As a business owner, there’s one thing that you cannot live without. Sales. It is the life-blood of your business. Without it, you have nothing but a hobby.

Even though sales is the most important thing you as a business owner should focus on, there are a lot of business owners who are resisting sales.  I’ve noticed that often they stay away from sales because they have an icky association with sales. They don’t want to be associated with the sleazy car salesman.

But sales does not have to be yucky.

Sales is service. Your ideal clients are out there just waiting to hear from you. They have problems they want solved and as long as you stay quiet and they don’t find you, they are still suffering and their problems are not being solved.

Put yourself in their shoes. Think about a problem you’ve had in your life, and how it was solved because of some solution you found somewhere.

You have a gift, and you are meant to use that gift. Without selling and enrolling your clients you are not sharing that gift with the world.

Here are 6 ways you may be sabotaging your sales efforts:

• Not focusing on sales every day. As a business owner there are always so many things to do. One of the biggest mistakes I see is that sales is not a top priority and often falls behind other less important tasks. If you can set up your business in a way that automatically generates leads for you on a consistent basis, you may not have to even worry about this. If sales conversations are trickling onto your calendar effortlessly or you have a sales funnel that automatically generates sales, you’re in good shape!

• Thinking it’s all about you and forgetting that your ideal client is waiting for you to help them. When you are making it about you, you are not serving them and you let your own ego get in the way.

• Staying attached to the outcome. If you have an agenda other than to help the client, the client will feel it and they will end up not trusting you. If you are doing this, you are coming from a place of getting instead of serving and your potential client will feel it. Instead, ask yourself how you can best be of service and help the person. Help your potential client come up with the best solution for them that will lead them to what they want.

• Not being who you need to be. Are you afraid of stating the truth or challenge your ideal client in their limiting beliefs? Often, the fear of not being liked will cause business owners to say and do things that are not serving their clients because it’s more important for them to be liked than it is to help them. In order to help them move forward, you cannot buy into their story that is keeping them stuck, but you need to come from a higher perspective in order to help them.

• Telling instead of asking. The idea of the sales conversation is for you figure out what they want and need and see if what you offer serves as a solution to what they want or solves their problem. It is important to help your client explore and see for themselves why they need you. Once you start telling them what to do, you are not letting them come to their own conclusions. As a result, they become defensive and most likely you have lost the sale. By asking the right questions the client will sell him/herself and want to work with you, if that is the best solution for them.

• Not asking for the sale and having problems stating the price. Once you have led your client through a sales conversation and it is clear that working with you is going to be their solution, it’s time to state your offer and ask for the sale. If you are not confident in stating your prices, the potential client will feel it and not trust that you can help them. They may also start questioning the price if you are not confident. Practice stating your price with confidence and make sure you can feel deserving of it. If you don’t you need to work on shifting your mindset to align them with your prices. A topic for another post 🙂

Have you ever made any of these mistakes? Which part of the sales conversation do you find most challenging. Feel free to share a comment below.

Feel like you could use some support with this? I invite you to apply for a strategy call with me here.