Coach Charlie has been excelling himself this week teaching some new clients the finer points of sales and marketing, particularly as it relates to energy. Julie won a Horse Assisted Coaching session with me as a raffle prize to raise money for the Harrogate Neo-Natal Unit. I was delighted to be able to support this organisation who have supported a number friends through their challenging times.
Julie selected Coach Charlie to work with during her session on over-coming her fears around selling. Making sales is a key activity for any business owner but one that many of my clients don’t relish. Charlie taught Julie the subtle art of selling – how to manage her energy, when to lead, when to follow, when to pause and how to keep him engaged.
You see the biggest challenge you have in business is not competition for your products and services but rather people’s apathy and inertia. Your potential clients have so much going on and are over-loaded with information that sometimes they stop engaging. (The average person gets 147 emails per day and I know I get a lot more than that). Your challenge like Julie’s is how to attract the attention of the client (in this case Charlie) and keep him engaged so that he wants to follow you.
At first Charlie just stood still rooted to the spot, unable to move. Julie did a great job of keeping his attention but her energy was not compelling enough to get him moving – and guess what, Julie shared that often happens in her business. Her prospects are interested in what she has to offer but like Charlie never take action and buy her services.
Charlie taught Julie how sometimes you need to be a little directive to get the first step, because this is always the hardest. Once the first step is taken however, then momentum can keep the horse (and your potential client) moving forward. When Julie raised her energy and gave Charlie some clear instruction he walked alongside her.
How many times have you not led your potential client through the sales conversation for fear of being too salesy? This is the lesson that Julie learnt in the round pen from Charlie – sometimes your clients need a gentle nudge to get them moving in the right direction. They need to be told what to do in order to take the first step and it needs to be easy to take. Set things up for success. So in Julie’s case getting Charlie to walk across the round-pen to join her was too much of a step but when she made that first step easy, by joining him and being much closer to him, he willing walked with her.
The horses have been teaching me so much about sales recently so I’m delighted to be a guest speaker on The Get Clients Fast tele-summit happening next month. Stay tuned for more details and how you can grab a copy of my hot off the press free report Attract And Convert Clients By Being A Trusted Sales Adviser.
Julia Felton (aka The Business Wrangler) is the founder of Business HorsePower. Business leaders, entrepreneurs and executives hire her to accelerate their business performance by harnessing the energy of their people to work more collaboratively together. By aligning purpose with actions the team achieves exponential results as everyone starts pulling in the same direction.
Julia believes that business is a force for good and through designing purpose-driven businesses that leverage the laws of nature, and the herd, you can create businesses founded on the principles of connection, collaboration and community that make a significant impact in the world.
