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.
Do you struggle to get clients to see the value of what you do so you end up giving everything or nearly everything away for free, free just so they'll say yes. Well, we're going to be talking about that today because if you want to know where that boundary is and how to still make sales in your business, man, this is going to be a really juicy episode. And actually it's a surprise episode because it's not in my, what do you call it?
(00:51): Like my spreadsheet, my spreadsheet of organized talking points of what we're going to do, talking about. And it came up today because somebody joined my Facebook group, which is called are you ready for this consensual sales? If you're not in there, you should go join there. It's a really great group. And so don't just take my word for it. Take the 500 people that are already in there that has a 79% engagement rate. So we're really active. Awesome Facebook group. Okay, so anyway, this lady, she joined my Facebook group, we're talking and she's like, you know, I really just want to book clients and make more money. I said, okay, like let's talk about that. Like what is happening, right. And she shared this, and I'm sure a lot of you, you want clients to see the value of what you do, okay? You really want them to understand and see the value, so you end up giving them everything away for free just so they'll say yes and you don't know where that boundary is.
(01:41): So let's talk about that. Let's talk about first starting with establishing that boundary. So if you don't know where that boundary is, guess what? You get to create it and you don't know what you want to create or what boundary you would establish in the first place. Let's talk about the one that I use and the first one is, is that if I'm going to give something away for free, it's going to be from a place of generosity, not of desperation or not of. I'm freaking out if I don't do this and they don't do it, give me something in return, like I'm going to get really stressed out and whatever, right? If you're going to give something away for free, let it be on your own terms from a place of not panic, okay? Not panic because what ends up happening if you're panicked about the sale and you're taking on more work that has like, no, you don't get any money, you know who loses, your family loses and you need to win.
(02:32): Like that's the essence of consensual sales is that you are creating win-win scenarios, not your family loses and your client wins. And even those is my boundary. Sometimes I mess up on it too because there are times where you have to hustle through not so ideal circumstances, right. Just to get to your clients. So I get that, and this is super serious and super new, but I was pulled into a project that was like really amazing, right? Like on the outside, I was like doing a bunch of, basically there's this big event and they needed sponsors for this event. And I was like, I would love to help you get sponsors for that event. Right? And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you can take a commission and you know, take a cut of the commission and whatever. And I said, okay, this is going to be so great.
(03:14): So I built all these relationships with all these people and the coronavirus happened, the coronavirus happened and the event was canceled and there's now no sponsors. So I did like three months of work nurturing these relationships and didn't make any money and I was so mad at myself because I broke one of my boundaries. Right? And so like there's things that sound good on the outside, but man, like once you get your hands in there, it's like you gotta be made sure that you are paying substantially because when you're paid substantially, you can actually give more value. You know what I'm talking about? You don't have to always cut corners. You can show up differently when you're paid what your service is actually worth. Okay? That's the first thing. Like if you don't know where the boundary is, you're like, I don't know how much to give away for free.
(04:05): Like we'll just decide that you're not going to give stuff away for free and that you're only going to create win-win situations for your family. And when I say not do things for free, that doesn't always necessarily mean monetary, right? There can be an exchange happening that doesn't always have to be dollars. That's one thing to think about, so the value that, this is going to be a little bit of mind teaser, but I want you to understand that price does not equal value and so when you are giving stuff away for free and you think that equates to some level of value, that is really, really shortsighted by thinking that price alone determines value. That could be so far from the truth and I'm going too quickly, there's this lady name Pell mall Pamela that's like Pamela Lev. I don't know if you guys know her.
(04:50): I'm going to spell her name. P a. L O. M a left. She is another sales coach. I've just come across her online. She's got really amazing content and she made this short list two years ago about value, like what are other ways that you can create value and I just want to rattle off this list because I literally, I saved this by my desk and I look at it all the time when I think, man, should I discount? Should I give this away for free? No. There aren't like 15 other ways that you can create value for people that have nothing to do with the price. Okay, so I'm going to ride them off your clients' wants and will pay for one what others want, which is social proof to what their friends and peers want, which is social influence. Three what they can't have easily, which is a high barrier of access for what they pay a lot for which is expensive.
