‘Sales’ is not a dirty word. How to make selling easier.

Question. Do you enjoy selling? 

I’m going to bet that the answer will be a resounding no from a lot of readers. But I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be as excruciating as you might think.

We can all agree that selling is important can’t we? I mean let’s face it, without sales, we don’t have a business. So if we want to build our business and be able to invest in it and grow it, we need to have the confidence to sell.

What’s the big fear when it comes to selling then? Something I hear all the time is that people don’t want to be seen as ‘pushy’ or ‘money grabbing’ or that they feel they’re just not confident enough. 

I want to unpick those fears for you and give you some tips to make selling feel more natural.

You can sell, even if you don’t feel that confident.

Yes it’s true. To sell effectively you do need confidence. But I’m not necessarily talking about ‘karaoke queen’ confidence or ‘owning a room’ confidence. Having a quiet and assured inner confidence in your product or service can work just as well. Better in fact.

Knowing your product or service inside out, what it’s features and benefits are, why it is appropriate for your customer and the value it brings will give you all the confidence you need to sell successfully.

Have a pitch

What do you say when people ask you what you do? Do you freeze, stutter, break out in a cold sweat? To make sales, you’re always going to have to talk about yourself and your offer, whether that’s in front of a room of people at a networking event, online, or with individual clients. This is where a well thought out and rehearsed ‘elevator pitch’ will reap rewards for you. An elevator pitch is a 60 second pitch about yourself and your business which tells people in a nutshell, who you are and how you can help them.

If you need help crafting your elevator pitch you can get my £5.99 video here.

Be clear

Clarity is super powerful when it comes to sales. Be clear in your messaging right from the start of your customers journey. Be clear about your offer and its benefits, and be clear in your packaging and pricing.  Remember the ultimate goal is to make it easy for our customers to buy from us, and easy for us to sell to them.

Show your human side

Authenticity is a bit of a buzzword at the moment isn’t it? But it is important and it works. Showing your vulnerabilities makes it easier for your customers to connect with you and gives you credibility. Now, I’m not telling you to go all out with the sob stories here. But it’s absolutely fine, great in fact, to talk about your experiences and how they have shaped you. Why do you do what you do? What drives you to offer your product or service. Tell your customers a story – they will love it. 

Don’t be afraid to talk about times when things haven’t gone to plan either. Admitting you’ve made mistakes and talking about how you overcame them will help people to know, like and trust you – which is absolute gold.

Consistency, consistency, consistency

Have you ever heard the saying ‘your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room’?  Well, Jeff Bezos said that and he knows a thing or two about business. He’s the founder of Amazon. And it’s so true. Your brand is more than your logo and some pretty colours and fonts. It’s the very heart of your business right down to your core values. The way you speak and present your product should reflect this across every platform and in every communication with your customers. There’s no point in investing in email, landing pages or really anything else, if your brand and message isn’t consistent across the whole lot.

Customers need to be assured that you are as good as you say you are and that you are serious about your business and serious about offering a good service. When messaging isn’t consistent, confusion and doubt can set in. Not good.

How much should you promote yourself?

I get this question alot. Social media makes it much easier to speak to our target customers, and the temptation is there to bombard them with information about our products and requests for them to buy buy buy! But remember that people can unlike, unfollow and even block. Eek. The key is to add value. Nobody likes to be hard sold to. To keep your customers engaged and interested you need to be sharing content which is giving them value. Think about content which is entertaining, educational, interesting and relevant. 

There’s no magic formula, but think about a ratio of around 85% value added content and 15% promotional content.

The close

This is where it gets scary isn’t it. You need to ask the question. ‘Would you like to work with me?’ ‘Would you like to buy?’. But, if you have confidence in your offer and you have worked on building a relationship with your customer and listening to their needs, you’ve nothing to be afraid of. Really. It’s not pushy, it’s not money grabbing. You are making an offer. Not everyone will say yes, and that’s ok. Some people may say no now and then say yes later. Some people may never say yes. But some people will and ultimately, sales is a numbers game. The more people you speak to, the more opportunities you create for people to say yes to you. But you have to ask the question.

