The Hard Truth about Over-Delivering in Sales Conversations
This week, I want to talk about over-delivering in your sales conversations.
Real quick – I’m doing a masterclass called Selling with Soul at the beginning of March. It’s all about approaching sales conversations from a place of connection and intuition – in a way that leaves you feeling good about the dialogue that you just had with this other person.
If you haven’t registered for Selling with Soul yet, go to SellingWithSoulClass.com and register, because – no matter where you’re at in your business – I think you’re really going to like this class.
Now, while creating my materials for this class, I’ve been thinking a lot about one of the classic mistakes that so many people make during sales conversations: over-delivering.
I’ll give you an example from a client who came to me just the other day.
She said, “Monica, I just talked to this client who was having trouble with finding the right guy for her. And after I heard everything she said to me, I gave her four pieces of advice on things that she could do in her dating life to help her find a solid relationship.”
When I asked her how long this took, she told me that she spent about 45 minutes sharing her advice and 90 minutes on the conversation as a whole.
At the end of the call, she said, the woman responded with, “You’ve given me so much stuff to think about – let me go think through that stuff and then I’ll come back.”
That is a classic example of over-delivering. And I want to get to the root of why we over-deliver.
This might be a hard truth to hear – and I’m not saying that this applies to all of you – but I ask you to listen and see if it resonates with you even just a bit.
Most of us overdeliver because we feel insecure about our abilities. During sales conversations, we feel this need to prove that we know what we’re doing.
And so we give them a lot of information, a lot of tips, a lot of tools, because we are hoping that they’ll see that we are smart and that they’ll see that they should hire us.
It really stems from the fact that we don’t feel very smart. We don’t feel like we are worthy of being hired.
Over-delivering is a compensation mechanism for our own lack of self-confidence and self-worth.
OK, deep breath. I know this isn’t easy to hear. So my invitation to you is to really think about this for yourself.
You don’t necessarily need to speak with anyone about it or even admit it out loud – but if this resonates with you, then before your next sales conversation, I want you to remind yourself that you do know a lot, that you are worthy of being hired, that you are worthy of being paid.
If it helps, read through the testimonials that clients have sent to you. Look at all the qualifications and certifications that you’ve earned.
Take a moment to really take in who you are and how wise you are.
Then, from that place of confidence, go into the sales conversation and only offer one or two pieces of advice. Be sure to clearly connect those pieces of advice to your entire methodology or system that they’ll work through with you when they hire you.
Notice how that shifts your sales conversations. See how it shifts your responses, and, most importantly, see how it shifts the way you feel about yourself at the end of the sales conversation.
If this sparked something for you, know that this is just the tip of the iceberg.
If you’re interested in learning more about sales, be sure to register for my upcoming masterclass, Selling With Soul, so that you can get my complete step-by-step process of selling from a place of alignment and connection rather than manipulation or fear.
