Episode 27: Why We Are All Natural-Born Sales People

This episode is going to be one of the most exciting episodes for people who don’t like sales. As lots of you know, my background is all things in the world of marketing, but one of the things that is central to my role, whether I like it or not, is sales. So in this episode, we’re going to talk about selling for non-sales people.

Here are the highlights:

{1:02} We’re all born sales people who don’t recognise we are

{2:09} What makes a great sales person?

{3:11} What traits do you have in common?

{4:26} Good marketing promotes and positions the business well

{6:47} What is social selling?

{8:23} What is good marketing?

{11:45} Creating marketing content around frequently asked questions

{14:09} Marketing your products or services based on customer online behaviour

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Welcome to Episode 27 of Dawn of a New Era. The podcast Chronicles of a Serial Entrepreneur with myself, Dawn McGruer. And I would say that this is going to be one of the most exciting episodes that people who don’t like sales.

Now, my background is in all things in the world of marketing, but one of the things that is central to my role and whether I like or not is sales. And in this episode, we’re going to talk about selling for non sales people.

And this is something that’s so true to my heart and something that I speak a lot to individuals every single day.

You know that when you say to people who are entrepreneurs or in a role about selling, then, oh, no, no, that’s not my thing. I know I can’t sell.  Weirdly enough can all sell. And, you know, you might be thinking, well, you know, I’m not a salesperson. And some of the salespeople out there might be thinking, well, you know, only salespeople can sell. I don’t think it’s true. I think we are all natural salespeople. We just don’t recognize some of the traits. Now, you’ll be selling yourself all day long. Now, some of us will be hiding some of their accolades and achievements, you know, maybe not as overt as others in sharing those accolades and achievements that they’ve done and  the successes. But we’re all salespeople now. Think about some of the most successful businesses in the world. You know, think of the global global companies, the world’s biggest companies and the people that started them and what were their traits, you know, were they natural sales people? Were they professionals?  You know, did they have huge commercial backgrounds? In fact, the majority is not. None, none of those traits. They started out with an idea, a mission, a vision, something that they wanted to do, a passion that they wanted to take to the masses. Yeah, but these people have gone on to drive absolutely massive revenues and growth for these organizations.

Now, if you think about what a good sales person is, there’s probably lots and lots of entities that go within it because there are human skills, there are psychological skills and things that, you know, being able to recognise people’s emotions by being able to empathise, being able to persuade and convince.  You know, there are so many different traits.

But literally, I think one of the things you have to put faith in yourself in, is that you are a natural salesperson. There is no one more passionate about what you do than you. And the thing is, is that if I asked any of you to talk about something that you had a huge interest in, you would be able to sell it to me. Absolutely. Without a doubt. So think about the trends of highly successful people and highly successful, you know, leaders in the world and think about what these people do, OK? And think about what traits do you have that are similar.  Now, every day you will be selling your business without even knowing. Now, the unfortunate thing is, is you’re probably really good at selling your business to your friends and family, telling them what you do, telling them all the amazing benefits, the products and services.  But this doesn’t always translate to the end user and the potential customer. And what has to happen is that sales and marketing are a match that is indeed made in heaven. And many, many people for many years have seen these entities, at the broadest spectrum of each other in terms of, you know, marketing does this thing sales does this thing. They’re not connected. Our departments do not speak. You know, and I’ve witnessed this in corporate and it’s just shocking because marketing and sales are together because, you know, I always talk about marketing as a revenue generator.  And, you know, it’s such a controversial topic because so many people were saying, Dawn, you know, we set a budget, you know, for advertising and X, Y and Z. We have no idea what we got return on investments, just the money that we spent.

I mean, in this day and age marketing, you can have a measurement for every action that you take in the world of marketing.

And good marketing is about promoting the business, positioning the business and giving this this the business or brand such awareness and presence that selling is happening all of the time because the whole differentiation is, is that if you think about if someone doesn’t know about your product or service, how do they start then buying it?

Well, it’s actually more about the psychology, the consumer behaviour and aligning what you’re talking about, the proposition of this product or service to the end user.  And just being able to talk genuinely, authentically and share some form of social proof about, you know, why it’s good and most importantly, what’s in it for them, what’s in it for the end user, the customer. So think about it. If you are looking to be a marketer or a salesperson, for me, it’s about presenting what the proposition is and why people need it.

