I attended another great event last night along with 20 or so awesome women. Hosted by The Power Chicks featuring Chris Flett of Ghost CEO. The topic of discussion was Asking for the Sale.
Chris was enlightening as always, one of the most interesting things he shared was how the ‘new’ model of selling is actually one that women tend to do naturally. The ‘old’ way of selling was all about closing the deal. Cue Glengarry Glen Ross…
This model is competitive, aggressive, and is very numbers-driven as opposed to solution-driven. The new model is less about selling and more about education and information. Chris explained that if you are presenting the right information to the right market, the sale should just happen naturally. Bingo! That’s my kinda sales, baby.
Hold the phone a second though…
Although women tend to use the education/information model of selling by nature, there are a few ways we create obstacles for ourselves. As Chris says, women like to be everything to everybody. Yep. I can relate to that idea. Mom, friend, daughter, businesswoman, cousin, smart alec…pretty much switching between roles several times every day. And we do this in our businesses…we want to be inclusive versus specific. The problem is that when you try to appeal to everybody, you matter to nobody. Your message becomes part of the white noise as Chris said.
Tying into what we discussed at the last Coaches Corner, Chris encouraged us to focus on our niche markets. Answering the three questions: what do you do? why does it matter? and who cares? Tailor our answers to these niche markets and we begin to break away from the pack, elevating ourselves to experts in our chosen field/industry. At the same time, by doing this, we are presenting the right information to the right market making the sales process hum right along.
So simple. And makes sense. Yes, a teeeeny bit scary to be so specific BUT I do believe necessary. I am still honing in on my three niche markets and will be re-organizing the content on my site to reflect my specificity.
Thanks Chris and Lynn for putting together this great event! Looking forward to next month 
