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'm going to talk to you about one thing specifically about how do you navigate the line between connecting with somebody, waiting a little while, and then going for the sales pitch, because what happens is some of you guys that makes you feel icky, right? It makes you feel girls. And it makes things feel weird if you're going for the pitch, but it feels like you're tricking them. It feels like you're tricking people when you try to be their friend and then you go for the sales pitch.
(00:57): Okay. And understand that, that feels icky, especially the way that most people have been taught sales. So I'm going to just share with you a breakdown of some of the guiding principles that we use in the consensual sales training. The very, very first one is, is that when you make a connection with somebody, when you make an initial contact with somebody, you're only doing it, if there's a connection and we identify connections on shared values, shared experiences or shared sense of humor, okay? You're not just like having your appointment book open, running around the street saying, do you want an appointment? Do you want an appointment? Do you want to do, do you want an appointment that doesn't feel good at all? The very first thing is, is that you're initiating a conversation with somebody who you have a shared connection with because your network, they actually have to be people that you know, and that they know you.
(01:56): Well, it does not make sense to just go on Facebook and add [inaudible] and hundreds of people. That's not how this works. You actually have to keep a long term game in mind that your life and the benefits that you want are all connected to people. And the only way to access those is through conversations. And the only way to have a conversation that feels good is if you're first identifying that shared connection. So that's the very first step in how sales will feel good. You don't even bother with talking to people that you don't have anything in common with that will protect the integrity of the relationship. So I shared this story with some of you awhile ago, but there was somebody that I wanted to buy. She was telling me a really amazing sales coaching package. And she's like, I got a set $5,000 sign up today.
(02:52): And I sat on the call and I was like, I don't know if I can do this, whatever, whatever. Well, we, this great connection on the phone call. I didn't know what I wanted to do an entire month goes by. And she ignores me. She doesn't say anything. She has a follow up with me. She doesn't make any attempt to like build the relationship. And 30 days later, she comes knocking on my door and the direct messages. And she says, Hey, I got this really great payment plan. Are you interested now? And I was like, no, I'm not interested because you don't care about me for 30 days only if I'm willing to pay with your new extended payment plan. And so what I want you to think about is when you are connecting with people, you connect with people that you actually want to facilitate a relationship with because the people that have relationship with you nine out of 10 times, want to be the ones to do business with you, or they're going to be people who connect you to your clients.
(03:57): So that's the very, very first rule. And you have to be really careful too, about who you're letting into your life. So I don't want anybody to connect with me. Why are you connecting with me? What do we have in common? Like, what are you trying to get out of me? Right? So you also have to be careful about who you allow to connect with you. Do you have anything in common? Okay. If you don't, you can't force a relationship. That's not there. That's the very, very first thing to consensual sales. When you're trying to figure out how do I make an initial contact with somebody without feeling like I'm tricking them to sell to them. First thing, do you have a connection? Do you have something in common? Is this something that you could be friends with, even if they don't buy? So you're setting the intent of the relationship.
(04:42): That's not based on sales. That's not based on the outcome. Okay. And if you know, anything that I talk about is that it can't be outcome focused. It can't be outcome focused because you're not in charge of whether somebody says yes or no. Nobody wants you to be in charge of you can't control whether somebody says yes or no. So you're viewing the relationship, the initial contact as a way to warm your life up to the relationship. Like everything that you've ever wanted or gotten has come from somebody that's probably known you. Well, okay. So that's the first thing. No. How do you go from, okay, I've got this connection. I got somebody that I'm driving with. How do I make sure that they don't feel used if I go for the sale? So there's a couple things. Here's the principle manipulation is deceit sales it's truth.
(05:37): So when you understand that sales has this guiding principle of putting truth on the table, you have to also be really clear about who you help and what you do. There's no reason to hide what you do and who you do it with and the outcome that you provide. And a lot of times we're so to tell people what we do, we don't often know what it is that we do. And we're usually so easy that we're willing to pick up any jobs. So we haven't clearly identified what those three things are. And that can start to really confuse people. Okay. It can make it start to feel icky. So when you understand that sales is truth, you can say in confidence, yeah, this is what I do. I'm a sales trainer for creative professionals who want to sell person to person, right? Who want to get paid, what their services worth and have a booked out appointment.
(06:30): You know, they want to have us. They want to have a winning list. I can say that in confidence, without it being weird, because that's the truth. I don't have to hide that. Now. How do you move the person from initial contact to a sale? You first truth. You tell them what you do and who you do it with. And that naturally happens usually by a normal conversation. What do you do? Oh my gosh. How long have you been in that field? What cool projects are you working on? Right. Do you have any questions for me? Yeah. I noticed that you help, you know, it seems like that you are like doing this like sales thing. Like what is that exactly? Yeah. I'm a sales trainer. I help people like sell their packages and it's really awesome. Okay. Leave it like that. If you rushed through this part of the conversation, you're going to get to the no faster.
