There’s a simple reverse psychology hack to get comfortable with sales.  

While I was NOT born a salesperson, there came a point in my agency life where I made the conscious decision to get better at selling.  I saw it as a necessary step in creating a business which could run without me.

No, I didn’t get into the web or digital marketing space to be a salesperson, but I did get into it in order to grow a business which would support the kind of life I wanted to live.  I was at odds, because I knew if I didn’t build a system which attracted leads and closed them, I’d never have the stable business I dreamed of.

With the desire to be better at sales, I set out to consume everything I could about sales.  I even asked my dad who had been in sales for most of my life for ideas about what to do differently.

You see, I was tired of doing sales my way because…

… It took a lot of my time

… I always felt like I was undercharging and over delivering

… Prospects seemed to drag their feet

… I was routinely nervous (especially with big clients)

… I never really knew where the next client was coming from

That was the way I felt until I read something profound by Micahel Gerber (who wrote E-myth) which set me on the course to a major discovery.  In the book, he said, “People run systems and systems run businesses.”

He explained the best businesses in the world develop systems (or ways of doing things) virtually anybody can run.  In other words, the people were interchangeable because the system was reliable and produced a predictable result regardless of the person operating it.

I could see how this would work in a factory, or even when it came to systems for delivering websites and digital marketing…

But, the big question I had…. Could a system work for sales? Could I design a system that worked no matter who used it? 

Here was my thinking about a sales system:

If it worked (like a true system) then anybody could operate it to sell successfully. On the other hand, if it failed, it was the system to blame, not the person operating it.

This idea gave me a lot of unexpected confidence because the real reason I was struggling with sales was I felt like I was a failure.  The reason I was nervous talking to clients was because I felt like I had to be the best salesperson in the world (when I wasn’t) and I was afraid to mess up.

But if I had a system, I didn’t have to be an expert salesperson because the system did the selling, I was just the guy operating it.

It’s a subtle shift in thinking.

But I can’t tell you how major of an impact it has had on my relationship with my agency.  Operating a small agency can feel SO personal.  I had a hard time distinguishing between where my agency ended and I started.  There was no separation.  But removing my personal attachment to the sales process was profound to say the least.

Building a sales system wasn’t easy and I wasn’t even interested in doing it until I realized the benefit it would have in my business.

That’s why today in our agency, and the agencies in our community using the same sales process we developed, can confidently say, “People run SALES systems, and Sales Systems SELL for our agency.”

If you want to learn more about how to build a sales system, be sure to apply for a call with our director of coaching. Let's get you on the path to confidently selling your agency's services.