Jill Konrath

International Speaker, Bestselling Author of 4 books, & sales strategist at JILL KONRATH, Inc.

Jill is a solopreneur herself… who’s helped companies bring in millions in net new revenue, increase market share and drive more profitable sales — much sooner!

Expert session

Tactic that has had the biggest impact on Jill’s success

Using a three-step B2B sales process to boost your sales at launch

Result if you follow the steps in Jill’s session

A non-intimidating sales process that works with customers in a collaborative way to improve your sales for a product launch

Full session with video, notes, audio and discussion inside EHQ Club. Learn more

Expert session snapshot

Transcript

When I was doing my consulting, my specialty was in new product and new services launching. And I spent a lot of time working with large corporations in terms of how to shorten time to revenue on new product introductions. And literally I worked in the gap between the sales and marketing to try to find how could they get up to speed and get them, get the new product selling as fast as they could get it selling.

So what I’m going to say about entrepreneurs is actually true about all companies but for entrepreneurs, it is intensely personal. It is intensely personal. Because, you know, like I said, with my own situation, I had invested all this time and energy and my heart was like, totally in it.

And so, you know, it just it was like it was my baby. I mean, it truly was my baby and I loved what I had, you know, and I just couldn’t wait to take it to the world. And this, but let me just say, this still happens to me. Anytime I create something new, I fall in love with what I’ve created.

And I’m not detached and I want to go out and show people my baby pictures. You know, it’s kind of like, you know, look at this cute little thing I created. It’s a new program and it’s really fun and looking at it involves this and that and I want to show pictures.

It’s like, you know, I would just want people to look, look, look at my baby and I want them to, here’s what I want them to do. I want them to go, “Oh, wow, look at that cute little baby. Oh, look at that. Look at that smile. I love it .” That’s what I want them to do.

But most people don’t think your baby is cute. You know, they’re just kind of going nice. “Oh, that’s really nice.” You know, I mean, think about yourself. And if it’s not your baby, you don’t love it, you know.

So that is the tendency of all of us, is that we want to go out and show people what we have and which means we want to talk about it. And we want to explain everything that went into it, our passion and all the intricate details that clients will typically find extraordinarily boring and will turn you off real fast.

And they’ll feel like they’re being pitched out and you’re trying not to pitch, you’re just trying to rope them in with your passion. But instead, you start to see them leaning back, you know, as you’re talking to them.

If you’re in person, they’re leaning back with their arms crossed like they’re trying to protect themselves from you because now they feel your push to sell. And the same thing happens on the phone and you start hearing objections come up. And this is when entrepreneurs really, if they were paying attention, they would realize that they’re talking too much. And they are not connecting with their buyer.

But typically, what I see buyers saying is, they’ll say something like, “Well, that’s really nice Liam, very nice”. I bet you’re going to sell a lot of those. Yeah, we’re, “wow, how much, that’s really cool, how much does it cost?”

And you know, whatever the price is, they’ll go, “I’m just afraid it’s not in our budget this year, that if you come back next year, we can talk or keep in touch with me, you know, make me, send me a brochure, you know, via email”, you know, and they’re just like gracious, you know.

But when they say a bunch of, so a lot, they’re saying but not here. Or they’ll ask, does it, you know, they’ll ask some question to disqualify you like, can it do this or can you handle you know, that it’s a service? You know, how do you work with that? You know, and they’ll find some way to say, “oh, if it can’t do this, we can’t go ahead.”