091: The Sales Creation Skill No One Talks About

You've got a sales process, you've got reasonable sales skills - you've signed clients before. But there's a third sales skill that nobody talks about, and it's the one that actually turns a static, slow pipeline into real clients.

In this episode, you'll discover:

• The three parts of the Sales Triangle and why most people are missing one
• The benefit of a raw, unpackaged willingness to just go and get sales
• What "sales mode" actually feels like and how to get into it
• How strategy can kill the vibe - and what to do instead

If you've had a tough month and you just want to refill your pipeline, this episode is for you. It will give you permission to approach sales without the overthinking that kills momentum.

Enjoy!

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Transcript

The Sales Triangle

What this looks like

Why strategy kills the vibe

Open Sales Sprint

Action Steps

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Have you noticed so much business and marketing content out there is so abstract and airy fairy? Like what they're saying sounds good, but what do you actually need to do? That's where the Good Marketing Good Business Podcast comes in. This is where I share practical strategies to help you grow your service-based business. And in case we haven't met yet, I'm Shannon Stone, award-winning business and marketing consultant. And for the last decade or so, I've been diving in deep with small business owners, helping them to make more sales and get more done in less time. And today's episode is no different. Enjoy. Hey guys, welcome to the podcast. I am very excited for this episode today, genuinely. It is titled The Sales Creation Skills No One Talks About. And I stand by that, that no one talks about this particular element of sales that we're going to discuss. But for any business owner who is very much a part of the growth of their business, a part of the sales piece in their business, even if you have a team, even if you have someone who does sales or does business development or supports that piece in some way, I really want to extend and share this skill with you because it's a very, very powerful one. I, when I first started in business, I was that person like many other business owners who just wanted to hire someone to do the sales and said, Oh, I'll just hire someone to do the sales and then I can do the work, the project work, the marketing work, having come from a background in marketing. But it doesn't work that way. It's always the dream, but that doesn't really translate. So I think understanding how to generate sales for your business is one of the most important things to do. I believe there's two very important things for any business owner. One is how does your business grow? So that's your sales and your marketing. So making sure that that you're across that, you're not mentally outsourcing it. You might outsource it, the function to people, but really understanding that is so critical. And the second most important, or the second on that same level of importance, is understanding the finances of your business and your financial position and you know all the things that come within that, your cash flow, your tax, your obligations. If you're a true business owner, we have to understand those two sides to it. So sales is a big part of that. So let's jump into this episode. I hope you are definitely taking notes. I always do a companion article with every episode as well. It goes and sits on LinkedIn, it's always titled the same as the episode. If you like things in a written format or if you like it in both, if you're like me, that's there for you as well. So let's talk about it. So the first piece is the sales triangle. So the skill I'm going to share is something no one talks about, but there's parts of sales that we all talk about. So the first part of the triangle is your sales processes. So your sales processes, when you look at your business, it's, you know, it's people going from your marketing essentially to then becoming a client. It's that piece often in between. So are they booking a call with you? Are you selling on the phone? Are you sending proposals? What does your follow-up look like? What does your CRM look like? Have you got a are you using something like HubSpot or using spreadsheets or using pen and paper? What are you using? So they're your sales processes, the very technical process pieces within sales. The next part of the triangle is your sales ability. So when you've got someone who's interested in your services, they want to find out more about working with you. This is your sales ability. So this is how you're having those sales conversations. This is your languaging, it's how you're conveying things on there. It's your objection handling. You might follow a bit of a script or a process to some degree on there, but your sales ability is, you know, it's the person who is taking that interested person and hopefully having them sign up as a client if they're a good fit. So we've got our sales processes, the technical things, you know, the proposals, the follow-up, the CRM, all that kind of thing. Then we've got our sales ability, how we're talking to people. Are we having great conversations? Can we answer their questions? Can we articulate our services really well? Can we handle the objections that they may have? That's your sales ability. The third part to the triangle. This has a less, less kind of formal words, and this is why I guess people don't talk about it. I'm calling it your sales mode. And basically, it's the raw, unpackaged, unprocessed willingness to just go out there and get sales. So how your