Adopting a business ideology that embraces a “serve more, sell less" mindset throughout your organization is the best way to enhance your competitive advantage and increase your sales.
We all know people love to buy, but few of us love to be sold.
As critical as it has been to my own success, I never liked the process of selling all that much. Selling puts the focus is on persuasion rather than connection. To me, selling felt like a cheap and tacky activity persuading a prospective client to buy from me.
Like myself, I haven’t met too many entrepreneurs and business owners that enjoy the hustle and grind of early stage selling.
On the other hand, I love to serve people–helping them to achieve the better outcomes they desire. Whether they buy from me or not, I know eventually the good karma of serving the good my prospective customers will always come back around.
It’s human nature to be more attracted to a proposition of serve me rather than sell to me. Wouldn’t you agree?
Are you selling or serving your target customers? Do you know their needs? Do you know what keeps them up at night? Do you know what moves them closer to achieving their desired outcome? Having this insight could be the turning point for scaling your business to the next level.
Simply put, stop selling and start serving. Adopt a "we exist to serve you" mindset throughout your entire organization, and watch your sales grow naturally, organically, authentically.
This applies to every type of business–not just a business in the service industry like hotels, restaurants, and retail. There are many ways for every product or service to fit into a "we exist to serve you" mindset with customers and clients.
As the leader of your enterprise, your mission is to develop effective strategies to increase your impact and influence with higher value customers and put those strategies to work in your product or service design in ways that bake the “selling” into your value proposition.
Be a value creator rather than an order taker.
Emotion is what drives purchase behavior. Let your target consumers tell you what moves them. It’s all about them, not your products or services. Listen carefully and build your strategy based on what you hear. There’s a reason you have two ears and only one mouth. If you want to forge enduring relationships and create lots of opportunity, listen twice as much as you speak. Listening is a far more important marketing skill than some verbose, ill-timed, irrelevant sales pitch.
Are you a good listener?
When having a conversation, do you find yourself formulating your responses in your head while the prospective client is still speaking? In a sales conversation, do you ramble on about the features, benefits and quality of your products or services? If you want to kick up your game in life and business, and experience greater sales effectiveness, be a good listener.
When you listen to someone–really listen, you honor the person speaking. When you listen intently, you show them you care about their desires and concerns. You demonstrate, by listening, that you are person who can be confided in and trusted. Serving begins with listening. This skill alone is a force multiplier in building enduring relationships with current customers and customers-to-be.
To create competitive advantage for your business on a massive scale, serve more and sell less.
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