Episode 350: Proven Methods to Sell, Close, and Prosper
Sales can be a daunting task for many business owners, especially those who are new to the world of selling. The fear of rejection, not knowing how to start a conversation, and lacking confidence in asking the right questions can hinder their ability to close deals and grow their business.
In another edition of #AskAdam, Adam and Andrea discuss the importance of sales for business owners and advice on how to improve your sales skills. Adam emphasizes the need for business owners to embrace the identity of a salesperson and highlights the impact that sales skills have on the success of a business.
Show Highlights:
- Building confidence in sales is crucial for business owners.
- The key to successful sales is to have conversations with potential clients.
- Focus on providing value and solving the client’s problems.
- Consultative selling is an effective approach.
- Paying attention to not only the client’s words but also their tonality and body language.
Links Mentioned:
Get your Business Growth Secrets SUCCESS PLANNER for FREE and profit like a pro: https://adamstottplanner.com/free-book47315172
Adams website: https://adamstott.com/?el=Pod
Watch the Episode on Adam’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/adamstottcoach?el=Pod
Connect with Adam on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamstottcoach/?el=Pod
Join Adam’s network on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-stott-coach/?el=Pod
Business owners: Monetise social media, get more clients, increase your following, and make more sales: https://socialmediamonetisation.com/unlockfb?el=Pod
Coaches, Consultants, and Speakers: lower your marketing costs, increase ticket prices, and get more high-ticket clients: https://personalbrandunlocked.com/fb-event-reg?el=Pod
Transcript:
Please note this is a verbatim transcription from the original audio and therefore may include some minor grammatical errors.
[00:00:00] Adam Stott: Welcome to business growth secrets everybody today. We have an episode all about Sales. So business owners that want to sell more, close more, make more money, build their confidence in sales. This is 100 percent for you. So welcome Andrea. So welcome to the, uh, to Biggest Business Growth Secret Show.
[00:00:20] You’ve got some questions you want to ask today. So do you want to say hello and then take it away?
[00:00:24] Andrea: Yes. Hi to everyone. Um, I’ve got some great questions actually from some of the business owners that we work with on a regular basis. Um, one of the most common questions I get asked regularly is what is this structure and process that somebody needs to follow as a new business owner, uh, that’s not quite confident in their sales?
[00:00:45] Is there a structure and process that they can follow when they start up a sales conversation?
[00:00:51] Adam Stott: So absolutely. And this question, we have to dissect the question A little bit. Is there a structure and process? Yes. And we can talk about the process. Is there a mindset for selling? Yes. Is there a mindset for your products and services?
[00:01:06] Yes. It’s a big topic. Um, so I think that the first part, is it led more? How does someone build confidence? Is it led more around? What is the structure? You know, a bit more context on how that’s come in. What do you think?
[00:01:19] Andrea: I think one of the common problems is they don’t know how to start the conversation.
[00:01:23] They don’t know how to open it. They don’t know what kind of questions they’re asking, and they don’t have any confidence in themselves to ask those questions because they, they’re frightened. They have a fear around the asking the right questions and not getting the right information back from the client.
[00:01:42] Adam Stott: I actually think it’s really hard and I’ll tell you why I think this topic is really hard. It’s something that I say it’s really hard. I think it’s really hard for a lot of people coming into
[00:01:50] Andrea: business.
[00:01:51] Adam Stott: It was really easy for me and the reason it was really easy for me is because it’s really easy for a lot of people coming into business.
[00:01:56] My whole career prior to starting a business was all in sales. And I actually think this is a big problem for business owners that they come into. a business. They’ve never sold before. They’ve usually worked for somebody else and not typically a salesperson. And then they, they spend a lot of time building the products out, getting really good at the accounting, the processes, all the different stuff.
[00:02:18] You know, when you look at the business, they, you know, they might really do well with their marketing, but they hate sales. They might really do well with their business strategy, but they hate sales. They might do really, really well with looking off their numbers, but they hate sales that might build an amazing product, but they hate sales.
