As someone with 15+ years of sales experience and trainings and seminars and more, I’ve learned the game of sales and found through all of my time becoming an expert, that sales is actually quite simple. However, we as entrepreneurs tend to overthink sales and in turn, I see people absolutely panic about where their next dollar is coming from. There’s a few things that I hear often from entrepreneurs (I’m sure you fall into one of the below if not a couple):
- You aren’t making sales.
- Your audience has run dry with no new interest.
- You don’t feel like you’re strong at sales.
- You feel like sales is awkward or scammy.
So let’s fix that shall we? Because being in business (I hate to break it to you) is about making money. Making enough revenue with low enough costs that you receive a profit for your hard work. That’s business. A hobby, an internship, a passion project is different, and that’s perfectly fine. But for those of you with a business you’re running, sales keeps the doors open. So we have to master it.
I’m not making sales.
I have heard this one nonstop from prospective clients which leads me to think 1 of 2 things happened: You either locked in really strong clients at the beginning that referred people to you so you never had to become an active sales person, or your industry had a boom that had so much natural general chatter around it that all of your leads were warm or hot without any real need to sell.
In this case, I’m going to ask you one question — how often are you pitching? If the answer is “often”, then get ready for the section on conversion strategies. But I’d venture to say that you’re not pitching yourself like you need to be. With sales, we see a 3-5% conversion rate on average (and this number is not industry specific so it can be a tiny bit higher or lower but … not really).
This means for every 100 people you reach out to, you may get 5 clients to say yes.
There are some things that can speed this up: creating authority in your audience, having a strong website, impressive testimonials, but the most important thing that will speed up this process is having a very clear product with strong deliverables and a price that encourages a “yes” from your ideal consumer. Start with product, go to pricing, and then you can care more about sales.
Everyone in my audience has purchased from me.
This ones a bit easier to solve (good news for you if this is what you’re experiencing!) You either need to 1) create an opportunity to re-engage past sellers with a more advanced offer or (my preference) seek out new circles who don’t know about you yet. You have a proven sales method since your audience has converted already, so get in front of new people, and you should see sales come in.
I’m not strong at sales. -or- Sales feels wrong or awkward or scammy.
This is where this challenge comes in – and tune in later this week when we dive into just why we, respectfully, disagree with this. Sales is all about natural connections, and when we think of sales being so gross or so wrong, it’s because something probably…is wrong. That’s ok, you’ll learn how to do things differently here, you’ll increase your sales skills, and you’ll realize that you have sales around you all day every day. We only tend to notice the annoying ones. Let’s be the sales people who lead with humanity – that’s where the $ is.
Looking for more ways to improve your sales skills? Join the Free Sales Challenge with 8 weeks of homework, training, case studies, and more to perfect your sales technique and understand the process better. I can’t hear that you aren’t making money because I know (and I’ve seen!) that there are ways to create a strong revenue in your business through sales in a way that feels natural and supportive instead of scammy, manipulative, or gross. You simply have to be shown the way.
Talk soon x Ashli
Join our Free 8-Week Sales Challenge for detailed examples, scripts, and how-to guides when creating ethical sales strategy. Simply click here to sign up for the challenge and let me make you money – for free – no strings attached.