I Laughed at My First Table: How to Get Over Sales Nerves as a Service Business Owner

A lot of service business owners are great at what they do and terrified of selling it.

They'll happily spend hours doing the work, but asking someone to buy, explaining their price or walking up to a stranger at a networking event makes their stomach turn. So they avoid it, wait for referrals and hope the business grows on its own.

I get it. My first real sales experience was a disaster.

What happened at my first table?

In my early twenties I started waiting tables, and the very first time I had to greet a table on my own during training, I started laughing.

Not a polite little laugh. A ridiculous, unprofessional, can't-get-the-words-out laugh. The people at the table were almost insulted. I couldn't say a single sentence, and my trainer had to step in and take over the table.

I was so nervous that my body just did the only thing it could think of.

The funny part is that I'd been a martial arts instructor growing up. I competed in tournaments and taught classes. You'd think talking to a family at a restaurant would be easy compared to that.

Why didn't my confidence carry over?

In martial arts, I had a persona. It wasn't really me. It was a version of myself I stepped into when I was on the mat, and that version knew exactly what to do.

At the restaurant, there was no persona to hide behind. It was just me, a little shy on the inside even though I talked a lot, walking up to strangers and trying to sound natural.

That's what a lot of owners experience when they try to sell. They're confident doing the work, because the work has a role and a script they know. Selling feels different, because it feels like putting yourself out there with nothing to hide behind.

Did the nerves go away?

They did, but not because I suddenly became confident. The second table was a little better. The third was better still. After a while, I was interacting with tables naturally, and I didn't even think about it.

Waiting tables ended up being one of the best things that ever happened to me. It made it feel normal to approach people. There's nothing magical about it, but if you're a reserved person, having to walk up to strangers over and over pulls you out of your shell.

Years later, when I was selling insurance, then mortgages, then my own company's services, that comfort came with me.

Did I ever have nerves again?

Of course. In college I put off a big presentation until the night before, stayed up all night writing it, and a quarter of the way through presenting it, the nervous laugh came back. I had to stop, turn around and collect myself before I could finish.

The difference was what caused it. That time, I wasn't prepared. The laugh showed up because I knew I hadn't done the work.

So there are two kinds of sales nerves. There's the nervousness of doing something new, which goes away with reps. And there's the nervousness of being unprepared, which goes away with preparation.

How do you get over sales nerves in your business?

Why does this matter for growth?

A business that only grows through referrals is a business that grows at someone else's pace. At some point, you have to be the one starting the conversation.

The owners who break through aren't the ones who were born good at sales. They're the ones who got enough reps that talking about their work stopped feeling like a performance and started feeling like a conversation.

You can't borrow someone else's reps. You have to get your own, even if the first one ends with you laughing at a table full of confused strangers.

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