[00:02:31] And, and the problem is, and I’d call it the law of the lid. You know, whatever skill set that you are deficient in will put a lid over your ability to progress. And the thing about selling, when we talk about the law of the lid, is selling is the one that puts the lid on the startup business from the very beginning.
[00:02:51] Cause if you can’t sell, you ain’t going nowhere, right? Like literally. And if you cannot sell, if you can’t go and have conversations, your business will not grow. So I think there’s, I’ve got so much advice on this topic. It’s insane. Uh, the first, first bit of advice I would give to all business owners that are struggling with sales, give yourself permission to suck it.
[00:03:12] Like, don’t worry about the fact you ain’t good at it. It doesn’t matter. You know, you know the way that you can actually get quite good at it is not caring if you’re good at it. Yeah. Because the first thing you’ve got to do is drop the anxiety, drop the fear and just say, you’ve got two choices because this is reality, you’ve got two choices.
[00:03:29] You’ve got to sell or choice number two is your business is going to fail.
[00:03:34] Andrea: Yeah.
[00:03:35] Adam Stott: And let that drop with the people watching. If you do not sell, your business is going to fail. So I’m now presuming that you’re on board and you don’t want your business to fail. Hopefully that is the case. Or you could disagree with me and you could go, no, I don’t really think that’s the case.
[00:03:52] I do e commerce. I don’t need to sell. Or yeah, but you know, I don’t really need to sell because my product’s really great. Or you can come up with whatever sort of reason you want. To disagree with me, but whatever point there will come a point in your business where you have to sell. And because of your reluctance to sell or to embrace a skillset, your business will fail.
[00:04:13] So the bottom line is you want to be in business. You want to be an entrepreneur. You want your free time. You want your holidays. You want your wealth. You want your money. You got to be a salesperson fact. And it’s an identity that people got take on board. So first of all, Let’s take the identity on board.
[00:04:29] So, okay. I am a salesperson for my business and at the beginning You’re probably the only salesperson for the business. So the first thing you gotta do is take the identity Secondly, you gotta say is okay. I might not be very good at this today And that’s okay, and I might not be very good at it tomorrow.
[00:04:45] That’s okay next week. That’s okay next month. That’s okay But the only thing that is not okay is if I don’t try So if I don’t go and have conversations with people, so you’ve got to try and you’ve got to go through that. Now, a few things you can do to make it easier. So that’s like the, the mindset stuff, really basics, you know, step one, you’ve got to understand that you’ve got to sell in order to be able to succeed.
[00:05:09] Um, or you accept failure, you know, step two, you’ve got to allow yourself to know that it’s okay. I’m not great at this to start with. And then you’re going to build forward and you’re going to become better. And in step three is like the law of conversations. You now need to go and speak to as many people about your products or service as humanly possible in order to spread the word, build the conversations and you just need to ask some basic questions.
[00:05:37] So imagine you went out and you spoke to And this is like, this is not advanced stuff. This is you suck at sales.
[00:05:43] Andrea: Basic stuff. This is
[00:05:44] Adam Stott: like, you suck at sales, you hate sales, you can’t sell for toffee, and you need some basic, and, and, and like, there’s loads of people like that by the way. There’s loads.
[00:05:53] Right? So, for the people like that, go and speak to loads of people, but just add one thing. So you go and you talk to them, you’re at a networking event, and you’re like, Oh, Oh yeah. You know, I do coaching and da, I help people to get healthier and you know what? I help ’em with their nutrition. Whatever you do.
[00:06:08] Oh, I help em. I’m a personal trainer. I help it. Just ask the question. Do you know someone that can benefit from that?
[00:06:15] Andrea: That’s a good question actually.
[00:06:16] Adam Stott: And, and, and the bottom line is, well actually, you know what? I’m not really training very hard at the moment. And then basically one or two things happens.
