There's two types of people who hear consensual sales in the first go, Oh, Eww, Shawna, that is not what you want to say. There are better words to use and the second type here, consensual sales and say, you know what? You're right. I don't want to talk my way into the sale. I don't want to memorize a script. You just want to work with clients who are excited to work with you. Now that's consensual sales.
I am kind of scared to do this episode because I don't want to hurt your feelings but this might hurt your feelings if we do not have an honest conversation. Yeah, about the ways that you are embarrassing yourself in your business. You are never going to sign the number of clients that you want to sign and I know this because I was working with you today. I have a private client, one to one who runs, she runs like a health and fitness club and is signing clients right to come into her gym and join the membership or whatever.
00:55 And man, she is struggling. And today there were lots of things that we had to flush out and that's what I want to talk to you about while it's still fresh in my mind. And I hope that you can benefit from it too. I don't just hope, I know that you will if you listen and pay attention here. So in my mind I had the title of this episode called how to be professional and get rid of your employee mindset, but I think that employees can be professional. So that's not quite the angle that I was going with. So I think that I'm going to end up titling this like how to stop embarrassing yourself when it comes to your sales life. I dunno. Maybe that one is a dumb title. Maybe it'll be something like how to stop embarrassing yourself when you don't even realize you're doing it.
01:35 So there's like three specific things that I want to touch on on how you can really be taken seriously in your business. Not just be like a joke. The first thing is you have to distinguish between being salesy and Selly. You don't have to make apologies for selling your offer. None when you sell it is a really good thing for everyone. There was actually this quote that I read in this book called thou shall prosper and it's like the 10 commandments of making money and it's like one of the best books about money that you could possibly read and in that book he says money connects to dreamers and what happens is when you're not selling your hurting your family because your customers are winning at your expense, at your family's expense and business, when you run your business and you're selling, it means that you both win.
02:37 It's like a win-win situation, okay? We want more of that. We don't want you to be the loser and when you're not selling it turns out you are. What I want you to start thinking about is, is not pressuring somebody and backing them into a corner selling this. Simply extending the invitation to talk, so many of us think that selling is just like, I'm going to put you into a corner and I'm gonna make you buy something that you don't want. Like that is not selling, that's not selling at all. I'm like, gosh, that sounds horrible. Selling this meant to feel good. Selling should feel good. And when I say selling, again, I'm just saying simply extending the invitation to speak about your offer. And so what ends up happening is you're so embarrassed. I don't know. I don't know if you're embarrassed or you've got shame or you've got guilt, but all this weird baggage starts coming up that prevents you from even extending your offer or to talk about your offer because you think it's salesy.
03:38 What I want to tell you that more embarrassing than putting an offer on the table, more embarrassing than just simply talking about your offer to let somebody know that it exists for them is running a business for one, two, three, four, five years, and you're still really not profiting that much, hardly at all. Or you go a week or months without a client. That's embarrassing. Like I would be embarrassed about that. It's like pick your embarrassment. Okay. Like what's more embarrassing for you? I'm embarrassed for you. If you go weeks or months without a client, I'm embarrassed for you that you've been in business for three years and you're not profiting yet. You're still struggling to sell. Oh my gosh. Get over yourself. I know that maybe sounds easier said than done. So let me just break this down for you a little bit. Every problem that you have in sales is something that you didn't do upfront, right?
04:42 So I'm trying to think of a good example of this. I, I've been watching a lot of Kobe Bryant videos recently and I watched this clip of him and somebody who was asking him in so many words like, how are you so confident? And he says, well, I've just practiced a thousand times. Like what's one more time? And so if you're struggling with the part to sell, if you're struggling to the part to put on your offer, that tells me that we just need to do it more. That's how you're gonna develop confidence. That's how you're going to start to feel good about it. That's how you're going to be able to just do it one more time. Because you've already done it so many times. I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this, but what I'm trying to say here is that don't be afraid to practice.
05:27 That's what every good student knows. Okay. That's one thing to think about. But here's what I'm sort of going with this. If selling is extending the invitation to speak about your offer, it has to make sense. It has to have context. So just like when comedians have to set up a joke, they don't just tell their joke, it'd be like, Oh I got this joke to say. And then they like Pell a joke. Like that's not funny. Like they have to set up the joke and in the same way every problem that you have in terms of selling this because you didn't set things up right the first place. Okay. So if you're going to extend the invitation to speak about your offer, it has to be set up. You have to ask questions in a way that give you the insight that this person could want your offer or would benefit from your offer.
