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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.

So let me guess. You're the type of person who wants to avoid conflict at all costs, right? The conversation gets awkward or gets tense, and maybe you start breaking onto a sweat. You're just like, get me out of here. That is affecting your ability to sell. And I want to talk about it because it wasn't that long ago that that used to be me to where, like, you just want the people around you to be happy and you don't want to be the source of their pain.

(00:53): Right. And if we don't solve this, you're never going to be able to sell. You're always going to be hearing objections and you're not going to be able to overcome them. And it's just gonna be trouble for you. So let me kind of catch you up to speed with how I got here, because it's not uncommon for people to say, Oh, Shawna, like you just don't care. What other people think of you and Oh, shuttle, like you just say what's on your mind. And it's like, ah, yeah, there was a, I spent a lot of time in my life being absolutely terrified of what people would think about me or like that, making sure that other people were happy. Right. So my mom, she was 15 years old when she had me, she ran away from Minnesota to Colorado, which was where I was born.

(01:31): Don't really know my dad at all. My biological dad and yeah, so she's just runaway 15 year old teenager and all of the drama and the life and the stories that go along with it. But eventually my mom would remarry when I was in high school to a really great guy. My mom has a heart of gold, this guy's great. And they had two kids when I, like I said, like I had one foot out the door for college and there was my first summer home. And she had this idea, okay, this is going to make sense. In a minute, there was this idea that she had to take us on this family trip to Colorado, but she wanted to drive, okay. From Minnesota to Colorado, she wanted to drive. And I was like, what? I'm the 19 years old? And you're going to put me in the back of this car with two little kid, brothers are still in diapers for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours like, you know, 15 hours, 13 or 15 hours or whatever, how long it takes to get from Minnesota to Colorado.

(02:32): And I said, no way, am I doing that? That's crazy. That's totally crazy. And it's not happening. Well, I have a sister she's two years younger than me. So it was basically like me and my sister and my mom growing up. Right. And when a sister ends up going on this trip and I ended up being the only one that stays home and my family, they get to like South Dakota and they have to like turn around. And when, when, when they turn around, so they'd only been gone like two, three days, they get home. And like, what happened? Like why are you guys back home? Like, you couldn't apparently make it to Colorado. And I never really knew why they turned around, but apparently my sister was like, Oh mom. And you know, my mom's husband got into like a fight. And then they're just like, I got sick of it.

(03:16): And then I just turned around and came back. I dunno, like family drama. Right? So anyway, they return and my mom isn't just like mad at me. She is feel me. Like she doesn't talk to me the entire summer literally gives me the silent treatment for the whole summer while I live there. Now this isn't like anti mob. My mom is a really great person. She's got a heart of gold and we've had to overcome a lot of stuff. And there's a lot of growing up that we've had to do relationship, but talk about insanity. Totally crazy. Like not talking to your daughter when she's home from college for three months in the same house that you live and giving her the silent treatment, just because she told you that she did, he didn't want to go to Colorado. And that's how it was. That's how it was for me growing up is like, I mean, it wasn't like I was perpetually feeling like I had to make my mom happy.

(04:16): That's not true. That's not an accurate, yeah. Yeah. It's like, that's what I mean, like that's I never grew up thinking I had to make people happy. I grew up thinking like, I hope she's not mad. I hope she's not mad at me. If that makes sense. So it makes sense to me when you're in these conversations with people and you don't want to talk about their pain, you don't want to talk about them, the problems that they're having, you just want to go in and fix them, right? Like you want to go in and solve them right away. You want to swoop in enthusiastically and like fix all this. And that's costing you sales. I'll elaborate that here in a minute. But I wanted to tell you this other story too. So basically growing up there was my mom and my sister, but I had sort of this, like the psychology term of circuit, right.

(04:59): I had this like surrogate father who was basically my dad, but not my biological father who was there for me, like my whole life. Not until later in life, which is another random story though, say for a different day. But he was sort of like this fill in dad. Right. And he was a great guy too. And when they split up, so they split up my mom and the sky had basically, my dad had split up when I was, they split up basically when I was elementary school, as I got older, I started to have to pay for more things. Right. I had to pay for sports. I had to pay for shoes. I had to pay for school clothes. And whenever I would ask my mom for money, she would always say, go after dad. And it was so strange, like w talking about breaking out into a cold sweat, I mean, hives, cold, sweat, heart palpitations.

(05:50): I do not want to ask my dad for money because my dad was a construction worker. So in Minnesota, that means like he didn't have work like seven months out of the year because it was freezing. And so he just bounced around from job to job and like never had a stable job. And it was so awkward. It was so awkward having to ask my mom because my mom was like, I don't know money either. You know what I mean? Like, my mom was a single mom. She don't have any money. She has to drive an hour to the cities to make 14 bucks an hour. But yeah, that's true. I'm, I'm used to wake up at like five o'clock in the morning to drive to work and hour. So she could make, like I said, 14 bucks an hour because that's, that's just what you have.

