5 Life Changing Tips to Grow Your Revenues

You’re only as good as your last deal.

That was basically the mantra that I held during the early part of my career. For years my job security depended upon my ability to generate sales and revenue. This drove me to hone my skills, out-compete anyone who was doing something similar and obsess about sales. 

It meant that at times I was not a team player. 

It meant that I sometimes (possibly more often that I’d like to admit) exuded “needy energy”.

It meant that my day to day was a roller coaster of emotions from the adrenaline rush of getting a “yes”, to the inevitable lows that accompanied being hung up on, ghosted or simply ignored. 

This was unsustainable, left me feeling a little powerless when it came to selling and robbed me of joy.

I see way too many people relying on their charm or good reputation to sell. These are assets, for sure, but if this is what you base your sales process around then you will only ever be as good as your last deal.

I’ve spent the past 20 years learning, experimenting, failing and succeeding at selling so that your experience with sales can be a little easier and a lot more sustainable.  This article compiles my top 5 tips for generating consistent sales.

1. Normalize Selling.

Everything is sales. Whether you’re negotiating with your toddler to get dressed for the day or inviting a room of people to adopt your ideas - you’re selling. The most important thing business owners can do is to normalize a culture of selling. This means dispelling any myths or discomforts, trauma responses or limiting beliefs held around what it means to sell. This means getting clear on what your values are when it comes to sales. It means establishing what you want your prospects to feel when you sell to them. 

2. Set weekly Revenue Operations Meetings

Not enough business owners do this. They are so focused on delivering their service that they don’t prioritize sales and then wonder why they aren’t generating the revenue they want. I break down monthly revenue goals into weekly revenue actions - aka the actions required to ensure we generate that revenue and each week I map out the actions I need to take that will yield the results I’m looking for. 

3. Release Attachment to Outcomes, Prioritize Attachment to Actions

Sales is about influence, but it’s not about control. We’ve been conditioned to believe it’s about control through the glorification of  high pressure sales tactics and glamorous life led by sales bros. The reality is you cannot, and should not want to control your prospect. All you can do is show up, provide value and connection and a commitment to your follow through. If you can let go of your attachment to what your prospect does, which is beyond your control, and instead focus on your attachment to ensuring their experience with you is as valuable and powerful as possible your sales process will start to feel fun, rather than a grind. 

4.Hand to Hand Combat

Forgive me for this crude name, but it’s what I started calling social selling a while ago and it’s stuck ever since. You can call it whatever you want, just make sure you do it. H2HC can take many forms, but in essence it’s getting into the habit of making daily, direct invitations, into your sales process. It’s not enough to have a booking link on your websites or posts. This is not Field of Dreams, if you build it there is no guarantee they’ll come. Normalize and prioritize direct outreach. 

5. Embrace Tension, Eliminate Friction

Tension and friction in the sales process is not the same thing. It’s ok for prospects to feel tension. If they didn’t - their problem likely isn’t urgent or important enough to solve. We want a degree of tension in the sales process, and people who are good at sales will ask questions to highlight that tension. Friction is bad - friction is anything that acts as a barrier to sales. This could be intake forms that are too long and require too much personal information from a prospect before they’ve even had a call with you. It could be not using a calendar link to schedule sales calls and going back and forth in email purgatory to get one booked. It could be not having easy methods to collect payment. 

It’s not hard to be good at sales. Like most things it just takes practice. It can be hard to create a culture and set up the infrastructure that allow for your company to consistently and sustainably generate sales. If  you want to learn  more about how I support small businesses to do this, send me a message. I’d love to connect!