How to Sell Without Bragging - One Tip to Help

Speaker A: If you find yourself struggling sometimes to sell your company or sell yourself, then I have a tip today to help you. Maybe you have a friend setting up a company who struggles to position themselves in the strongest way possible. Maybe they're too modest, maybe they suffer a little from the imposter syndrome. Listen in today and I'll help them too. My name is Paul Owen and you're listening to the True Sales Podcast. Welcome back to the show. Delighted as ever that you've chosen to join me today on your favorite podcast platform to obviously listen to one of your favorite podcasts with me, Paul Owen. And a short solo podcast giving you one idea particularly focused today on perhaps the more reluctant salesperson, the more bashful salesperson who struggles at times to put themselves across in the most compelling way. Well, I hope you've had a good day, a good week. It's been a busy week here at True Sales. I spent Monday this week with a coaching, uh, client of ours, one of the fastest growing companies in London's commercial property market right now. And then Tuesday I was up in the Midlands with a long standing client of mine. Not only spending a day with them looking at sales obviously, but also going out for a celebratory dinner with their sales team and their, uh, owner, uh, to celebrate last year's figures, uh, ending in, uh, September. Their financial year ended in September and they were 60% up on the previous year. So really nice to spend time with them, to see them succeeding. And long may the success of both clients on Monday and Tuesday continue. And then today it's Wednesday that we're recording. Who knows when you're listening to it, a bit of more challenging day. We're putting the final touches together for the True Sales Academy online training, giving you sales training anywhere, anytime. Um, just a few teething things. We're trying to sort out those last minute things. We're trying to get it all going. So anyway, it's going to be live soon and yes, as a podcast listener, you can have a special offer from us. Remember, all you need to do is drop me a quick line, Paul, @choosesales.co to let me know you're interested in registering and we'll send you a code for a bit of discount off the course and one or two added extras as well. Okay, so let's talk about the theme for today on, uh, reluctant salespeople or nervous salespeople or bashful salespeople. And I think there are many of us in sales that sometimes do find it difficult, uh, selling ourselves, selling our company and I was reminded of just how prevalent this challenge is, I guess in some of the recent work. Again, recording the online training, being around creative people, camera specialists, production specialists, sound engineers, brilliant at their job, find it difficult to go out and sell themselves and position themselves. And there's a couple of different things around this, of course, as ever, uh, in perhaps all bits of life, there's a mindset side to it and there's a skill set side to it. I don't suggest in this short period of a few minutes on the podcast, I can immediately solve the mindset issues around am I confident enough? Do I know how to do this, do I really have value in what I do? Etc? But what I'm hoping is this skill set idea that I share with you helps to maybe mask the mindset for now, and then through a bit more success, you may find a way to overcome the mindset as well. So, uh, what's the challenge? The challenge here, people go out and they don't sell themselves well. So they're reasonably good at talking to clients and finding out need and uncovering stuff. But when it comes to sharing what they do, they tend to explain what they do. They tend to say, here's the what. But I think they're often reluctant to, what's sometimes called in the business world, sell the sizzle. You know, give something with a bit of spice. Uh, there was a lovely description I heard from a friend of mine, actually in the finance world, and he was talking about presenting to the board and, uh, often his boss would remind him to advertise rather than to explain, that is, to pick out highlights and put those across the board, not just talk them through everything. So this idea of being able to sell things compellingly applies in many different worlds. Well, first things first, I want to try and at least alleviate some of those mindset concerns. I say I can't take them all away in one short podcast of recognizing, ah, that you probably much more able to see the value that you offer your clients, and therefore the prospective clients that you might go out to meet by thinking about the clients you already have, the people that you've worked with, and how they value you. So rather than trying to write down here's all the things I think I'm great at, which, you know, often even experienced sales folks such as me can get a little bit uncomfortable doing that, I suppose, if it's particularly about yourself, but about your company or whatever it might be. Um, but actually to think about what your clients say. So try and think of words and phrases that your clients have used to describe you. I think this is often, number one, a great reminder of the value that you offer. And if you do have that imposter syndrome that creeps in sometimes, and most of us do, by the way, then it might help