#222: My 8 Best Tips on Selling and Why You Need This NOW!
This is a solo episode I recorded where I’m sharing my 8 best tips on selling, and why you need this now!
Selling is a skill for everything we do in our businesses and in our lives. Also, if you can get comfortable developing this skill, you will gain unbelievable confidence as you move forward.
Selling is what I see female entrepreneurs struggle with the most, but has the biggest reward.
Hopefully, this episode is to give you the push and the encouragement you need to get uncomfortable, put yourself out there, sell directly to your audience, and grow your business!
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Welcome back to the Blogger Genius Podcast. I am your host, Jillian Leslie. And this is one of my special episodes where I have to share something that I think is really important. And I think it can help you.
I want to talk about selling, and how icky it can feel and emotionally how it pushes us into places that feel uncomfortable. However, if you can master this skill, the world opens up for you.
8 Best Tips on Selling and Why You Need This NOW!
And selling is not just about selling products or things like that. Everything in life is about selling, it’s about selling yourself, it’s about selling your vision. So, I hope that you find these tips helpful.
How I develop them is because as you know, if you listen to the podcast, we are launching MiloTree Easy Payments, it’s launched, but we’re in our beta.
And what that means is I have been working closely one-on-one with online entrepreneurs now. Everybody I’ve been working with has been female. And I think some of this stuff does really relate to women and how we can hold ourselves back.
So, it’s so interesting, because I’ve been working with women in all different kinds of niches, they have all different kinds of personalities.
But the one place that I feel everybody struggles, and everybody kind of gets this pained look on their face, is when it comes to selling.
So, I wanted to share with you what I have been sharing with all of these entrepreneurs, to get them to lean into putting themselves out there. And to recognize that selling is fantastic.
And it is a skill that I recommend you work on. It’s like a muscle and I really hope that you will start exercising it if you’re not.
So, I’ve got eight tips here that I want to share.
Selling Tip 1: You Are Worth It
And the first one, in order to sell what is the thing you need? You need to believe you are worth it. It’s weird. We walk around, and a lot of us, including myself, really have issues around are we worth it?
Are we worth putting our stuff out there and people buying it from us? I know when I turned 40 I had this realization that if I didn’t believe I was worth it by 40. When was it going to happen at 41, 42?
I was old enough, I kind of thought that at some point, you’ve reached this point where you just feel like an adult and you step into yourself and you just can sit in your own skin.
And what I realized was it doesn’t work like that you have to work at believing in yourself and believing you’re worth it. Nobody is going to anoint you and tell you you have arrived. You get to do that for yourself.
So as you put your business out there as you continue to dream, and plan and work hard, know that you’re worth it.
Because if you’ve already started a blog, or started putting content out into the world, you are living in rarefied air, because most people can’t do that. So already, you’re ahead of 90% of the world.
So, please take that in and recognize you are worth it. And in fact, I’m going to anoint you because nobody did it for me. And that was kind of a disappointment.
Number two, somehow we have all internalized that selling is icky. It’s unseemly. There’s something potentially offensive about it. I’ve noticed this with the women I’m working with, they are so happy to tell me about the paid workshops they are putting together.
And all the ideas they have and how they want to turn their paid workshops into memberships of services. They have so many creative ideas.
And then we put together their free sales page to get free hosted sales pages because we want everything to be easy and they see it come to life and their eyes light up.
And then I go, “Great. Now you get to go out and sell this.” And I typically say, “Hey, by the end of today do you think you could get two sales?” Oh my God, they just look at me mouth agape.
Selling Tip 2: Think of Selling as Service
So, this is what I want to say, how about thinking about it differently, you are an expert, small “e” in something and you make other people’s lives easier. So, I want you to think about “selling as service.”
You are providing value, you are putting good in the world by creating solutions and selling them to people and remember, people value things they pay for.
So, when I started to think about this, it flipped my whole perspective on what I was doing, because I do believe in what I am selling. And hopefully you do too, you are not selling snake oil.
When I mentioned this to the entrepreneurs I’m working with, I can see them soften and I can see them understand selling in a new way.
