When you think about selling, what kind of emotional response do you have? Be honest…it’s okay if your gut reaction is more ‘ow’ than ‘wow’. Today I’ll talk about some of the most bothersome mindset blocks around sales, and how we can replace traditional pitching with sales strategies that actually feel good. Over the next several episodes, we’re going to explore how we make sales authentic and natural….and how can we truly help others while creating the revenue we need to sustain our businesses!
Read the transcript below:
Steve Napolitan: Welcome to more business, more live daily. Today I want to talk about sales. Whether you think it’s icky or you’re taking from someone, we want to talk about it because it is the way that we create cashflow. Even if you’re in a nonprofit, you have to get donations, so how do we do this authentically, with compassion. Let’s jump in. So this word sales it’s gotten a bad rap and if you want to change the vocabulary you can but ultimately sales is how we generate business or even if you’re in a nonprofit, how do you get donations? There has to be a communication and a trade of energy. And first even let’s talk about money for a second, money in itself is energy. I don’t know any paper currencies, maybe there are some out there but any of the major countries they’re not backed by any precious metals anymore like the United Kingdom’s pound used to be backed by Sterling silver, the United States dollar used to be backed by gold. All that’s gone away and now it’s just printed.
No one really knows how much money is in the world at this point. People can guesstimate based on gross national profit and all these things but the reality is no one really knows. And this is just an energetic exchange even if you barter, there’s an energetic exchange, you’re trading for this item and that is the power of reciprocation. Guy Kawasaki talks, I think in his book Enchantment, I might be misquoting, I should’ve looked that up before I talked about it but he talks about the power of reciprocation and how it’s a natural human state to want to reciprocate when something is given to us. It is a natural state and that’s this whole thing of “sales,” right? We’re trading something, a product or service for some sort of currency typically these days and bartering still happens, so it’s just this exchange.
Now the reason that it’s icky is when people are trying to take from someone or make a sale that is not necessary and I guess or wanted because maybe there are some sales that are not necessary, right? We could have a piece of chocolate cake but is it necessary for our survival? No, but maybe we really want it, so it’s to feed our desires, what we want and what we need. There are some things that we need that we pay for and so, ultimately, if you have a product or sale and you want to do something my first rule in business is and even this is what I teach my kids, they ask me, “What is business dad?” Well, businesses helping people, right?
Anything that you do and whether you’re doing it for-profit, nonprofit, ultimately … I should have turned my notifications off, there goes a beep for my next thing. So you are seeking some way to sustain, right? So ultimately, no matter what we’re producing, we have to have a certain amount of means to continue to do it. So you could have an amazing nonprofit but if you don’t get donations or ways to sustain that nonprofit, then it’s not going to happen. If you are creating a product or service and you don’t sell it and you don’t have money coming in, then there’s not a way to sustain that business. And here let’s come back to what your belief is, why are you doing what you do? What is your core purpose? That purpose, if you don’t believe in that, then of course it’s hard to sell but if you truly believe in what you’re doing and you’re making a difference in the world and that’s why we like to work with socially conscious companies, people that are doing something good for the people or the planet, then why would you not share it with other people?
Ask yourself that. Why would you not share this with others if you truly believe in what you do and a lot of times it’s because we don’t know how or the way that we were taught to sell is impeding that, it’s basically causing us to feel icky about it. So over this week on the daily videos, I want to pick apart sales. So in the next episodes coming up, I’m going to talk about how can we make sales authentic? How can we truly help others and then create the revenue we need to sustain our organizations? Whether that is for-profit or nonprofit, these skills will serve you very well.
So the first thing for today is just to really think about do you believe in what you’re doing? And if you do, then why would you not offer it to other people and exchange for money? Because if you don’t receive that money or whatever you’re trading for, then you’re not going to be able to sustain and if you can’t sustain, then you can’t do your good work in the world. So I believe you deserve to be paid for what you do and you should feel the same. And then let’s go into the next episodes this week and really start breaking this down. I hope this is helpful. As always, let us know, comment, let us know the biggest takeaway, your questions and we’ll see you on the next episode.
