Selling Tips: How to Serve Your Customers
by Selling to Them
by Molly Gordon, MCC
Look Ma, No White Shoes!
The used car salesmen in white shoes and belt with a loud plaid
jacket has become an archetype of selling. As a result, you may -- like
me -- have tended to keep sales in the closet, depending on the admiration
of your network and the kindness of strangers to bring in revenue.
Do you do your best to provide value without asking for reciprocity?
Do you write newsletters, blog, offer complimentary introductory session
or other benefits to prospective clients but back away from selling to
them?
How thoughtful. How generous. How unhealthy.
Yes, unhealthy. Because when you don't invite your customers
to reciprocate, when you don't issue clear, open, and regular invitations
to buy, you consign your business to a kind of financial anorexia.
The person suffering from anorexia has a distorted body image,
and can languish and even die from starvation, while being convinced that
they are fat. What's more, they are convinced that being fat is a fate
worse than death (literally).
Financial Anorexia
Do you have a distorted image of what it would mean to profit from serving
others? Would it be okay with you if people saw your business thriving?
Or do you cling to the notion that somehow starvation is a more artistic
or enlightened path? Heaven forfend that your clients or customers would
think you are in business for the money!
And of course, you aren't in business for the money
any more than a healthy adult lives to eat. Yet, your business
needs money just as certainly as you need food, and the more up front,
clear, and effective you are at selling, the healthier your business and
your relationships with your customers.
Sounds good in principle, but how do you sell effectively
without pressuring your customers and alienating your audience? Keep reading.
Selling to Serve
Your customers and clients -- like you -- have a lot more on their minds
than whether or not your work can help them. They could be crying out
for what you offer, but distracted by slings and arrows of everyday fortune:
leaky plumbing, aging parents, boomerang kids -- the list goes on and
on.
In order to help them, you'll need to open your mind to selling.
How do you keep selling from co-opting your values and your vision? The
answer is to build service into sales and vice versa.
Tips For Selling That Serves
Begin with the end in mind. Stephen Covey had this one
exactly right. (If you haven't read his classic 7
Habits of Highly Effective People, it's well worth your time.) Before
you sell anything to anyone, remember why you are going to do it.
This first key is the most important. If it is missing, you
will run out of steam before you even begin the sales process.
Remember the archetype of the white-shoed car salesman*? It
runs deep, and unless you consciously establish the service foundation
for selling every time you write copy or tell someone about your work,
you risk getting blind-sided by shame. And guess what? As soon as shame
starts to burble up in you, your customers pick up on it. Yuck!
Walk a mile in their shoes.
What do your "just-right" customers need to know in order to make
a decision? What could get in the way? What are the stakes if they fail
to act?
How many couples would not be together today if one
partner hadn't been willing to hang in there when the other hesitated?
If the course of true love doesn't run smooth, why would the course of
deciding to buy something that's a good fit?
When you stand in your just-right customer's shoes for a while,
you'll see what steppingstones they might need in order to buy something
that will truly serve them.
Are those steppingstones for everyone? Of course not. Is that
a problem? No, and to find out why not, keep reading.
Dance with no as well as yes. When you are
clear about who you are serving and how, open your heart even wider so
that people who don't need what you offer or who are not ready to buy,
are free to decline. Rather than arming yourself against someone's decision
not to buy, open yourself to it.
Imagine a prospective client or customer considering and then
deciding against your offer. Watch them closely in your mind's eye without
pretending to know what they are thinking. Just watch.
When you let go of what you think that they think about you,
what do you see? Do you notice that they are simply taking care of themselves
as best they know how? Good. Now notice how your heart eases as you unhook
your self-esteem from their choices.
This heart's ease completes the circuit from intention to
serve to decision to sell to blessing all of your prospects whether or
not they decide to buy. Selling becomes a conversation in which you advocate
for those folks who want and can benefit from your work so that they can
notice, consider, and decide.
*By the way, I love my car salesman, DJ Dougherty at Peninsula
Subaru here on the Kitsap Peninsula. Why? Because he served me in
every step of the sales process. Two and a half years after buying "Blanche"
from him, I still tell everyone I know about how happy I am with my car
and with the process of buying it. How would it be if your customers told
their friends about you because they loved the way you sold to them?
* * *
 Learn
more about Authentic Promotion - a comprehensive small
business marketing resource that turns marketing and self promotion into
a path of increasing self-awareness, authenticity, and right livelihood.
In particular, the strategies of maintaining your work life balance you
learn to apply will build the solid foundation for your authentic prosperity
as an entrepreneur.
* * *
Contact Master Certified Coach
Molly Gordon at:
Shaboom Inc. Life could be a dream…
PO Box 195
Suquamish, WA 98392-0195
mgordon@authenticpromotion.com
As a business coach and small
business marketing consultant, Molly Gordon, MCC, is available in Greater
Seattle Area and internationally |
