I think of it more as storytelling, using real examples from your experience to make a point more memorable.  When you share your war stories and lessons learned I find it makes the conversation more natural and relevant.  Stop selling and start sharing for best results.
 

In my case I was lucky because after Optus terminated my contract (6 month contract that lates over 4 years) they engaged me to do some telephone line audits for Flight Centre. At the time they had 683 stores across Australia. I did the ones around South East Queensland and developed a network of subcontractors for the distant locations. Subbies I still use today 16 years later.

That launched my company in 2006 and led to other auditing projects through Optus and others.

Such a great opportunity to share stories, @Michelle Cusimano ! Thank you for this question!

Whether you're in sales or not.
Whether you're business started 20 years ago or just last year.

How did you get the first sales in?

@Yee Trinh  @Paige Arnof-Fenn  @Monica Suarez  @Kirsha Campbell  , how was it for you?! 

My first client came from a talk I gave to a professional networking group.  Someone from the audience came up to me after and made an introduction which resulted in my first project a few weeks later. I felt great that my talk was so well received and generated meetings and referrals as follow up, I knew I had a real business.   I still give lots of talks and it is a great way to generate leads and business.  I think having a good reputation is incredibly important to building a strong B2B business.  Here are the lessons that experience taught me:

*  Do great work that people will talk about

*  Give lots of talks even virtually and use examples from your experience, I do a lot of public speaking online and offline when not social distancing, host podcasts and webinars which leads to people talking about me online, tweeting, etc.

*  Join networking groups to meet people who are the multipliers in your industry, they talk to everybody and know everyone, they have large followings so you need to connect with them online too

*  Be active on social media so you can share your talks and content and your followers can  help spread the word

*  Generate lots of fresh content that will push down any potential bad comments online

*  Monitor your online data to shut down trolls and misinformation, there are several online tools to alert you of potential problems (some are free others are for a fee)

It continues to be a great source of leads and has served me well.  

Talks and fresh content. Getting the word out there about what you have done and do. That's simple and effective advice, @Paige Arnof-Fenn !

A few people are very skilled at embedding case studies and unpretencious "self-promotion" in their talks. Jay Shetty is someone who does this brilliantly in his podcast On Purpose. How do you call that type of technique if people want to go learn?