[00:06:25] If they are not interested in what you do, absolutely zero interest in what you do. They’re gonna go. No, I can’t really think of anyone at the moment. Yeah. Yeah. Um, you got three, you got three answers. My aunt Sally needs that, which means they’re not interested, but they think Sally might be. No, I can’t really think of anyone that can at the minute.
[00:06:44] No problem. If you do know someone, let me know. Is all you need to respond. Or thirdly is, you know what? Actually, I would be quite interested in that. And now you’ve got a lead. And you’ve got a buying question, so how does that work? And then you can move people on. You know, but that is, look, we’re not talking advanced stuff.
[00:07:00] I’m talking you suck at sales. And you’ve just got to talk more about your business and ask a simple question. Hey, do you know someone who can benefit from that? And then they’ll tell you. Right? And you’re not getting rejected because you’re avoiding the rejection. Because you’re not actually saying, Andrew, do you want that?
[00:07:15] Cause people just ain’t got the balls to say, do you want it? You know? And uh, if they had the balls to say that, they’d probably get a few people to say yes. Now this is the irony, no matter how bad you are at sales, if you just talk to more people, you would sell more.
[00:07:28] Andrea: No matter how bad you are. It’s practice as well, isn’t it?
[00:07:30] Yeah. It’s practicing.
[00:07:31] Adam Stott: Absolutely. So, so that’s the kind of, the next thing that I would say, um, to people. And then, you know, we’ve got to build forward from there. So at this point I want to diverse a little bit. And I want to go back to when I was horrendous at sales. Um, and I’ll talk, well, I was 18 years old now as it stands today, you know, I’ve sold a hundred million pounds worth of products on online.
[00:07:57] You know, cars, automotive, you know, marketing, events, coaching, you know, just been doing it for decades and decades, right? So I can sell pretty well. I sell from stages very, very, very, very well to hundreds of people at once, as well as, you know, I’ve done more one on one sales than you can shake a stick at.
[00:08:15] You sold to me. Yeah. So I’ll sell to you as well. So the bottom line is, I know a little bit, it’s not my first rodeo, right? Which is what I want to say. But if I took you back. So when I was 18 years old and I knew nothing about sales and, and I would have, if you’d have said Adam sales, I would have said what you’re talking about.
[00:08:33] I was terrified of it. And when I was working, so I’ve got the first job I ever had, which was a sales job. And when I took the job, I didn’t know it was a sales job. And I worked at a company called powerhouse. Now at this company called Powerhouse, it was washing machines, cookers, TVs, toasters, washer dryers, all that kind of business, microwaves.
[00:08:54] I knew nothing about cookers, I knew nothing about washing machines, like literally I was so young I just took the job because they had a free coffee machine and I thought if I can work inside and I can drink free coffee, I’m winning. That was the level of my ambition, right? So I went in. Um, I got, um, talking, I was absolutely not interested in speaking to anyone.
[00:09:16] And this lady, Diane, um, who became like a mentor to me, he said to me, Adam, it’s really simple. You just walk up, you talk to people, you’re friendly to them and you have a conversation with them. And then they ask you questions about the cooker or the washing machine or the microwave. I don’t know the questions to save.
[00:09:35] You don’t know questions. You just say, let me find out. And you go back and you answer their questions. If you do that enough times, you’ll know about the cockers and the cookers and the washing machines and all the rest of it. And she said, Oh, and by the way, the more people you speak to, the more money you make.
[00:09:49] I said, well, no, no, no, it doesn’t work like that. I get a salary. She was like, no, no, no, no, no. You get salary, but everything you sell, you get a percentage of the sale. Really? Yeah. So, so I’m like, okay. So, so I go and I start talking to people and then they say, how does this cooker work? I’m 90. I’ve never cooked a single thing in my life.
[00:10:11] I’m 18, 19 years. I’ve never cooked a single thing in my life. Let me find out exactly what she said. When I found out, went back and told them they’re not great. And I did that until I knew and I started selling and started selling. And what happened and where I, and the reason I’m telling this story is because I was lucky.