06:15 So in this specific example with my client, she was getting these people coming to her free class and then the class would end and the person would leave. And that was the time for her to like extend her offer and speak about her membership with that person because they just disappeared, right? Like they just, they just walked out on the class. Like how are they supposed to know? And so I'm sharing this with you because you can set up that conversation up front so it would simply look like, Hey, welcome to the class. Before you leave, I'd like to talk to you for just a couple of minutes. You talked to the person for a couple minutes. What brings you here? What are you looking for? And they'll tell you what they're looking for and then when you know that answer, it's essentially like, okay, do you want to speak about one of my offers that I think that could help you with that?
07:03 That's not weird. That's not awkward. That can be, no, I guess like that's like the easiest thing ever, but you don't set it up. You have to set it up. You have to set up the sale. Just like you set up a joke and you're going to feel resistance moving into the sales stop if you don't first identify that need, you have to put the problem before the solution. And so many people put in the solution for it as well. It's like, well, where's the solution supposed to go? What's the context? Is it even relevant? And that's why people get so mad when your DMS blow up with pitches and people trying to sell their service. It's like I didn't ask for that. I don't know why I would need that. And so your job when you're selling is to find the need and then fill it and again, you're not filling it by backing something into corners or sign up for my membership.
07:54 Sign up for my coaching program. Sign up for this package. What you're saying is, because you said this, are you interested in talking about how I can help you? Are you interested in learning about one of the programs? I think you're a great fit for. It's like part of being professional is being prepared and there has to come a point where you have to stop winging it. You actually have to develop the skill set needed for you to do a really good job. Yeah, it's like a craft, like don't you care enough to develop the craft where you can speak to your ideal client in a way that feels good. Phil Jones, he's like a sales trainer. He wrote the book exactly how to sell and exactly what to say. And they're both really great books and he's a really great teacher. He's got like his famous quote that's like the worst time to think about what to say is while you're saying it, I think that's how it goes and that's, you winging it, you're winging it.
08:50 You might as well be crossing your fingers and hoping that somebody signs up for you. Doesn't your business deserve more than just the dash of hope, of randomness, of random luck? I think it does. I think it deserves way more than just a random stroke of luck. The second thing is your customers have to be sold both on your offer. Like they have to believe that that offer is the thing that will help solve their problems. And then the other thing is that they have to be sold on you, that you are the one to deliver that service. And I know you guys know exactly what I'm talking about because if you've ever had like five friends, they all sell the same makeup and there's like two of them that you would probably never buy from even though you like the makeup and you buy from like the fourth person but not the first two.
09:39 Right. Do you get it? Like there's just some people that you wouldn't buy from even if you love the product, even if you love the service, even if the service is exactly the same and that's because people have to be sold on two fronts. They have to be sold on the offer and they have to be sold on you. And how they're sold on you is also in the credibility and authority that you bring to the table. Your customers are always looking for clues and it happens like on an unconscious level. It's sort of like when you go to the doctor's office and the doctor comes in in a white coat stethoscope, you're looking at his awards on the wall, like there are things included that you're looking for to see if you can take this person seriously. Now I'm not saying that you have to go, I dunno.
10:29 You need a bunch of accolades and you need to dress a certain way. Even though those things might help. I'm not to say that they don't, but what I am saying is that do you command a level of respect and authority and speak in such a way that conveys your credibility and being prepared I think is one of the best ways for you to do that. It's sort of like, Hey, like this past example that I gave you where it's like the woman comes into your club and you say, I'm so glad that you're here. You know when we're done with this workout, I'd love to just speak to you for a couple minutes and get to know like what brings you here and how I can help you or what it is that you need today or what you thought of the workout that's sort of commanding presence can be all they need to flip a switch where man, this person is here to help me.
