This week is all about sales and selling...
Selling is a transaction where a good or service is being exchanged for money. It also refers to the process of persuading a person or organization to buy something.
The desire and ability to sell your creative work is the fundamental difference between having a creative business rather than a creative hobby. Selling is probably the most important element of running a creative business, as without sales you will have no income and therefore no business.
Creatives in particular can quite often be uncomfortable with the sales process and thinking about themselves as salespeople. Your creative work is quite often personal to you, so putting yourself out there to potentially risk criticism and rejection can be daunting. Creatives also often aren't confident talking about money and asking for payment for their creative work. There is also still a belief among some creatives that making good money means they are a sellout.
To successfully run your creative business you have to start thinking like a business owner and learn how to confidently present yourself and your creative products or services to potential clients and to be able to talk about money and close deals so you can get paid.
Sales is actually a creative process. A good salesperson uses the power of ideas to create demand. They create a message (sales pitch) using different mediums - in person, on their website, on their social media etc. They think creatively to get their product to market in new and different ways and to share their message in new and fresh ways.
Key Points for Creatives to Remember when Thinking about Sales
You deserve to get paid for your creative work - change your mindset to acknowledge and accept that you do in fact deserve to get paid for your creative work
Everyone needs money to live and survive - creatives are no different
Get comfortable thinking and talking about money - like it or not it’s important both in your creative business and your life
Making money from your creative work does not make you a sellout
Skills to build for Successful Sales
Optimism and resilience - not everyone is going to want to buy your product or service and that’s ok, it’s to be expected, everything can’t be for everyone. Unfortunately the inevitable rejection can be hard to deal with, especially with your own creative work. It’s important to be able to put rejection into context, not take it personally and to be able to move on and remain positive.
Honesty and Integrity - Being honest and having integrity is important in all aspects of life and business and sales is no different. No matter how much you need the money you should never push a sale on someone who isn’t right for the product or service, or be misleading about a product or service. This will lead to unhappy customers and bad reviews and word of mouth marketing and will damage your business reputation.
Emotional Intelligence - Emotional intelligence allows you to understand how others are feeling and manage both your emotions and their emotions toward you. When you’re emotionally intelligent people will relate to you and trust your judgement and guidance, you will also be able to pick up on potential clients moods and when is a good time to close the deal and when to back off.
Empathy - selling is all about building relationships, empathy is important for building meaningful relationships and therefore sales. Understanding and empathising potential clients will help you understand their needs, problems, motivations and desires. Empathy will also help you understand what people are thinking and feeling and will help you guide conversations in the right direction and gauge when to push ahead and when to hold back. Practice empathy by reframing your thoughts, imagine yourself in someone else’s shoes and be curious about their actions and behaviors rather than judging and making statements.
Listening - focus on your active listening skills, listening to potential clients will give you valuable information on their problems and what they are looking for, helping you to provide solutions. Listening will also help you build trusted meaningful relationships. Think about questions you can ask to guide the conversation without taking over the conversation.
Communication - it goes without saying but to be good at sales, as well as listening you need to be good at communicating about your business and the products or services you are trying to sell both in person and through emails etc. To do this effectively you need to have an awareness of your audience and how best to put across your message to different audiences.
Confidence - confident people inspire confidence in others, if you’re confident about what you’re selling, potential customers are more likely to believe your message and proceed with the sale. Confidence doesn’t come naturally to most people, it really is a case of fake it ‘til you make it and gradually building confidence. We will also be covering confidence in more depth later in the programme.
Creativity - successful selling involves coming up with solutions for potential customers, creative skills will help you to be innovative in coming up with these solutions.
SALES & SELLING INDUSTRY EXPERT VIDEOS
This week’s exercise will get you thinking on how to create a sales pitch for your potential customer.
Sales Funnels
Sales funnels are used to sell everything including information products, services and physical products that you see every day.
What is a sales funnel?
A sales funnel is a step-by-step process that allows you to bring your potential customer one step closer to your offer and a buying decision through a series of marketing actions like automated emails, videos, articles and landing pages that will do the selling for you.
Source: https://wildaudience.com/sales-funnel-guide/#:~:text=A%20sales%20funnel%20is%20a,do%20the%20selling%20for%20you Understanding the Phases of a Sales Funnel
To create a successful sales funnel, we need to start by understanding the four phases of a sales funnel. These four phases include the awareness stage, the relationship stage, the sales stage and the upsell stage.
Awareness Stage
In the Awareness Stage, your goal is to build brand awareness and let people know that your creative business exists. This can be done through many different methods including social media, word of mouth, advertising campaigns etc.
Relationship Stage
The Relationship Stage is all about brand familiarity, creating trust and building relationships so that people feel comfortable buying from you. This can be done through methods such as email marketing, re-targeting advertising, social media etc. Building relationships is probably the most important stage and the key to success.
Sales Stage
The Sales Stage is all about closing the sale, for this you need to work out the best way to get people to pay. If you have built your relationships successfully selling should be easier.
Upsell Stage
The Upsell Stage is where you can make more money by selling additional products or services to your customers. Think about what other products or services that your customers might want.
Example Sales Funnel
Your sales funnel might start when your potential customers see a piece your work at a craft fair. Seeing your branding helps potential customers get familiar with your brand. They might then see your work on Instagram showing the product in a stylised image, helping them imagine it in their home. They might then later see an Instagram story showing your creative process and the skill going into your creative work. This shows them the value of your work and it’s worth.
They then look at your profile and visit your website to purchase the item they have viewed on Instagram. While on your website they might then see another complimentary product sold with the original one in a bundle or just positioned together on the website to show the value of purchasing both products at the same time. When they receive the item they might also receive a discount code or promotional card with information about other available products or a free gift or handwritten card leading to brand loyalty and further sales.
WEEK 28 BOOK
Our book inspiration this week is How to Own the Room: Women and the Art of brilliant speaking by Viv Groskop
Most books about public speaking don’t tell you what to do when you open your mouth and nothing comes out. And they don’t tell you how to get over the anxiety about performance that most people naturally have. They don’t tell you what to do in the moments when you are made, as a woman, to feel small. They don’t tell you how to own the room. This book does.
From the way Michelle Obama projects ‘happy high status’, and the power of J.K.Rowling’s understated speaking style, to Virginia Woolf’s leisurely pacing and Oprah Winfrey’s mastery of inner conviction, what is it that our heroines do to make us sit up and listen - really listen - to their every word? And how can you achieve that impact in your own life? Here’s how.
WEEK 28 PODCAST
Our podcast inspiration is ‘Conversations with Women in Sales’ with Lori Richardson.
Women in Sales is a podcast dedicated to becoming the best resource in the world for female sales professionals. Every episode will feature a woman in sales that’s doing incredible work, and each guest will share practical advice for advancing your sales career. Each episode is dedicated to the memory of Barbara Giamanco.
Each episode features topics like: leadership, career management, social selling, overcoming adversity, sales and marketing alignment, B2B sales, strategic partnerships, buyer personas, account based selling, content creation and promotion, social media, and more.