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Wanting to be a better salesperson does not make you:
We all know that No sales = No business. Fostering strong relationships will absolutely grow your business, but NOT if you altogether avoid sales. My last post was about how relationship building is more important than a quick sale, but NOT an effort to label sales as bad. If you can’t or won’t sell yourself and your business, you’ll end up with a lot of friends, you’ll give away a ton of free value, but you won’t be able to pay your bills. I like to think of sales like food. We need it to survive. It’s not inherently bad or good. Almost all of us have a complicated relationship with it. Some food we eat a lot, some we only eat once in a while or on special occasions. It can taste delicious and makes you feel instant gratification. You look forward to it, savour it, and when it’s over, you can’t stop yourself from wondering when you’ll have it again. Or, it can taste terrible, leave you with a stomach ache and feeling sick. Sales aren’t bad. Selling isn’t bad. It’s an essential component of building a healthy, balanced business. ;-) So why do sales feel so icky sometimes? Because we don’t know if the person selling us cares beyond the sale. Relationship focused business is NOT about avoiding sales. It’s about fostering strong relationships, seeing the human behind the sale, and creating a safe, trusting and open space where sales happen naturally without the icky feeling. When you care about the person behind the sale, you care beyond a yes or a no. You want to help, offer your services, and see them succeed. But you also see and nurture the strength and resilience in the other person, knowing that your relationship is essential regardless of the sale.
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Bullet lists of words are not what inspires or maintains company culture.
How can you choose the right values and then get your team and clients to buy into your values and culture? Story. In this video, I take you through the difference between core values and other common business values, as well as the simple process of creating a value story that inspires! Relationships > Sales.
There I said it. Yes, to run any sort of a successful business you need sales. Although fast or immediate sales sound like a dream - they often come at the cost of establishing any consumer trust or brand loyalty. Relationship-building sounds tedious and time-consuming, but the truth is - business is about the long game. One sale today is not more important than:
All relationships are different. Sometimes we connect instantly and know we’re a guacamole and salty tortilla chip kinda match. Sometimes they take time and need a lot of nurturing and growth. Sometimes they just don’t work. Welcome back to being human. Business is about serving humans, not selling humans. When we come from a place of service and focus on relationships instead of sales, we get benefits far beyond a sale today.
So how do you start building relationships and honouring the human behind the screen? Listen. Care. Serve. Can I get an amen? Challenges of Digital CommunicationTone, body language, facial gestures, and personality can be easily lost in written communication. Have you ever read an email or message and wondered: Are they mad? Do they care? Do they have any idea what I’m going through? How can they expect me to understand this? The reality is, life is only getting more digital, and our ability to lead is directly impacted by our ability to communicate both verbally AND in writing. So what can you do to ensure your written communications are working in your favour? 
These four simple steps can massively improve your written communication and help you genuinely connect with your reader. Bonus Tip: Use the newbie test - if you were sending this to a brand new team member on their very first day, would they understand it, feel empowered by it, and be able to list exactly what you are asking of them? Let me know if you found this helpful! growing businesses with communityWhat does evidence-based psychology say about community and business? Motherhood & BusinessThe three weirdest things motherhood has taught me about business.  Motherhood is fantastic, don't get me wrong, but there is a lot of weird, gross, goopy, and often stinky stuff that comes along with it. Here are a few odd things motherhood taught me about business. 1. Poop and Social Media. Before I had my daughter, I was pretty worried after hearing the nightmare stories from my mom and many of my friends about the crazy poops babies have. I would try to get my husband or my mom to change the poopy diapers for a while. It was kind of fun to pass my stinky daughter off and have her come back fresh and clean. Unfortunately, there is no way to avoid poopy diapers as a mom, and regardless of how much help I had, I had to change a lot of them. As time went by, it got easier. Less gross. Less stinky. Not because my daughter’s poops were different, but because I got used to it. It wasn’t so bad after all, and seeing her so happy after getting cleaned up was a pretty rewarding feeling. Now you’re probably thinking, what the heck does this have to do with social media? Well, I used to avoid it too. It seemed formidable, complicated and time-consuming. I never knew what to post, what to say, when to post, or why I was even posting in the first place. Over time, with a lot of practice (and a few social media marketing courses later), I got the hang of it and started to enjoy it. The poopy lesson is that sometimes things will start gross, challenging, and not so fun. With time and practice, you CAN begin to enjoy something you never thought you could.  2. Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face or have a kid. I am a massive advocate for planning and preparation. Still, I’m also an even bigger fan of being adaptable, fluid, and committed to finding a way regardless if it’s to plan. Having a kid threw every single plan I ever had right in the trash beside the dirty diapers. I learned that kids and parents are truly adaptable. Our ability to pivot, make do with what we have, and go with the flow will significantly increase our chances of a successful outcome (or nap). Sleep schedules, meal schedules, and screen time limits all seem excellent until they don’t work, and you need to change. Start with a plan, maybe even have a few contingencies, but be adaptable more than anything.  3. It can't all be serious. Whether you are raising a child or building a business, there has to be some fun and play. Kids need to play, use their imaginations, and occasionally break things. They have wild dreams and can turn pretty much anything into a game. In business, finding the fun and play in the day-to-day can be the difference between running a business and LOVING your business. I’ve learned to take a much more relaxed and playful approach to my business and raising my kid. I play music at my desk, a dance between calls, and have an ongoing game of digital checkers going on with one of my clients. I can’t say there haven't been hard times with both motherhood and running a business, but the good days outnumber the bad. By being open to learning to like things I once disliked, valuing adaptability over rigidity, and adding a lot of fun and play in my life, I’ve never been happier as a mom or a business owner.
I hope you add some fun into your day today and think of me! Sincerely, Mickey PS: I’ve added my favourite fun playlist to Apple Music; you can click here to listen to the Boss Mama Beats playlist and have some fun in the office. Click here to listen now! |
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