Ask For The Sale: Don’t Be A Chicken
When’s the last time you got yourself all pumped up to do something to grow your business or ask for the sale only to chicken out at the last minute because you were worried about what other people would think of you?
Are you too chicken to ask for the sale?
Recently, I was the guest speaker at a Business Among Moms event where the attendees asked sales related questions, and I shared tips, techniques, and sales advice.
One question, in particular, stood out and the lovely woman who asked the question came up to me afterward to continue the discussion about it. I’m sharing this question with you in case you’ve ever found yourself in a similar situation, and hopefully, my answer will give you a new outlook on these situations.
The question: “What do you do when you’ve psyched yourself up to go to an event with the intention of talking about your product/service and then when you get there, you chicken out? You don’t want to come across as salesy or pushy, so you hold back talking about your product/service. And you don't ask anyone for their business.”
The answer: First, most of us walk around with an unconscious mindset of, “The world revolves around me. Everything that happens somehow is about me, for me or because of me.”
Maybe you’ve found yourself in a situation where someone made a comment you thought was about you and you were surprised to find out later it had nothing to do with you.
I know I’ve been there a few times.
With this awareness in mind, when you show up to an event prepared to talk about your product/service and intend to invite people to become customers you’re thinking about you. Where this becomes a problem is the people you’re meeting are thinking about themselves. They’re not putting two and two together and realizing you're chickening out because you don’t want to come across as salesy or pushy. They think the reason you didn’t ask for the sale has something to do with your opinion about them.
Your Savvy Sales Tip: When you don’t invite people to do business with you, you open the door for inaccurate conclusions to be drawn by your customer as to why you don’t want their business. Ask for the sale!
Here are some real life conclusions I’ve heard from people who didn’t get asked for their business:
“She doesn’t think I can afford it.”
“I’m not her type of customer.”
“She doesn’t think her product/service will work for me.”
“He’s too busy to take on new clients.”
“He’s not interested in working with me.”
“My order isn’t big enough for him to even waste his time.’
“She doesn’t like me.”
Chances are none of these conclusions are true. The person concerned with coming across pushy or salesy is so caught up in how the situation relates to themselves; they don’t take into consideration how the other person may interpret the lack of invitation to do business. Remember, most of us think, “It’s all about me, why didn’t she/he ask me for my business?”
I worked with a client who wanted to ask her friend to join her sales team. She'd put off asking because she was worried her friend would feel pressured to say yes and it would create friction in their friendship. During our coaching session, we worked on specific language for the ask, what to do with her voice and the best time to ask her friend to join her team.
My client called me the day after her session to say not only did her friend say “yes” to joining her team, her friend told her, “I’d always wondered why you didn’t ask me to be on your team, I thought you didn’t think I was capable of doing it.”
Wow, talk about a powerful misstep with the best of intentions!
The best thing you can do is be willing to put yourself out there and invite people to do business with you. When you don’t ask for the sale, people will wonder why. Then inaccurate conclusions can form. Do you want people to think you don’t like them? Or, do you want them to think you don’t believe that they can afford your product/service?
People appreciate when you ask for their business, so go ahead and ask them. I can honestly say in my 20+ years in sales, I've never had anyone say, “How dare you invite me to become a customer!” I am certainly told no a time or two, but never damaged a relationship by asking for someone's business in a kind, considerate way.
I’d love to hear what happens as you invite people to do business with you and ask for the sale.
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