11:16 And one sort of story that I'm thinking about is have you ever been to subway when it's super crowded at lunchtime and the line is out the door and it's like pack and you only got like 12 and a half minutes to get this up, eat it and get back to work or school or whatever you're doing. But the person who's making your sandwich doesn't look like they know what they're doing. And it turns out that they're brand new in their training and there's no sort of name tag that indicates this, but you can just tell in the presence and then the body language that the person is making your sandwich that, Oh my gosh, they're brand new and they have no idea they're doing right just by watching them and just by their energy. You can tell that that man, you hope you get the right sandwich and you hope that you get out of there on time.
12:05 So there's all kinds of clues and there's all kinds of ways that you can use your body or your tone of voice or the way that you look to convey a certain level of conviction that you are the one that will help them if you like. I've read this somewhere. I don't know if it's from influence, but we're taught to look for those clues from a very young age. Teachers, police officers, doctors. Like I said, we want to be able to trust the person who's helping us and we want to be able to trust their recommendation, their offer. Right. One other way that you can be more professional and like really step into the business owner that you want to be is to put yourself in the other person's future. There's essentially three parts of persuasion. You can use fear, you can speak to what somebody is thinking or you can also use visual persuasion and that's sort of what we're doing here in putting yourself in their future sort of like, let's say that I'm working with somebody and I'm working on their project for January.
13:13 What I can do is I can speak in a way that visually puts me in their future in July seven months from now. It shows that you are a part of their team and it shows that you are invested in their success. If you've signed a client and you want to keep that client on an ongoing basis, it doesn't make sense that you'd go to up to that person on the day that your contract ends and be like, Hey, do you want to sign up for three more months? That's an employee mindset that's like, just give me the projects and I'll just check it off the list. If you want to get paid more, if you want to sign more clients, if you want to be taken seriously, if you want to be professional, show up in their future or you're a part of the team helping them succeed and invested in that success.
14:00 I've got these ideas. I want to work on this project. I think we could do this, right? All right. I will help you do that. You can do that. That isn't profound, but it will help you keep those clients longer and it will help them be excited about the things that you're working on. So how to be taken more seriously. One, you have to be prepared, okay, and you have to set things up and give your offer context. It can't just come out of left field. You can't stop winging things. You need to stop crossing your fingers and rely on a skill set that you've developed over time or you're building today. Don't be embarrassed about being salesy. Be embarrassed that you've got a business where it takes you weeks or months to land a new client or you don't know where the next one is coming from.
14:50 Be embarrassed that your profit sucks. Those are way more embarrassing. Your customers are always looking for clues. If they should buy from you, they can believe in your offer. They may believe that the offer is the one that will help them, but maybe they're not convinced that you are the one to deliver. Maybe they don't believe in you. Well, how do you do that? Well, do you remember? You have to give them clues. There's other ways I guess when you could share case studies and testimonials and give social proof. Absolutely. But one of the fastest emotional cut to the brain emphasis that you can make is simply in the way that you speak and the way that you command authority. And that goes back to just being prepared, like practicing. The worst time to think about what you want to say is when you're saying it, most sales struggles are going to happen to sales struggles that you're facing are usually something that you didn't do upfront.
15:44 So the best thing that you could do is honestly just be prepared and practice. And when I say practice and be prepared, you're probably only looking at one, two, or three, maybe four scenarios. So it's not like this is like a prepared test or it's like the M CAD and you have and you got to spend six months studying. I'm talking about three different scenarios. This isn't rocket science, this is just preparation. And then the last thing is really just putting yourself in their future. You can do that, right? Just speak about their future. So they see you in it and they'll keep you around longer. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend. Take a screenshot, you can share it with me, I can give you a virtual high five. But if you really did enjoy this episode, come back, come back next week.
16:29 We are talking about how you can charge like what you should be charging is too much or it's too little. How to find that sweet spot. Okay? And that's it. Knock knock. Who's there? Clients are banging on your door ready to give you money and book your services, but they're asking hard questions like, how much is it? Who are you? How do I know you can help? And your brain melts when you feel like a deer in headlights. You've worked way too hard for this opportunity and you can't let it slip away. Here's what I need you to do right now. Get on the phone with, yup. All you need to do is type one word, consensual sales of five, five, five, eight, eight, eight. Again, it's consensual sales to triple five, triple eight. And I'll tell you exactly what to say to close those deals. You'll actually get me a real person on the other line. Thanks guys.
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