So remember, to win in sales, be confident, be clear, be consistent, tell stories, build relationships and have conversations with your customers. 

And then ask them: ‘Would you like to work together?’

Don’t forget to head over to my free Facebook group for loads of help and advice including daily live videos from me – I’d love to hear from you and how you get on with putting this advice into practice.

So, with all of this in mind… would you like to book a 121 Mr Whippy with me? 😉

Love Kate xx

How much should I charge? Price like a pro!

How to price your product or service so that it works for you and your customers. 

Is this you? You finally get a call from a potential client (more about why you’re not getting more of those later). They want to know what you charge. 

It’s a reasonable question, right? Of course it is. 

But you panic. 

You can’t remember how much you charge, or even worse, you don’t really know. (‘My service is bespoke!’ I hear you cry). You get flustered and mumble that you’ll get back to them with a price. Or maybe you pluck a figure out of the air only to kick yourself later that it was way too low.

It’s not a good look is it? Not exactly professional. 

Well if that is you, you’re not alone. One of the questions I am most often asked is ‘How much should I charge and how should I structure my pricing?’.  Imagine having everything aligned, automated and running smoothly. Think about how much business you could do without having to waste time thinking about what you should be charging. 

Don’t worry – Kate’s got your back. I’m going to talk you through some simple steps that you can take to ensure that you never have to have those awkward conversations with your customers.

Ever again.

Firstly, look at your competitors. What are they offering and what are they charging? Try to

understand what your ideal target customers have bought before, and for how much. This will help you to work out where you should be positioning yourself.

Of course, to do this, you need to have a super clear picture of who your ideal target customer is. You can find out more about that here.

You should absolutely know what it costs to create your product or offer your service. Think about things like time, materials and supply chain. If you don’t know your costs, you can’t possibly set a price. 

Spend some time working out what makes you different and special – this is a big part of your offer and makes you more valuable to your customers, and more confident in your pricing. Your messaging on your website, across your social media and anywhere else that you are seen by your customers should be consistent and clear and should show the value you bring. 

Should I show my prices on my website?

Tricky question? I’ll give you a clue. The answer is yes.

I hear it all the time. Business owners are scared to display their prices because they’re worried that the customer will be put off  by them. Well here is some truth. If you have done your competitor research, based on your ideal target customer AND you know what your product or service costs to produce AND you know what makes you different and special THEN you will be confident in your pricing. And if a customer is put off by these prices, then frankly, they’re not your customer.

But my service is bespoke.

Yes ok. Perhaps you offer a ‘bespoke’ product or service. That’s fine. But if you have all of the elements of your service or product itemised and priced, you can easily package them together to give the customer a price, or at least, a very good idea of what the price will be. Using the word ‘from’ is useful here.

Always remember the power of storytelling. By telling your customer about somebody else like them that you’ve helped and what they paid, you’re giving them a really good indication of what they can expect to pay, and what they can expect to receive. Posting case studies on your website or your social media is a great way of doing this.

Why am I not getting as many enquiries as I’d like?

Remember earlier I said that we would look at why you might not be getting as many calls as you’d like? Well, if your messaging isn’t clear, and you’re not displaying your prices, people will be put off. They’ll either assume that they can’t afford you, or they might just go to someone else who has made their pricing and offer clear. Because, newsflash, not one of us is offering a product or service which isn’t already being done somewhere (usually!)

The key message here is that we want to make it as easy as possible for our customers to buy and, as easy as possible for us to sell. With that in mind, you might want to think about offering pricing plans for higher ticket items, or subscriptions. And you should always think about how you can package your products for your customers.

There are some basic principles when it comes to pricing, but there’s a lot to think about, and a lot of leg work involved in getting to that point of being truly confident in what you are offering. You can find loads of great advice including daily live videos from me over on my free Facebook group, or if you’re ready to really take your business to the next level, you can find out about my Marketing Masterwhip programme here.

See you soon, Kate