Why no-one is teaching sales to social entrepreneurs (except me ofcourse)

I used to think sales was something I just had to learn enough of to get off the starting post until I could make enough to pay someone else to do that side of things for me.

Oh how little I knew about sales back then. And the potential within all of us to sell what we love and provide our services to others...simply from a place of recognising our value and gifting it to others.

I use to think sales was for just one kind of person. You know what I mean. That annoying "salesperson" type you meet at a party who never stops talking, is gregarious, loud, always talks about the latest deal they've just landed and telling you how their spending their sales bonus this year 🤮

I actually don't think anyone is actually like this (or at least I've never met them) but its funny that this character predominates our thoughts about "selling".

....back to the point...

A year or so into my business talking to lots of different social entrepreneurs and prupsoe driven business owners, all leading incredible organisations with huge society changing visions, I realised they all struggled with the idea of selling.

Of all the social enterprise trainings & accelerator programmes I'd been part of to develop myself as an entrepreneur and grow my business I'd never received any sales training, or actually even heard anyone talk about how to actually sell. It was like it was the silent part of busines which was never to be spoken about 🤫

I began to realise that was because everyone else had this weird internal tension about selling as a value-led social entrepreneur.

Our perceived notion of sales, selling and who you had to be to sell didn't correlate with everything else we embodied as a social entrepreneur.

And so for most they ignored the sales part completely and focused on the securing "funding" from grants, social investment, and sponsorship. Never really exploring an essential part of entrepreneurship and running a business.

The truth is we need sales in our business. We therefore need to sell. But there isn't just one way to selling, and you never need to feel uncomfortable about doing it.

Are you ready to unlearn your ideas about selling and try a new way?