What to do when you don’t like selling

📄 Don’t be mice people

There is a lot that goes into successfully herding cats, and that is more true the higher the value of your offer, the more more …

📄 Can selling be fun?

Almost every day, someone tells me a different reason why they don’t like selling. “Selling is stressful”. “It’s frustrating that the process takes so long”. …

📄 Selling is squiggly, not linear

I don’t care what any sales guru teaches about pipeline stages, or steps to close a sale, or what new high-conversion funnel is being touted …

📄 If you don’t like selling, you’re talking to the wrong people

I’m not here to tell you that you should learn to like selling – though something like the SFNP training can actually have that effect …

📄 Make everything you do an act of service

Having a meeting with your buyer is an act of service, obviously. I mean, provided you’re having a conversation and you’re not just subjecting them …

📄 Don’t subsidise your buyer’s business

Saw an interesting tweet the other day: You are not in the business of subsidising your client’s business. If they cannot afford to pay someone …

📄 Pitching is conceit because you just can’t know what that person needs to hear

When you show up to a first buyer conversation, and you start off with a pitch, it’s not just proving behaviour, approval-seeking and me-messaging, like …

📄 How to sell more because of your values… and not despite them

Sometimes when people ask me to explain how it works, that ‘helping nice people sell more’ thing, I tell them that I help people sell …

📄 Leadership abhors a vacuum

If nature abhors a vacuum, then leadership sure does too – a fact with direct, and possibly devastating, implications for your sales process and the …

📄 Never ascribe to malice

That buyer who said they’d get back to you by the end of the week about your proposal but it’s now three weeks later and …

📄 The Achievement Stack

Long-term readers will know that I possess quite an unstoppable drive to create things. Over the years you’ll have seen me produce all sorts of …

📄 “I can’t afford to lose this deal”. Actually… are you sure you can afford to win it?

"Yeah that client is a massive headache. They micromanage me, their communications are a mess and the owner really doesn’t know what he’s doing. But …

📄 Selling: something you do with people, not to people

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 …

📄 Cards on the table: How nice people take the awkwardness out of sales conversations

Said a student of the Sales for Nice People training: "I feel awkward having meetings with buyers, because it always feels like it’s about trying …

📄 How to send emails that help your sales instead of getting you ghosted

Email is a powerful tool if you use it right, and that means you need to be very careful and very precise in how you …

📄 You won’t get the deal if you don’t get the buyer (the unfair advantage of learning your people)

What’s the most impactful, worthwhile, fulfilling and uplifting experience that you can have with another person? Think about it for a moment: What kind of …

📄 Never ask your buyer for thoughts or feedback

"Attached is the proposal as discussed, looking forward to your feedback", read the email. I looked at my client’s screenshot and thought: "Crap. Yet another …

📄 Telling people what’s right for them, and robbing them of their autonomy

The reason traditional selling is such an annoying and frustrating, ineffective approach: It presumes that the seller knows what’s best for the buyer, and then …

📄 Don’t ‘close the sale’

I’ve never liked the idea of ‘closing a sale’. To me, that phrasing is the complete opposite of what actually happens when somebody buys. Sure: …

📄 Asking better questions: control over outcomes

You can create a lot of change – and generate a lot of sales – by asking the right questions… but it’s easy to ask …

📄 “If you’re planning to spend more money than time, it’s not going to work and you shouldn’t buy”

Some people think that if you pay enough money to a knowledge worker – coach, consultant, advisor, developer, solutions architect etc etc – they’ll come …

📄 Everything you want is on the other side of writing (every business is a publishing business, cont’d)

Not everyone will be aware of it rationally or consciously, but I believe that every business, and/or every business owner, at some point realises that …

📄 Serve your clients before they buy

It’s quite amazing how many folks have hang-ups where it comes to selling their work: "I just don't like selling", "Stressful", "No good at it", …

📄 You’re not in the winning-people-over business (AKA Lead, don’t plead)

Getting people to buy your work gets a lot easier when you realise: You’re not in the winning-people-over business. Yet that’s the position most sellers …

What to do when you don’t like selling

Which of these is your biggest challenge?