No matter what image comes to mind when you think of selling, no matter how badly you've been treated by all the unscrupulous sales clowns out there, or whatever the stereotypes that you've seen in movies and series and books: none of that is ‘selling’.
Coercion, pushing, manipulating – it’s all those things and more, but selling it is not.
Because selling is something that should be inherently ethical. If it’s not, I don’t call it selling.
Selling is something you do with people, not to people.
Oh sure, you can certainly get your sales and grow your business by being pushy, or forcing people, or manipulating, or bullying and shaming people into buying from you. All that stuff works, and it’s really effective…
And, it’s also what separates nice people from the ones without integrity
As nice people, we simply offer something of value and ask the buyer whether or not they want to trade that something for money. No big deal. No ethics were harmed in the making of this sale.
The latter though, all the scuzzy and pushy sleazebags out there, they don’t care whether or not the purchase is right for the buyer: the just want the money.
As exemplified by the gloriously revealing statement "That’s my money you have in your pocket".
Yes, that’s actually how some people think. There’s gurus out there who literally teach that:
"The buyer has your money in their pocket, and your job is to get that money into your pocket"
I don’t know how cynical and low humans can get, but this kind of attitude is probably as rock-bottom as possible when it comes to integrity, ethics, empathy and serving buyers.
People like us though, we don’t think like that, we don’t operate like that.
People like us – with values, and integrity, committed to doing right by people – we just want to help a buyer make the right decision.
Because in the end, selling with integrity comes down to just that:
Enabling the buyer to choose: to either keep the problem, or to get rid of it with your help
And that attitude, the one where you’re serving your buyer before they even buy is what makes selling possible for ethical entrepreneurs.
Not only that, ethical entrepreneurs who learn and internalise this attitude, consistently discover that:
a) Selling isn’t all that bad, once you realise that when done right, selling is an act of service
b) It can even be fun, because you’re helping a buyer find the clarity they need in order to make a decision
c) It’s really effective!
Why?
Because when your buyer perceives, on a visceral level, that your primary interest is for them to make the right choice, even if that’s to not buy, then the level of trust they have in you goes up enormously. And obviously, without trust there’s no sale.
Also, the fact that you’re not pushing for a sale but instead you’re facilitating a decision-making process, where you’re unattached to the outcome, means your buyer will lean in, participate in the process, and collaborate with you in that process (very helpful for when it gets to be time to co-create the proposal)
Suddenly, you’re no longer awkwardly trying to ‘get them over the line’, but instead you’re having a helpful conversation that your buyer enjoys and benefits from, causing them to gradually enroll themselves into the option of buying your work.
In other words: your process of turning buyers into clients is no longer something you do to your buyer, but it’s something you with your buyer:
You’re working with them – collaborating – on helping them figure out the right choice. And if you do that explicitly, selling stops being something you feel frustrated or awkward about, and it becomes something you enjoy.