Why Aren’t They Buying? How to Fix the Sales Slump ft. my Sales Coach, Gwen Tinsley
Thank you to our sponsors!
Enroll in The Branding Business School Today!
Links mentioned in today’s show:
Boost Your Sales Calls with Grit and Tenacity Consulting
Connect with Gwen on Instagram
Listen to Previous Episodes with Gwen:
Episode 109: The Psychology of Selling ft. My Personal Sales Coach, Gwen Tinsley
Discover the secrets to maintaining sales momentum during slow periods with the first guest of Season 9, Victoria’s renowned sales coach Gwen Tinsley. Gwen shares her expert strategies for avoiding the dreaded start-stop sales pattern that often plagues entrepreneurs, especially around the start of the year. Discover how consistent lead generation and engaging sales conversations can keep your business on a growth trajectory, even when markets seem quiet. Gwen provides actionable insights into combating potential clients' lack of urgency and ensuring you're always ready to connect with active buyers.
Authenticity is the cornerstone of successful sales, and Gwen explains how to maintain it while overcoming imposter syndrome. She reveals her formula for confident selling that blends authenticity, curiosity, and a genuine desire to help. Learn how reflecting on past wins and lessons can boost your confidence and how positive client feedback can serve as powerful social proof. With practical tips on building rapport and the importance of listening to recorded sales calls, this episode is packed with advice to help you attract the right clients and strengthen your team dynamics.
Finally, Victoria and Gwen explore the power of emotional connections in sales strategy, emphasizing that building relationships is key to driving sales. Gwen shares her insights on leveraging confidence and emotional intelligence, especially for female entrepreneurs, to create impactful experiences that resonate with clients. From engaging happy customers for referrals to maintaining a visible and value-driven presence, you'll learn how collaboration and persistence can keep your audience engaged and interested in your offerings. Tune in for strategies that can transform your sales approach and elevate your brand.
Lack of Urgency in the New Year
For a lot of business owners, the first couple months of the year can be really slow. Victoria’s sales coach, Gwen, shares that the reason why is because we aren’t comfortable with creating that sense of urgency in our conversations. For a lot of female entrepreneurs, there is this goal of balance of doing what we love with our business, but also being intentional with our families and so during the holidays, a lot of people have a goal to not work during the kids breaks, so there is a trickle effect with business slowing down starting around October. Then what happens is that we get into January and February and it’s a ramp up to get sales started again, but the cycle actually begins at the end of the previous year.
Addressing Hesitations to Create Urgency When Selling
Building a sense of urgency happens in the sales conversation component, so if you’re not having sales calls as part of your process, it’s a huge missed opportunity. Sales calls are the time to build trust as well, something that takes a lot more effort these days especially at the beginning. Sales calls are where you build this sense of urgency without you feeling like you have to discount your products or services and without you feeling like you need to add in different things into your offer, just to get the person to say yes. You have to become comfortable with holding people accountable because you genuinely care about them and you want them to succeed. You have to also truly be convicted that what you have to offer is the answer, it’s the solution to their problems, and by not having it, their lives are worse off without it. If you’ve cultivated a healthy relationship through your sales conversations, dug in, and asked enough questions to really understand their problem, then instead of them interviewing you, you have interviewed them to understand what it is that they’re trying to accomplish and you have a deep understanding of the why. It’s all about getting the permission to feel comfortable to respectfully hold them accountable in those conversations.
The Secret Formula to Confident Selling
Gwen shares her formula: Authenticity + Curiosity + Desire to Help = Confident Selling. When things start slowing down, it’s important to take a step back and listen to your sales calls. By relistening to your sales calls, you can determine if there’s something missing or a process that was skipped. Then remind yourself that every single time you must show up authentic. The moment you show up inauthentic in your conversations, you start to attract the wrong people, and then those conversations get harder and those people are the ones that disappoint you. Then all of a sudden you don’t trust and believe people like you once did, and there goes the drive of natural curiosity. This leads to no longer wanting to help others, but rather just wanting to help yourself. At this point, you’re risking compromising your authenticity and your values to bring on people that you should have never brought on to begin with.
Having the Confidence to Sell With Conviction
Reminding yourself of how amazing you are, especially when sales are slow, can be a really powerful way for you to find confidence in yourself before hopping onto a sales call. Gwen shares her tip of keeping a wins and learns document, where you can reflect each month, and then also keeping a “Client Love” folder for whenever someone sends you a compliment, you can screenshot it and put it in the folder. Then, whenever you need a pick me up, you can go through this folder, read the compliments and testimonials, and then realign yourself with knowing that what you’re doing is helping in big ways.
Selling to the Emotions
Emotion is what drives people’s behavior, so being emotionally connected to your brand is going to help you in your sales. We think that people buy from us because they like us, but really, they want to be led. If they had the answer to their solutions, they would have already done it. They’re looking for solutions, and they want to feel confident, so they come to you to be led to those solutions. When you find out the person’s why, that’s where the other emotional pieces come in. Very rarely is the first answer they give you, their real “Why”, so it’s your job to ask it again and again to really get to the root, which then you’ll have a much higher chance of closing the sale.
Generating Interest in Offers
The more that you outflow, the more that you inflow back into your business. What Gwen means by this is that the more you train your audience to expect contact from you, the more will come to you because when they’re ready to jump on your services, you’re making it super easy for them to get the conversation started. Another thing Gwen shares is to not rely on just your website to do the selling for you. Call them to action, jump on a phone or video call with them, have an informal Q&A, or maybe get a few of your past clients together and ask if they would do a forum with you and then send that link to new inquiries. There is always a way you can increase your outflow, but you have to be patient. The last piece of advice Gwen offers here is to look back on your data. When sales are down, it’s easy to think “I need to create something shiny and new!” but that’s a lot of work and effort. Instead, go back and look at your data to see what’s worked in the past, and just keep it simple. Trust the system, trust your processes, and outflow more.
One Change to Make Today to See a Difference in Sales
While Gwen believes that it is a compilation of changes, one area of focus can be on your sales conversations. You could do this today and it could have an immediate impact. Take a look at what kind of conversations you’re having and where you’re having them. For immediate results, if you have people that you have talked to recently that are hanging out in the wind or are “not right now”, Gwen challenges you to think about how you could follow up with them five times and in each of those follow-ups, how can you add value? Instead of “checking in” how can you position yourself as the expert and add value to their lives? Be raw and authentic, reference the previous conversations that you’ve had with them, and let them know that you’re there to support them, and would love to reconnect to talk about when the timing may be right for them.
Final Thoughts
Sales has a lot of stigma surrounding it, but it’s a necessity. If you don’t have paying clients, you don’t have a business, so it’s something we have to talk about. If you don’t know how to have confident sales conversations where you’re selling with conviction, authentically, then you’re going to work so hard to get leads in the door and they’re not going to close. Make sure the closing piece is dialed in before you focus on all the other things, and if you need support with this, connect with Gwen at Grit and Tenacity Consulting!
Key Quotes
“Someone’s always buying something. You’re either buying their excuses or they’re buying your services.”
Gwen Tinsley
Stay connected!
Follow The Branding Business School on Instagram and Facebook.
Follow BrandWell Designs on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest
LEAVE A REVIEW + and SHARE this episode with someone who wants to build a go to brand in this online era. You can listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts!
