5 Indications of Thirst for Selling Knowledge

BusinessSales / Service

  • Author Jo Harris
  • Published September 26, 2010
  • Word count 928

Are you thirsty for knowledge and don't know how to quench your thirst? If that is how you feel, read on.

Do you have a low awareness of your problem and the impact it is having on your business? For example, do you blame the customer, your product deficiencies, or the fact that you are too busy trying to make it work?

Then you are my ideal client!

What are the thirst symptoms that I can help you with?

  1. You loath "Sales"

You may not actually say this but I know you are thinking it! You blame the generic term "sales" for your woes.

Your product should speak for itself. You know you are right, it should speak for itself. But I want to ask you - What are you doing to help your product find its voice, its message, its why, how it is relevant for client, how it can help your client? How can you find out what your client needs?

When you do try to "sell", the image of the used car salesman springs to mind. And your self-talk turns up the volume. You feel like you are looking at yourself and you can't help but think, "I don't like how I am sounding right now. But if I don't ask for the job/business then I won't be able to pay my bills this week."

And finally you drag the chain. You have a whole library of a litany of excuses as to why you don't sell or won't sell or haven't got time to go to a networking event even when you know you should.

  1. Loss for words for what to say

To overcome a classic case of verbal diarrhoea or the opposite, verbal constipation, you need to do two things.

Firstly you need to get intimate with your product. What is it? Who is your ideal client? Why should people buy your product? What is in it for them? What are your strengths, what makes your product unique? I have a range of tools and resources that will help you facilitate this awareness.

And secondly, I want you to commit to the following:

"I will practice, and improve, and polish the words I utter to sell my goods, for this is the foundation on which I will build my career and never will I forget that many have attained great wealth and success with only one sales talk, delivered with excellence" (Og Mandino, "The Greatest Salesman in the World", Federick Fell Ed 1968 pp71).

It takes practice. Not just practicing what you will say in your head and on paper - but out loud. Record yourself and listen and critique yourself. Or better yet, get someone you trust and whose opinion you value to listen to you and give you some great feedback. Or record yourself and send me the audio file to review and give you feedback.

  1. You don't reach an agreement with your client at the end of your conversation.

If you don't reach agreement with your client by the end of your conversation it means that either

  • You didn't have a clear purpose for your discussion - it was not set up tightly at the beginning. Maybe you didn't check that your client's outcome was the same as yours?
  • You didn't explore your client's view of their world to elicit the problem that you can solve or what they need to achieve their goal.
  • You didn't listen empathically.
  • You didn't qualify your customer to ensure they matched your ideal client.
  • You discover through the course of your conversation that they are not your ideal client. If this is the case - simply ask who they recommend you talk to? Or who else do they know that they believe could use your product.
  • You didn't realise that sometimes a great outcome is getting a new lead from the client you were talking to. Just gaining agreement for them to see you again is sometimes an AWESOME outcome.

Remember all is not lost. Live to fight another day. Be kind to yourself - keep your ego in tact and your motivation high!

  1. Vague feeling you know you could do it better but you don't how.

This is great as it shows that you have some personal awareness that there has to be a better way.

To solve this you need to invest in yourself. You need to "Sharpen Your Saw" (Habit 7, Stephen Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, 1990, The Business Library, Melbourne).

You need to do an evaluation of your current skills and attributes to work out a personal development plan for yourself. Contact me to obtain a copy of the competencies of a Sales Person so you can do some effective personal evaluation.

  1. Your business is stalling or you are losing money.

If this is the case you really need to have a look at how you are leveraging your existing resources of

  • You - your skills, attributes, beliefs and values
  • Your product - who is your ideal client, why your ideal client should buy your product
  • Your time - how you spend your time each day (is it around generating business or just keeping busy) and finally
  • Your money - where is your money going and are you getting a good return on investment for every dollar you spend?

If you can commit to being a reflective practitioner of you and your life, you are on the way to experiencing the success you dream about.

Contact jo@sellingyou.com.au for more information and assistance. I would love your feedback.

Copyright © 2010 Jo Harris Consulting, All Rights Reserved.

Jo Harris is the founder of Jo Harris Consulting and Selling You. She provides coaching, training, facilitation, and key note speaker engagements to individuals and employers.

Jo Harris Consulting looks forward to the opportunity of meeting with you to discuss your coaching and training needs.

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