Somewhere along the way we seemed to get the idea that Sales is a dirty word and that Selling is a necessary evil that we would love to be able to avoid altogether if we could just figure out how to have a successful business without it!
If I had a pound for every HR Consultants who tells me that they can’t sell, hate selling, are terrible at selling etc then I wouldn’t need to make any sales myself.
I get it though. We didn’t go into HR because of our stellar sales and marketing skills and we are unlikely to have had much opportunity to either use them or develop them in a Corporate HR career.
So we have spent our career believing that Sales is not something HR people do.
Except now we have our own business and suddenly we have to sell our services.
And goodness me, isn’t it uncomfortable?
We’ll do just about anything to avoid it.
Lots of giving our services away for free and hoping that somewhere along the way people will offer to start paying for them.
Chronic undercharging – because if we absolutely must add a price tag then we will overcome our scruples by making it as cheap as possible.
All that confidence and self belief we have in our HR skills makes a dash for the exit as soon as we start even thinking about making sales.
We know we need clients but we are secretly hoping that we will find them without having to do through the Sales part.
It’s honestly well past time that we get over ourselves when it comes to selling and having sales conversations.
Yes it’s not fun and we don’t feel confident about it.
But there was a time when we didn’t feel confident about HR as well.
It’s a skills gap – not an ability or an aptitude gap.
Yes some people are just naturally amazing at selling.
But we can all learn how to do it.
And maybe you will surprise yourself by finding out that you are actually quite good at it and you enjoy it!
Because there is really nothing like seeing that payment come through and knowing that you did it!
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