4 foolproof tips for becoming a sales queen
Truth: as an entrepreneur, being good at sales is one of the most important skills to have. However, you don’t need to already be a sales expert when starting your business — it can be something you pick up along the way!
If you’ve never been in a sales role before, diving into it for your own business can be challenging. There’s always the fear of coming off as sleazy or the awkwardness of asking people for their money, but that all comes down to shifting your mindset to realize that your products or services are helping people--and what could be better than that?
Discover these 4 tips below for foolproof ways to become a sales queen.
TALK WITH THE LEAD VIA PHONE OR FACE-TO-FACE
Unless it makes sense to chat about your products or services via email, always opt to have these conversations via phone or face-to-face (on Zoom or in-person). This is why: although you can use all of the exclamation points and emojis you’d like within an email, people aren’t necessarily going to be able to hear in your voice or see in your facial expressions how excited you are about what you do. More often than not, people will skim the email until they get to the price, and if they don’t like that number, it’ll be easy for them to stop the conversation from there.
However, if you’re speaking to someone on the phone or face-to-face and they really connect with you, the price means less to them, and they become more likely to say yes to what you’re pitching them, therefore giving you a much higher conversion rate than email.
Now that you know how to go about conducting a stellar sales call, it’s time for the fun part: where to get sales!
LET YOUR CONFIDENCE AND PASSION SHINE
Everybody knows that no one will love their business as much as they do… but if they find someone who genuinely feels passionate about their work and the impact their business is making, that’s a big indication that this person would be a good fit in helping to grow or scale their business. If you feel excited, so will they! And if you feel confident in what you’re describing to them, they’ll feel confident in how you can help them.
In other words, if you don’t really sound like you know what you’re doing, people will worry if you are actually the right person to work with. And if you don’t show excitement in what you do, people will assume that you won’t put as much effort or work into them and their businesses.
Don’t hold yourself back from showing how you really feel about the work that you do because that’s what brings the business!
REVOLVE THE CONVERSATION ENTIRELY AROUND THEM
People love talking about themselves, so don’t shy away from asking questions about them, their pain points, and where they could use support. Gathering information about their pain points and needs specifically is crucial because you’ll need to use that information to craft your pitch to them! Ultimately, whatever you’re offering will solve the problems they’re facing, which is why it’s important to cater what they share towards that pitch.
In addition to this, you’ll want to keep a notebook or clean Google Doc handy to jot down all notes to reference at any point in time.
STAY ON THEIR MIND AND FOLLOW UP
If the prospect doesn’t give you a definite yes or a definite no while you’re speaking, the conversation definitely doesn’t end there--you can’t just assume that just because someone hasn’t gotten back to you yet doesn’t mean that they’re not interested!
People don’t respond for a multitude of reasons…
They’re busy.
They open your email and forget to respond.
Their inboxes get chaotic.
And more. It’s very easy for someone who fully intends on working with you to forget to contact you, which is why it’s your responsibility to prevent that from happening! You’d be surprised how many times people will tell you that they never saw your email come through or they meant to respond to you earlier when you follow up again.
In addition to reaching back out via email, we’d also recommend following leads on social media so that you can share some extra love on their posts and help to stay top of mind. It’s also a great idea to send them resources that could benefit them, which is another way to make sure they don’t forget about you without you directly saying, “Hey! Please hire me or buy my products!”
After storing all of these tips in your mind for later use, there’s one last thing to remind yourself: practice makes perfect. You might not totally nail your first sales conversation, and that’s OK! Your consistency, hard work, and effort will have you feeling more and more comfortable and confident as time goes on.
Be gentle and patient with yourself, and watch the sales flow!