I’ve never been a great sales person. Heck I don’t even think I’m a good sales person. As a matter of fact, I hate selling. However this weekend at my golf club, people thought I was a great sales person (which I found rather humorous) because I was easily selling raffle tickets to raise money for the Susan G. Komen Foundation.
On August 5th, we are holding our annual Rally for the Cure Charity Golf Tournament. We instituted a member-only raffle to raise money. I had no trouble working the Player’s Lounge this weekend to sell tickets because I am passionate about this cause. I didn’t feel like I was selling something but rather offering people a chance to get something valuable and help our cause. People readily took out their wallets to buy their raffle ticket.
What made this an easy sell?
- We were giving them something of value (a $20 raffle ticket could win their annual dues)
- We could relate to everyone because many of us have experienced the effects of this disease either themselves, through a friend or a family member
- We were passionate about this effort and want to beat our donation from 2009.
Tips to Make it Easy to Promote and Sell Your Services
I started thinking about how this relates to selling your products and services. Selling is sometimes very hard for most small business owners because sales is something we’re not good at or feel comfortable doing. When I’m talking with a prospect, I don’t sell – I market. What’s the difference? By having a marketing mindset, my conversations focus on helping the other person rather than closing the deal.
In order to make this necessary function easier for you, remember these tips:
- Create a valuable package with benefits that are hard to resist – talk about how you can help them either solve a problem they have, improve something that is not working or move them toward a desired outcome that seems unreachable.
- Build a solid relationship with your ideal target market – people are more likely to develop a business relationship with you if they know, like and trust you. Take time to get to know your prospects. Provide them valuable information with no strings attached. If you have a relationship and they need what you offer, you are more likely to make that sale.
- Talk about how they will benefit from your products and services – remember people only care about “WII-FM” – what’s in it for me. Avoid talking about how you conduct your services and rather, focus on how these services will help your prospect achieve a desired outcome.
- Project your passion for what you do – if you don’t love what you are doing, it is very hard to promote it to others as your audience will know you aren’t being honest with them. Build a business around your values and passions and it no longer feels like work. Then when you speak about what you do, you do so in a way that is not selling but rather educating, advising and helping those you meet. Working with you becomes a natural.
If you don’t believe in what you do, what you offer and how you can help others, you will never be able to sustain the time and effort it takes to build a successful business. But follow your passion, develop an expert reputation and educate your audience on how what you do can help them be more successful, and you will never have to sell your services again.
How passionate are you about what your business offers?
For those who want to read about Nancy Brinker, the woman behind the Susan G. Komen Foundation, there was a super article in More Magazine’s May 2010 issue.
