All we all want to do is sell our stuff! All we all want to do is sell our shit I heard somebody say the other day. It’s why we network, create content on SM and comment on other people’s posts. It’s why we blog, write articles, write books and put ourselves out there as speakers.
It made me think. In truth it made me a little sad.
Ok I get that the drive behind every business owner’s actions, in terms of engagement and communication, may be the need to sell their stuff. But is it really all that we want?
Is making money, creating a sustainable turnover for our business or our employer, what we want to be spending 40 to 50 years of our lives doing?
Specifically, as leaders, are we creating an environment for our teams, colleagues and clients that is totally focused on how much money we can make by selling our stuff?
The business owners drive to create income
Business owners, of all shapes and sizes, need to create an income from their products or services to keep their business going, pay their staff and pay their bills. But surely that is just a mechanism for survival, the base requirement that must be met, isn’t there more to business than that?
What about passion, your passion for what you do and the passion your clients and customers have for what you do and produce. The passion you need to get through the rough spots, that makes every win a celebration and that made you start your business in the first place. As a leader you need that passion to ignite the enthusiasm and buy in of your teams, to give them the impetus to go the extra mile.
If all we are concerned about is sales, then surely we lose our human touch and more importantly we lose touch with our clients? People buy on emotions and make decisions using logic. If we focus on the sale, the revenue, we use logic and lose the emotion. How then are we going to create engagement, know, like and trust with our customers?
40 – 50 years of just selling?
Yes, sustainable income, for our business or our employer is vital for the survival of the business. A leader who focuses his teams’ efforts on that income, rather than working on what is actually going to be produced is not going to be a good leader because they won’t inspire passion in the team.
To inspire passion a great leader will think about this:
- The pain point of the client / customer / end user
- The solution that the service or product is going to provide to overcome / eradicate that pain point
- How as a team people will work together, with passion and enthusiasm to create that solution
When these three points are the focus then the outcome will be exactly what is required for the client and they will buy it, ‘ding ding’, revenue.
As a leader you must have an engaged team to produce great results. Make that team collaborate effectively, work to their strengths and where possible do what they love, well then those 40 to 50 years will be way more enjoyable and fulfilling for everyone. Plus, when a team is happy it stays together, less turnover and all the costs and disruption that entails.
Creating a sales focused environment for our teams
Yes, ok, we have to make sales to keep our business alive, that is a given. If it’s all we as leaders and our teams are focused on, we miss the point and our working lives become a target driven misery of routine and blandness.
According to Matt Dudek, Vice President, Gartner. “Leaders of inside sales teams face a high turnover risk with their reps today — 18% annually according to our research.”
According to Gartner’s recent Global Labor Market Survey, 37% of inside sellers said they intend to look for a new job in the next year and some of the key reasons for moving to other companies are cited as, more engaging work, a friendlier wok environment and highly skilled managers.
Yes sales must be sales focused but it’s not all about selling your stuff, it’s about having fun, being well led and having passion for what we do that makes that happen.
So, we all have to sell our stuff, yes, but we should be focusing on why we do it, who we are doing it for, why we are doing it for them (not us) and how we can create that passion in ourselves and others as we do it.
When you crack that, you and your people will sell your stuff, no problem.
