How does the idea of selling make you feel? For many, it's not a great feeling. Unfortunately, the image many of us have of selling is not positive. But the ability to sell is essential if you want to run an online business.
If you suffer from an aversion to selling, this is something you'll have to get over. It just takes a slight change of mindset.
Selling Is Helping People
One major reason people hate selling is that they see it as something manipulative. You're trying to convince someone to buy something against their will and using dirty tricks to do it. But if you're offering a product that's actually helpful for the prospect, there's no manipulation involved. You're "serving" them, not "selling" to them.
For example, let's imagine that you're selling coaching sessions to help clients build an internet-based business. Rather than convincing the person to sign up by emphasizing your skills and credentials, you could offer a free session where you teach a few crucial things they can apply today to get results. Once they try what you taught them, they'll realize the value of what you offer.
Listen to Your Prospect
Another reason we hate selling is that it seems pushy and annoying. The typical image of the salesperson is someone who's talking a mile a minute and overwhelming a prospect until they are helpless and ready to buy.
Actually, in order to sell well, you need to be a good listener. You need to understand your prospect well and understand their needs. After offering your service, follow up with them to see what they liked and what they'd like to see improved or changed.
A Personal Process
We often see sales as impersonal. People are just numbers. You go for quantity over quality, hitting as many prospects as possible until one buys because it's a numbers game. But good salespeople connect personally with their prospects. First, you make a personal connection. Then, with respect for your prospect, you work together to find solutions to their problems.
Confidence Issues
Many of us hate selling on a much more gut level. The reason it makes your skin crawl is because of those two simple letters: NO. To put it simply, rejection hurts. Even when you know it's not a personal rejection, it can still sting when you go to great effort to explain your product and the prospect, in the end, says ‘No’.
There are many things you can do to build up confidence. Confidence grows naturally through experience. The more you face rejection, the tougher you get to it. But you can also gain confidence by understanding your product well and how it genuinely helps people. If you know the strengths of your product, you can better communicate this to prospects.
We will be following up with blog posts that focus on the blocks that keep you from effective selling. Our posts will also include step-by-step ideas on how to turn prospects into purchasers, and how to overcome the negative feelings you have about selling.
