I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, focused on launching a writing and advisory business around personal finance for GenXers. I’m blogging here daily to track my progress. In Saturday Sales, I learn about and plan for selling products and services.
I’m starting from ground zero learning about sales. I don’t even know what I want to sell yet, though I have a few ideas:
- Eventually I want to write, publish, and sell a book about personal finance for GenXers, that upends conventional wisdom about how to manage your money
- I’m thinking I may build a SaaS product that allows people to set up their own buy/hold/sell system and get notified when any of their positions have triggered buy or sell recommendations.
- I continue to think about selling my paintings, both through in-person gallery shows and online. I did sell one painting so far but that was kind of a fluke, not based on any systematic approach to selling them.
- In the short run, perhaps I want to sell premium newsletter subscriptions, premium downloadables (e.g., an overview of a simple market timing model), or even individual financial coaching sessions.
Here’s a good starting point: 9 Sales Basics that Every Beginner MUST Know by Marc Wayshak.
And here are his nine tips, with my summaries of what he intended by each tip.
- Don’t reinvent the wheel — approach selling using systematic, proven techniques instead of muddling your way through.
- They can’t hurt you — your sales prospects are not a danger to you!
- Have a system — you aren’t born a great salesperson, you get there with practice and by picking a proven selling approach then following it.
- Know your first 30 seconds — Create a 25-30 second elevator pitch. Memorize it and be ready to use it when someone asks, “what do you do?”
- Drop that pitch — Don’t start your sales conversation with a prepped talk about how your product is the best in the market. “Engage prospects in real conversation.”
- They don’t care about you — they care about what’s happening in their world. “The less focused you are on yourself, and the more focused you are on them, the more likely you are to really engage them in a valuable meaningful business conversation.”
- Get them talking — this will make it more likely you move on to the next step and close the sale.
- Demonstrate you can solve — the main question that prospects have is “can you solve the problem that I’m facing?” not “what does your product do and what features and benefits does it have?”
- Next steps are EVERYTHING — “Always be scheduling next steps.” If your prospect doesn’t want to schedule the next step that is a big red flag.
In tip #3, Wayshak repeats what I read in Mel Robbins’ book The Let Them Theory. She says:
Every business has a formula. Follow it….
Formulas exist because they work time and time again.
For me, that means figuring what kind of business I’m building and then following the formulas people have figured out to make those businesses work. If I’m building a coaching and advisory business that’s going to look different than a content business (books, premium downloadables, newsletter subscriptions, podcast sponsorships) which will look different from a SaaS business. And of course the sales approaches I need to use will differ too.