This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Shout out to all my fellow introverts out there as I begin the podcast. I am the kind of person that does not like making phone calls. I do a lot of public speaking and people are always like, how do you do public speaking being an introvert? And I'm like, well, that has nothing to do with it actually. It all has to do with your energy usage and consumption and how you need to recharge.
So I can make the phone calls if I have to, and I do enjoy the public speaking, but I have to recharge afterwards. And the more you understand about yourself, whether it's introversion, extroversion, or some other personality traits, something else, then the more successful you can be, the more productive you can be, the more well-adjusted, let's say. And so I always think it's interesting when there's an intersection between one of these personality issues and entrepreneurship or side hustling. And here on the podcast, we're looking at all kinds of topics, but it all relates to how you can make extra money without quitting your job, how you can build your side hustle to eventually go full-time perhaps, or to at least create another full-time income, like we're really trying to help people create serious, legitimate impact and advancement in their lives and careers, okay? So today with that in mind, we're gonna hear from Adam.
Adam is a software consultant. He's been successfully running a business for a year now. Well done, Adam. But like a lot of us, Adam is also introverted and he finds the idea of making sales calls terrifying. It's like the last thing in the world he wants to do and I get it.
So he's wondering, what do I do in this situation? Is it possible to structure my business to avoid those direct calls, but still maintain a successful sales process? That's exactly what we're gonna talk about, okay? How to do that? How do you practically and specifically do that?
It's a question I know many of our other introverted listeners or anybody who just doesn't like making sales calls, 'cause you could actually be extroverted, but like, I don't wanna make a sales call, that's intimidating. I think I have an answer to this, maybe even a helpful one. So stay tuned, Adam's question coming up in just 30 seconds. [Music]
Hi, I'm Adam, a side hustler and wanna be entrepreneur. I've been running my own software consulting firm for a year now.
The business is doing well, but I struggle with one major issue, sales calls. As an introverted individual, I find these interactions particularly daunting. It feels like the shyness is holding me back, but I'm hopeful there might be a workaround. Is it possible to structure my business to avoid these direct calls, but still maintain a successful sales process? As a fellow introvert, I'd appreciate any advice you could give.
[Music]
Adam, great news. Well, thanks for your question, first of all, and congratulations on the business, but really great news. I think you can build a sales funnel that doesn't require sales calls, at least often. Okay, so there's a caveat that some industries, some businesses, that is an important part of the process. So it depends on your industry, but for lots of things, lots of industries, even high value stuff, I was talking with somebody the other day who had set up a business where they had a range of products and services for sale, but some of them costs $10,000 or more.
And they said sometimes there would be an order that came through, I think one time there was an order that came through $30,000 just through the shopping cart, and they had never heard of this customer before. So really what you need to do is build trust, and there's more than one way to build trust. Sometimes, or at least maybe the old way of building trust is through that face-to-face contact or those direct sales calls and such, but there are other ways to build trust. You can do so through testimonials. You can do so through guarantees.
You can do so by just making it really clear what the outcome, what the deliverable will be when someone signs up for your product or service. And technology really helps with this, okay? So email marketing automation, CRM software, like customer relationship management, anything to where people have their questions answered as they go. So where their questions aren't kind of stacking up, where they're feeling reassured. So if you don't wanna devote time to the sales process, at least to the direct sales process, devote time to optimizing your website.
Devote time to online chat and support, perhaps. And then also just content marketing, building up demand. If you're building up an audience that has demand for your product or service, you may entirely be able to skip those sales calls. And as I said, it really depends on your industry, but for a lot of industries, you don't have to do that if you don't want to. And if you do, if you are into it, that's great, but just remember that your customers may also not want that.
Your customers may also be in the same place of like, I don't need a sales call, I don't want a sales call. Tell me everything I need to know on the website, make me feel comfortable, and then I'll place an order. So Adam, as I said, I think it's good news, and I hope you are able to incorporate it, or at least just stop worrying so much about that, that pressure of doing something that you really don't want to do. That's my encouragement for you and anybody else out there in that situation, or anybody who's thinking about their business and how to design it. I am cheering you on, I am wishing you well.
sidehustleschool.com/questions. If you have something you wanna ask, of course, we'll continue to feature them each week, along with updates from listeners as they launch and grow their projects. I'm so glad you're out there. Thank you for being you. My name's Chris Guillebeau, you're listening to Side Hustle School.
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from The Onward Project.
