Sarah Lakhani Consulting

Where Brand and Business Come Together This is the space where ambitious women come to bring clarity to their ideas, structure to their growth, and meaning to the businesses they’re building.

Sales

Can you learn to love sales?

by Leave a Comment

Ah, sales.  You can’t have a business without it and yet, many business owners despise it.  What type of person are you when it comes to selling and – perhaps even more importantly – how can you learn to love sales?

Sales is a fundamental activity for your business success

First, we have to acknowledge that sales is an incredibly important activity in any business.  Without it, you literally don’t have a business.  As many people have said before me, if you’re not making sales in your business, you’ve got an expensive hobby.  In order to have a business, you need revenue coming into it – and without sales, that just won’t happen.  Sure, you might have some word-of-mouth and referral traffic, but even then, particularly when it comes to services, there is still a good chance you’ll have to get on a call to pitch your services and close the sale.  And, something to be aware of is that referral traffic may dry up eventually, so you always want to be able to generate your own sales so that you’re not dependent on an outside source for it.

So… what do you do if you’re not the amazing salesperson you want to be?  

Let’s look at the three types of salespeople that exist

Type #1: The Believer

This type of salesperson loves to sell because they believe in their product/service and they want to serve as many people as possible

Type #2: The Anti-Salesman

This type of salesperson hates to sell because they’re repulsed by the idea of being salesy

Type #3: The Snow-to-Eskimos Salesperson

This type of salesperson wants to sell their products/services to whoever will listen, no matter whether they’re a good fit or not

What type of salesperson is The Believer?

If you happen to be a Believer, then hats off to you, keep doing what you’re doing.  The reason why the Believer sells so easily is because of their perspective on why they’re selling.  They focus on serving rather than selling.  They understand that when someone purchases their product or service, they receive something that they have been wanting or needing.  If you like to think of things in terms of push and pull, they don’t push their products to their customers, they allow their products to be pulled by their customers.  This is easier said than done, but we’ll get into some key principles in just a little bit. But before that…

What type of salesperson is The Anti-Salesman?

If you relate to this type of salesperson, you definitely feel resistance to selling, and most likely equate selling to being “salesy”.  You don’t see a middle ground, and likely just put your offer out there and tell yourself that if someone wants it, they’ll buy it.  But the issue with this perspective is that very often, we intend to purchase something but we get distracted, or we need to feel better about the purchase, or we have questions that haven’t been answered, or a whole host of other reasons that get in the way.  

What type of salesperson is The Snow-to-Eskimos Salesperson?

You hopefully don’t really relate to this type of salesperson, but it’s likely that you are repulsed by the idea that you could be perceived as this type of salesperson.  If this sounds like you, then you’re The Anti-Salesman above, but let’s explore this type of salesperson, too, and dive into the persona of the salesperson you don’t want to become.  The Snow-to-Eskimos Salesperson is on a mission to sell their product or service to anyone.  This is the pushy salesperson with the morally questionable tactics.  You shouldn’t want to be this type of salesperson.  And the good news is that you don’t have to be!  You can conduct sales activities without becoming a Snow-to-Eskimos Salesperson. 

The question, therefore, is: how can you feel good about selling? 

That is, essentially how you’ll learn to love sales, right?  

  1. Remind yourself that you’re not taking anything away from your customers.  You’re not forcing anyone to buy.  You are simply offering your product or service – which they have decided they want – in exchange for money.  Break it down like this and you’ll soon start seeing this as the fair exchange that it is.  
  2. Have a way to gauge interest and ask those who’re interested to “raise their hand”.  You don’t want to be The Snow-to-Eskimos Salesperson, so make sure that whoever you’re selling to is genuinely interested.  There are so many ways to do this: you can host a free event (on a topic that relates to your product/service) and ask people to sign up, you can invite people to a discovery call (if you’re a service provider), you can sell via your own channels (social media and email) giving those who aren’t interested the opportunity to unfollow or unsubscribe or you can open up a waitlist or pre-sale as part of a campaign.  There are probably plenty of other ideas too, but these are some to get your creative juices started.  
  3. Learn more about peoples’ buying habits.  More often than not, we need to be reminded of something several times before we actually hit the purchase button.  This is true even of things we already know we’re going to buy.  It’s not about convincing someone to purchase.  It’s about providing them with multiple opportunities to make the purchase.  Study your own purchasing behaviors – and those of the people around you.  And then remind yourself of these behaviors when the time comes to sell.  
  4. Understand – deeply –  how your product or service benefits your customer.  If you understand this, you’ll be able to explain clearly, concisely and with conviction, why someone should purchase your product or service.  And this changes the conversation from being a situation in which you feel like you’re trying to sell something to someone to a situation in which you’re able to demonstrate empathy and provide a solution to someone.  It’s a very different energy.
  5. Lastly, build a relationship before selling.  Create marketing content that speaks to your ideal customers.  Connect with them via comments and DMs on social media.  Set up free events that they can attend to become better acquainted with your products and services.  Have a website and social media accounts that provide the information your ideal customers are looking for.  Selling in the 5th or 10th encounter with your target customer is much easier than selling in your 1st or 2nd encounter.  Create a community or a customer journey that your ideal customer goes through before you ask for the sale.

Learn to love sales: The Conclusion

Essentially, everyone can learn to love sales.  I truly believe that.  It’s a skill and a change in mindset, and if you’re not there yet, follow the 5 steps above and you’ll see a shift in your sales.  After all, you have something to share with the world, and the more people you get it to, the bigger the impact you’ll make.  This is about more than just you and the discomfort you currently feel about selling.  It’s about serving and creating an impact in the world.  

