My youngest son, Roman, came to me the other day, defeated. He hung his head low, telling me that he had to turn in his newly earned birthday cash to buy all the baseball raffle tickets he still hadn’t sold from his baseball bag.
When I turned and looked at him, I asked him why he hadn't been actively selling, or at least trying to sell those tickets, so he didn't have to turn in over $100 of his hard-earned cash. After all, birthday money is hard-earned living 11 years, you know. 😉
Every time I brought up the idea of selling the tickets, this is what my darling Roman would say to me.
“Mom, it's just too hard. It makes me nervous. Mom, people don't want to hear from me. Mom, I don't want to be bothering people. Mom, I don't know if anybody can afford this.”
My heart broke. There was no way my kid was going to turn in his birthday money, roll over and shrug off selling his raffle tickets!!!
Instead, I told him we were going out.
We started talking about sales as we went door-to-door. Every knock was a chance, an opportunity, for him to face his fear and tell me what was worrying him about ringing the doorbell and letting people know about his offer.
Here are the facts. We sold over $115 worth of tickets in less than 30 minutes. Roman kept his birthday money, and he was glowing on the way home, skipping and even asking what else he could sell.
As business owners, I realized that we often start putting our own hard-earned money back into our business instead of keeping our money and paying ourselves.
We hang our heads low, thinking…
No, I don't want to ask for the sale, or maybe, I don't want to charge that much, or how am I going to find those clients,
It breaks my heart.
Every time this happens, I roll up my sleeves, whether with my son or one of my amazing clients. We will sit together and brainstorm on how instead of sales feeling gross, yucky, or like we’re bothering people, how to find the value in what we are offering them and inviting them to take a chance on participating in that offer.
Sales is simply a chance to own your worth and invite people to your offer.
Just like Roman, when you step into that moment of knowing you can do it, you, too, can walk away from sales feeling more enthusiastic and proud of all your efforts.
