You know why selling your services feels so hard and icky?

Because you’re selling your services.

The reality is, no one likes being sold. But everyone loves to buy.

Especially when what they’re buying feels like the best investment they could have made to achieve their desired outcome.

In the service industry, whether you solve a complex, multilayered problem in a highly regulated space, or help humans unlock their potential, the underlying principle remains: People buy when they are ready to buy, not when you’re ready to sell.

So when clients tell me, “I hate selling” or “I can’t afford to come across as a snake oil salesman in this deal,” my answer is always the same: “That’s great! Then you need sales-enabling content, John.”

What Is Sales-Enabling Content?

In simple terms, a sales-enabling asset is a content asset (video, article, audio, report, assessment, etc.) that acts as a facilitator for a transaction.

It’s sort of like a mediator between you and the prospect, priming the prospect and helping them get enough information to make a decision.

The essence of leveraging sales-enabling assets is to naturally guide the prospect with high-value assets (that you can automate or semi-automate) so that by the time they get to that final sales meeting, they are as close to doing business with you as humanly possible.

Sales-enabling assets do not sell.

They help the prospect make a decision.

They help them buy, instead of helping you sell.

They guide the prospect step-by-step until they feel ready to buy—which is the whole point, right?

In the past, this kind of effect could only be accomplished by hiring sales people to go door-to-door or call and follow-up several times before an actual sales meeting. But we’re talking about bootstrapping your way to your first million in revenue, so heck no to all that.

The most efficient way to nurture a prospect to a decision is to leverage content and build assets that can act as the primer they need on your behalf.

Why Does It Work?

Have you ever been to a store where the seller was so bad and so desperate to make a sale you decided not to buy the very thing that took you there in the first place?

Everyone has had that experience.

Now think of a time when you experienced service that was so good, you bought everything you could just to support that shopping assistant or store owner.

What’s the difference here?

It’s simple.

That first awful experience felt like the seller was trying to shove things down your throat. But in the second scenario, you felt cared for, understood, and valued, and it just felt like they weren’t interested in your money.

And when you feel cared for as a consumer, you feel not only more inclined to spend your money, but happier doing so, too.

(Let’s not forget this lesson as business owners. We can learn a lot from our consumer selves on how we need to approach business.)

Now, where do sales-enabling assets come in?

They help represent you in the same way the second seller served you. They are meant to demonstrate that you care, you understand, and you value your prospect.

In my business, we serve a lot of financial services providers in different verticals. It’s a high-trust, highly regulated space where risk is a big concern and no one wants to sign the dotted line unless they have certainty.

That’s the keyword here.

Certainty.

Building certainty in the mind of a potential client is extremely important, yet very hard to do at the last sales encounter.

And that’s why we use the sales-enabling content to act as breadcrumbs left along the path of buying, so prospects can slowly munch and snack on a little piece of certainty at a time. By the time we get to the closing phase, it doesn’t feel like we’re shoving a sale down their throat. It feels like we’re there to finally help solve a problem they want to be free of.

That’s why sales-enabling content never fails to work. Because it helps empower the buyer, long before the sales conversation, to determine how they feel about you, your solution, and your company.

And if they can convince themselves that you have their best interest at heart, then you don’t need to sell anything, do you?

Can It Replace Hard Selling?

It does and it must.

If you’re selling low-ticket items or work in a simple, nonregulated space, you can pretty much get away with anything.

But if you’re in B2B of any kind, you sell high-ticket solutions, and you genuinely care about your clients (why else are you even reading this?), then you must replace hard selling with sales-enabling assets.

Why?

Because in our space, the currency that best translates to new business is trust.

And trust isn’t cultivated on an ad on LinkedIn or at that final sales meeting. It starts long before.

You need assets that can help you cultivate, nurture, and convert that trust into a business opportunity without investing more of your time.

The highest and best leverage, therefore, becomes an investment in a mechanism that can accomplish that for you, and I haven’t found anything better (besides hiring humans to do it) than cloning yourself through content assets that guide your prospect through their purchase journey until they are ready to say “yes” to you.

And if you don’t believe me, take a moment to reflect on the fact that I sent you here to read this message.

Why? Because I’m courting your business.

I will never hard sell you.

It’s too distasteful for my style.

But I will continue to court you and smother you with value and good vibes…

And I sure hope that if we are a good fit and you want a real growth partner, you will buy when you feel ready, because every ambitious founder deserves an ambitious business wifey to support the conquest.

There's Always More to Learn—Read More from Our Blog.