Why You Suck at Sales

Mar 22 

Originally posted on the blog: https://www.jpmpartners.com/blog/why-you-suck-at-sales

Here's why you suck at sales -

1. First of all, it's all about you.  Why is it all about you? You’re not a narcissist, but in your sales demos, it sounds like you are. You're talking about yourself way. too. much. You're talking about your product or service way. too. much. How much do you talk in your calls? How much do you let the client talk?
2. You don't really care about them as much as you think. What you really care about is making a sale and it breathes through every word you say and write. Your client is prey.
3. You don't really care about them.  Yes, I said that twice. Either your client is prey OR you are the prey and your #1 priority is protecting your ego... I know because you don't even attempt to overcome their objections: Have to think about it? Ok, great. Have to talk to someone else? Ok, great! Don't have the budget right now? Ok great, when can I follow up? If you really cared about the customer you would make it your number one priority to help them solve their problem NOW and if that means they need to buy from you, then you need to get over the discomfort of (what you perceive as) confrontation and confront them. Get them out of their own way because what's holding them back from moving forward is the same reason for all of their problems.
4. But Jess, what I sell is not really that critical - THEN DON'T SELL IT. Why are you selling something you don't believe in? Why are you creating something you don't believe in? Not everything that's created is sell-able - that is unfortunate but true. BUT chances are that if you created something with your creative spirit, you are just forgetting or not acknowledging how important it really is, and not communicating that to the customer so of course, they don't see the importance, either! 
5. You're in your own way.  You keep getting in your own way, you don't even hear that every sale you don't make is because you told the customer not to buy. You assume going into a sale that every single person will not buy. Yep. You focus on all the reasons they won't buy and then guess what happens... exactly those reasons you imagined. So who created them, you or them? We projectile vomit our objections all over our clients all. day. long. Your clients’ objections are really your own and you keep buying them.
6. You keep buying your own excuses. Yes, in your way again - but when you don't make a sale, don't do your outreach, don't hit your goals, you make excuses every. single. time. and you keep buying them. Hopefully, no one else is buying them from you. But if you're your own boss, you need to fire yourself. NOW. And hire a new you.
7. You trick yourself into believing that you don't have enough --- enough time, enough money, enough connections, enough, enough. ENOUGH! You have enough. In fact, we all have enough and we have limitless amounts when we make it our priority. No time? Really? How many hours of Netflix did you catch this month? You are downplaying your ability to perform and deliver; you have access to an UNLIMITED amount of time and energy when you FOCUS.
8. You're a victim - it's everyone else's fault except your own - the market, the timing, the price, ignorant customers… when you own that every single time someone came on a demo and you don't make the sale it's your fault, you will have radically different results. People don't show up to demos to waste their time. NO ONE. They came to buy something. The faster you can accept that the easier sales will be. When you own that it's ALWAYS your fault and there's always something to learn, you will magically understand exactly what to do differently next time, or where to seek help. But you can't get answers to questions you don't have. Take accountability, however, and the questions will appear. If your intuition doesn't know the answer it will guide you to someone who does.
9. You confuse instinct with intuition.  The louder voice in your head is your instinct - your fear-based, protective voice that is pushing sales away and sabotaging your success.  Your intuition is very quiet right now but she knows exactly what to say at exactly the right time and to whom. Your instinct is to run away, to avoid conflict, to make people like you. And doing whatever it takes and whatever excuses or procrastination you need to do in order to avoid the pain or fear of REJECTION - which means you probably don't even try to close the sale.  The customer closes the conversation and tells you the next steps when it should be the other way around. When customers are in the driver's seat they will always take the safe route which is to do nothing at all (or go with your competitor who put their ego aside to help the customer).
10. You are better than what you are showing the world right now. You are capable of so much more AND YOU KNOW IT. Show up. Show up. Show up. When you're tired, REST. But don't overestimate the time it takes the body to replenish energy. You're mostly tired because of a lack of boundaries in your business. Taking on too much, not delegating, thinking you don't have enough so you have to do it all yourself. And then there's no time for magic to happen -the unplanned and the unexpected. When you show up you tell the universe you are open for business. 
11. You think you're working but you're not working. You are running a busy-ness, not a business. You are "working" all day long but not moving forward because all work is not the right kind of work. A business is a system that runs itself WITHOUT you. A busy-ness is a scenario where you've essentially created a job for yourself that can't survive without you. The only work that matters when it comes to sales is when you're talking to customers. Everything else that is not talking to customers should be trying to get in front of customers. You fill your time up with a lot of other stuff that your ego tricks you into thinking is important because you are "putting out fires all day." Your business is running you, not the other way around.  Nothing else can take priority over sales because without sales your business has an expiration date. IT'S GOING TO DIE. Not even the irate customer who's going to cancel or the product code that broke. None of it matters as much as sales. Do not create a business where you have to drop everything to handle a customer service issue or product issue. Until you have a scalable sales team, SALES is your main priority. And even when you have a sales team, SALES is your main priority as CEO. RE-VEN-UE or nothing else in the business happens. Investors can not even save you from this - they are also interested in one thing: RE-VEN-UE.
12. You think "selling" is a dirty word so you keep looking for shortcuts so you don't have to "sell.” You convince yourself that you're being efficient and time-saving, but it is not getting you sales so who cares if it saves you time? The real reason is your relationship to selling has everything to do with your relationship to yourself and how much you believe in what you deliver. Truth is, we are selling all. day. long. to everyone. But we don't consider it selling when we really believe in it. So if selling feels icky - then the only question to ask is, is what I'm selling worth it? And if you're selling YOU, which we all are in some capacity, then are YOU worth it? I say without hesitation, "Yes, yes, YOU are worth it" but it doesn't matter what I say because self-worth is an inner game. You really need to answer that question because when you do, sales is easy. There is nothing in the way of you and helping people when you are confident af. Not cockily over-compensating for a poor self-image type of confidence, but genuinely confident, self-love, self-esteem, kind of confidence. Because YOU ARE WORTH IT. And you deserve to max out your human potential.

If you want to suck less at sales, you need to get on my next FREE Sales Dissection, where I dissect a volunteer's sales call right in front of your very eyes: HTTP://freetraining.jpmpartners.com