better business blog

Tips and stories to add value to you and your organisation

Drinking Coffe Is Selling

7 August 2016

One of the joys of being in business is that I get to meet lots of interesting people. Everyone has a back-story and any product or service can be fascinating to learn about, when you’re talking to an enthusiastic expert. This is, in essence, my approach to selling …be interested and enjoy finding out about people and their work. 

Selling, as in making sales, causes heartache for many people. They worry about being rejected, and fret that they are not good enough to win a sale. Whereas the truth is that we all sell all the time. We sell ideas to our manager, we sell holiday plans to our partner, we sell the need to go to bed on time to our children.  We constantly discuss options and make our views known …we sell our position. And we get buy in, we just don’t realise we are doing it.

So, we can all sell and the easiest way to be begin the process is to go and drink coffee. Recently a colleague of mine was criticised by her friend for ‘drinking too much coffee and not spending enough time on sales’ …which is a foolish comment to make. Meeting people, being sociable and sharing a cappuccino is a brilliant way to sell. We build trust and confidence over a frothy coffee and we ‘sell’ ourselves as being reliable, decent people to do business with. 

This week, go and drink coffee with someone. No agenda, just be friendly and make contact with them. You’re welcome to ask me and I will tempt you to some delicious green tea!

Next week: Doing The Right Thing