[00:10:29] And that got me over my fear of going to talk to people and have the conversations. And, and when I had the conversations, I realized it actually wasn’t that scary. All I was doing was solving someone’s problem. And as soon as I solved their problem and they said, yes, they bought, I made a bit of money out of it.
[00:10:46] Everybody won. Right. So there’s nothing sleazy about selling. You’re just solving problems. So if people think it’s sleazy, that’s what I’m telling you is it isn’t. You’re a problem solver. So after I did that, I then went on and I worked at Ford and I sold cars at Ford and then I leased private jets at, um, AMSA.
[00:11:03] So I literally leased the jets out and that’s what I did. And then I worked at BMW and then I started my first business. You know, my first business struggled at first. And then I took that from. You know, from a very small business to 40 million pound a year business over a course of a decade. And then I took sell into marketing and education and seminars and all the rest of the stuff.
[00:11:21] Yeah. But the reason that I go back there is because a lot of business owners starting out are still in the state of fear of what happens if I go and speak to someone? What happens if I don’t know the answers? What happens if they don’t want what I’ve got? What happens if I look silly? It’s the fear of rejection as well, isn’t it?
[00:11:46] It’s literally.
[00:11:46] Andrea: Frightened to death of people saying no to them.
[00:11:48] Adam Stott: Exactly right. So I think that the best way, and I always remember, I’ve had a lot of sales training and the best thing I can advise anyone is to, is this, basically this skill set is going to be a skill set that puts a lid on all of your success.
[00:12:09] So let’s understand that because it’s a fact. If you do not conquer this, it will put a lid on your success and you will only be able to go so far. Now, when I look at everybody that’s successful that I know. I’ve had 350 people on this podcast, I’ve had millionaires, I’ve had billionaires, and I’ve had Andrea.
[00:12:29] Right? You know, right? But, and, and you’re the best of them all, Andrea, right? Yeah, okay. Adam. You say all the right things. Yeah, that’s it. So, um. You’re not on
[00:12:39] Andrea: commission for this one, by the way. No, no, I’m not. No.
[00:12:41] Adam Stott: So, what I’m, what I’m trying to say is every single person I know that’s successful can sell. So the people that are listening.
[00:12:50] You might have stumbled across this topic and maybe you feel like you don’t need to sell. And perhaps you’re, you’re saying to yourself like, Oh, I don’t want to get rejected. And maybe you can’t see yourself as being a salesperson. But if you look back round and you understand that if you, if you embrace the feeling of selling, you start saying to yourself, you can do this.
[00:13:12] Then all of a sudden, you’ll start seeing much better results. Better, bigger, brighter results happening in your life. So for me, take a sales training. You know, understand this skill will cap you get sales coaching. I mean, just in the other room, we’ve got Lee McQueen, apprentice winner, one of the best sales people I know, training our clients.
[00:13:33] Oh, he’s amazing. Yeah, he’s amazing. You could come and do that training.
[00:13:37] Andrea: And
[00:13:37] Adam Stott: so some people won’t do that. They’d rather suffer their whole life than pay for a bit of training. I think it’s nuts. You know, suffer rejection, fear and not putting yourself out there. I think I feel to let me just context what I’m trying to say now.
[00:13:52] I go back to the powerhouse, I did my training in the powerhouse, you know, I’ve got my rejections in, I’ve got my nose in, I’ve got my, my awkwardness in, and I’ve got all of that stuff that when I went to Ford. I was over that.
[00:14:05] Andrea: Yeah.
[00:14:06] Adam Stott: And then I went and I was the first person to jump up and I was the first person to answer the phone.
[00:14:10] And then when I went to AMSI, I didn’t care about cold calling people about private jets, you know, and I signed Honda up for jets and stuff like that. And then when I went to BMW, I didn’t care. And then when I started my business, I didn’t care. So I took the lid off a powerhouse, which allowed me to grow.