Selling Tip 3: Selling is Not About You, It’s About Your Customer
Third tip, selling is not about you, it’s about you providing value for somebody else. So a lot of times when people I’m working with start talking about what they’re doing.
And they do an Instagram Live, let’s say or a story and they go, “Hey, guys, I want to tell you what I’m working on. Oh my God, I’ve got this great thing I am working on, you’re going to love it.”
And it’s like, no, no, it’s not about you. Remember, it’s, “Hey, guys, I have a solution for you that you need to get, because it will change your life.”
So, whenever we focus the limelight on us, nobody cares. What people care about is themselves. So, sell that to them.
So again, notice how much language we use around ourselves, see if you can flip it to your audience, which leads me into number four. And this is the idea that when you are selling, you are a storyteller.
Selling Tip 4: Tell the Story of the Transformation
And what you want to be doing is painting a picture of the transformation for the person buying your product or service. So, let’s say it’s a necklace, it’s like, I want to paint the picture of how beautiful you will feel in this necklace.
How it will make you stand up a little straighter. Or if let’s say I teach you a skill, how you will feel about yourself when you’ve mastered this.
So it is like you hold the space for them and say I see you and I see how much better your life will be when you buy my solution. And that’s why being specific is so valuable. Really, you’re a master storyteller.
Now, we are moving on to my fifth tip. It’s all about testing. Because at the end of the day, you don’t know what the market does. And you need to figure out what the market is telling you.
Selling Tip 5: Test Your Idea Because Only the Market Knows for Sure
So, an entrepreneur will say to me, “When should I host my workshop?” And I’ll go, I don’t know. But my gut says, oh, do it during the week or do it on the weekend. But I don’t know.
So then what I say is put it out there, put it out there fast. And see if you get takers see if people buy from you. Because maybe they don’t want to do a workshop on a Saturday, maybe Wednesday night is the ideal time. Well, we don’t know. So you’ve got to test.
Oh, by the way, this is one of my other tips, test, test, test. Test quickly, test often and do not take it personally say nobody buys because people don’t want to go attend your workshop on a Wednesday night. Who knew?
Great, create a new sales page in MiloTree Easy Payments with the different date or time and see what people think. And this is why I say test fast.
And two, if it doesn’t work, it is not about you. It’s that you weren’t able to connect the pieces. Think of them as puzzle pieces. I’ve got this offer. You’ve got this need.
I want them to fit together and if they’re not fitting together, okay, good learning. Let’s come up with a new experiment.
The next tip that I tell people because you know how I say, “Hey, can you go out and can you get two sales?” And they look at me like I am insane.
Selling Tip 6: Do Guerilla Marketing With Sales
What I say is do guerilla marketing. So what does that mean? Guess what? Chances are, you know people in your community like your friends, let’s say Instagram, go DM them, send them a voice message, make a connection and put yourself out there.
Especially for the people who have bought from you before or who are already your biggest fans like get in there and be personal.
They talk about how, on the internet today we are building these relationships one-on-one, well, I say go sell your solution person-by-person. Instead of going like, “Hey, guys, I got this thing for you.”
It’s like, “Hey, Michelle, I know this will work for you. So you want to check this out. And I want to make myself available to answer any questions you have, but I’ve got a solution for you.”
Selling Tip 7: Get “Salesy” and Be More Aggressive than You Think
My next tip is get salesy, which means, if you feel like you are overselling, you’re probably just at the point at which you’re getting your message out there.
You think that people are paying attention to you like watching everything you are doing, and they are not people are busy and distracted. So to get your message to rise above the noise, you got to keep getting it out there.
For example, for me, and for many of the entrepreneurs, I am coaching email can be magic. So I say, keep sending emails, resend them to the people who don’t open your emails with new or subject lines.
Keep putting your message out there, keep painting the picture, keep letting people know that this is the solution. This is the product they need to buy.
And the truth is, let’s say they get annoyed with all the emails you’re sending, they’ll unsubscribe, these are not people who are your people who will buy from you.
So understand they’re doing you a favor and chances are you being salesy is not that salesy. So I want to push you to that point where you go, “Oh, my God, I’m so tired of talking about this.”