Did this article help change your perspective? Share it with others who might need the same!

The Secrets to Scaling Your Business

by Leave a Comment

When you first start building your business, you might find it manageable to do a lot of the work yourself and to save costs by not purchasing software or platforms which you’d only use for specific things a few times a month – if that.  And that is totally fine, and probably the smart thing to do – until you have your product or service nailed down, and the customer experience mapped out. Then it’s time to scale your business.

And to scale, you need to automate.  

I’m going to talk through the absolute necessities for automating portions of your business in this article.  

These are things that will allow you to buy back your time, giving you that ability to take a step back from the operational side of your business and focus on your next big step.  

And as Founder or CEO, that is exactly where you should be spending a good chunk of your time. 

So here are the top 5 places where you should be automating your business operations.  

Scaling Your Business – Top 5 Tips

You’ll notice that the first three are all email sequences.  Email is the easiest and most effective way to communicate your brand, your offer and your overall business to your potential customers.  If there is ONE thing you choose to automate, let it be this.  

Scaling Your Business – Tip #1: An Automated Opt-in Sequence

So the first thing you want to do is to create an automated email opt-in sequence.  

An opt-in sequence is based around your opt-in item, or your lead magnet.  A lead magnet is essentially a free item of value given to someone in exchange for their email address.  For product-based businesses, these tend to be discounts. For service-based businesses, these tend to be e-books, guidebooks, access to a course or a webinar. And for software businesses, these are typically free trial periods.  

So once you have your opt-in, you will definitely want to automate fulfilling the customer’s request.  The last thing you want to be doing is manually sending out the lead magnet or discount code.  

Ok, so this first tip is easy, right?  Hopefully you already do that, if you have a lead magnet.  And if you don’t have a lead magnet, you should 100% get one in place.  More on that another day.    

Scaling Your Business – Tip #2: An Automated Email Welcome Sequence

The second thing you want to do is put together an automated email welcome sequence.  This is typically a sequence of 3 to 5 emails that any new subscriber would receive.  

Personally, I deploy 3 emails, 24 hours apart.  You might choose to do 5 emails, 48 hours apart.   Some businesses do welcome sequences that are weeks and months long.  Choose what works for you.  

You should use your welcome sequence to literally welcome people into your business.  Showcase your personality, your brand, your values, your products and services. Let them get to know you and your business or brand.  

And remember, done is better than perfect.  Get 3 emails in a sequence, move on to automate the next thing, and then come back to this and add to it later, if you’d like to make it a longer sequence or want to make changes to the emails.  

Scaling Your Business – Tip #3: An Automated Email Sales Sequence

The third thing you want to do is put together an automated email sales sequence.  

This sequence can be updated and swapped out every time you have a new product or service you’d like to push, or you can have a general one, particularly if you run a product-based business.  

The sequence should consist of approximately 3 emails, and should be triggered at the end of your welcome sequence, ideally with a gap of a few days or even a week or two.  

In this sequence, you’ll showcase your absolute best products and services, throw in some testimonials if you can, and really demonstrate the value of your offering.  Make sure you provide quick links back to your website for easy purchase or more information.  

The aim here is that after receiving your valuable lead magnet, then getting to know you, your potential customer might be ready to make a purchase, and you don’t want to miss that opportunity.  

If they don’t purchase, don’t despair! Perhaps they need to get to know you a bit more, particularly if your business sells high value products or services, or items that are not purchased frequently.  

Top tip: Monitor how many emails it usually takes (between the opt-in, welcome sequence, sales sequence and newsletters) before potential customers are – on average – ready to buy from you.  Then try to have that number of interactions with your potential customers in your welcome sequence and sales sequence (i.e. add more emails to the sequences so you can automate those interactions).  

Scaling Your Business – Tip #4: Automating Admin Work

We’re more than halfway there! 

The fourth area you’ll need to automate is not an email sequence.  In this tip, you’re going to start automating portions of your business that require you to spend a lot of time going back and forth with clients/customers or potential clients/customers.  If you’re a service business, getting a calendar booking app on your website is a great way to avoid the 3-4 email exchange that takes place when setting up a discovery call with a potential client.  Same thing goes for coaches and other “meeting” based businesses.  I personally use Paperbell to schedule my coaching sessions and my workshops.  I absolutely love it and highly recommend it for coaching and consulting businesses.

Scaling Your Business – Tip #5: Automating Lead Generation

Lastly, but very importantly, you should deeply consider using paid social to drive leads to your social media pages.  The great thing about doing this is that it continues to run in the background, and over time, you’ll know how much revenue you can expect to make based on the amount you spend on paid social.  

For example, once you’ve tested this a few times, you’ll figure out your conversion rate on your lead magnet page, and then your sales page.  So when new potential customers are brought into your ecosystem through paid social ads, you’ll know what percentage of them will opt into your lead magnet, and after that, what percentage of those will move forward with a purchase at the end of your welcome and sales sequences.  

You can even set up your lead magnet to have its own sales sequence for an item that is more closely related to the lead magnet.  

The idea here is that once you know how well you can convert potential customers into paying customers, the only thing that you need is more customers, and paid social is a great way to get them.  

Scaling Your Business: A Summary

In conclusion, the only way to scale your business is to start looking at what you can automate within it.  Manual processes and interactions will always be a bottleneck to scaling, so those are areas you want to focus on first. 

Scaling your business is an incredible way to buy back your time.  Don’t be afraid to invest in it, as you’ll be able to spend more time building and growing your business strategically with the time you’ll have bought back!

As always, good luck, I believe you can do this, and I’m always around if there’s anything you’d like some help with.  

If you found this helpful, share it!