[00:14:26] And I think business owners have to say, and they have to, first of all, be real with yourself. Are you suffering on this topic? If you are suffering, Go out, buy every, I don’t, you will not find all the answers in a book, especially on the topic of sales. And I’ll tell you why. Because you need to do it like I did at Powerhouse, but there’s
[00:14:45] Andrea: nothing wrong with
[00:14:47] Adam Stott: you buying sales books and familiarizing yourself with some of the tactics, but get some training, get a coach, go and attend a sales course, go on a journey of embracing this skill because all of a sudden you will make more money.
[00:15:02] And everything will change for you and it will be, you know, it would be very, very powerful. So they’re the kind of recommendations. I’ll give you some other simple recommendations. First person you’ve got to sell is yourself. So fall in love with your product. If your product sucks, make it better. So you fall in love with it.
[00:15:18] If you don’t know how to do that, Go and talk to your clients and say I’m afraid my product sucks. What else do I need to do to make people happy? Please tell me. Tell me. Tell me. Oh, we had a big team meeting this morning. I’m just like every week What can I do to make my product better? And why do I want to do that?
[00:15:35] Because it’s so much easier to sell something people love, want, need and are happy with Than it is to sell something that sucks. So sell something good, you know, because you’re not even selling it You’re just passionate about it.
[00:15:46] Andrea: What would you say are the common mistakes that people make in a sales conversation?
[00:15:50] What would you say that there, is there anything specific that you would say for them to actually avoid doing? So what are the no’s?
[00:15:58] Adam Stott: Yeah, I think today’s world is very, very different. And I, and, I think that a lot of people actually chase too much. I think consultative selling or consultative selling, to say that correctly, is the way forward.
[00:16:16] Now that methodology is you are asking questions to find problems to provide a solution. And I think a lot of people, you know, when somebody’s like, you should do this and you should do that, and you should get this, you can only tell someone what to do. If you are the expert and you have authority for sure, right?
[00:16:37] So when you go to the doctor and the doctor says you need to take these pills, you don’t go Yeah, well, I don’t know if it’s right for me and I you know, you just go okay doctor I like you’re telling me that’s what why because they’ve got authority So if you are an authoritative person, you can tell somebody what to do and they will recognize that that is good for them.
[00:16:54] But if you’re not authoritative, you need to use a consult, a consultation type approach to ask questions, to find solutions. So basically any sale is you sitting down with a prospect, getting to know them, getting to know what their problem is, getting to know what their issue is, and I’m really caring.
[00:17:16] about seeing if you can find a solution for them. And if business owners were to do that and they were to slow down, actually spend more time with their clients, ask better questions, care about the client’s results, then you would very, very quickly see that more people would sense that. They’d feel that and they’d want to do business with you without you having to push them.
[00:17:40] Andrea: And it’s the listening, isn’t it? They’ve got to listen. Definitely and to, to the responses that are coming back from the potential client. Definitely. Because that’s where a lot of people go wrong, I think, is they don’t actually listen to what they, what their client’s saying to them. So they’re not giving them the right answers.
[00:17:53] Adam Stott: Absolutely. And, and whenever you are, you know, you are speaking two languages, right? So when you are having a con a conversation with the clients, the things that the client is saying is one thing, but then you have to remember words are 7%. There’s also the tonality they’re using. Yeah. The body language that they’re displaying.
[00:18:12] And really understand that sometimes somebody will say something to you. But that’s not actually what they mean. What they mean is something very, very different. So you’ve got to be able to be really engrossed in the process, understand that you’re there to help somebody and read the cues, you know, and if you don’t understand how to do that, that’s why I say, you know, this is a skill set that is definitely worth mastering.
[00:18:34] Yeah.
[00:18:34] Andrea: And a lot of people don’t know how to do that either. They don’t know how to unravel what the client thinks they need and what We think, or you as the sales person actually thinks they want, they dunno how to do that.
