2 powerful sales frameworks for professionals who hate selling

Sales is the most valuable skill you can build if you aren’t in sales. Here are 2 frameworks to help you learn how to sell anything in record time.

The ability to find hidden value is the most powerful business skill you can build.

And it’s especially important for those of us who have full-time jobs that aren’t sales — lawyers, accountants, entrepreneurs and marketers. We all need to sell to succeed.

Unfortunately, stigma and ignorance keep professionals from ever learning how to sell.

They spend hours (and usually a ton of money) focused on designing the word’s most amazing product, or becoming the market-leading expert, without actually trying to sell their services and see what the market wants.

It’s no longer enough to just be an expert or to have a great product. They’re everywhere.

You need to learn how to sell.

Here are 2 sales frameworks that will help you attract high value clients, and then win them over with valuable insights.

1. Fanatical prospecting framework

What’s the number one reason people professionals struggle to grow their businesses?

It’s not that their product sucks, or that their sales script is wrong.

The number one reason people don’t sell more is that they aren’t prospecting enough. They aren’t creating enough opportunities, building a big enough pipeline, to make the numbers work in their favour.

Sales is a game of percentages. To increase your odds of success, you need to assume a low conversion rate and work backwards from there. That means attracting as many people as possible to your product or service — through prospecting.

Here’s the Fanatical Prospecting Framework from Jeb Blount:

1. Invest more time in getting fresh leads and getting more contacts.
2. The phone is your friend. You cna use email and social selling, but don’t overlook the power of making 30 calls per day to improve your sales.
3. Address the three P’s: procrastination, perfectionism, and paralysis. Just pick up the phone and dail for dollars — it’s the fastest way to grow your business.

The insight framework

For professionals worried about being sleazy or icky, the insight selling framework popularised in ‘The Challenger Sale’ can help you focus on value.

According to a study conducted by Matt Dixon and his colleagues, the highest performing sales follow the three T’s:

1. Teach: First, they teach their prospects — not about their product or service, but about more significant business problems, new ideas, and astute observations. They bring genuine knowledge and expertise to the table.
2. Tailor: Next, they tailor their insights. That means connecting broader industry trends to their prospect’s specific business, or translating experiences from other client to a new context.
3. Take Control: Finally, they control the sale. They’re not afraid to talk about money, to push back on the customer, or to lead them to the close. If you have delivered true insight, and presented a tailored solution, you have earned the right to take control — and it’s not sleazy or salsey.

Wrap up

These two frameworks completely changed the way I thought about sales.

They helped me realise that to grow any great business, you need to first build a pipeline of customers, and second, uncover value for them by delivering tailored insights that resonate with their greatest challenges.