(06:30): You just have to do what you have to do sometimes. So, anyway, sorry, I'm getting on a tangent. I don't want to tell you my whole life story, but I never wanted to ask my mom for money. And then she'd make me feel guilty. Like, why don't you ask your dad? And then I hated asking my dad. And that was like another layer of guilt and shame that I just, I felt bad asking. And I remembered this one time I needed shoes or I needed like a comforter for college, or like I needed a blanket to put on my bed and I didn't have any money and my mom didn't have any money. So I was like, I got the courage to ask my dad and my dad would say, okay, this is what he said once he was like, here's 20 bucks. I hope that that covers it.

(07:06): And it was like $20 on like a $60, $80 purchase. Like barely even covered it. You know what I mean? Like it was like pennies on what I actually needed. And he gave me the money and he said, don't tell your sister. And he said, and don't tell his wife, right? Because like they had their own money problems. And so on top of feeling guilt and shame her mom and feeling guilt and shame from my dad and guilt and shame I had now had my dad's guilt and shame about like hush, hush. Like, don't tell your sister. And then like, don't tell my wife because I can't give you this $20. And it's totally crazy. And I'm sharing this with you again, because what ends up happening is when you get on these conversations and you bring your own baggage about what you can and cannot say, it eliminates the ability to have a really honest conversation because you're perpetually like projecting.

(08:03): Not only are you projecting, but you're going to want to bail on these conversations. It's like, you've really trained your body to like create a fight or flight response. And your job when you're selling is to stay in the conversation is to get truth on the table is to have an open and honest conversation. Okay? So if you have this conflict avoidance around making other people, if you want to avoid conflict and you have this perpetual need to make other people happy, right? Or to make sure that they're not upset, or you have sort of this shame and guilt around asking for money, this is affecting your ability to sell. Now, let me explain. Imagine if your client comes to you and they say, Oh man, I'm really struggling with this or that. And you immediately come in and enthusiastically try to fix it without letting them sit in that pain without letting them sit in that their conflict you're robbing them of making a true and empowering decision.

(09:11): They'll never ever know the true cost of not solving their problem. If you swoop in and don't let them come face to face with the pain they're in. Now, this doesn't mean like you'd like me to like twist the knife and like dig out a print pick and probe at a prenup, pick a scab, you know, like pick and probe at a problem. But it does require you to sit in that problem and be honest about what it's costing them. So it's not uncommon to get to the end of the sales call. And somebody says, okay, I need to think about it when they say that it's almost, I mean, there's lots of reasons why this could be happening, but it might be because they don't know the cost of what inaction is costing them. So you see how this works. So it's like, they need to know the reality of their problems.

(10:04): So they know the cost of it. So at the end of the call, they're not saying, Oh, I need to think about it. Like that will never happen. Because now, now that you know, the cost of the conflict you'll know the cost of an action, right. And maybe you don't even need to like pick and probe at the problem. Maybe you don't need to like twist the knife. Maybe they already know, but they're just so used to running away from it. They've never actually like looked it in the face and said, wow, like, this is a lot of a bigger problem than I realized, because they've nobody has ever stopped to ask them, or they've never made stopped to look at it. You know what I'm saying? And then once we have like agreed and they say, yes, like, that's exactly, that's exactly what I'm going through.

(10:44): And they're talking to you and you're, you know, you're confirming and your active listening, then we can talk about solving their problem. Okay. Then we can present our solution. And when that happens, you're going to hear very little objections or none at all. And at that point, the money, like it doesn't become about like your price. It becomes about how can I do this? I have to figure out how, and it's so much easier to sell when people are in that frame of mind, rather than like, Oh, I can't afford it. You know? Like they're actually thinking about, okay, like how can I pull this together to pay for this service? And when you have this conversation, they're going to thank you. Like, they're going to be happy that you sold them. I mean, can you imagine if you could sell something and the other person was crying, happy tears, because they felt so much relief from your services.

(11:42): If that isn't happening, we might want to be asking yourself, or you're getting a lot of these, like penny pitchers or people who are on like these shoe string budget is to start asking yourself if you even solve like a big enough problem. I see this in conversations with my speakeasy members is they're like obsessed with the solution. You know what I mean? Like that's why you do what you do, right? Like if you're a dietician, you're like obsessed with nutrition. Like that's why you do what you do. But like, instead of obsessing over a solution, I want you to start like obsessing over a problem. Then that way, when you're in these conversations, the offer is like, co-created okay. If not like something you're trying to just like the offer the solution. Isn't something that you try to Ram down their throat. It's like an active participating conversation.

(12:31): Okay. So let's recap this episode. I shared two stories with you about how avoiding conflict is not normal and healthy. One how my mom came in salad driven for three months, and then how my dad was all like weird about money, right? And it's affecting like these feelings and these sort of mindset. Things are affecting your ability to allow your potential client to sit in their own conflict. Okay. We can not enthusiastically try to solve their problem because then you're removing their ability to make a decision, an informed decision. All right. If you liked this episode, you're going to like next week, it's with Don Kennedy, a business financial coach who is centered around making sure that you're not just making money, but you're keeping it and increasing your profit. Okay. That's next week. Join me Monday. Share it. Flood comment, thumbs up And consensual sales on.

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