And then the last point, I think I have now covered all of my newest sales tips. But the last one is, and I mentioned this at the beginning, but everything in life is about selling.
Selling Tip 8: Recognize Everything in Life Is About Selling
It sounds really again, awkward and weird and icky, but it’s true. It’s like if you can nail this skill, you are golden.
And the one other thing I wanted to share, is if you’re the kind of person who gets lit up thinking about things like I’m going to start, I’m going to create a course.
Or I’m going to write an eBook, or I’ve got this big project I’m going to work on, well guess what I want you to reach out to me, because I don’t want you to do that.
A lot of times people will go, “I’m going to go work on a course, do all the videos and create the PDFs, set this whole thing up. And I’ll be back in six months when I’ve got my course ready.”
And I say chances you are a creative spirit. You want to help others, and you are terrified of selling.
Because at the end of the day, at the end of those six months, when you are so busy and you feel like you are doing such important work, you are going to have to get out there and hustle and feel uncomfortable.
So, I want to say to you if you’re in that place where you’re like, okay, and then I’m going to work on my course or any project where you’re going to go off and work on it for a long period of time.
Reach out to me because I say let me help you set up a paid workshop where you can test this idea, I get it up in an hour, start putting it in front of your audience and see if you get takers.
I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard the story of I went off. I worked on something forever. I came back I tried to sell it and it was crickets. Nobody bought it or I got three sales and people are demoralized.
I say if you have an audience, whether that be on social media, whether it be blog traffic, whether it be an email list, hopefully it’s a combination of those things. There is money to be had in your community in selling directly to them. But that’s it.
You do not know if you’re onto something until you test it and this is why I say test quick, test cheaply, test often.
It’s funny I coach people to do the opposite kind of the conventional wisdom. I say you come up with your idea, you go sell it first, don’t start building anything, until you know that those puzzle pieces fit together.
You have an audience that says yes to what you’re offering. And then I say, well, if it doesn’t work, guess what, no skin off your nose, go try something else, go put another offer in front of people.
So, I hope that this podcast episode inspires you, shifts the way you think about this. And I say go risk it. Because at what point, I promise you, nobody is going to come to you and say, “You are ready, you’re ready to do this, you’re ready to put yourself out there.”
No, it’s you saying to yourself, “I’m ready. And this is scary. And I’m going to feel vulnerable. And I’m going to feel icky and kind of uncomfortable. And I’m going to lean into that, because I know that that’s where the growth happens.”
And I just want to share one last thing, this is what makes my job so satisfying. When I see people, women, because it’s been mostly women.
Selling Secret: Having Success Selling Makes You More Confident in Your Business
When they finish doing their first paid workshop, and they see that people have gotten value out of it and that people have shown up for them, people have paid them. And they recognize how much they actually know, their confidence goes through the roof.
It’s like, they feel so validated. And then they immediately say, I loved it. And now I want to turn this workshop, into a membership, or I want to offer coaching. They get so brave, it is so satisfying. It’s why I love my job so much.
It’s almost like I get to be their counselor and again ready for it, I get to actually see their transformation. And it makes me so happy.
So, if you want to have a transformation I want to work with you. Email me at jillian@milotree.com and tell me you want to go on this journey. Or reach out to me on Instagram, DM me @milotree.
But I really hope you take this risk, you’re already taking risks. So please pat yourself on the back what you are doing, most people would be too terrified to do.
And I will say if you have an audience there is a powerful income stream right there ready for you to tap into. So, please risk it. Because if not now then when and nobody is going to give you permission except you.
So, I hope this episode gave you some stuff to think about. I hope it was inspiring. I hope it was motivating. If you have any thoughts you want to share with me, I would love to hear them.
And I will see you here again next week.
Other Blogger Genius Podcast episodes to listen to:
- How to Grow Your Income in 2022 with Jillian Leslie
- How to Build a New Income Stream Fast and Easy with Cristy Harfmann
- Are Limiting Beliefs and Imposer Syndrome Holding You Back with Maria Conde?
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Let it pop up in front of your visitors and ask them to follow you on Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, join your list, check out the exit intent but really get your community growing. And we’d love to help you with MiloTree. And I will see you here again next week.
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