Twelve years ago, I started Selling Service with an idea: use all the experience I’d gained in my time working for big business to help smaller businesses who love what they do and are great at what they do, but don’t want to do the selling and marketing and all the mucking about that goes with it.
A dozen years later, I’m still here and that feels worth saying out loud.
The last twelve months were wobbly to say the least. A big client vanished just when I’d done all the work and was about to see the reward. Bringing new work in got hard, and unrelated to that my health fell apart, so all round it was a bit of a struggle.
Like everyone else I’ve had years where I’ve been flying, where the phone rang without me asking it to, and one project slid cleanly into the next. Last year wasn’t one of those years. And I think there’s value in saying that, because I spend a lot of time helping other people talk about what they do in ways that are honest and human, and it would feel wrong not to apply the same standard to myself.
But the thing about difficult years is that they have a way of making you think more clearly about what matters, and what the best ways of working are. Since 2020 the aspect of the business which has absorbed most of the time and effort is the monthly writing. The blogs, the posts, web copy, eBooks, where I get a brief, or work one out with the client and I hand back words for them to use. I may schedule posts, but for the most part how the words are used is down to the client.
The six years before Covid were largely spent working on creating sales and marketing support for often rather larger businesses. Here was some writing, but also a lot of driving (30k+ miles per year). That was unsustainable, and the hard stop of March 2020 quite probably saved my life.
Over the last few months, I’ve thought long and hard about how to join up the writing with building content plans and refining effective sales processes. That reminded me of the term “sales enablement,” and the lightbulb lit up. That’s what I do – sales enablement. And my first new client? Selling Service.
It means…
- Clear consistent messaging across all platforms, networking, web, LinkedIn, socials and in conversations with my partners.
- Being present in the places where my potential clients are, which may mean some of my existing outreach may not be appropriate anymore.
- Having a strategy for what the next three months, twelve months, and indeed six years look like.
It also means being honest with myself about how I want to work. So, it’s also about being open to new ways of working, and building things like online courses, digital products for residual income. That is already underway, and there will be some exciting things to share soon.
After twelve years, I know what good looks like for me. I know the kinds of clients and projects that bring out the best of what I do. I know the working patterns that suit me and the ones that don’t. The next phase isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing the right things, with the right people, in a way that’s sustainable and, most importantly, fun.
If you’re curious about what that looks like in practice, I’d love to have a conversation about how I can make the same thinking work for you.
