💼 Hate sales? Here is what to do instead

My client, Colin, is a back pain expert. He is excellent at helping people overcome their back pain so they can live happy lives.

Colin gets a good number of discovery-style free advice call bookings via his YouTube channel where he gives genuinely free no-obligation advice to help people. This advice has been some of the best I have known any coach to give for free - he has had people tell him that his free advice has brought them back from the edge of suicide and others beg him to let them pay him because his free advice has helped them so much.

Colin’s clients ask HIM how they can pay him

However, only a small number of those extremely helpful discovery calls have led to sales. Why? Don’t all the business gurus out there say we just need to provide value and money will come to us? We clearly provide value, why don’t we get sales?

I ask Colin to record a few of his calls and to send me the recordings to review. The problem became clear immediately: Colin was uncomfortable selling (just as many people are!).

Now, I never advocate or practice hard selling. I firmly believe that you should never try to “convince” somebody to buy from you. In my opinion, selling is about providing people with the information they need to make an informed decision and to take action. Sales is about providing solutions, about helping people.

We always “sell” with integrity, ask the customer questions to better understand their problem and then suggest the solutions you think will genuinely help them (even when that solution is not something you sell! Trust me, it pays off in the long run).

Colin was a self-proclaimed hater of sales and salesyness. We will tackle that root problem together, but we needed a more immediate solution. How can you sell when you hate selling?

There is a very simple switch you can do to help improve your selling without being salesy: ask the person what they want the next step to be.

What would you like the next step to be? In an ideal world, what would I do next to best help you?

This switches the onus on you selling, to the customer selling to you. More often than not, they will outline exactly what they want you to do. If you can do it, fantastic, you can explain to them how the next steps work with you. If you can’t do it, fantastic, now you can explain to them what they can do to find that solution elsewhere and you have a better idea of what customers want. It is a win-win. Rather than “convincing”, you’re now simply listening and helping.

Colin made the switch and immediately closed his next two sales calls. He has been consistently converting clients ever since.

You don’t need to be in a position where clients are begging to pay you for this switch to work. Try it on your next sales call, it works.

Asking simple questions transformed Colin’s sales success (2 minute clip)

Asking what the customer wants the next step to be made an immediate difference

Another sale. From struggling to succeeding with sales from a quick and simple switch.

I shared this in my Work Smart Wednesday newsletter. Want the full set of related insights? You can read them here: https://worksmartwednesday.substack.com/p/work-smart-wednesday-october-9-2024

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