you remember all the great reasons that people use you, all the value they see in what you do. So it might help a little bit with the mindset. But I'd like you to then to use that idea, uh, use those words, use those phrases that clients use to describe you. Maybe on feedback forms, maybe on testimonials they've written on LinkedIn, maybe on, um, reviews, have written on Google. And use those words as a framing, I. E. When we start to talk about yourself, your company, your services, your products, whatever the things are, you frame it in a way of saying, well, our clients tell us that what they enjoy about working with us is. Our clients tell us that what they enjoy about working with us is. I'm not suggesting it's a word for word of that, by the way. I'm just repeating it so you can hear how a simple framing allows you to present to people that you're merely telling them what other people have said, rather than being boastful yourself if it helps you. And it's not a prerequisite if it helps you. I think if you're uncomfortable selling, pitching, presenting yourself, it can sometimes be useful just to get that out in the room or get that out on the phone. Whether you're in a meeting with your network with the phone, and it comes to that stage where the client does want to hear a bit about you, um, I think it's fine sometimes if you're nervous about doing that, to explain that you're not the best salesperson and so might not be the right person to get it quite right. But what our clients say about us is I'm not recommending that there are some downsides to it. In case any of you are sitting there frowning at that idea, I recognize you can be underplaying yourself. And so I don't think you have to have it. But if you are really uncomfortable, then sometimes just saying that you're uncomfortable can help. And it leads very nicely into what you are, uh, about to say on that theme. By the way, for all sales ideas, what I try and do in all the advice I offer on the podcast, and you'll see it when the Academy goes live online, and it's certainly, uh, certainly there in all the training that I do is to give people ideas, to give them Structures to give them theories, to give them thinking behind the things that we do. And then encourage people to turn those ideas into something that they can do in their own, um, own voice. It's much more authentic that way. It feels much more like you. That comes across better to people. But I don't think that's the same as just saying, I'll just rock up and be yourself. I think a little bit of planning, a little bit of structure, a little bit of forethought helps us do it. But it is always, I think, success about taking a good idea and then making it your own. And I think again, being able to, if you're uncomfortable, flag up you're uncomfortable could help. I was with another commercial property client only a few months ago with their founders who found the pitching process torturous. And they are very much delivery people rather, um, than salespeople. And one thing I suggested to them was get it out in the room. You know, this is probably going to be the worst sales pitch you hear today because we're not salespeople. We are people who specialize in delivering for them. It was authentic, it was true. It reduced the expectations that people would have about how slick this thing would be. And actually, when you consider that what the client is looking for is people who are capable of delivering, then it's quite smart as well. They're saying, I'm not that thing that you don't want, and we are that thing that you do want. So there's my tip. If you are uncomfortable, if you suffer from, oh, who am I to say, I don't like to sing my own praises too much, then try to alleviate that concern by reminding yourself through reading testimonials and reviews and feedback forms that people are giving you or just what people have told you. And then take those words and use that framing to put across your value. At networking, on calls, in meetings, it feels authentic, it feels natural. And it will be a much more comfortable way for you to show people the value that you offer. Okay, so put it into practice and do as ever. Let me know how you get on with that. Or forward this to somebody that you think might struggle with this idea and hopefully they can put it into practice. So last reminder on, um, this episode that if you want to be one of the first people to get the access to the true Sales Academy, we've got courses for telesales, uh, for sales and um, for non sales people who do sales work in their job, uh, then drop me a line, Paul, @truesales.co and express your interest, we'll put you on the list and we'll send you a special offer. Uh, that it's going live soon. I promise you, if the glitches don't keep going for too much longer, then we're just a few days away from that going live. Last reminder, if you like this podcast and like what comes across, then please do subscribe. It helps you to make sure you don't miss an episode. It helps us because it raises our profile or raters, reviewers, or tell a friend. Really want your help in spreading the word about the work we do, which is helping people to sell wealth with honesty and honesty and integrity at the heart of that sales behavior. So we're wrapped up for now. My name is Paul Owen, and you've been listening today to the True Sales Podcast.