being an entrepreneur. The feedback and understanding you get by being close to the customer is what allows you to get a killer product.
It is hard to replicate the passion that comes from your original vision. In my charity, I have had a marketing team for a long time. But no matter how many times we hone the message and standardise comms, at the end of the day, people want to hear from me (don’t ask me why). And I guess I say something different because it does work differently. My preferred case? You do it in combination with a team as soon as you can.
Option 3: change your mentality. Not all sales are made evil. In fact, they are an enabler of what you can achieve. This is what I want to focus on today, the mentality.
Why do you hate sales?
We need to take a step back and assess, what is it that we hate. Is it the cold call, is it the wait, is it the pitching on events, is it the 30-second intro to a stranger in a networking event, is it the rejection? All of the above?
For me, it is close to all of the above. Maybe I can stand the wait, but I can’t stand the intro.
For each person, there will be different triggers. And in all of us humans, rejection is likely to be the biggest trigger. We all like to say “Better a no than no answer“. But are we being entirely honest?
Our rational self is correct, we are better off knowing that someone does not want to become a client than continuing to invest time in converting an impossible sale. However, our emotional self does not want to be rejected. So as much as we know we should be following up all the time as rule #1 of sales, we procrastinate on it often just to avoid the negative outcome.
When I find someone procrastinating on sales (self included), I try to identify where the resistance is coming from. Fear of looking stupid. Fear of sounding pushy. Fear of being a “sleazy car-sales guy”. Fear of getting a no. Fear of rejection. Fear of failure. Until you understand it and face it head-on, you won’t be able to overcome it. So c’mon, what is it?
Why do you have to do sales?
For years, I have kept a parallel job with my M&A and later COO role at Morgan Stanley. I founded a charity in 2004 and do you know what charities need? Money. Starting in 2008, we had started to grow our projects, so reaching out to 30 or 50 friends via email was no longer going to have to do. I am very easy with written content (as you can see by the size of the repository of this blog). But less easy on the public speaking part.
From the early days, I made a decision that I would do it for the children, no matter what. That was my way of distancing myself from a “sleazy car-sales guy” though I must admit that often some friends may have seen me as such when I could not stop going about funding a specific project. No matter what my limiting belief was at different times, my why was very strong, and therefore I never stopped doing it, even if I did avoid certain more direct or networking ways, as I did not feel they fit my personality. More on that later.
Change your perception: from necessary evil to passion enabler
Now, I am in a new stage of my life where I have lost all shame in fundraising for the charity (finally), but I am establishing myself as a business advisor. That needs clients too right?
Correct, and as such I have had to speak about what I do, but this time, for myself, not for the children. That shift was significant. I had to actually speak about myself. It was always easy to do that in the context of my work at Morgan Stanley or my work at the charity. What about in the first person? I never thought I could do it. I was wrong.
Speaking to a business owner about this last week, I realised it was all about perception. My approach since I launched Inside the Business Mind has been to ensure people know what I am doing because they may need my help. And if they do need my services, I am there to provide them. If they don’t, that’s ok as well.
Because I have chosen that my legacy includes impacting businesses through empowering their business owners, reaching out and connecting to business owners is part of achieving this. Moreover, I love talking about a good business problem and working through it, so if I keep this approach in mind, I stay very close to my authentic self and therefore my passion and intention come through very easily.
As I have worked with business entrepreneurs over the years, this has been a common feature. Sales is not that side-thing they sometimes need to do.
Sales is after all why they are in business and how they can implement their vision and live their purpose.
Change your perception: I am not good at it
All my life, I said, “I am not a salesperson“. And that is what I would claim over the last 20 years fundraising. “I am not good at it.“. But hey, I can’t be that bad. Even though I obviously have more people working with me, the fundraising numbers speak for themselves. The reality is, I am ok at it, probably more than ok, under the right circumstances.
These are the circumstances you need to identify. How do sales work for you, and which environments can you thrive in? For me, I identified 3 factors, but these are not unique and I encourage you to assess them for yourself:
- Content-driven approach – my brand grew from my writing. Even before I had even considered leaving my corporate job, I was already in the “business” of writing and sharing my views and learnings on business and life. For me, this key piece of my life has been a constant and easy way for people to get to know me, build trust and potentially identify whether I could be someone they want to work with
- 1on1 engagement – I am better at individual engagement rather than large-group settings. That does not mean I don’t go to large group events, but it means I am comfortable if, at the end of a 100-person event, I have only spoken to 3 or 4 people. I am more focused on deep 1on1 conversations than shooting in many directions. Granted, this does not work for every type of business, especially volume ones.
- Pay it forward – my brain works (and is more interested) when solving problems. That means often my conversations when I meet a new business owner go very quickly to what challenges she is facing and what is next on the horizon. This also means my brain stays very actively engaged and I can use that opportunity to offer some of my knowledge. Additionally, I joined a few networks where I have offered mentoring or free brainstorming calls as a first way to gage if I can help someone in the future. It is my way of paying it forward as I embrace my certainty that I can add value.
“Through our experience, we’ve learned that “a compelling story” is a narrative that explains why your product or service will meet someone’s needs, especially in sales. It involves listening, making an emotional connection, and thinking from the customer’s point of view”,
Change your perception: Brave the fear
Often doubts come from fear of not being good enough. The product is not yet good (that is why they invented MVP), I don’t have all the qualifications yet, and I don’t have a good pitch yet, what if I make a fool out of myself? People have come up with all sorts of fears to justify dreading sales. And that’s ok. They are all reasonable fears, but they can be addressed. No one expects it not to be scary (ok, for some people it isn’t, but this isn’t for them!). What you expect is to put that fear to productive use. Analyse it and break it down so that you can reframe the narrative.
I am particularly fond of the use of soft launches to smoothen the impact of a product or service launch. It immediately sends out the idea that the product may not be finished yet. Importantly, it also sends out the idea that you are open to feedback as you try and solve a problem in the world with your product. And it reduces your need to have a perfect product out there. It is not just lean start-up entrepreneurs doing it, restaurants do it too!
Changing the narrative
Sales has a bad rep. It’s that department that does the hard job of shoving products to some desperate customers. We need to change this narrative. If we are able to do so, once we identify the fears we are facing when going out there, our authentic selves can come through and passion will be the biggest sales asset. Give it a go.
Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán from Pexels