business stands today, it's an established business, I'm sure. So you've got those processes in place, right? People can find your website, they can book a call, or you know, you know how to follow up with people because you've done it again. Maybe your process isn't super slick, but that's okay. You've got a process in place. Also, you've got the sales ability, you've converted clients before. Could your sales skills there be much better and much stronger? I'm sure for all of us that we can always develop that. But if you just have, you know, today if you're thinking about your business, or this month you're thinking about your business and you want to generate more sales, those sales processes in place and your sales ability in place, to some degree, that that alone is not going to generate you sales. You know, you can kind of look, well, if I follow up with people, I'll get sales. Yes, but that's why there's like a whole other piece to the triangle that is needed, and that is that really raw willingness to say, actually, I need to get out there and I need to generate sales. So as we go through this episode, I'm gonna share with what that looks like. I'm gonna share some different examples, and I want you to be extremely open-minded to what this looks like and write down anything that stands out to you in particular, any particular ideas that come up that are relevant to you and your industry and your business, what you've got going on. But that's the first part to it. We've got the sales triangle, so sales processes on one, sales ability on the next bit, and then the third part of the triangle is sales mode, which is this what we're gonna talk about today. So, what this looks like, I'm gonna run you through a list. So the first is just knowing, you know what? We want to make sales, we've got that firm plan, need, desire, absolute must, whatever your reasons, which it's always great to know your reasons for it. But you've got that clarity, we want to be making sales. Now, I want you to remember you know what to do when leads arrive. You've got those sales processes. I want you to remember that you do know how to sell, which is that sales ability. What you need is to get the people, you just need the people to buy, and we can really complicate things, we can really come up with or take our mind to we need a strategy, we need a plan, what's our marketing doing, all these very set-in-stone type of activities to some degree, and they absolutely have a place. But I want to talk about like the title of this the sales creation skill that no one talks about, and really it's creating this almost like visceral mode within you, this visceral feeling and creating this momentum of getting you to a place where you can start chasing sales or creating opportunities. And I want you to do it in the way that's very on brand for you. But when I get clients and they're like, Oh, we've got to make sales real quick, we've got to. I see it as the greatest opportunity, and as much as I and at certain times, you know, you give the strategy or this what this will work or that will work, or you'll craft something out. I almost love this approach. I don't want to call it a strategy, I almost love this approach so much more, and I'll share in the examples why it's really good because it creates opportunity for better strategies when we sit and think and reflect on what are the things that that have worked for us before, what are the things we could do today, almost like in a very that strategic hat on. I think we can really close ourselves off to opportunities and possibilities of better ways we could do things, better ways that we can attract clients to us. So, what this looks like is you know you need to get the people. So I want you to use what you have, and I want you to develop tenacity. I want you to develop, I've written some words down, let me grab them. It's developing being ruthless, being resilient, being persistent. It's those four things: tenacity, ruthless, resilient, and persistent in the endeavor of hopping into this sales mode. Keep in mind this is not at a detriment of anything that you do, what is on brand for you. You know, it's not that you're coming across salesy, sleazy, or anything like that. Like none of that exists here. It's just putting on a new thinking cap to use what you have. So this could look like picking up the phone, it could be putting out a new offer, it could be sending an email, reaching out to someone, it could be being flexible with the packaging when people come to you. And part of all of this is really good for your business evolution. Business is in a very fast change situation at the moment. And so maybe certain things that you're doing, the way you're doing it, the way you're selling it, the way you're packaging things, it needs to develop. So it's taking you out, and that's why this is quite open-ended. It's taking you out of the structures of your current business, of the way you've done things, of what a pristine, A to Z, perfectly mapped out strategy could look like. Because what happens when you kind of shift that to the side just for the time being, you can pick up other pieces of gold. So the idea of this is to have no grand plan. It's I don't have a grand plan, I don't know exactly how I'm going to do this, but I know I just need to get in front of the right people. When I'm in front of the right people, I know what to say, I know how to um talk about what I do and how I can help them. It's just that piece in between. So I'm going to share a couple of examples, one from a client, one from myself, that will hopefully start to paint this picture a little bit better. So I had a client who we had our sales call