Selling Through This Shit Storm

It’s the last post from the peeps in my world, you heard from her other half (Martin) this morning

And now you hear from Sarah Jolley-Jarvis (who along with Martin Jolley-Jarvis I have been mentoring for newly 2 years now!)

She is all about SALES

The content is pretty simple but that’s the point

It’s not hard IF you keep it simple

Read and go do!

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Let’s face it, for some people their business has evaporated over night.

If you are one of those people I’m not about to tell you that you should be sell sell selling what you do…that would be dumb

But if you need (and want to) you can sell your skills during this crisis, some of the skills might need transferring

Or the internet favourite word at the moment ‘pivoting’

To make them work and still add value remotely right now…

but people ARE buying and there IS demand there for the right skills.

So what are the right skills and how can you package them?

I’ve done over 20 calls with people who are struggling to find a new direction…every single call without fail comes back to the same thing…

Who is your ideal customer?

what is going on for them right now?

What help do they need?

First of all let’s deal with the worst case scenario: your ideal customer still needs what you sell but you can’t sell what you do because it can’t be done under lockdown conditions:

that sucks…you might have to look for alternative income, what other sellable skills do you have that people might need right now?

As far as maintaining contact with your ideal customer how might you be able to add some value, enough to maintain your relationship and keep at the forefront of their minds?

I’ve seen great examples of this with sports therapists doing tutorials on how to self massage, nurseries sending out activities to do with your kids, adding value with zero expectation or ability to sell.

However if you can sell then do!!

If you have something of value then why shouldn’t you be paid for it?

Don’t devalue your skill set, or your profession by doing things that SHOULD be paid for free of charge: I spoke to a client who was super frustrated; she does online yoga classes and has been doing for over a year prior to this all kicking off.

Her local competition decided to go online and are doing a class every morning for free…you can’t be undercut lower than that!!

We worked through her approach to sell against this, fortunately she has a fantastic reputation, some great USPs and a back catalogue of over 100 classes to differentiate herself and justify her monthly subscription.

If you are faced with something similar, look at where you can differentiate and add more value to justify the cost.

The likelihood is that your ideal customer still has the same needs as before…but their priorities might have changed.

Speaking to past and present clients, understanding where they are at and how their needs might have changed can really help you to figure out how you can still meet your customers needs.

I spoke to one person who has a fantastic loyal following and is normally booked up for months in advance, since the lockdown began every single client has cancelled: they simply can’t prioritise the money right now to pay for his services.

With little time to organically target sectors who can afford to prioritise money for their services he went back to his audience, found out what they could afford to invest right now and provided a scales back version of their normal services that fitted their budget…they put the offer out and it sold out organically in less than 24 hours.

Understand what your customer needs right now…and provide them with a solution that meets that need at a price that they can afford and just as before this crisis began they will buy!!

Finally…you have an audience but you can’t sell to them what you would normally provide but does your market need what you can provide for a different reason? Can you meet their needs in another way?

For instance I spoke to a lady who runs a face to face tutoring business for children (mostly for exam prep etc)

Schools closed, exams got cancelled and demand disappeared. Quickly though enquiries started coming in for tutoring for kids who are learning at home: parents who didn’t want their kids missing out on learning. This wasn’t something she had done before.

But Was totally within the skill set of her tutors, she got them set up online and within day’s was able to offer appropriate tuition for kids of all stage of education in lockdown.

This was a simple ‘pivot’, she increased awareness of what she had to offer organically using social media; providing decent value content to her growing audience and within a week she was at full capacity and in a position to look for more tutors to meet demand.

If you are desperately searching for your next sale start by reconnecting with your ideal customer, understand how what they need and how your skills can help them meet that need…

And then don’t be afraid to let them know that you can help them: you are doing them a disservice not telling them if you can truly help them during this time.

Corona Crisis or not always keep your communication honest and authentic: don’t pretend to be someone you aren’t, don’t ‘put on a brave face’, be human, be you and you WILL attract and convert those ideal customers you enjoy working with.

Happy selling 🙂

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Back to Dan

How straightforward was that eh?

If your honest, smart and act quickly you can crack on during these weird as fuck times

And if the idea of sales scares you?

That’s normal for some!

Sarah is a great sales coach (she also does sales training for corporates and groups as well)

Again lemme know if you want an intro

Right that’s it from me ‘leveraging’ my peeps, if you got something from any of the posts?

TELL ME

The guys and gals happily gave up their time to create it, would be nice to give them some feedback

Anyways that’s it from me

If you celebrate? Happy easter!

If not?

HAVE A DAY!

😘

Dan