Growing Your Business and Sell with Grace
It’s no secret! Most of us women entrepreneurs are creative, passionate, hardworking; we are good at what we do but we have dirty little secret! We suck at selling and that is a big saboteur for our morale and our creative businesses. Most spiritually inclined women entrepreneurs equate being salesy with being sleazy, very unlady like, and refuse to participate in the game. As a consequence, they are left far behind in the competition. But it doesn’t have to be this way. That’s why as a Mystic Wealth Creator for the conscious and spiritual women entrepreneurs, I focus a lot on this area and teach women entrepreneurs the art of selling their services and selling them with grace. One of the guests on my radio show was Dr. Nadia Brown who too focuses on this very aspect as a trainer. Dr. Brown is the founder of Doyenne Leadership Institute, LLC and writer of Leading Like a Lady: How to Shatter Your Inner Glass Ceiling. Together, we were able to come up with a few tips for those women entrepreneurs who find the aspect of selling in their business a hard nut to crack:
Go ‘Out There’ Often
Mental blocks are subtle, unseen but they impact your action, your confidence and your creativity in a big way. Dr Brown suggests that no matter how many skills you would learn, they would be useless if you don’t overcome the mental block, the fear of selling in your mind and heart. She recommends that one has to face one’s fears. And the best or let’s say the only way to do so is to put yourself out there. I tell women entrepreneurs who suck at sales that if they need to learn selling, then it’s very much like swimming, if they are not going to jump into the water and keep putting it off, they will never learn to swim. So my recommendation to them is the direct approach: get out there and talk to your prospect. Pick up the phone and make that dreaded sales call. Approach your prospect at an event and introduce yourself. The more you put yourself out there, the more you would learn. With each sales call, your fear would go down a few notches. And that’s progress.
Pay Attention to Body Language
Fear is something that originates in the mind but is expressed through your body language: your gestures, movements, face expression, and choice of words. You may think that no one else can find out this dirty secret of yours but fear is most visible and apparent. It lowers your confidence level and sabotages many unseen and unrealized opportunities. Your prospects can see it and doubt your abilities. Your competition can sense it and use it against you. One of my clients, Audrey Pyon, used to feel so much afraid during her events that she used to lock her knees often and grip with her toes. But counseling helped her overcome her fear of selling and helped her land newer prospects.
Flip Your Perceptions of ‘Yes’ and ‘No’
Thinking that a prospect’s ‘no’ is your failure and feeling demoralized over it is also a saboteur. I tell the women entrepreneurs I train that getting people, your prospective client, to say ‘yes’ is a process. It takes time and you need patience. Even a ‘no’ is a connection established. Dr Brown very rightly points out that women need not to be afraid of rejection, stop fearing the ‘no’. She makes her clients do an exercise which comprises approaching at least 100 prospects; it doesn’t matter whether they say yes or no. She says that if you work long enough, approach enough people, you would eventually hear the ‘yes’. Also, Dr Brown has a free productivity tool called the ‘Courage Diary’, where she advises women not to measure their success solely on the basis of the number of ‘yes’ they acquire in their work schedule and record the ‘nos’ too. Even the ‘nos’ are a form of success because they show progress.
Back Passion with Real Work
Sales is hard work. It means finding your passion and turning it into a business but that alone won’t guarantee its survival. You have to put in real hard work and sweat into it. If you want the world to know that you are passionate about something, make yourself seen and heard in association with your business passion. Show them your authentic side, be it through sending an email, doing a post on facebook, twitter, and Instagram. It means doing a facebook ‘live’ feed. All these actions are a form of subtle sales generating activity, with a long term impact. Dr Brown recommends doing these ventures will get you noticed, help connect you with your next business prospect. Even if they think you are not right for them, they are likely to remember you and pass your reference on to someone else.
Selling through your heart is a creative and spiritual exercise. Instead of lying to your clients or employing manipulating tactics to land a client or retain him, trying to sell like man, let your inner conviction, purity, authenticity, and femininity speak for you. Clients are also looking for someone they can trust, rely on and build a long term relationship with. If you have been finding the sales aspect of your business, a hard nut to crack then I can help you overcome these fears. You can book exclusive time for yourself from my training calendar. The first session is exploratory and is completely free. Contact me
