Sell Without Selling!

Fresh customers are an essential life force for your business and most businesses struggle to get more and more customers for their business. The frustration is to get in front of your ideal clients in the right way takes a lot of time, effort and energy.

The biggest mistake most small business owners do is that they try and sell every time they are in front of their ideal clients. A research shows that only 1 - 3% of your ideal clients are ready to buy now. Most of them would need anywhere between 8 - 32 touch points to reach the stage of buying. Now to these 1% customers, content that sells may be relevant, to most others it is not.

Let's look at it like the process of meeting someone for the 1st time. You don't propose marriage right out of the gate in the 1st meeting. You need to get to know them. More importantly you get them to know you - in the right way and the right light. Impress them by your brilliance just enough for them to listen to you and talk to you. To notice you.

Everyone wants to impress their clients and be present in front of them in a way that you shine more than your competition. If you want to do that - stop selling. Stop selling every time you are in front of them. Stop running an agenda with them.

What should we do then? If that's your question, read on!

5 ways you can increase your chances of selling without even selling

1. Educate them: Everyone wants solutions to their problems. Find out what are some immediate problems your clients have and then educate them with ways to solve that problem. Be genuine and authentic. If the solution is something other than your products or service, share that. Your only objective here is to educate your potential customers so that they sit up and notice. Best way to get noticed is to help rather than sell.

Action:

1. Share a new regulation in your industry
2. Share a newspaper article that will help them
3. Show them ways to get benefits
4. Warn them about potential challenges or challenging trends in their industry

2. Ask for advice: The best way to gain trust is not to give advice and show you are better than them, it is by seeking advice or seeking a favor. When you are humble enough to ask someone for their advice, they see you as genuine and authentic. Ask your customers questions and ask them their expert opinion on those.

Action:

1. Interview them on how they tackle a [particular challenge]
2. Do a survey on best way to do [a new thing]
3. Run an opinion poll

3. Show empathy: Don't always show your bright side. Share your challenges and your vulnerabilities. Be open and honest about the tough situations and let them know that you understand them and their challenges as you have gone through them as well. Don't always be the expert, be a co-passenger in their journey. The point to note here is, be honest and genuine. Don't make up stuff.

Action:

1. Share your story
2. Share a failure and what you learnt from it
3. Share your struggles with something new you are trying

4. Provide value: Give value first and earn the right to sell. People value those who provide value. Don't just sell blatantly, but if there is something you can do without selling, then do it. Remember it is a principle of humanity - what goes around, always comes around. Give freely. Give abundantly. Give consistently. Be a giver and you will see, people feel obliged to give you back.

Action:

1. Share a resource with them that will reduce their time involvement
2. Share industry best practices
3. Offer your time to answer their queries or resolve their challenges

5. Just gently guide them to the next level: Instead of going for a sale all the time, just gently guide them to the next step in your sales process. Sell that next step and not the final sale. Get them in to a discovery meeting. Get them to share their top challenges. Get them to just evaluate a sample. Get them to take baby steps with you rather than leap through the whole sales journey.

Action:

1. Invite them to a webinar
2. Invite them to meet your experts in a hot-seat session
3. Request for a free, no-obligation discovery meeting

Which of these actions resonate with you? Let me know in the comment