Happy Sunday folks, back for another solopreneur blog update. Hope your weekend was full of goodness and less snow than we got in Toronto.
Today got me thinking about one of the reasons starting a solopreneur business is such a cool opportunity right now.
Well, not just right now, but especially right now.
Because there are so many options for things you can do to make money.
One example is making money from selling plants and herbs. Kind of random, but is it really?
After all, the business of selling plants is just like selling anything else, and businesses and stores need to get their plants from somewhere.
That’s why I found my most recent podcast guest, Di-Di, so interesting.
He grew up on a farm in South Africa and thanks to his early exposure to potting plants and herbs, eventually built a thriving business growing and selling them.
And I bet there are a lot of you on this list who grew up doing something – maybe you still do it now – that you could build a solopreneur business around!
Of course, you never know until you try.
The other interesting thing about Di-Di is how over the years, he really learned and evolved his marketing efforts to
- embrace technology to use it to his advantage, and
- stay true to himself and his clients.
As you’ll hear in the episode, he’s just a standup guy who built genuine relationships with people – arguably the best way to grow a list of clients.
Suffice to say, there’s a lot to learn from him and I don’t want to soil all of the lessons in this email.
See what I did there? Oh god, it must be a Sunday…
Anyway, I highly recommend giving the full episode a watch or listen here.
Also had a great sales call this week, one of the best ones I’ve had in a while.
How?
Well, I finally spent some extra time reviewing and improving my solopreneur sales call strategy.
As you know, we’re a few days away from starting our beta test for the new Visto immigration software. And what that means is that once we finish the beta, it’s time to sell.
So with that in mind, I’m spending extra time with our sales advisor to get his advice.
Side note: I highly recommend getting some experienced and trusted advisors in the important parts of your work. If you are a techie, get a technical advisor. If you’re in sales, or you’re like me and do all the selling for your company, get a sales advisor.
I speak to mine every 2 weeks, and he also sent me some good resources to help improve my sales and demo calls.
The call went well today for 2 core reasons:
First, it was a really good lead.
And by that, I mean it was someone in our target market, the perfect fit for the type of client we want to work with, and he was also just a genuinely nice person who likes our product/vision.
So part of solopreneur sales can be luck.
Second, with the help of my advisor, I prepared a bit of a script – more of an outline and list of key questions – to guide me through the call.
This allowed me to lead the conversation more effectively, and what I’m learning pretty quickly, is to actually have the prospect answering questions and talking more than you do.
The best kinds of sales calls are actually when they are talking more than you – explaining their business, needs, pain points, goals, etc. And you hopefully aligning your solution with that.
Happy to go into more details on the sales tips and process.
Otherwise, if you’re struggling to close clients, make sure you’re asking them good questions to really understand them, their needs, pains, goals, willingness to pay, etc.
That’s it for today. Have a great day, make sure to sign up for my daily updates here and keep grinding.
