Grow With Soul: Ep. 52 Why You Think You Hate Sales and 5 Ways To Make Selling Easier
Today it’s just me, and I want to talk about the dreaded SALES. This is something that came up on a Q&A I did on Instagram Live recently, and it is generally just a perennial challenge for so many of us. Many of us feel deeply uncomfortable with the idea of selling, which of course causes one or two problems when you have a business and need to sell things. So today is a bit of a pep talk on changing that mindset and finding ways to sell that feel more comfortable.
Here's what we talk about in this episode
Why you think you hate sales
Building trust with your customers & clients
How to build trust with your email marketing
Planning your sales copy and Pitch
Using stories to engage people to buy
Be clear and honest, no smoke, no mirrors
Just get them to come back
Read the episode transcript:
Hello and welcome to episode 52 of Grow With Soul. Today it’s just me, and I want to talk about the dreaded sales. This is something that came up on a Q&A I did on Instagram Live recently, and it is generally just a perennial challenge for so many of us. Many of us feel deeply uncomfortable with idea of selling, which, of course, causes one or two problems when you have a business and need to sell things. So today is a bit of a pep talk on changing that mindset and finding ways to sell that feel more comfortable.
To start off, let’s go to the root of the problem. I’m going to tell you why you think you hate sales. We don’t notice when we’re sold to well, because we love the thing we’re buying and are excited by it, or we’re so thrilled to have found someone who gets us and can help us, that we’re just not really conscious of being sold to. We only really notice we’re being sold to when we’re sold to badly - when someone is pushing us to have something we don’t really want, when it all sounds too good to be true, when we feel a bit uncomfortable about it all. Therefore, we equate all selling with the bad kind, because the good kind we don’t even think of as selling - and none of us want to make people squirm yet we feel like that’s what selling just is.
First, we need to redefine it in our mind, and get back to the core of what sales really is - a mutual exchange. Think about something you own that you love, a favourite holiday or a course or experience that really transformed you. I bet you don’t feel hard done by for buying that thing, I bet you don’t feel like you were given a hard sell, I bet you don’t look back and cringe. I imagine that when you bought that object,, or that experience you were thrilled with it, and it brought value to your life. Here’s what we need to remember: sales is a mutual exchange between equals. Somewhere along the line, perhaps helped along by shows like The Apprentice, sales became gameified, where there was a winner who took the money and a loser who had the product. But that’s just not true - you and your customer are equal parties in this, you have something they want or need and are willing to pay money for, and you both leave the transaction equally as happy.
The idea isn’t to make anyone do something they don’t want to do. I think that selling can sometimes be equated with forcing someone to buy something or wearing them down until they do (I’m looking at department store perfume counters and trade show booths). That’s not what you need to do, especially if you have a service business and actually need the person to like you and be on board when you work together! Sales is introducing people to something that they are going to love or that is going to help them immeasurably, and showing them what they need to see to help them make a decision to have it in their lives.
The fundamental cornerstone of sales is trust. At a basic level, your website needs to look legit enough that someone can trust if they pay you money you’ll deliver the product. They also need to trust that it will be the quality you say it is, that there’ll be no hidden surprises. On the service side, they similarly need to trust that you can actually do for them what you say you can, that you won’t disappear on them, and they’ll end up with what they want on the other side of the process. So throughout all the elements we’re going to talk about, trust is the core - without it, no tactic or shiny copy is going to work, because the trust needs to be in place before anyone is even thinking of buying from you.
Trust is hard to build and easy to break. So, with that in mind, how can we start selling in a way that’s more comfortable?
Stay the same person
There seems to be this compulsion that when we think about selling, we think we need to become this new, girl bossing, hard hitting person. That even though every month we send out touching, whimsical newsletters, when it comes to an email for a course launch we have have to sound bright and peppy and use FOMO tactics and “wait, there’s more!” style copy. That’s because these are the kind of emails we receive that feel like ‘sales emails’. We notice we’re being sold to in them so we think that’s what a sales email just looks like, and in order to be professional or to do it right, we have to be like that too.
But actually, this is where you risk breaking down trust. If you’ve been sending these beautiful emails all this time and then you flick a switch and waltz into someone’s inbox like you’re on the shopping channel, it’s going to jar for them. They’re going to think ‘hold on, I thought you were this person with these values and I really liked you…but now you’re speaking like this and I feel uncomfortable and has it all been a lie this whole time?’ The trust they have in you will start to break down because you’ve gone against everything you were before.
This happened to me once. I was an avid listener to someone’s podcast and gobbled up everything she had to say - she was fun and sweet and understanding on the air and had some good ideas. I signed up to one of her webinars to get more of that good stuff. The webinar was going along quite happily, then suddenly she switched when it became time to sell. The kooky sweet girl was suddenly telling me that if I didn’t take her course I wasn’t in the top 20% of business owners, that you have to commit and invest if you ever want to make your business work. It was like a punch in the face and I was a little heartbroken that this person I’d really related to had suddenly whipped off this mask. The trust was gone, and I never listened to her podcast again.
