Empathy and Selling

I totally get why a lot of small business owners are afraid of selling. I’ve experienced it personally. I see it constantly in the business owners I meet and interact with day to day. It starts with conversation reluctance. Why are most people reluctant to have a sales conversation with someone? It’s usually a difficult conversation. If someone doesn’t understand and respect the other person’s decision-making process, then it feels like you’re being sold to. It’s awkward. And then, as you ask for the sale, there’s the overwhelming fear of rejection. You hold your breath and say “can we get started now?”, then clench your eyes as the guillotine of rejection falls bluntly down on your neck. It can be paralysing. It causes stress, anxiety, emotional and physical pain. It’s a problem.

For most of us, it’s a natural reaction. Why? Because we naturally avoid difficult conversations. Even at a biological level, the early part of our brain is looking for the quick easy win. It wants to avoid problems. Quite naturally we brush past people’s problems and talk about the nice stuff. Unfortunately the nice stuff is usually the very barrier that we use to avoid talking about our problems. Yet sales is all about understanding people’s problems and how you can solve them. In fact entrepreneurship is no different. To be a successful entrepreneur you must be good at sales.

Imagine we sat down in 6 months time and you said to me, “Wow business is going great. Before growing the business was a constant struggle. Now, I can barely manage the growth and I’ve got a whole new set of problems. But you know what? I’ve never felt more engaged and more passionate about my vision. Before, it seemed like a foggy and distant reality. Now, I feel clear. I’ve never felt more aligned with my vision to create a meaningful impact on this world”.

So what’s holding you back from having that conversation? From having many sales conversations myself, I’ve found it’s empathy. Empathetic conversations with people who you really care about helping. The minute you stop thinking about sales as sales your mind will pop. Rather, you’ll have empathetic and impactful conversations with real people, driven by a true and genuine intention of wanting to help them. Try it on for size, your own uplift will shock you. It’s not about selling someone, its about truly caring about them and wanting to help them.

Belief in your product and self belief in your ability to deliver on your promises will augment, simply by caring about the people you’re talking to and sincerely wanting to help them.