I Am Not Good At Selling

Show Notes

Background

Cathy Smith began her journey as a marketing professional in 2001, and has helped thousands of businesses to grow. Cathy specialises in helping coaches and is dedicated to showing you how to get your first clients, and many more. If you are ready to take your coaching practice to the next level, then you are in the right place. Whether you are just starting your coaching journey or you’re an experienced coach not seeing the results you desire, this podcast is for you.

Selling is Serving

“I’m not good at selling”. This is a conversation I hear a lot, particularly from coaches. I’m not good at selling. I love coaching. I love helping their clients. Maybe that’s you, but I’m not good at selling. Well, that’s probably not a useful thought. So what if you were to reframe that?

What is selling? We’re serving. We all like to serve. We like to help our clients. We like to get them the best results that they can get. So it is serving. So by not selling to your clients, you are not able to serve them. And by not serving them, the learning curve might be a lot longer than it needs to be.

So if you think about selling as serving and reframe it a bit, what does that do? Does that help you the most? For most people, it does. Because when we’re thinking about selling, we’re thinking of all those icky stories. We’re thinking about the words that we’ve got to use to manipulate people when they really don’t want to buy. We’re thinking about the objections and how we’re going to overcome them, and what words should we be using?

But what about if we’re just selling from the heart? I’ve got this solution. If you are a coach that is struggling to get enough clients, you’re not getting the thriving business that you would like. Would you like to have a chat? In that sense, is it overly salesy? Does it sound like I’m pushing you into it? You can go get.

That’s me. Okay. I’d like a chat. Oh, yeah. That’s me. No, I don’t want a chat. Oh, that’s not me. I’m good. So you’re just making a choice. I’m offering you a potential solution, and you’re just making a choice. And that’s all selling needs to be. So if you’ve got that solution to the person’s problem, would you like them to at least have the opportunity to make a choice?

Sell Your Story

So when are you thinking about selling? How can you do it better? Well, there are lots of different ways. Obviously, you can go and get training and you can do sales training, but what can you do as a fundamental right at the very basic level? Think about stories. We all love a good story, don’t we? And we like to tell stories generally.

So what is it that you can tell a story? Maybe you’ve helped somebody. Maybe you’ve got them over that hurdle. Maybe this person is very similar to the person that’s in front of you. What case studies have you got? What stories can you use? And as most of you coaches have had a previous life, they’ve done something before. What can you adapt out of that?

What can you tell them that’s going to really hit home and make it happen? So I was talking to a lady this week and she’s in the coaching realm as well. And she said, I’m not good at selling. But she’s in weight loss. And I said to her, have you got a story? Have you got some people that you’ve helped? Oh yes, loads of people. We’ve done this and we’ve done that. We’ve done all the rest. Well, what if you make that into that one perfect story, a story that you can tell. And no, it won’t be perfect to start with, but start somewhere. So tell people about the results that you’ve got for other people. Now obviously protect their confidentiality.

And depending on what your agreements are, make sure that you’re not disclosing too much. But in general terms, you can tell people of the stories that you’ve made. So I helped a client that couldn’t get their messaging right. We did some sessions with some brainstorming. We came up with a few things. Some things landed. Some things didn’t. And then click, it was perfect for that person.

And man, they find it easy when they’re doing selling because they’ve got the messaging that works exactly for them. They’re comfortable with it. They like the way it sounds. And it sums them up perfectly. So sometimes it’s a case of playing with something until you’re comfortable with it.

Build Your Brand

You can also consider building your name or your brand. Like me, I use the attraction maven. At first, it was a bit clunky. Nobody knows what that means. Nobody understands what that is. The Maven is for expert. So I’m the attraction expert. So when we build websites, obviously we want to attract headline customers. So by using that, I got over that. Oh, you’re a web designer and I’ve got one of them. . And then as the years went on, it just became, I’m the attraction Maven. I wasn’t the manager. I wasn’t the CEO. That became my title. And it became easy.

And quite often people would say exactly that. What is that? And that would be the conversation opener. And that would be them approaching me. So sometimes it’s a case of having that story or that title or that little word which just becomes a conversation opener. And then you can say, oh, I see you’re struggling with this problem. Coaching might help.

Don’t Sell but Add Value

This is how I can help you with that solution. Or better still, this is how I help other people like you with that solution. So just think about it as that kind of thing. And sometimes it is literally giving them that point. You’re here or there. And that’s all they need. Be careful not to give them the whole thing because obviously then they’re not going to need to pay you.

And that’s another place where people go wrong. They don’t want to sell, so they give them everything. And that person goes, oh, that console was amazing. That free coaching was amazing. But they don’t want to come back because you’ve given them way too much. So just be careful about how much you are giving away. So by reframing the selling process, it makes you more confident.

And then it makes people easier to be able to believe what it is that you’re telling them and what you’re selling. Because if you’re confident about it, they’ll be confident about it. So think about adding value. How can you add value just a little bit before time? Like I said, don’t give them the whole farm. But show them that you can help them.

Show them that you’ve got things that might be of interest to them. So think about it as adding value and reframe it. And then that can be a mindset thing. Because if you’re walking around telling everybody you’re no good at sales, well guess what? You won’t be. So what is it that you need to believe? Maybe you can’t go from I’m no good at sales straight through to I’m a great salesperson.

Change Your Mindset

What is it that you need to believe? What are those little things, the little milestones that you can add? Maybe the next time you go to say, I’m not good at sales, just stop yourself. I’m a salesperson. Or maybe don’t say anything at all, because every time we reiterate something, particularly on the negative, you know, as a coach, then that’s going to get stuck in our brain.

So we really need to think about that mindset of what are we saying to ourselves? What are we putting out there in the world? And what are we telling other people? So if we say we’re not good at sales, well, are they going to want to buy from us? They might say, oh, she knows what she’s talking about, but she can’t sell it.

So it’s not about selling it. It’s about being confident, offering the solution. And if you think of marketing as problem solving, you’re just solving that problem. And now you’ve got the solution that they can use. And if they say no, then think about why. Do an evaluation. Was it the wrong product for them? Was it the wrong time?

Was it the wrong price? Or were you just not quite confident enough? And what can you do next time to maybe make that more confident? And if you go back and do that evaluation, don’t beat yourself up about it. Okay, well, I made an offer. Okay, that’s a good thing. I didn’t quite do this as well as I could.

Build Relationships

Talking to a friend is much easier than talking to a stranger. You get to know what the problem is. You can nurture them, particularly if it’s somebody who has expressed interest and maybe is not quite ready. Well, what can you do to help them? Do you have a lead magnet? Are there things that you can help them with?

I had a PDF so that it has a few questions on it that can be answered. What are the top three things that your people are struggling with? Can you help them with one of them or part of one of them? What is it that you can give them value so they can understand that you’re just the person for them?

So, you know, when we have loyalty cards, it might be from a coffee shop. Once you get close to getting that free coffee, you’re more likely to go there more often or quicker. So you can get that free coffee. You don’t change your opting to buy. So what if your people are like that? What if they’ve got your lead magnet, your free PDF, and now they can do maybe a one session or a small course or something like that that you’ve got to offer.

You’re giving them a little bit to try before they buy the main dish. So sometimes sales can just be, let’s give them a little something, a bit of a taster, and then you can do it. Other times it’s about video. If you can see people, hear people, see their mannerisms, you can go, yep. Cathy knows what she’s talking about.

Links

Coaches Marketing Roadmap Book

Contacts

Cathy Smith Coaching
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