Recently there was a lengthy discussion on LinkedIn where coaches were giving their view on whether or not they should hire a salesperson. The following is an expansion of my contribution to that discussion.
Every coach needs to become good at sales. In fact as a coach, “sales” is the business skill you should be focusing on the most. But I’m not the only one who thinks that.
According to Ira Kalb, BusinessInsider.com, “Perhaps the most important subject you can study is sales…Selling is a critical skill because, like it or not, everyone has to sell to succeed…If you want to increase your chances of success in business and in life, it will greatly help you to learn the sales process and practice it so it becomes part of your marketing DNA.”
And Peter Vogt, Career-Advice.Monster.com says, “Sales experience is applicable everywhere. Business leaders, many of whom started out in sales, believe that if you can succeed in sales, you can succeed almost anywhere. Sales is often viewed as the training ground for the business standouts of tomorrow. Why? Sales is all about understanding a product (or service or cause) in depth, teaching other people about it (using your written and verbal communication skills) and showing those people how they would benefit. No matter where your career may go in five, 10 or 30 years, the communication and persuasion skills developed in sales will be crucial to your success.”
You are the best salesman of your own product. If you are passionate, confident, enthusiastic, and you have good programs, your coaching can almost sell itself, but not quite.
Take my case: I was what you might call a serial start-up entrepreneur because every time I got to the selling part of the business, I got stuck. I thought I was bad at sales, and I didn’t want to do it. So I’d give up and start another business where I thought I wouldn’t have to sell…i.e. “network marketing,” web designer, graphic artist, to name a few. But by the time I started my coaching business (the fifth business in 6 years), I knew it was time to stop running away from sales and learn how to strengthen that skill. And I’m glad I did because it paid off. Now I have a sustainable business because I know how to get clients through sales conversations.
I’d like to inspire you to get good at sales. There are several advantages to coaches getting good at sales that I want to share with you.
1) Enrollment conversation: The main purpose of it is to find out if that person is a good fit for one of your programs. Therefore it’s important to conduct the enrollment conversation yourself, so you get to decide if the potential client is a good fit. If you hire someone else to make your sales, you give up control over who your clients are, and that can be a cause for regret later on.
Even if you establish a definitive criteria for an ideal client, your salesperson may not always get it right, unless they’re trained properly. There’s nothing worse than being handed a client that’s hard to work with especially when there’s nothing you can do about it because your salesperson has made your commitment.
2) Stay in control: You have more control over what’s being said about you and your business. When someone else is giving the sales pitch, you can’t always be sure that they will follow your script. Even if you have a script to follow, you can’t know ahead of time what direction the conversation will take based on the person’s answers to your questions. A lot of the conversation is ad-lib. What you would naturally say in response to an answer may be quite different from what your salesperson would say. And most salespersons are professionally trained to handle negotiations.
3) More authenticity: In the coaching business, it’s important to come across as genuine and transparent. When you hire a salesperson, the sales pitch can come across as just–well—a sales pitch. But when you are conducting the conversation, the potential client will feel like it’s more of a conversation with someone who genuinely cares about them and is looking out for their best interests.
4) Correct market: One more point to be considered is that selling becomes much easier if you are targeting the correct market. For example, after participating in my first large-scale giveaway, I learned that most of the people who subscribed to my list were freebie seekers, who perhaps wanted some free coaching and nothing more. Hence, my enrollment conversions were depressingly low. But when I changed how I got my leads and went more for quality, my introductory session sales conversions increased dramatically. So if you are good at sales and the sales conversations are still disappointing, you may be talking to the wrong people.
In conclusion, getting good at sales conversations instead of hiring someone else to do them, will help you get better quality clients, have more control over the sales process, and build more lasting and authentic relationships with your future clients.