Now, if it’s being constructed and market research has gone on and you know that everybody’s challenges this, it serves this need and it solves that challenge, well, that’s the sort of information that people need. But as much as people might see that as marketing, that’s actually persuasive content, you know, and that is selling. So I feel that it’s impossible to market to someone without having some form of sales, because even if I told someone about, let’s say, one of our courses.  let’s say I was talking about our diploma and I was talking to someone about what I did and why I’m so passionate about the diploma, that person will go away with all the information I’ve given to them and they’ll make a judgement on what they think.

Now, if they were truly sort of thinking, well, you know, that sounds amazing, not that it’s amazing for them or they would even want to do it. The great news is, is they’ll become my sales person. They’ll become my marketer because they’ll tell someone else about it. And this is the whole essence of sales and marketing and the fact that, you know, every day we’re bobbing along thinking, you know, we’re not good at sales, we are good at sales.

Everybody is a natural born sales person. In some way. We’re just different in the in the traits and the ways that we do it. We’re not talking like a traditional salesperson. I think a lot of people’s perception is, you know, sales is about, you know, outbound cold calling, you know, real pressure, closing a deal. Selling doesn’t have to be this because social selling, which is the act of using platforms online like social media to sell your products without actually selling, is all about presenting information.  Persuasive, convincing information that someone needs to be able to make a decision to comfortably buy that product because they know it meets all the challenges and the needs.

Now, it could be an impulse buy. So there’s a certain mix of skills and knowledge and discipline that you will be learning and will be inherent to you. And you may be are not utilising all of these day to day.  Because the simple fact of selling, about getting a product to market, to getting people to buy it, to getting paying customers is about presenting the proposition in the right way so that it is enticing and it is creating desire and it is answering all the frequently asked questions and all the sales objections that come with it.

And then ultimately there’ll be a percentage of people who want to buy. But the difficulty comes or the disconnect comes is when I look at business, who’s got an amazing product to service and they are not, you know, reaping the benefits or getting the level of customers or revenue that they want.  It’s simple. It’s because they are not getting this information to their end audience. So for me, it’s not just about the selling side of things. The marketing is the distribution. It’s this bridge building across to make the sale. Now, if we think about what good marketing is, its marketing is content and content is is the fundamental thing.   You will meet nobody who hasn’t engaged or consumed some form of content that has bought your product or service. Because when you ask them, how did you find out about me, they might say, oh, I saw your website or I saw a social media post.This is all coming from content. Now, for me, the sale wouldn’t have happened without the marketing. So they are a natural born connection. And for me, it’s a synergy that has to happen within a business. So if you drill back to the basics and think about how well you are selling or how good a salesperson you are, you have to then walk back to number one

Why was the product or service created in the first place? What need did it serve? What challenge did it overcome? And all of this needs to be communicated in content, be it video, social media post, email, whatever it’s going to be, podcasts. And this has to be translated so people first of all, have awareness about the product. Secondly, then if you spike someone’s interest, what’s the first natural thing that we do? We start running problems in our minds and objections and reasons, and we come up with questions and then we start evaluating other options because we are really savvy individuals who need to go and assess it.

Now, if you walk your own customer journey and you go through those steps and you plot it out and then you look at how well you’re marketing and how well you’re selling through this process and then what the actual real results are at the end. The focus every single day should be I have this product or service. How many people know about this product to service at this present moment in time? And your shift should be that you are focusing on the whole end to end funnel, not just how do I get new people, how do I get new people? Because that’s just exhausting. And I promise you, as an entrepreneur, as a marketer, as a salesperson, that will just lead to burnout.

It’s not good business. You want to be, yes, getting people into your world each and every day. But you have to think about what the process is and this customer journey, mapping it out is instrumental to success.  People who truly understand the customer journey and work on getting it to be more immersive. Driving this digital experience online or getting better conversions are the ones that are doing really, really well. And the great news is, is that it’s not hard to do.

You have to think about how do people find out about your product or service? Where do they find you? How are you reaching them? Because the scale of probability, quite honestly, is that if you’re reaching new people every day, it’s quite difficult not to sell because if you’ve got the right content and this is really where the key is and they always say content is king, don’t they? And this is true because it’s the convincer, it’s the material that entices.

Now, when I think about our own products and services, I think about the different questions. Now, I can always say that there’s a handful there’s probably five frequently asked questions that we get asked day in, day out.

And those are the sorts of things you would create content around, you know, could be articles or videos, explainers, things that overcome those sales objections or handle the frequently asked questions day in, day out. And don’t be scared about sales objections. The most common ones are price, time, you know, resources available to do things.

