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Very few small business owners start out as confident sales people.\n\n\n\nIn fact, selling is quite often a new business owner\u2019s #1 fear.\n\n\n\nMany avoid selling. Some stumble through it. And still others look to leaders and sales trainers to learn their methods and duplicate their models.\n\n\n\nIn that process, they learn what works\u2026 but they often also learn that \u201cwhat works\u201d doesn\u2019t necessarily work for them.\n\n\n\nAll this month, we\u2019ve been examining sales and selling\u2013asking \u201cwhat works?\u201d when it comes to asking someone to buy what we\u2019re selling.\n\n\n\nFirst, I talked with Autumn Witt Boyd who shared how she realized that she\u2019d taken the trend toward sales automation a little too far\u2013and has since developed a hybrid process that\u2019s high touch without overwhelming her.\n\n\n\nThen, I talked with Katie Hunt who shared how she had a fabulous new offer launch without spending tons of money on advertising or recruiting an army of affiliates.\n\n\n\nLast week, I shared my conversation with Kate Strathmann where we both shared our reflections on building less harmful sales systems\u2013systems that are less manipulative, less urgent, and more in line with our values.\n\n\n\nThis week, I\u2019ve got 4 more stories to share with you from small business owners who have intentionally done things their own way when it comes to sales and selling. They\u2019ve found what truly works for them\u2013even if it bucks the prevailing wisdom or would make a bro marketing expert role his or her eyes.\n\n\n\nBefore we get there, though\u2026\n\n\n\nI wanted to share some questions you can use to examine your own sales process.\n\n\n\nFirst, I want to say that I don\u2019t think learning someone else\u2019s sales system is a bad thing. And I don\u2019t think every effective sales system being taught is inherently manipulative or harmful. Even if you plan to find your own version of what works, learning about effective sales systems can help you get creative with the way you do want to go about selling your offers.\n\n\n\nWhen it goes wrong is when we don\u2019t take the time to carefully examine and analyze what\u2019s going on in a sales system that we\u2019re learning and, instead, just naively follow the instructions.\n\n\n\nSo these questions\u2013which I formulated from the conversations we\u2019ve had this month\u2013can help you take a closer look at a sales system that you\u2019ve learned or one you\u2019ve created and make sure that it\u2019s creating the experience you want your customers to have.\n\n\n\nThe first question is:\n\n\n\nDoes this sales process mimic the experience I want customers to have after they buy?\n\n\n\nBoth Kate and Autumn talked about how they want to align what was special about the type of experience they offered with the way sales conversations actually went down.\n\n\n\nFor Autumn, that meant incorporating more personalized, human conversations into what had become a really automated experience. For Kate, it meant making sure that the collaborative, co-creative experience she was building also carried over into the content and conversations she was having around her program.\n\n\n\nBefore you decide on what your sales process should look like,