Selling isn't so Bad

I get all flustered when think about "selling". Why? It conjures up pictures of slimy door to door salesmen (or women but the slimy ones tend to be male for some reason) or exasperating telesales people which make me instantly switch off. My brain knows that selling is an important part of the marketing mix but the rest of me hasn't caught up yet.

Then I went to a business networking event last week where I go to "meet an expert" in sales. It was one of those moments where I thought "run now" and was about to go on the hunt for the marketing expert instead (well there's always something you can learn) when the door was closed and we were "speed experting". That meant we had 15 minutes with each expert and then got moved onto the next one.

Well I definitely learned something (with each of them as it happens, including the health and safety chap) - and forced to come up with a sales question I put my mind to what I needed to know. "Face to face selling" I asked - "how do I do it as a service business?". Oddly this is something that terrifies me despite the fact that I love meeting people and networking. And this ultimately was the point - he said that I shouldn't think of it as selling and that it's all about relationships at the end of the day. Also to only go with one objective in mind the first time you want to make contact - if that's just getting the right name, leave it at that and go back next time to set up the meeting or make the telephone call.

Very obvious I know but so much less scary. So fired up (as I run my own marketing business too) I made myself a small list of the people I really wanted to make contact with and one step at a time I think I'm going to do it...

Karen McNulty
www.MarketingPlanWiz.co.uk