together, and I knew she was in a position where she needed to make sales really quickly, true to this whole conversation. She needed to make sales really quickly. And one thing I do is I'm very on the ground with my clients. So, what have you got coming up right now? You know, any calls booked in at the moment and we talk about them, or any projects or proposals that are out there, things that are very here and now, as well as the future. I think it's really important to look at both. So I have this sales call with her. I know she needs to make sales really quickly, and so I asked her at the end of our call, once we've kind of dealt with the dealings, what have you got coming up? Do you have any sales calls coming up? And she had like two the next day, and so we looked at it, and by this time I already understood what her goals are. I already understood some things that we were going to be doing together, things that she needed support with, ways that she was going to make sales, but she had these two calls in tomorrow, and we looked at it, and I basically said, you know what, like based on everything that you do, essentially I said, I think you should triple your prices. What she was selling her services for was severely underpriced, and she tripled it the end of the next day, and this is always a test. I'm like, is she actually gonna do it? You know, you tell anyone to raise their prices, you know, you won't know until it really comes down to it. But she actually did, she tripled her prices and she converted both those two clients, and that gave her she had multiple offers and things in her business, and then she went on like she closed down this very low-cost membership that she had because she could see actually I'm earning way more by working privately with people, but she had other things coming up in the business. We were gonna launch a group program, which ended up being very successful as well. Then that tripled her new tripled priced monthly revenue. So it's like you've got to look at what you've got right in front of you. You've got to see what have I got coming up, what can I do right now, what else can I do with what I have as well as what I don't have right now? You know, we can kind of craft this perfect little strategy and hope that that's gonna work really well for us. But when we come back down to the ground and you know, really just look at things almost like remove the internet, remove all the ideas, just look at what's right in front of you. And they were some examples for her. One that happened for me. So back in the day, I used to run a lot of challenges on social media. So I'd have a Facebook group and I would run different challenges: content creation challenge, sales generation challenge, things within my wheelhouse. And as you do with a challenge, you know, at the end of it, if anyone wants to know about how I can help you some more, here's a link to book in for a call. But on this one particular challenge, I was like, you know what? I'm going to, when people opt in for the challenge, I'm gonna offer that call before the challenge even starts. And like, you know, if you're sitting there thinking before even doing this, it's almost like please don't think, just do. If you sit back and think before actually, if I were to sit down with myself or someone be like, oh, what if I offered a call before I delivered the challenge, before I delivered any value, before I prove myself to people, that's probably a bad idea because I need to warm them up. I don't know them. This, you know, you come up with all the reasons not to do something, but I just thought, you know what, I'm just gonna try it. I tried it and it was the best thing I ever did. One of the best techniques because people would book in for book into my calendar before the challenge kicked off. What that does to any business owner, it builds momentum, it builds confidence, and so then I was able to deliver the challenge with you know, sales always put a pep in people's step as a business owner, put some more of a pep in your step, and then there's still sales coming off in that case of the challenge right at the end when I can still follow through and see if anyone else wanted to book a call. So these type of things, it's like look at what's right in front of you, kind of like tone down that thinking, tone down that strategy a little bit, and just get that sales mode on, be open-minded, be flexible, see what else you can do. And I don't always like to give people the ideas because if I give you my ideas, it's like I'm putting you in a in a constrained box of my ideas. I want to know for your business, because this is what this is about, what are the ideas you have? Because you know your business, you know what you do, you know what's right in front of you, you know what's behind you, you know you in your industry, you know so much. All what I love to do is kind of pull that out of you by making these suggestions to you. But if you need ideas, sure, we can talk about that as well. But part of I guess this skill, this conversation is kind of like I said, toning down that strategy and being more open-minded, not having that grand plan and just going out there and seeing what else you can do, what are some different things that you can do that are relevant to your business, what you've got going on. A point that I have here in my preparation notes is strategy can kill the vibe, especially when it comes to activating this sales mode. And the moment you try to turn this into a framework, a plan, a process, it's like you've already lost. It's like trying to bottle up confidence. Like, can you put confidence in a bottle and give it to someone and then say, open this