(07:16): The reason that you're rushing is because you're scared. That's you being outcome focused. I need you to just not do that. I need you to focus on the person on the relationship. Okay. On this part of the conversation. Now, once you have clearly identified, once you guys both know each other, what you do and who you do it with, you can start to build rapport and the relationship will start to be built because you'll learn more about their unique situation. You'll become a familiar face. And when you become a familiar face, I don't want to say that you're waiting, but you're letting the relationship build on time. So this is like really good practice for me to communicate this. So I appreciate you if you're here watching this and you're like, I'm like, I'm trying to like figure out what you're trying to say. The reason you're rushing the conversation is because you're scared.
(08:08): Yes. Thank you for saying that. The reason that you're rushing the conversation is because you're scared. Did I say that? And did you just quote me? Did I really just say that that's a really great quote, okay. You're building this relationship. They know who you are and what you do now, what you do is you never, ever, ever talk about your offer, unless somebody has like, that person has clearly asked for your help. They have given you permission. And do you have clearly identified a need? So today in our community, somebody had said, this woman showed up at me as a friend, and I could just feel that the pitch was coming and sure, shit, it came first thing this morning when she's like, Hey, I got this, this mastermind that you should join. And I think you really benefit from it. Do you want me to send you the link?
(08:55): And the person in our community was like, man, I don't want to be that person. And I said, did they ask you for permission? Did they first identify a need? And do they know who you are and what you do when that, that feeling is totally mutual? Oh, these are just the commandments of consensual sales. I actually should have make amendments. So second central sales, actually, that's a really great point. But yeah. So what I'm doing here is I'm just, I'm discussing how you can go from initial contact to sale without feeling like you're tricking people or without it feeling icky. Okay. So we talked about some of the basics. So if you're just coming in here, we're not like halfway through. So make sure that you catch the beginning because the beginning sets the tone for everything that I'm saying in the middle. So you do not talk about your offer until you get permission until they ask for it.
(09:43): Or you have clearly 100% identified a need. One really important consensual sales principle, commandment, if you will, is that you never ever put the answer, the solution, the call to action without first identifying the problem without putting the problem. First, your business does not exist for you. It exists for other people and they have to say that they want to hear about it or that they even have that problem in the first place. Okay. So before you're just getting to know them, because if you can help them, you should be sending someone else like you should be connecting them to other people, which is exactly what we had talked about yesterday with Joanna, who said that one way to be a really great leader in your community is to be an incredible resource. Okay? I'm getting a little off tangent here. There's sort of this mentality, that to get people to buy, you have to create all this urgency and you have to like do all this crazy stuff and like have these magic formulas to make people buy.
(10:45): But anybody who knows anything about creating desire, you actually have to create mystery around your offer. And you do that by not playing it fast and loose now shall not promote a call to action before identifying a need. Oh my gosh. Yeah. If you guys are picking up my commandments, just tell me what they are so I can put them in a document I'm in a fancy PDF. So going back to this point about creating desire, people want what they can't have. And if you're playing fast and loose, if you're playing it too eager, you're not going to get the sale. Now, this doesn't mean that you're not supposed to talk about it. It doesn't mean that you can't be direct or honest. I actually want you to be all those things, but I want you to first make sure that those things first fill a need.
(11:34): Your offer has to fill a need. Cause selling starts to feel weird when people don't know who you are, they don't know what you do. And they don't know why they would even need this thing. Has it ever happened to you? You're like, why am I seeing this? Why is this person talking to me? I don't even need that. That's selling. That feels gross. Okay. And now you're distracting me. Yes, Prince, you guys have seen the success I've been having in my business. We have 50 members that have joined the speakeasy. That means I have a little bit of money and I'm decorating my office.
(12:10): And it's actually really funny because every time Prince comes on the radio, we'd have this big announcement in the family were like, it's impossible to have a bad day because Prince is on the radio. Yeah. Hey girl, I've got those organic body wraps. So yeah. So going back to this thing, it's like, if you want sales to feel good, if you want to feel good about sales, ask yourself, like, pull your hand over your heart and ask herself like, who am I meant to serve? Cool. Am I meant to serve? And that will help you like narrow in, on a specific person. And that will help you sell because the people who also don't need your stuff or don't want your stuff can actually become your own. Salespeople can actually be connectors to your sales people. And that's what you want with the connections. And you've got a mutually returned the favor, right?
(12:58): That's why like most, I don't know. I guess I've just only heard Tony Robbins say this, but like, if you want to make a million dollars, you got to help a million people. Like this is one way to do that. I said nothing to the girl and I was already in a mastermind and she's like, Oh, that's right. You did say that. Yeah. So she wasn't even listening is okay. That's really funny. Let's just keep moving along this process of how to go from initial contact to sale. It's gonna be really hard for you to like, keep all these relationships running all these relationships running. So there's two things you can use my own sort of database that I have created inside Trello, which is like a glorified posted note where you just become where it just like houses. The people that, you know, it's just like literally like a little like date book, if you will like where you would have the context that you'd have in an address book.
