5 things that changed the way I thought about sales

A business can’t be successful without sales. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you offer, what you charge or how desperately you want to bury your head in the sand at the sound of the word sales, all businesses need new customers. But that doesn’t make selling feel any less icky, pushy or stomach-churning. We started our businesses to do what we love on our own terms, not to convince people our products are worth buying. 

You can read all the sales strategies you want (Google found about 1,890,000,000 results for ‘sales strategy’ in 0.64 seconds) and I’m sure you’ll come across something you find useful. What you can’t ignore is how you think and feel about sales. That has a massive impact on how you sell and whether potential customers ever take the leap. 

So before deciding which sales strategies you want to try out, look at your relationship with selling. These 5 realisations helped me to take more opportunities to sell, come across better when selling and ultimately build my customer base and revenue. 

How you feel about sales matters

Before your customers can have confidence in your product, you need to show confidence in your product. Pay attention to my wording there! You can have confidence in your product and not show it because you’re too worried about saying the wrong thing or being rejected. If you don’t like selling, that’s going to come across in your sales conversations and make it harder for people to connect with you and believe in your product. Bringing positive energy into sales makes a difference to how much we do it and whether people buy.

Childhood experiences shape how we sell

Replacing all the ickiness around sales with positive energy starts with understanding where the bad feelings have come from. Often our fears and worries can be traced back to childhood experiences. Yes, even the businessy things like selling. What did you learn about sales and money growing up? It could be things you witnessed your parents go through, things you were told or experienced, or cultural and social beliefs. An image that comes to mind for me is a pushy double-glazing salesman. I don’t want to be like him!

Sales is a win-win

What we’ve been told or learned about sales often isn’t true. Or it’s a distortion of the truth. In the film Matilda (what a classic), her dad is a used-car salesman who manipulates people into shelling out on shit cars. That doesn’t mean anyone with anything to sell is manipulative or over-charging. Most people (you included!) are selling genuinely useful and high-quality products and services so making a sale is a win-win. Yes, the sale makes you money but it also benefits the customer. They’re getting something out of the deal that will make their life better. There’s nothing wrong with that. 

Your price doesn't matter

Us small business owners tend to get hung up on pricing. If you’re not worried about overcharging and putting people off, you feel frustrated about undercharging and devaluing your work. It’s a right old mess! Here’s the thing, your price doesn’t matter. Let me repeat that. Your price doesn’t matter. You can get bread for under a pound in Aldi. Do you think Harrods is going to lower the prices in its food hall to match? No! I’ve found people who charge more are actually more confident at selling because they have thought about not just selling a product but a whole experience to make the price worthwhile.

You can change the narrative

Just because you hate sales now doesn’t mean you’re going to hate selling forever. I’m not going to promise you’ll ever love selling but it doesn’t have to be something you avoid, dread and end up overcomplicating because you’re so worried about it. By looking at how you feel about sales and why, you can get to a place where you feel good about selling and hear more yeses. 

We’re changing the narrative around sales in the Find Your Vibe Business Club in October. We’ll start with journaling on how we feel about sales and why, identifying the original experiences that created the negative beliefs. Then we’ll look at what we want to change and the action we’re going to take to build our customer base and revenue. You’ll have opportunities to explore sales privately through daily journal prompts and with your fellow business owners through guided workshops and other group sessions. Sign up by October so you don’t miss a thing!