The Truth About Selling

Sometimes becoming better at sales is not about the presentation.

Sometimes it’s not about the offer.

Sometimes it’s about you.

When I first transitioned from being a baseball coach to working in the fitness industry I really struggled with selling.

Actually, I was pretty pathetic.

In fact, I only generated any sales at all by being willing to sit down with a lot of people.

I remember that during my first month of selling training, my closing percentage was 12%.

Yes…12%.

And honestly, it was just a mental thing with me.

My own personal hang ups about money.

I’d never made more than $30,000 in a year and the thought of someone investing $300 or $400 a month on personal training seemed pretty extreme to me.

I tried to sell in spite of this hang up – but I’m sure that it showed in the way that I presented our programs and in my lack of confidence.

But then after changing my thought process about sales…, it finally hit me:

Selling should be easy.

You’re just helping people get what they want.   

I was getting caught with the financial side of things, but I’d spent the previous 7 years convincing parents to spend tens of thousands of dollars to come play baseball under my guidance at a school they’d never even heard of before I started recruiting them.

If people really want something they’ll find a way to make it happen.

As soon as I got that through my head, selling became easy.

I instantly went from a 12% closer to a 60-70% closer.

Once I lost the head trash I was able to recognize that everything starts with a sale.

It’s the first step to helping someone…and it’s simply an exchange of value. You give the prospect something of value (your solution) and they give you something in exchange (the investment.)

And, truthfully…you’re probably giving them more value in the exchange.

The impact what you provide can have on their life is far more valuable than a few hundred dollars in almost all cases.

Remember, selling isn’t an adversarial thing.

It’s providing a solution and offering it as an exchange of value. Nothing more.

 Aside from actually being good at what you do in helping clients achieve their goals – this is the most important facet of your business.

You have to be good at attracting people who are a good fit for your business and you have to be able to convert them into long-term clients.

If you want to set yourself up for long term business success – embrace marketing and selling. It’s the only way you’ll be able to attract the right clients and build a lucrative business that you love.

So with that in mind, here are some tips that have helped me and I suspect will help you:

• Understand that unless you sell your offering – you can’t really have much impact. You have to sell what you offer in order to help.

• Marketing is simply connecting with someone and helping them understand how you can assist them in moving from where they are to where they want to be.

• Follow up is the most underappreciated part of the sales process…and one of the things that has helped me the most. I email you daily, right? That’s follow up. When you’ve made an initial connection with someone – follow up consistently.

Use different approaches…phone, text, email…direct mail. You never know when someone will be ready and can’t assume that they can give you the attention you want during the first or second follow up…so keep trying. If you do nothing else differently this year – triple your follow up efforts and watch your revenue explode.

• Make the marketing and selling process about the prospective client…not about you. What problem are you helping them solve? What do they want to achieve? What do they feel they need to get where they want to go? Frame your message and solution around those answers and you’ll stand out from the rest.

• Selling is nothing more than determining that you can help someone go from where they are now to where they want to go and agreeing on the exchange of commitment to get there.

• Marketing & selling don’t stop once someone becomes a client. You still need to win someone’s business every day. You need to re-sell them on the plan regularly. Remember – what we sell isn’t an immediate gratification thing, so you need to re-sell someone so they’ll stay the course until they reach their goals.

In short…there is some selling in coaching.

• If you want to be better at marketing and selling, make things more personal. Create a personal connection. Give someone more personal attention. Spend more time investing in each individual. You’ll sell more and be better equipped to serve them as well.

• Remember – More selling = more impact. More impact = more success.

Hopefully those tips and thoughts help you as much as they’ve helped me.

By Pat Rigsby