bottle, drink this bottle, you're gonna have the confidence. Like it does not happen there. It's like you have to create this momentum within you, you have to create this visceral feeling and this level of thinking, this sales mode yourself, because no one's gonna go and do it for you. And even if they did, I would love for them to adopt this approach in your business. So hopefully it's giving you just permission to be unpolished and move, move fast, move anyway, move messy, make forward steps and be okay. Like, okay, I'm gonna put out this offer. Maybe someone signs up, maybe they don't. I've even seen many times people will put out different offers which might grab the attention of people, but no one buys that offer, but they buy something else that you're selling, maybe the original offer or services that you actually do want people to buy. But what it did is it grabbed that attention, it brought people towards you. Okay, a couple more things that I want to touch on before we start to close out this episode. Now, you could almost equate this to being a sales sprint. So, a sales sprint, it is a strategy that I use, it's like a contained time frame of doing a sprint, a sprint of sales. So you could almost equate it to that. I do have more of a strategic one, which is like contained, there's some frameworks and bits and pieces about it. This is not that. This is more like an open sales sprint where the only metric is activity. So just going and getting out there. It's not having funnels, it's not overly planning, it's not creating or building anything, it's how can I just get in front of the people that will buy? Because you know, like we reminded you a couple times, you know what to do when people are in front of you. You've got the sales ability, and you've also got the sales processes in place. So we want to stop tinkering with those things. If you really want to make sales right now, like pause the tinkering for the moment and let's hop into this sales mode. And for a lot of you, it will probably be very outreach focused. So reaching out to people, maybe it's you know, you you've you've read an article, and this is why it's so great because we can get so stuck in in a box and like make ourselves really small. So maybe there's some great people in your industry that you want to work with, you'd love to work with them. This is the time when you email them. You know, you might have seen them in an article, you might have seen them on TV or heard them on a podcast, or you know, you've got their book or something. Send them a genuine email and see what comes of it. And then it's like, you know what? I really like it's almost like let's follow more of those inspired thoughts that come up. I love to work with that person. Let me email them, let me call them, let me send them recent newsletter in the mail, let me send them some crispy cream donuts. I love to do that to people. It's like such an easy way to send nice gifts, kind of in the mail, but through Uber. You might be a great, you know, user of certain software or products or services. And so you reach out to someone and you say, you know what, I am an avid user of your product, and here's an idea that I have for you. The idea being in the scope of what you do, or maybe not. It's just I'm I genuinely have this great idea for you. Maybe you can work with them, but it's not like you have to sell to people all the time, you just need to connect with them. Maybe another idea is that, and you know, it's like I'd love to, it's almost like we need to reactivate our brain coming up with ideas ourselves. So maybe you know, you want to get a few people in your industry together, or a few, um, and and I don't know, it could be for a particular, it was International Women's Day recently, or maybe there's some other reason, or maybe there's no reason at all. Like maybe you want to get a few people together, and that's your reason for reaching out. Um, what will come of that you will see, but these are just some of the ideas that I wanted to share with you. So you're not kind of staring at a blank screen or whatever it is, or a blank paper, but the ideas will come even on day zero when you start this sales mode, this sales sprint, this open sales sprint, and you have no ideas. It's like that's almost part of that actually is part of the process, like being stuck, not knowing what to do. Taking two hours to write one email, it's all part of the process. I think it's like pushing us into just operating a bit differently. And I think we have to really operate differently, especially for the world that we're in. Everyone is following the AI strategies and the cookie cutter program strategies and all, you know, we're just a sea of sameness. So I want to take you out of that, hopefully by the end of this episode, to get you doing something different. The last thing I want to share and remind you is that you've probably already done this before. You know, you've probably had you we've all had the beginning of our business. You've had the beginning of your business where you started at zero. How did you go about things? But not the technical things, not that you went to networking events or you set up these referral, like it's almost like this visceral feeling. What do you do? Like, how do you go for it? How do you just get out there and start generating those sales? You're probably a bit a bit more scrappy, a bit more relentless. It's probably those four words that I shared with you: tenacity, ruthless, resilient, persistent. And like I said, do this on brand. Do this the way that you are as a person. Like, you know, you don't have to come across as like an aggressive, sales-only minded person. Hopefully, I