All this to say: you are enough the way you are. People follow you and read your content for who you already are. They love your tone of voice, the way you explain things, the jokes you make. They trust you enough to be sticking around and continuing to consume what you do. That’s what they’re already sold on with you, so use that when you talk about what you have to sell. Be the person they already like, and it won’t feel like selling.
When you’re writing sales copy and planning a pitch, always think - 'what do they need to hear from me?' Not 'what do I want to say?'
Always always come at this from the point of view of the customer - what do they want and need? How is this product going to change their life? What is the struggle you can help them with? Sometimes, in the nicest possible way, what we want to say isn’t always that interesting to the consumer. For example, if you are a potter and there is a complicated process where you need to double fire to get a glaze to do a specific thing (I’m making this up), that’s really interesting to you and you’re super proud you’ve done it, but really your customer doesn’t really care about that, they care about what the inspiration was, how it will look in their home, if it’s dishwasher safe.
Similarly with services, if you’re a designer,, you could go really into the ins and outs of the software you can use, or a coach can talk about your approach and research and how you will behave on a call with someone. But really, the client doesn’t really care about how you’re going to do something for them, they care about what that thing is going to be. They care about the end result, the transformation in-between, the experience they’re going to have and how their life is going to be better on the other side. So talk about those things, those things your potential customer needs to hear.
Use stories
And by stories I mean the original definition, rather than Instagram videos. Humans love stories, we are drawn to them like moths to flame - they are how we bond as communal groups, and how we learn. Think about how much more engaged with a topic you feel if someone talks through a case study or an example, rather than just gives you a list of steps or reasons - perhaps you felt it earlier when I told the story of the podcaster’s webinar. We are wired to learn and understand through stories, so when you figure something out through a story it not only sticks better, but it makes you feel better too.
So, if we want to engage people and help them to see that what we’re selling is what they need, then stories are a great way to do this. It might be the story behind why you created a product, a story of someone who you have helped before, a story about how e-courses have helped you in the past, a story about a struggle overcome or happy ever after. Through the details, a customer can see their own situation reflected back at them, and can see their potential future in the outcome of the story, thereby helping them to make their own decision that this might be for them.
This has the added bonus of really not feeling salesy too. You don’t have to worry about saying the right things, or what sections to include, or 'am I hitting the USPs?' You just need to tell the story.
Be clear and honest - no smoke, no mirrors.
I know I quite often feel like I need to make it not feel like I’m selling something, that it should be imperceptible to the naked eye whether an email is a sales one or not. And this is OK, to a point. Yes, as we’ve discussed, sales copy should sound and feel like you and be an enjoyable enough read, but I think disguising sales as content is actually a step too far.
If I was talking about my course The Playbook that’s currently on sale, It’s the difference between something like “In the past I’ve struggled with being visible in a crowded market place and I know it’s a problem that so many people are wrestling with now; so I’ve created a course which shares everything I know on this topic and I am so excited to help you help more people to find you”. Versus “I’m sharing the secret to how I’ve maintained visibility in my business, click here to read more” and then you’re taken to a sales page where it’s going to cost you money to find out.
I think we’ve all been so burnt by the latter example that actually we feel refreshed by the former. We don’t want to be treated like we’re stupid, we don’t want to feel tricked. Going back again to the core principle of sales, this is a mutual exchange. If that course sounds like something that could help you then you’re empowered to go and find out more, if it doesn’t then I’m not going to trick you into clicking.
Just get them to come back
We put so much pressure on needing the sales in the first day of a launch period or the moment someone follows us on Instagram. But is that how you buy? Do you hear a coach on a podcast for the first time and immediately spend 200 pounds on their course? Do you buy a new cushion within the first five seconds of laying eyes on it? No, of course not, because you don’t trust them enough yet. You want to check out the website a bit, read a review of the cushion and perhaps weigh it up with another one you’ve been looking at. With the coach, you read their blogs and follow along with their work for a bit before you decide that yes you think they can help you.
It’s totally unreasonable for us to put the pressure on ourselves to make immediate sales, and sometimes that can convert to putting pressure on the customer. So my view is always to just get them to come back. Imagine you’re at a craft fair; if you’re anything like me you like to do a lap of the room, making mental notes before you decide what things you’re going to buy. If your business is a stall at that craft fair, you just need to give them enough that they feel they want to come back. If they’ve just found your business, let them follow and stick around at the back for a while; let them start building that trust. Make sure they’ve got the information they need, like when your sign up period for your course is closing, and then just keep doing you - keep posting in your tone of voice, keep sharing what they need to hear to make that decision, keep telling your stories. And trust, in yourself and in your product, that they will start to trust you too.