George Kao reframes selling for service providers as making yourself available to people already eager for what you offer. Instead of persuasion tactics, write and speak only to your ideal client who is leaning forward. Marketing, he says, is just sharing what you love with people you care about.
I'm going to talk about one of my least popular topics and that is selling and getting clients. Now, the reason why it's so unpopular is because a lot of you who are watching this are heart based service providers. And all you want to do is to do your beautiful deep work and just have people naturally come to you. That's all you want. You don't want to do any selling. Selling feels like a icky thing to do. But what I hope to do in this video is to shift your perspective a little bit on the idea of selling. And I think it'll make such a big difference for your business because you probably have noticed that. Sure, you get started in business and you ask your friends, family, colleagues to sell, sign up, or to refer business to you, but you also notice that that runs out pretty quickly after a while and you still want more clients, you still need more to stay in business. And so you have to sense, yeah, I have to learn how to sell, how to market myself to stay in business. And yet you start learning from salespeople and marketers and you say, it's just not what I want to do, it's just not from my heart. And I get it. And this is why I quit doing that years ago when I shifted my business. That's a different story. But let me share with you a couple of definitions that hopefully will start shifting things for you. Number one, and I want to thank my colleague, Gil Friend. Gil Friend for sharing this. He said, marketing is simply sharing what you love with the people you care about. And I love that so much. Marketing is simply sharing what you love with the people you care about. Brilliant. There's so much there to unpack. And I'll introduce my own definition. Authentic selling is simply making ourselves available, making our product available to the potential customers who are eager for that product. I'll make it more simple. Authentic selling is making ourselves available to the people who are the most eager. Okay, so what that means is when you are writing your website, if you have one, or writing on social media or making a video, or speaking on a podcast, or you know, inviting someone to your product or service or program, when you are doing any kind of selling, I hope that in your mind you use your, your powerful human imagination to imagine the ideal customer or client. And what kind of person is that? If you want to comment below with what you, how you describe it, but I want to, I want you to imagine the energetics of that person. Sure. We could talk about, oh, they are this age range and they're this kind of profession or they're. They have these kinds of interests. That's great. Okay. Demographics, psychographics, et cetera. But now I want to talk about their attitude towards you, which is, I think, the most important thing. Okay. Because over time, the demographics of our audience will shift and the interests of our audience will shift at least slightly. But the energy and the attitude and the approach of your ideal client towards you will always be like this. It will never be like this. Where they're like, convince me that you are worth hiring or buying from. So many of us have that kind of person. We don't even realize that that's the kind of person in our mind. We don't even realize it. This is why we hate selling. Well, I don't want to have to sell because selling means I have to contort myself into some inauthentic shape to try to persuade someone and to make my services so small. And so I just. I don't want to do that. It's so restricting and limiting and construct. Yes, I agree. Who are you thinking of in your mind that you have to do that for? Instead, the ideal client hears their energetic approach towards you. They are eager. They're leaning forward to say, I have heard of you. Or even if they haven't heard of you, there's something about you. I just saw you, and there's something about you. The way you write, the way you show up, whatever it is they see from you, there's something about you that I resonate with that I want to hear more. And then you start talking about your service in a very natural way. In a way like you're talking to someone who is very eager, and they're like, oh, yes, please tell me more. This is the kind of thing that I've been thinking about, the kind of thing that I've been dreaming of. This is the kind of thing I really need help with. Or the kind of experience you provide is exactly the kind of experience. I didn't even know how to put it into words. Thank you for describing it. That is the ideal client that I want you to imagine. Whenever, actively imagine it. Don't just do it, you know, because if you don't imagine it, you naturally fall back to the natural way of selling. As you're talking to someone who's like, yeah, prove to me that you're good enough. Or describe it. I'm so bored. Or I'm so, you know, impatient. I'm, you know, like, oh, you got to make it so interesting and make it perfect. You got you know, kind of dig into my pain and all that stuff. It's like, no, my ideal client is already leaning forward. They already enjoy my presence and all I have to do is whisper and be natural and be genuinely service oriented and caring and just my natural, caring self. That's all that's needed for them to say yes, I want to sign up. So I hope that this is helpful. I hope that this shifts your idea a little bit about selling and marketing and just authentic selling. True caring being a true caring human being to the one that is eagerly in front of you. Imagine that person and sell only to them, write only to them, speak only to that person. I hope this is helpful and thank you for joining me.
