Welcome back to the Scale Your Small Business Podcast with your host, Jillian Flodstrom. This week, we’re welcoming number one award-winning account executive and a super successful sales coach, Nicole Cramer. Nicole is here to share with us her unique perspective on shifting our mindsets to a place of service and how we can avoid being ‘salesy.’
Nicole believes sales can be fun. It doesn’t have to be a big, scary thing. The key is shifting your perspective. Serving is selling, and selling should be serving. Nicole reminds us of this: if you’re feeling salesy, the chances are you’re making it about you. You’re making yourself the centerpiece, and that’s not why you started a business, right? If you’re not telling your customer how you can help them, then you’re not really doing what you said you wanted to do, which is to help others. We have to be willing to get uncomfortable and take some of those risks in order to fulfill this passion.
A major challenge Nicole sees business owners make is distracting themselves from what they are afraid to do with other tasks and things that they feel productive with. When you’re focused on, “I need this website to be up and running before I can help people.” The website doesn’t give you any better ability to help people. It’s a distraction that makes you feel good because you’re doing something, but it’s not actually a revenue-generating activity. And if you aren’t generating revenue in your business, then you don’t have a business.
Additionally, business owners often fall victim to bright shiny object syndrome of trying to do too many things all at once. Those who do this are just distracting themselves and keeping themselves stuck where they are.
Many people have the fear of being too pushy. Nicole’s advice is this: If you’re selling ice to a polar bear, then you’re selling a polar bear something that he doesn’t need. So are you selling people something that they don’t need? You’re being salesy because you’re selling people things that they don’t need. Don’t let your fears or insecurities prevent you from helping and serving people. The truth is, most people aren’t going to need what you have, and that’s okay.
Personal growth plays a huge part in professional success. From Nicole’s perspective, your first couple of years of entrepreneurship have nothing to do with growing your business. It has everything to do with your own personal development journey. If you don’t focus on that first and foremost, you are going to take yourself out of the game. You need to be so committed to why you want to do this and you need to be able and willing to recommit every day, sometimes every minute.
90% of this is mindset and 10% of it is strategy. Invest in yourself, hire a coach. A doctor does not perform surgery on herself. You are not meant to go through this alone. That can look like investing in a coach. Maybe that means investing in whatever your success team is, therapists, mentors, guides, anything that would help.
Nicole’s final piece of advice is this: you either get to fight for your limitations or fight for your possibilities. You can see it through either lens, but when you continue to see it through the lens of your limitations, you will continue to see more limitations. If you shift your perspective, you’ll see your potential.
Helpful Links
Show Notes
Get CLEAR Infographic
