How comfortable are you in asking people to become a paying client?
Once you know what’s getting in your way, it will be easier to overcome these issues.
By Kaya Singer
(BizNik) If you own a small business you likely spend more time marketing than everything else put together. You also know that in marketing there’s an order and a system to the process and when you follow the system correctly, it works and it brings you more clients.
One of the biggest mistakes small business people make is trying to sell to people before building a relationship and before they have shown an interest. If you love your products and you know your service is amazing, you want to tell them and pass on your excitement. However, if you do that part too soon, you lose people because you haven’t developed a relationship, listened to them and genuinely learned who they are and what they care about.
There are actually seven steps to the marketing process and the sixth part is called “put forth a good sales process with an easy way for someone to become a paying client.”
You need to know your potential customer’s need or problem, you build empathy, they have accepted your freebies, you know they need more of what you are offering, At some point people need to be invited to work with you and get more involved. However, there are three counterproductive issues that can happen and tend to show up in this part of the process. They are all caused from focusing on yourself rather than your potential client.
It’s very important to thoroughly do the first five steps of this process well before you focus on number six. If you don’t skip over the first five steps, your potential client will feel a strong connection with you and be ready for the next step. Number six will be mostly done by the time you get there. Sales only feels like sales when you are jumping ahead. When this happens you feel out of sync. You feel it and they feel it. Much of number six is about your empowerment and your attitude. What are the three issues that affect your empowerment and attitude at this stage?
1. Your unresolved money issues. Fear or discomfort around asking for money is a big issue with many solo business owners. The biggest money issues are around your own self-worth.
2. Pushi-itis. Feeling so passionate about your offerings that you want to tell everyone what you do and how great it is, but if you tell everyone too much it can feel like a sales pitch rather than relationship building. In this case, people feel pushed and it makes them uncomfortable and they end up wanting to get far away from you.
3. Fear. You are so worried about people thinking you are pushy that you hold back, disappear and miss the cues that people want to connect with you and move to the next step of the pipeline. This has to do with self-doubt.
How comfortable are you helping people to make the decision to work with you? Do you tend more toward error number one, two or three and why? What is one thing you can do to guide people in a way that supports them and their process? Here are a few ideas.
• Overcome your money issues. Do whatever it takes to delve inside and develop a more positive relationship with money.
• Value yourself and what you offer. Focus on your self-worth and acknowledge your skill and expertise. Operate from strength rather than self-doubt.
• Focus on your clients needs and the benefits they want. Keep your focus on your clients all the time. Listen and listen more. Remember it is not about you.
• Get help from someone who is not part of your business. You need to be able to speak freely about your fears and not worry about being judged.
• Develop a strong marketing plan that will help you to stay focused on the whole process.
If you do all these things, not only will you overcome the obstacles to selling but you will become a stronger and more empowered leader of your business.
Kaya Singer’s of, Awakening Business Solutions. 7 Steps to an Impeccable Marketing Plan- free hand-out. Steps to getting more clients.
Learn more about the author, Kaya Singer.
