There is no “right” way to sell.
We all have our unique approach to helping our ideal clients.
There is, however, a wrong way to sell (especially if you are selling services)
The wrong way to sell is to sell the deliverables.
To sell the “stuff” you’ll do for a client.
To sell activity.
To be blunt: clients don’t care how you do what you do to get them their results/solutions.
To be even more blunt: clients frankly don’t know how you do what you do and can’t tell the difference between your work and someone else’s.
They can only mark the difference in the results, the metrics, and the experience you give them.
One of the biggest mistakes I see, if it’s an agency selling their services, a provider selling their time, or a company going out to fundraise:
Is instead of answering “here’s what will change for the better” they focus on “here’s what you’ll get”
It’s not wrong to set proper expectations with a client on what they’ll get but the client is trying to answer one question:
“How does this get me to where I want to be?”
When packaging your productized service, don’t sell the “stuff”
In other words: don’t sell your services
Don’t even focus on selling the product.
Instead:
Focus on selling the solution you’re going to solve.
Everything else is minuscule.
Tomorrow I’ll send over 3 real-world examples of service providers to highlight this point.
• 1 vendor sold their activity (They were fired because of the sloppy proposal process).
• 1 client sells the outcome (and is growing as a market leader).
• The 3rd vendor sold me access (after we modified their proposal) and is now a collaborator instead of a vendor because of it.