[00:18:45] Adam Stott: Yeah, I mean, look, most of the time, you know, people will say things to a sales person that they’re talking to that are just complete nonsense.
[00:18:56] They’ll go, I need to, I need to talk to my other half. They don’t need to talk to the other half. You haven’t found what it is that person needs in order for them to, to, to want to go ahead. You still have resistance there. They’re basically saying to you, you haven’t convinced me,
[00:19:14] Andrea: right?
[00:19:15] Adam Stott: Or they might say, you know, in, in that case, sometimes they do want to speak to other half.
[00:19:18] That’s okay. But actually, you know, a lot of the time it’s just, I’m not convinced yet. You know, they might say, I don’t know if I can afford this, right? Very rarely say that, but they do say, I don’t know if I can afford this. You’ve not shown them ways. of how they can afford it or how they can save money in order to say yes.
[00:19:37] If, if they say to you, let me think about it, they don’t want to think about it. They’re basically saying you haven’t convinced me that this is the right thing for me to do, you know, and you haven’t found out enough about what I want and put a solution in front of me that I’m happy with that I can say yes to.
[00:19:56] Andrea: So you’re not giving them the value. You’re not getting
[00:19:58] Adam Stott: deep enough into what they need.
[00:20:01] Andrea: Yeah.
[00:20:01] Adam Stott: So slow down. Ask more questions. Everyone’s got a trigger point. You’re looking to find what that, that trigger point is. You’re looking to find the pain points and or it could be a pain or it could be a gain, right?
[00:20:13] So it’s, it’s one or the other. It’s like the thing that you can say that will get them to say yes or the thing that you can say that will solve their problem to get them to say yes. And there are really, you are looking for that during the conversation. And the bottom line is, you know, if you don’t find their need and their real need as to why they want to do this, They’re not going to go ahead with you, so you need to deep dive enough with someone to find that problem in order to provide a solution.
[00:20:40] Andrea: So the main things really for them to focus on are asking the right questions, digging deeper, not rushing the process. And making sure that they’re giving the right value so that the client can see the benefit that they’re getting from working with that person.
[00:20:56] Adam Stott: And care about your client. Just make your life easier and just say, actually, how can I help this person?
[00:21:01] Right. Forget you. Do you know what the best thing to do is? Take you out of the equation. What you want does not matter. What they want is what matters. And if you take you completely out the equation and you focus on the needs of the client and then you position your product as a solution to their need, then the answer will invariably be yes.
[00:21:21] Andrea: And being genuine as well. That’s crucial, isn’t it?
[00:21:25] Adam Stott: Well, I think it goes without saying, you know, it’s like, just show up as who you are, be who you are and people appreciate that and more likely to want to do business with you anyway. So, hopefully, you know, I think that’s pretty much all the questions for today on this subject, right?
[00:21:39] Thanks for
[00:21:39] Andrea: that. Tell us your,
[00:21:41] Adam Stott: tell us your thoughts in the comments. Is there anything? Yeah. That you particularly struggle with on sales. Tell us about where you need some help Tell us if you love sales, hate sales, need help on sales. Do you want to see more episodes on this topic? Tell us in the chat.
[00:21:57] Tell us the value you’re receiving and we will keep pumping the value. Did you love Andrea? Did you hate Andrea? No, I’m only joking, right? You know, but I think Andrea asked the questions very eloquently and you know, gave a great narration there, you know, tell us in the chat, you know, Charlie will be super jealous if everyone says I love Angela, sorry Charlie, you’ve lost your job.
[00:22:18] So, so there we go. And thanks everyone for tuning in today for another great episode of Business Growth Secrets podcast. If you’re listening to this, please subscribe. Online go and share it with someone that can find some value from it, you know If you’re watching the visual version on youtube, you know Hopefully you’ve enjoyed it and you leave a comment If you’re not watching the visuals go over and watch the visuals come and come and join us on youtube to check these out as Well, and I look forward to meeting you all in person soon and helping you on the next stage of your sales and business journey