You Can Lead A Horse To Water
“We aren’t attached to outcomes - we’re attached to results”
This was a piece of advice I received shortly after transitioning away from selling financial advice, to business consulting. In theory - this makes total sense. Energy, confidence, swagger and intent all play a critical role in the sales process. Your prospects need to be inspired to purchase. If you are overly attached to the outcome of the sales conversation you run the risk of exuding desperation. Showing up, day in and day out with energy and confidence to inspire your prospects to purchase without being emotionally attached to the outcome is essential, but in practice, not always easy.
Effective salespeople are driven by both outcomes and results. Before we go further it helps to distinguish between outcomes and results. Outcomes refer to closed sales and close ratios. These are internal metrics that are important sales KPIs. Trackinng these allows you to measure the effectiveness of your salesforce. Results refer to external factors such as: your prospects getting the support they need and your prospect’s experience with your brand. Attaching yourself to results is what ensures you can sell with intent and integrity...but sometimes it’s those KPIs that keep you motivated and light the fire required to effectively sell day in/day out. So how do you maintain the energy required to escort people to yes, without being too hung up on the results?
Trust the Process
A well defined, effective sales process is all about education, connection, inspiration and disqualification. Prospects need to be educated, entertained, inspired and convinced as they move along their awareness continuum towards purchase. While this typically happens in your marketing, it’s intimately connected with the sales process. If you use conversations to sell I would pay close attention to the steps your prospect goes through before they arrive at a conversation with you (Buyer's Journey). If you haven’t mapped this out in minute detail - you’re making life harder than it needs to be. Each of these steps also serves to weed out rate shoppers, tire kickers and those that are otherwise not a fit, thus ensuring that when you do connect with prospects for conversations they have a base level understanding of who you are and what you do. If you’ve taken the time to thoughtfully think through your sales process to ensure your prospects are getting what they need to say yes - have faith. If they’ve gone through your process and they still haven’t arrived at yes they may need additional nurture or they've disqualified themselves. There is comfort in this knowledge and I personally find it instrumental in my own ability to show up and sell my heart out every.single.day.
PSA: If you're like "sales process?" and don’t have a consistent, repeatable and effective way to bring new clients into your business - we need to speak immediately.
Enforce Boundaries
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had colleagues complain about getting stood up by prospects. Back in the good old days (pre covid) this would look like sitting at a cafe, positioned at a table facing the door with your most inviting smile plastered on your face, your coffee getting colder by the minute. Now it often looks like sitting in on a zoom meeting starting at your own reflection...waiting...I do not tolerate this. I appreciate life gets busy - but too often salespeople are treated disrespectfully and their time is not valued. This has got to stop...and as a salesperson that’s your responsibility :) Honour your time. Position these conversations as high value - why is it important for the prospect to show up? Enforce boundaries around your generosity: this can look like sending through information to prepare your prospect for your time together and setting the expectation that they best come prepared. Feel comfortable rescheduling if someone shows up ill prepared. While this may seem counter-intuitive (don’t we want high conversation volume?) there is A LOT to be said for channeling your inner Maxine Waters and reclaiming your time.
You Can Lead a Horse to Water
If I know I’ve given my all: ensured my prospect went through my sales process, brought the energy, enforced my boundaries, made a powerful invitation and still receive a “no” I remind myself of the old saying ‘You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink’. I am not in the business of writing permission slips, and neither should you be. I find it more effective to redirect any disappointment I may or may not feel towards my next sale. Life is too short and our work is too important to dwell on the one that got away.
