Are you selling a dream?

As a coach, I often talk about sales and branding with my clients. I am deeply fulfilled by this work. It is full of joy and promise and possibility. Not all of my clients play a sales role, but I love helping my entrepreneurial clients dig into their sales processes.

I had a chance recently to talk with group of women business owners about the sales processes they use. . I was fascinated with their observations about where their clients were coming from. It really got my attention. “They say they don’t have any money,” was a common belief. “They don’t want to commit,” was another.. I noticed how these thoughts can always be true for any sales person. What it signals to me as a business coach is that they have not helped the client understand the value of what they offer. They haven’t made themselves indispensable yet to their potential client. My sense was that they need to shift from a money conversation to a conversation about dreams.

I am curious about what creates a sense of “value’ to the client. Every transaction has an implicit or explicit value exchange. Contracts are explicit, for example, while assumptions about why a client buys a particular service are implicit. For example, many of my clients believe their price point is an important part of a buying decision, and it is, but many also purchase high quality. High quality purchasing is an implicit part of a buying decision.

When a sales process isn’t going well when a service is being offered, I look at what isn’t being offered in the sales process. Are you promising results, a difference in feeling, a change in the status quo? What is being offered and what is being delivered? Building a better dream can make it easier to sell a product or service.

Every time someone buys a service they want a change to occur. There is a dream at the heart of every transaction. That dream creates the desire to buy. As a coach, I want to dive into these thoughts and help create flow in the sales cycle. It is fun and profitable for my clients when this flow transforms into a repeatable and profitable sales process.

Helping the client see the value in the offering, is the way to complete more business and also to raise customer satisfaction because the client is able to fully experience what they are receiving. If I say “coaching is a 60 minute conversation with me,” it is true but it doesn’t speak to what the client receives from the coaching. If I say, “coaching is a collaborative dialogue that helps optimize business flow to boost profits,” then the client understands the transformation coaching delivers. The bigger dream offers more value to the client. More perceived value leads to more high dollar sales.

How are things flowing for you? What dream are you selling? Hit reply on the comment section and tell me about it. I love thinking about this stuff. How about you?