So if you think about it, you have to handle those. You can’t bury your head. And, you know, by handling them head on, you’re being true, being authentic and, you know, very transparent. You will build a trust by being truthful.

And, you know, I always say our CIM diploma is not for everyone. Because it’s not. It is not for everyone. Because there will be certain people that it just will not fulfil their need or objective, you know? So if someone came to me and said, right, I’m thinking about doing this course, this is what I would like to achieve with it. And this is the reasons why I’m doing it. This is my background. And I felt that there was a disconnect.  I would tell that person, but I would give them a different option. You will build better, deeper, more long term relationships with honesty rather than just trying to sell to people. Because what happens when you sell to people and you try and convince them and then they go over the line, you’ve almost pushed them over the line and there’s still a bit unsure. You always get customer problems.  Because you’ve sold them the wrong thing and that goes back on you unfortunately. When you have an issue nine times out of ten, it’s because the content that is available, either they’ve not consumed it or you’ve not created it. So you’ve got to think about walking the walk, going through the customer journey and thinking about each and every day this product or service I have. How do I get it to more people? How do I get more people to know about it? How do I get more people to express an interest in the generic topic? Not necessarily it.

So it could be that you have an amazing beauty product. So people who are interested in beauty, how do you reach those people so you can’t drill down to the exact target market straight away, but you can certainly market to people based on their behavior online. So joining groups, going to social media platforms where, you know, your audience is hanging out, talking to these people and creating content that’s not just on output, but is asking questions, doing research and talking to people about their likes, their wants they’re challenges and creating material that you can pop out to these people each and every day.

Now, the great thing is, is with you know, if you do an article, you can break the article down into lots of different pieces of marketing content for social media and so on, and the same with video. So you don’t need masses of content. You just need really good quality content. And once people start to understand who you are.  You’re getting brand and business awareness, again, it becomes very difficult. You know, if you’re reaching new people every day. It is really difficult not to sell, really difficult.  because as long as there’s proposition there’s actual need and and it’s something that there is demand for, why on earth wouldn’t it? And if you have the right content that’s really talking through the proposition, you have this online presence and visibility, be offline or online wherever you’re selling, then that is half the battle.

And then you’re using content every day and looking at the customer journey. Now, you’ll have to create different content based on if someone doesn’t know you based on, you know, someone who’s already inquired. But these are the stages that you have to think about from acquisition through to nurturing that person through to conversion.

And it doesn’t stop there. You want to keep your lovely customers, you know, happy and also keep them in your radar. And this is why social media is so powerful and, you know, social selling for me in the coming years. As you know, digital marketing gets more and more embedded in our lives. You know, everything is about online marketing at the moment. It’s going to be so powerful if you get the content right and you’re really speaking with your consumers and not just to them.

You know, building communities and things like groups are super powerful because if you you know, let’s say you had this beauty product, you started a beauty group and you had lots of different advice and guest experts and things like that coming into it. Those are the people who are a ready made market for you. And they have a community where they’re going to be definitely more engaged, more outspoken, and then they’re going to have an opinion and they’ll create content themselves and ask questions. So, you know, when you come to share a product or service, they’re definitely going to be more receptive. So to the end of this podcast. My final parting word is, honestly, believe in yourself. You are a natural born salesperson whether you know it or not. It could be buried very deeply inside. You may not have recognized some of these traits, but I promise you, your passion is your salesperson. And just think about the conversations you have. You know, what is the most powerful way that you could convince someone to buy your product and service? And quite often it’s just by talking to them. So how can you recreate that online? How can you recreate that to lots of people?

Well, one of the most convincing pieces of content is things like video, interviews, doing masterclasses, discovery sessions, all of these things that really does create desire, answers the FAQs and handles any sales objections. So think about your customer journey, map it out and try and understand what it’s like to be in your consumer’s shoes.

So onwards and upwards guys. Have an amazing week and let me know how you’re getting on. Come and join us in the group Business Concert Marketing Motivation Mindset on Facebook. You can connect with me on all the normal channels @DawnMcGruer and @BusinessConsort. And don’t forget to head on over to dawnmcgruer.com and subscribe so you don’t miss out on future episodes.

Take care and have a wonderful week.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode. And don’t forget, I’m going to be with you each and every week. So download and listen on dawnmcgruer.com or on iTunes and come and join us in our Facebook community too.  All the details are on the website. And I’ll see you next week.

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Multi-award-winning speaker, strategist & best-selling author of Dynamic Digital Marketing - Helping to inspire entrepreneurs to rise to meet today’s challenges and be powerfully present to shine online.

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