December 1, 2022

“People don’t like to be sold, but they love to buy.”

This statement from sales guru Jeffrey Gitomer should represent an idea freeing enough for professional services providers that some of you should feel like walking outside and screaming at the top of your lungs with delight.

Gitomer’s statement is my answer to a services professional who said to me recently, during a conversation about their business development:  “John, it’s easy for you. It’s terrifying for me. I’m an introvert and I hate selling.”

Sales is not about high pressure or scripts or closing techniques. Sales and business development does not involve conversations which are a breathless rush to craft an angle on how to jam a prospect’s square peg into the round hole of what you offer.

Sales, particularly in professional services, is about helping people get to a place they long for in their business. It’s about conversations that explore what’s best for the client, regardless of whether it results in a ding for your cash register or not. It’s about honesty in telling clients what they need and don’t need, even if what they don’t need involves what you do.

If that’s how you approach sales and business development, then I don’t have to tell you that you’ll be successful in your practice, because you already are.

And that extrovert-introvert binary that so many people love to talk about? Some of that is just malarkey that’s used to make introverts feel enough shame about themselves that they’ll buy a book or a course. I’d argue that if you want to pick one or the other, introverts might be much more innately equipped with necessary skills like listening which are necessary for adopting a heart for service as you interact with the world.

If you think you have to be a “salesperson” with all the associated stereotypes that roll around in your head, you don’t.

Just go serve people. Sales is service.

That idea ought to be liberating, right? You are in the professional SERVICE business, aren’t you?

 

 

Image created using Craiyon (Formerly DALL-E Mini)

(This blog post was also posted on LinkedIn.)

©Ray Business Advisors, LLC and John Ray

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About me: I help solo or small professional services firm owners with the confidence and positioning necessary to improve their pricing and change the trajectory of not only their business but their life.

I have a podcast called The Price and Value Journey, which features interviews with industry leaders and audio versions of my blog posts. You can find the podcast on your favorite podcast app.

I also have a book coming out in 2023:  The Price and Value Journey: Raise Your Confidence, Your Value, and Your Prices to Grow Your Business Using The Generosity Mindset.

For more information, go to PriceValueJourney.com