(05:44): Five what's cool, new, which is novelty? Six, what can transform their life, which is results? Seven what only you have, which is a valuable differentiation. Differentiation. Again, these are things that your clients will pay for. They have nothing to do with price. Eight what is limited, which is scarcity? Nine what is best now, which is urgency. 10 what has deep meaning to them? Which is emotion? 11 what brings them pleasure and delight feeling alive? 12 what feels like an exclusive privilege? Status? 13 what makes them feel important? Which is appealing to their ego? 14 what will make them look good in the eyes of others, which is hierarchy and 15 what is difficult to attain? Which is status. Okay. Yeah, so there was 15 different ways that you can create value by misled that I found on Facebook. So when you say like I just don't know how much to give away from free.
(06:47): That tells me that you have lost all imagination. It is your job, it is your one job to articulate value. And I don't know about you, but I'm not going to articulate my value on price alone because there will be somebody who will always do my job cheaper than me. There will always be somebody who will undercut your price. So bulk compete there. Refuse to compete on price and that will help you eliminate this obsessive need to like give away your stuff for free. This leads me perfectly into my next point. I don't know how many points they have. I'm just going to talk until I feel like I've, you've got it. But the next point is I feel like we, I don't know if this is like the Gary V generation where it's like, can we have to give all this free, amazing value, all this free amazing stuff.
(07:38): And then finally after somebody has been like jab, jab, jab, we can finally write hook them, right? Like all this amazing, great free, valuable content. They'll finally purchase from us. But that could be furthest from the truth. You create value in people's life by making them feel seen and heard. So when you are talking to them and you're trying to understand their situation and you're now going to give them free stuff, which if you're giving them free stuff that tells me that you have now clearly identified a problem and are ready to give them a solution. Just ask them if they want help with that. Clarify in value to them. I see you, I hear you. It sounds like? It seems okay. Based on what you told me, because you said it seems like it sounds like that I might be able to help you with a particular offer.
(08:32): I might be able to help you with one of my consulting packages and I'd be able to help you with a custom proposal. Do you want to talk about that? What do you think it looks like I might be a fit to help you. What do you think and what you're doing is you're literally getting the other person to open up the conversation about what they want. You'll be able to determine quite intuitively and quite like picking up on their own clues if they are ready to purchase from you or if they're just not in the market. You can't sell to people who aren't willing to spend money on a solution, so if they're not willing to spend money on a solution, why would you give your free stuff away anyway? Like I don't make sense. One thing that I do is you can do this in your own sort of this actually, this is just how I sold a person.
(09:24): Hi Rachel, this is Rachel just by program, my speakeasy program or talking back and forth, she tells me what her problem is and I said, okay, I'm going to help you. And after I'm done helping you when you make money, when you accomplish said thing and you need to get into my program. So I make it clear that my program exists while simultaneously giving people free stuff. What we don't want to happen is give people free stuff and then they don't know that your stuff exists. So whenever I'm helping somebody, I naturally seed the conversation with my offer, right? Say okay, before you get into my offer, before I sell you my program. So I just make it lighthearted. I'm giving help back and forth. We're talking about the problem. Okay, so before I actually offer my services, what I want you to do is this free thing one and this free thing too.
(10:11): Maybe it's looking at an article or read a thing or do this action and then we can talk about my program. And that's exactly what I did. Like, that's exactly what I did with Rachel who just joined the program. But like week and a half ago, she bought it after I helped her and it got her results. But I didn't wait until after I gave her the free stuff. Like the other thing is people can't buy. What they don't know exists. Oftentimes if you're giving away free stuff all the time, like if you're not actively selling, if you're giving away your free stuff all the time, it hurts the relationship that you have with your clients. And so even if you're not giving away for free, but if you're like severely undercutting what the cost is, if you're severely undercutting what you should be charging, I know you know this, I mean, have you ever had a friend who gives you like this super generous gift and you're like, it's like amazing everything you want and like so thoughtful and you show up with a box of wheat thins.
