Stop Avoiding the Sales Conversation

Your business isn't dying from bad selling. It's dying from silence.

Let me guess.

There's a conversation you know you should be having. With a potential client. A vendor. A partner. Someone who could genuinely move your business forward.

And you keep... not having it.

You'll send the email tomorrow. You'll catch them at the next event. You'll reach out once things settle down.

Things never settle down. The conversation never happens. And you tell yourself it's fine.

But it isn't fine. This is your business. This is your opportunity to help them.

I Was Bad at Starting

I get it, because I lived it. I'm an introvert. I don't walk into rooms and own them. Early in my career I'd sit in the proverbial parking lot inventing reasons not to walk over and talk to people, because walking over meant selling, and selling made me feel like a slightly dirty version of myself.

So I didn't. And the things I was supposed to sell didn't sell themselves.

Honestly, I wasn't bad at closing. I was bad at starting.

What is that supposed to mean?

The Real Cost of Avoiding It

We've all got the picture of the "good salesperson" in our heads. Loud. Slick. The "this offer is only good for today, pal" type. And if that's the only version of selling you can imagine, of course, you avoid it. Avoiding it is the sane response. Your instincts aren't broken. The image you have of sales is.

But avoidance has a cost. A very serious one.

A deal you push too hard might fall through. Painful, sure. Okay. But a deal you never start is gone with a 100% guarantee. Every time. No exceptions.

String enough of those together (enough conversations you almost had, almost scheduled, almost sent) and that's not a slump. That's a business quietly withering on the vine while you wait to feel ready.

You don't have a closing problem. You have a silence problem.

A Sales Conversation That Doesn't Feel Like Selling

So here's the good news, and the reason I do this work at all.

There's a version of the sales conversation that doesn't feel like selling. One where you don't perform, don't push, don't memorize a script that sounds like someone else.

You just get curious about the person in front of you. You ask real questions. You listen. You let them talk their way toward whether what you've got actually fits their life.

When the conversation is just that, curiosity and real questions with no corner to back anyone into, there's nothing to dread. And when there's nothing to dread, you stop avoiding it. You start having it. Why? Because you genuinely care.

That's the whole thing. It's not a louder version of you. It's a more comfortable one. I call the approach N.I.C.E.

"Success is attaining your dream while helping others to benefit from that dream materializing." Sugar Ray Leonard

Start With One Conversation

But you don't need the full method to start today. You need one conversation.

So, this week, pick the one you've been putting off. Pick the client. The vendor. The person you keep meaning to reach out to.

Don't pitch them. Don't prepare a speech. Just open with something a normal, curious human would say, and ask them about their world.

That's it. That's the rep.

The deal you never start is the only one you're guaranteed to lose. Go start one.

This article first appeared in my LinkedIn newsletter, Approachable Entrepreneurship.

Has "I'm just not a salesperson" ever cost you a conversation?

I write for the rest of us: the quiet ones, the introverts, the nice folks who'd rather build something real than learn to be pushy. How to Sell When You Hate to Sell lays out the full N.I.C.E. method, step by step. There's a better way to sell, and it might actually feel like you.

Get the Book →

Keep reading: You're Losing Sales to People You Haven't Even Met