(13:47): The one thing that I want to tell you is that I have had people in the friend zone that have come to me a year later and bought like sow's and dollar packages. And this has also happened recently to somebody in our community and speakeasy who had an initial contact in the friend zone for two years, two years, and just bought yesterday, like just this week, a $3,000 package that doesn't happen. If you just like chase one sale. If you're just trying to get an answer on one call, that doesn't happen. But the thing is is that if they're your people, it doesn't matter if they stay in the friend zone because they're still your people. Yeah. Actually my crying about this because like they're who you are meant to serve. And so the no simply becomes a not yet. So I had this person reach out to me.
(14:44): This is like another example I had this particular person reached out to me in October. And we tried to negotiate like this website package, right? You want to help with her copywriting? She wanted her write it with her sales and we couldn't agree on a price. She calls me back again. We couldn't agree on a price. Now, eight months later, she's in my friend zone. I still care about her. I want to know what's going on in her business. I want to know what's going on in her life. I also show up for my business on a regular basis. So that way I'm not just disappearing, right? I produce content that is geared towards her problems. So I become a familiar face, which is exactly how you create trust and create the know like, and trust factor. Eight months later, she pulled me in for a $1,500 offer with a three day, all inclusive opportunity come may.
(15:30): That's like a secret under the wraps right now, but like, Holy shit. And I heard this quote the other day and it's that sometimes the relationship can be more valuable than the actual sale itself. And that can be really hard for a lot of you to hear when you're so desperate for the sale. And I just told this to some other person in our speakeasy group, if you are so desperate for the sale and you can't make your rent, you need to go get a job. Okay? So there's a couple of things. This is like a really great topic. And there's so many ways that we can go about this and break off into like a whole bunch of different tangents. But here's what I want you to know. You don't have to be ashamed that you're selling. You don't have to be ashamed of what you do.
(16:17): You just need to be specific. You need to be specific about the outcome. You need to be specific about who you do it with. You don't have to hide. You don't have to be worried about a cold pitcher, cold message. Those are all just introductions. What will you need to do as you need to make sure that people don't feel used by being a familiar face, you need to make sure that you get permission. You need to make sure that you put the problem before the solution and that they ask, you will know that you are doing sales, right? When people start saying what you're waiting to say, and then you literally just extend an invitation to talk about the thing that you do. So that way you can understand their own unique circumstances and make sure that it is in full alignment. So the thing that you do, so there's actually a seamless match and that they can feel that.
(17:11): No, here's the other thing. If my best friend, if I thought that I could help her, I would pick up the phone and I would say, get your ass over here. I've got this amazing thing to tell you, and it's going to absolutely explode your business and like, whatever. Right? And I'm only able to do that. The stronger my relationship is the more direct I can be. So there are some times where you can be like a little bit pushy, but it's because I've earned my right. And the relationship it's built on trust, the stronger the relationship is, the more direct you can be. I have no problem telling some of you to like, get your ass here. I've got this amazing thing. That's absolutely going to help you because I've earned that. Right? So when you're navigating the consensual sales, there is a finesse to knowing.
(18:01): So the dynamics of the relationship, what I'm saying this for us is very specific is, is that I don't want you to sink that. Like you make contact with somebody and then they just sort of go and dislike this bucket of like, Oh, I'll just ask them how their dog is today. I'll just ask them like what they're doing this weekend. Okay. Like, you don't have to do that. You don't want to do that. Actually you build a relationship and you earn your right to be more direct. Maybe I'm getting off on a tangent. I'm just bloviating okay. That's all I have to say about this. We should give you a call to action. She was like, and this and this on a positive note one, you don't have to be ashamed of what you're selling to make sure that they ask before you talk about your offer, make sure that it fits a problem.
(18:47): If this is all, this is a great example. If somebody was like, Hey, shut up. I'm just mad at you. But like tell me everything about your offer. I would be like, I'm not like really going to talk about that with you right now. Because like, why would I do that? Like, you're taking my time. Like you're taking it rather than giving me something. But if there's context, if there's like, Hey Sean, I love your offer. And I happen to know, no, somebody who's a photographer. Who's been struggling to get their business off the ground for two years. Like, I'd love to learn more about what you do now. Like makes sense, right? Like your customer has to follow like a logical sequence of events. Hey, even though this episode is over, there's two things that you can do real quick to keep the conversation going.
(19:29): One, you can join me on Instagram. There is a graphic on my feed called after the show. That's a place where you can join for followup discussion. You can ask questions or share your opinion about episodes on. That's a really great place to hang out with us. The second thing is that you can go to sheaf, speak sales.com and download our interactive conversation guide with a push of a button. We will tell you what to say when, to who all at the right time. So that way you're never feeling like a deer in headlights. So you're never freezing up or freaking out in a conversation that's supposed to get you paid again. She speaks sales.com and I'll see you all later.
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