(11:05): You know, like I said, ever happened to it like a party or a gift or a birthday or Christmas where the generosity of one gift doesn't match with what you're giving back in return or nothing at all and you just feel like an idiot, right? When you are too generous, when you're giving all the free value, it can make the other person really uncomfortable. Like it is good for your clients to pay you like they want to pay you. I have this friend who is really great and he's this amazing copywriter and I like to hire him on all these amazing projects and things that I have in my back of my mind. But he's always like, Oh just send it to me when you know just like these no big deal. Like I'm happy to, you can do it for you for free.
(11:45): And it's like I don't want you to do it for free. Like I actually want to pay you. And so when you are not having those money conversations, when you're not just like being confident and holding your own, like creating that space for that conversation, you are hurting your sales, you're hurting it, the chances of you of making more money. Okay. So I'm going to wrap up with this point cause I heard this story today that I thought was so cool and I was going to share with you, but basically in the forties the margarine, people could not sell margarine, they could not get it to move off the shelves. So they hired this psychologist and some scientists who could do a bunch of research from the UK and they brought him over and they're basically like help us sell the margarine. Like the price is cheaper than the butter and like whatever.
(12:29): It's cheaper than the butter and we don't know why it's not selling. Right. Because again, here they are thinking it's about price. If margarine is cheaper than butter, people will pick margin over butter. But that wasn't the case. So they brought in a bunch of stay at home moms basically. And they had this lunch and learn. They had a lecture, I don't know what it was about, but they had a couple of different experiments about what these ladies and they, at the end of these lectures, they had a buffet, they had a buffet of butter and bread. But what they did is that over the different groups of the study, they gave them what was butter, but really margarine. And what was margin was really butter. And they just changed the colors. Right? And they described what they thought was the margarine, oily, nasty, greasy, right?
(13:11): They didn't like it. They rated it significantly lower. But what they didn't realize that the only thing that the guy had changed was the color of the margarine to be more like butter. Otherwise, when they had eaten the margarine, that when they were told was butter, they loved it. Okay. And now what they did is they took the studies of that findings and margarine. You know what had blown the butter sales out of the water for the next 50 years in America. And so I'm sharing this with you is because it's so short sighted to just think that people are buying your product or not buying your product based on price alone and your job is to give it away for free. And just giving you 15 examples. I've shared one amazing case study about margarine and butter, so what do you need to know?
(14:04): You need to know that you create value in your client's life by making them feel heard and seen and validating like who they are. Okay. If you can do those things that will create value in their life that they will want to hear from about your offer. The other things that I need you to know, just to recap quickly at the top of my head, is that people have to know that your offer exists. So if you're going to give away free stuff, let it be on your own terms, but seed it in the conversation with them, right? Say, okay, I'd love to help you for 15 minutes. Normally I charge for at least two hours on this console, so I'm going to do my best. Give it to me. How can I help you? Right? I don't know. I think that's it. I think you guys get the point.
(14:45): Okay, this is what I love. I love this. I love this topic. I love helping you make money because there's not much worse than not being able to do your best and when you are on fire, when you start resenting your family, when you're stressed out about client work, because you're not fairly compensated, you can't give value. So if you want to give value, the best thing that you could do is to charge appropriately. Knock, knock. Who's there? Pints 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? Are you really qualified and how do I know you can help me? Your brain melts and you feel a lot like deer in headlights. You've worked way too hard for this opportunity. You can't let it slip away. So this is what I need you to do. You need to grab your phone and text. Consensual sales, one word to five, five five, eight eight eight in central sales, five five, five, eight, eight, eight and you'll get me like I'm there on the other line and I'll tell you exactly what to say to close those deals.
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