Getting Over The Fear Of Selling with Victoria Fleming

Today I am excited to welcome the lovely Victoria Fleming to the podcast. We all know that no one likes to talk about sales and when it comes to money, it’s often considered a taboo subject. Unfortunately, everyone needs to be able to sell their product and service so despite it being a topic that entrepreneurs don’t like to discuss, sometimes you need that all-important advice that will help you improve your sales strategy. As a sales expert, Victoria is just the person to show you how.KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCASTWhen it comes to marketing yourself and not your business, it can feel a lot more personal when someone says no.If you don’t feel 100% confident with what you’re selling, start collecting the good feedback you have. Include testimonials, projects that have gone well and compliments you receive online. Ultimately, that is what you’re selling – a bag full of amazingness.Entrepreneurs set up their business because they’re brilliant something, forgetting that there are lots of other things you need to consider too. Sales, of course, is one of those things.Not focussing on sales is like sitting there and waiting for the phone to ring.Being personal is important as often, when it comes to the internet, things can feel like a bit of a mass approach. If you’re more personal, your approach is always going to feel less like you’re trying to sell.It’s important to have conversations with your target audience.Think about your customer avatar in detail, including what their main struggles are in relation to your products and services. How can you solve their problems?One of the hardest things about sales is closing, however, there are steps you need to take in between that are just as important.The first thing you need to do is identify who the person in front of you is, then you need to ask them questions to find out more. Once you’ve repeated what their problem is, you can then introduce your solution.Don’t run away from objections, instead use it as an opportunity to ask questions. For example, if someone says they can’t afford you, you could say ‘okay, do you mind telling me a bit about the budget you do have in mind?’.THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…Sales is about problem solving. Your products and services help people and solve their problems, so telling people to ‘buy you stuff’ is helping them. If you have a solution to someone’s problem, you should tell them.HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MISSIntroducing Victoria – 03:00Marketing Businesses vs Marketing You – 04:15Why Do People Hate Selling? - 14:40Sales Is Like Problem Solving – 20:00Closing a Sale & The Sales Process- 28:35Dealing with Objections - 41:01Transcript below Hello, and welcome to 2020. This is my first official podcast of the new year and the new decade, and I am super excited about it. I have to say I always love a new year. I love that thought of a fresh start, tidying my desk, starting things afresh, writing a new notebook. It's so sad, starting my new planner, making goals, and as you know if you've been listening to the podcast I did some work a few weeks ago about setting new goals for this coming year. I've spent quite a bit of time doing that, and I've now done it. I am all up and ready for the new years, so I'm super, super excited about it.What about you? Have you done your plans? Are you ready? Do you feel positive? I hope so. If not, come and find me. Come and give me a DM. Let me know what's up. Let me know what I can help you with because as you know I always want to make sure that I produce content, and create podcast episodes that really help you with your business, and today's is no exception.Today I am really, really excited to welcome the lovely Victoria Flemming to the podcast. She is a sales expert. Now, we all hate that word. None of us like to sell really, I think if we're honest. We also don't like necessarily talking about money, and also if you sell a service that is your head effectively that can be really tricky but because sometimes it just doesn't feel like that is as easy to understand your pricing as maybe a product because you can easily work out a product pricing based on what does it cost to get in, what does it cost to deliver, et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, I've actually been at a few events with Victoria. We've spoken on the same stage, and she's a very engaging, great sales coach, and I just wanted to bring her on, and talk a bit about how we can get over this horrible feeling of selling. How can we actually do it in a way that isn't yucky, and doesn't feel gross, and that we're not comfortable with? That's exactly what we talk about today.I really hope this is going to be a really good one to start with because ultimately this is what everybody needs. Everyone needs to sell their product and service, so unfortunately whether we like it or not we are going to have to do a bit of that. I'm really hoping that Victoria can show you the way in this episode, so I'm not going to go on any longer. I'm going to hand you straight over to Victoria. Introducing Victoria Okay, I am very excited for today's podcast episode with the super lovely Victoria Fleming. Victoria, how are you doing?I'm doing great. I'm so excited, and I'm even more excited to see you on screen because what the listeners don't know is we can see each other.Yes, always, and do you know I always do my interviews so I can see them. Sometimes because of quality and things you have to turn the cameras off, but I much prefer it because it's easier because you know what's someone's going to say. You know when they're about to speak. You can read their face and stuff, so yeah. I love it. All the interviews I've ever done pretty much most of them have been on camera, so I've got all these videos. I don't put them out because they're not part of the podcast, but yeah. I love being on screen, and I love seeing people, and I just have to say the day we're recording this obviously this is going to come out in quite a few weeks time, it's Halloween, and Victoria sat wearing these amazing flashing light cat ears. She's got a spider broach on, and she's held up some... What are they, Victoria? They're like-They're skeleton gloves. They're amazing.You've set the bar now. I feel like every time someone comes on, and I am going to have to screen shot this, which I will do, and I will put it in the show notes so that people can see how you're dressed. It's so funny. I love it. I love it. I love it.Every day should be Halloween, shouldn't it? Dressing [inaudible 00:04:19] like this. Why not? Marketing Businesses vs Marketing You Do you know what? Having just come back from the States because they love Halloween, and boy do they do it well. Our friends live over there. I've got to quickly tell you this as we digress. Our friends live over there, and we stay with them in LA. They have no children. They're very grown up. They have a very nice life, and they would find anything like that, they're British, so the fact they live in the States I think they probably find that a little bit tacky. That's what they would think.Anyway, my husband and I have often joked. If we had the money because we stay at that house, and they go off to work. We're like, "Wouldn't it be amazing if we had the money we could buy all these decorations, and they come back, and we have covered their house in Halloween everything." When I've got loads of money, and time that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go over there-[crosstalk 00:05:07] do that.We're going to do that, and they're just going to be like, "What the hell have you don't to my house?" It's going to be hilarious.Anyway, Victoria, in case my audience don't know who you are let's kick off, as always, with you telling us how you got to be doing what you're doing now.I'm super lucky. I get to work with businesses now on how to sell more, which makes a dirty word for some people, but I love helping people sell more because I think if you sell more you can have a more fulfilled life. What's got me there is that I have 15 years in corporate. I think like so many of us you start in corporate, and actually I think we learn heaps like that because you get to move around. You get to work for other people. You get to meet different people, and I was really lucky because I had 10 years with a technology company, and in that company the last three years was actually working with individual businesses who were selling the software, so with resellers. What was brilliant was actually even at a corporate point in my career I was working with businesses on how to be more effective with their sales, and how to have more fun with them, because selling should be fun. Then I went to construction, did the same thing. Construction software, right through the recession. I was a bright spark. I thought, "This is a great move to make." I literally I went into that business, and construction fell off a cliff, so that was really tough because you were going out talking to businesses going through really, really tough times.They didn't have business themselves, and again, that was a fabulous industry to work in, and come through the recession with that. Then I've been out on my own for nearly six years now because essentially I just go to the point where I thought, "You know what? All I want to do is help people sell." I want to help people address that challenge, and to be able to do that with loads of different businesses now it's pretty much a dream job actually. I know some people...