Because of my internship this summer, I was employed to create a client base based off my natural market. In other words, sell to friends and family. This was tough for a number of reasons, mainly because everyone I talked to just saw me as a kid and had trouble taking me seriously as a professional. They had trouble getting the little kid out of their mind and could not believe that a 21 year old man could actually help out their finances. In fact, I got a good amount of responses that basically said that I was too young to handle their finances.
What I figured out is that when dealing with friends and family, it is best to separate business from personal life and command respect in the sales region. This helps to allow them to take you seriously as a professional as opposed to as a kid. Go and meet at places you’ve never been or have the meetings in your office. Don’t hold meetings over the phone. It is too easy to get the wrong impression from their end because you are not providing a visual to them and it feels disconnected. This reinforces the idea of you as a kid. It is also helpful to bring an older colleague along to help reinforce the idea that you are serious and there are more people behind you than just good faith from childhood. Also, a lot of people will meet with you because you’re nice or they liked your parents. Attack those meetings and use that goodwill to your advantage. Make sure that you are able to milk that meeting for at least solid leads. However, don’t be too ferocious or then grandma will block your number because you have called looking for leads or sale 5 times in the past week.
testacr22 
Trinity Blank 
Caroline Marie Dawson
I definitely sympathize with this! Selling to friends and family is really difficult and often awkward. Personally, I think selling to strangers is so much easier than selling to friends and family because at least if it doesn’t go well or it gets awkward, you never have to see them again and you didn’t strain a relationship. I think its awesome though that you powered through those difficulties and learned some lessons along the way!
I have always hated to selling to friends and family. I could never shake the feeling that I’d be taking advantage of their generosity. Definitely agree about keeping business separate from them.
Interesting blog post. I think everyone can relate to the difficulty of selling to family and friends. As a result, I fully agree with your premise that business and your personal life should be separate.
This is a really interesting perspective on how to approach personal relationships in selling. I definitely can relate to the difficulties of balancing and separating sales and familial relationships when trying to sell to friends and family.