So you want to win some new clients. Where do you start when it comes to selling your expertise?
There are shelves and shelves of books, containing the ‘secret to great sales’. But really, there isn’t one. The truth is that what’s likely to be most effective is for you to find your own approach. The way to sell that fits with your values will motivate you. It will feel natural. That’s the one that is most likely to work for you.
Where do you start? A good place to begin is by getting your mind set and clear. Once you get your mind set and clear, the rest will follow.
Here are my top tips for finding your ‘sales mindset’.
Find your motivation: Ask yourself ‘why?’ Why do I want more sales? What’s important to me about this? What does ‘more sales’ mean? What would it look like? What do my ideal clients look like? What would matter to them? What’s important about that to me? The qualities that matter to you and that you want to go looking for will emerge from your answers. Getting clear about this early will motivate you and power you on through any barriers that arise on the way.
Look at what’s around you: Who are you working with right now? Who fits with the template of the client you’ve just described? Who do you get on well with? This will help to sharpen your vision still further. You may even want to sit down with them and talk with them about their vision for their business. This will send more positive encouragement into your system.
Consider how you will measure progress: Clients signing up is one measure. But that’s an end goal. What about some performance goals, some measures of how you’re doing in terms of the things that will take you to your end goal? These could include, calls, conversations, meetings, thought pieces, service calls, feedback meetings. What are your building blocks?
What does the journey look like: You may not be able to map it in detail, but put the ideal finish point at one end (describe this) and put your starting point at the other. They’re your bookmarks. Now go to the start and take a step forward. What’s there? What’s happened and what needs to happen to get you there? Keep doing this until you get to the end and you’ll have your plan.
What are the barriers going to be: When you’re working on your journey, look out for the points where you can’t quite answer or you have a question mark or a fuzzy view of what you’re doing. These are the points to note and come back to for more attention later.
If you work your way through the above steps you will be on the road to sales success. If you’d like to use me as a coach to get clear on your ideas in the above areas, get in touch with me here, I’d be delighted to hear from you.
What other thoughts do you hold when it comes to selling? Do get in touch, I’d be pleased to hear from you.