The art of selling is a powerful tool.
Subconsciously we sell all of the time. Whether it’s getting our children to eat their broccoli, or telling our friends about a hotel we just stayed at.
Hell, we even sell when there is no persuasion required. Ever heard yourself ‘enthusiastically’ ask your dog to ‘fetch the ball’? Every single one of us has mastered the art of persuasion and we don’t even know it!
So why is it, when our offer requires payment, we clam up?
Here’s the thing… Women, are such heart-driven beings, that selling makes them feel uncomfortable, to say the least. Confidence blocks in their approach to sales, is the one thing that holds so many female entrepreneurs back from achieving their big vision of an extraordinary life!
It’s not that we haven’t mastered the art of persuasion, far from it. The root cause of all the awkwardness boils down to confidence and self-belief.
I’m Sophie, women’s sales strategist, founder of the authentic selling system and my mission is to change the way that women feel about selling. Sales techniques are useful, but they are not the cure. To achieve lasting external results, we must first do the inner work by changing the way we FEEL about selling. I am going to share with you now 3 tips, to banishing that ’icky’ feeling for good.
1. First and foremost before we go into any sales situation we MUST let go out of the outcome! Having a clear intention for the meeting is great, but when you’re with your prospect, you must view it as a means to deliver information and not let it turn into a ’convincing parade’. Letting go of the outcome helps you relax, build a relationship and heaven forbid actually enjoy the interaction!
2. This one’s a goodie! The very essence of making a sale is the skill of taking a prospect from unsure to sure. Knowing this, you can now think about applying your own methods of creating certainty. You can also see why it is a recipe for failure if we are entering a sales meeting with no confidence.
So here is a simple body language hack that will not only create confidence in the mind of your prospect, but it tells your own mind that you are certain. According to research undertaken in 1971 by professor of psychology Albert Mehrabian, over 50% of what we say to people is done through body language. What we also know about physiology, is that it sends signals to our brains about how we are feeling at that moment. This has a catalyst effect on the words we choose and our tone.
Body language is a tough one to implement when we are feeling awkward, so rather than trying to remember what your arms, legs, and toes are doing all in the same moment, I am going to help you out with this simple posture change that oozes certainty. Put your shoulders back and point your chest to the sky. It’s like the hunter-gatherer pose. Confident and ready to slay! Try it and make it a habit. If you take nothing else away from this article, it will serve as your secret confidence weapon forever!
3. I couldn’t mention confidence and self-belief without talking about apologetic and weak language. Just like with body language, it’s not just what we say to other people. The words we use affect the biochemistry in our brain too! I could make a list of all the apologetic words under the sun here, so let me name a few regular offenders and then set you some homework.
The worst offender for me is the word ’just’!! Oh, that word drives me around the bend, I am a serial ’juster’. It took me months to ’just’ banish it from my vocabulary! Ever heard yourself start a phone call with ’Sorry to bother you’. Why are we apologizing for offering someone our awesome service? Swapping words like ’just’, ’maybe’, ’might’ and ’hopefully’ to phrases like ’I will’ or ’I am’ will emit bundles more confidence.
Go through your website and sales materials and check them for weak language. Have a friend listen to you talk about your business. Note down any weak or apologetic words and then swap them for words that evoke thoughts of certainty & confidence!
I am CERTAIN that by implementing these simple tips it will unleash the sales savvy entrepreneur from within! (See what I did there.) And remember the next time you feel grossed out by the thought of posting some content online or hyperventilating over a sales call, lift up that chest bone!!