think if you can kind of take away the pieces from this episode to hear it in the way that it's not putting you to be a salesperson, it's putting you to be more of an open-minded business owner who can generate sales in lots of different ways through your business. So I want you to know you've probably done this already before, and you can do it again. And I think the best and last piece I will share with you on all of this is that you can build the strategy in hindsight. So once you go through a sales mode, an open sales sprint, look back and say, you know what, this is what worked really well, and I'm going to adopt these new things. Or so the new, like in my example, when I was running those challenges, in hindsight, I could then adopt that new piece of the puzzle of the process where I said, I'm going to offer people a call at the beginning when they first opt in before I even deliver any value, like incredible. And I think when you build the strategy in hindsight, part of this is you can pull some of those great new things that really worked well and adopt them moving forward. But also part of this is I think when you can make this really visceral and put yourself into I I just need to do things, I just need to get things done. You'll probably do things and it's like lowering that thinking down and just doing a bit more. I think we'll take action on things or get things done or complete things that we probably wouldn't do in if we were given 12 months to do it. But activating yourself in this visceral way, creating that momentum. Think you'll get so much done in a small space of time. And the beauty is you're probably going to get some great clients out of it as well. Great clients, great new strategies, great new things to adopt, and great things completed that you probably wouldn't do. Tried new things, contacted new people, just had fun. Just had fun in your business again and just see what happens. And then you can go back to, you know, having a plan, having a process, having a great documented strategy. Those things can exist as well. The last thing, the last, last, last thing I will share with you is one of the conversations I had with a business owner recently where she has a long-term plan that she's working on, long-term strategy and funnel that she's building. It will take time, takes testing, takes lots of different things. But I remember saying to her, you know, you can do that, you can continue doing that. But if you need sales right now, there's nothing stopping you from like activating this sales mode right now, putting out some temporary offers or calling some different people, inviting people in to work with you, contacting your past clients. Like there's nothing, and there shouldn't be, there shouldn't be anything stopping us from doing things like this. I think this is the lovely side of the internet where we think everything needs to be a framework, everything needs to be a A plus B plus C equals Z, that equation. And so that's why no one talks about this sales creation skill because it's not cookie cutter, it's not stock standard, but hopefully it's here to have reminded you that you can really take the reins of your business at any point in time and you know step into that growth again of the business in a really different way. And maybe you'll find, like I've done this in my business before, but also note that I love doing this, but I'm also a planner, I love a good strategy, like I could plan my days all day and everyone else's day, every single day. I love that kind of thing, but I also love this approach as well, and so sometimes I think, could I do this approach all the time and then forget the strategy? But innately, I just don't think that's me. I love to develop a strategy, and I think when you kind of step back, this is a strategy. We've just kind of removed some of the things that put people in boxes. So hopefully you find that useful. I would love to hear from you how you found this episode. And if you have any questions, always do reach out. I spend most of my time on LinkedIn and when it comes to the social media platforms at the moment. So you'll definitely find me there. Action step for this episode. I would say there's two. Number one, decide. Decide, are you doing a sales sprint? Are you gonna hop into sales mode? Remember that sales triangle. We've got our sales processes, we have our sales ability, and this third one is the sales mode, which is more of an open sales sprint. So the first action step is to decide, am I going to do this? And then the second action step is when? When are you doing this? Are you starting this today? Are you starting this tonight? When are you actually going to start this? And then your third step is just to do it and come back to this episode while you're doing it, or just remind yourself it's probably going to be messy. You're probably going to say, I wish I had a better plan. I wish I had a plan. But just know that that is actually part of this whole process. It's to figure things out, it's to activate your brain to come up with those ideas and those possibilities. And if you are stuck, send me a message and maybe we can chat. I hope you have an amazing day and I'll chat to you really soon. Hey, thanks for listening. If you found this episode useful, I'd love for you to send it to a friend. The best podcasts I have found have all been recommended to me. If you can spread the word by sharing this episode, I can spend more time helping you by creating episodes just like this one. Send it, text it, tell somebody about it, whatever you need to do. The more you spread the word, the more I can focus on creating needle moving episodes to help you and your friends.