Hi, I'm Samantha Hartley and this is the Profitable Joyful Consulting Podcast. Today, I want to talk to you about selling with integrity and before we can get anywhere on that topic, the most important thing that we can cover starting today is limiting beliefs around selling. I was inspired to talk about this by a sales meeting I had with someone this week. I was in the position of being sold to, I brought my husband to hear about this program I was super excited about and so I asked the person running it, please tell me and my husband a little more about the program and he kind of stammered for a minute and then he said, well, this isn't a predatory call and I thought, well, that's weird, why would he use that word? Because I'm really excited and in doing it, like, I want to enroll in the program and it's like three levels. So I was like, all right, well, tell us a little more about that and so he did we're both interested and then I said, well, tell me about this third level. He started on that and I was like, wow, that is so exciting. So I asked him kind of about when can we enroll and how does it works? And he said, well, this isn't a predatory call and again, I was just stopped in my tracks and I thought, I'm not a gazelle. I don't feel like I'm being predated or preyed upon.

I came to this to hear more about it. and so I just couldn't understand the use of that word and I realized that what he really didn't want to look like was as if he were selling us something. Heaven forbid he'd be trying to sell us something, I was like, I came to buy I want this and someone has a belief that is getting in between his ability to explain the program to me and my ability to make a decision about whether this is the right next step for us to take. So I wanted to share beliefs I have heard, limiting beliefs about selling. I've heard that I don't want to damage or sabotage your results.

So a lot of these beliefs are revealed to me in language. So you heard that term, another term that I've heard for years is the term push, like, well, we need to do a push. I got to push things out there or I don't want to push people, we need to get a program push, using the term push to refer to marketing and selling and I do not like that as a term. We're never pushing people. We're never forcing, coercing, pursuing, like all of this terminology to me is non cooperative, it doesn't keep in mind the fact that there's two of us and each of us has to decide if we're the right fit for one another. I need to be able to explain what the program is, what my services are, what the value of the brand is, so that someone else can make a decision about that, like there is agency and freedom of decision on both sides.

So that language to me is very problematic and if we look at the larger meaning of like what is marketing, if it's not pushing and what is selling? So marketing is teaching and informing people about the value that you bring, your services, so that they can make a decision about whether or not this is the right next step for them to take. So, marketing creates demand, it puts out information so that people say, oh, I want that, or oh, I'm interested in that, selling is when people are interested in it and they say, I think I want that. Can you tell me more about, would be a fit for me? And they're exploring it like, what are my choices? What could that do for me? Then selling is offering and saying, well, we have, you know, small, medium, large, here's it, this is right for you, If you are this, it's offering them the next step that they can take to enroll, to invest and I think about it like this restaurant I went to one time where they had a dessert tray and after dinner, a menu didn't come out instead, they brought up this big tray with all these kinds of desserts on it. Well, that certainly created demand and as we looked at it, you know, you could ask questions like what's in that one and what's that pink thing there and what's that a piece of. So we can ask more information to decide which of these is a fit for us, and it's kind of a funky analogy to say the dessert tray is what you're doing but we are offering,we’re saying here is the options that you have available, we’re saying if you like cherries, you'll love this one, if you don't like chocolate, you should not get this one, right?

It's a funny analogy, but it's a fit if you want to think in terms of what you're offering to your clients. It's not pushing, no one was forced to take a dessert because that doesn't work, right, doesn't make everyone happy, it's not the way to serve.

So, what I think my buddy on that sales call was doing was saying, I don't want to convince someone to do something they don't want to do at all and I was like, I want to do it. So when you're not going to be convincing someone to do something they don't want to do, you are explaining to them what the value is and then they can decide. I mean, the whole purpose of a sales call or a sales process, whether it's on the phone or in a conference room, whether it takes place over the course of 30 minutes, or whether it takes place over five days, six months. I mean, selling processes vary from organization to organization and from brand to brand. But the same thing is happening in them, which is that two organizations are deciding if we are fit for each other. So you are explaining the value and they're deciding if this is a fit, Is it a fit for us? Is it a fit for us right now? Is this what we're looking for? Does this meet our needs? Can we invest in this? Right? That's what's happening during the selling. So when people believe that they don't want to be perceived that they're trying to convince someone, the overall heading for this belief is, I hate selling, I hate selling, I don't want to be caught selling, I don’t want to be caught, the people might think that I'm selling, heaven forbid that could be the worst thing. Why? Well, because I would look needy, I might get rejected, it just feels awkward, I feel vulnerable.

Well, it's not about you, to me anytime when I'm feeling those feelings around something I'm doing in my business. I realize I've slipped into thinking it's about me, it's not about us. If you're feeling like, oh my God, I can go on with this cause that makes me feel so needy, you're not focusing on the people you need to focus on, which are your customers and clients. So change your focus, and I feel needy awkward is a prompt to think about who you're serving and how you can serve them better. We're not taking advantage of them and when people say I hate selling, what I believe is that they hate what they think selling is. They don't really hate selling, they hate what they think it is and if they could transform that into a different kind of belief, then they would begin to build a relationship to the activity of selling, that would help them build their business and serve way, way more people. The funny thing is it isn't just little businesses you think like broke people who have, who can get off the ground can't sell. I've been with businesses in the millions who throughout the organization, there's this aversion to selling and so it's relegated to like one person does it. But the thing is that as the owner of the business, the organization takes on the character of the leader and the owner, especially a founder, no one can convey with the kind of passion and knowledge and expertise the value of that business better than the owner. So you want to bring all of that to your company, even if you're selling through a sales team, you want to bring that forward. So each of us has to have a compatible relationship with the concept of selling. So if you're trying to transform, I hate selling, an effective way to do that isn't to flip it over into, I love selling because it just won't be true. What I think is more effective is what is the truest thing that you can say about what you are doing when you're in a sales meeting. For example, helping. A lot of people can say I love to help my clients, I love to help potential clients, make a decision about what's right for them, make a decision about the next right thing for them to do. The next right action for them to take. I love to help them do that. Is that true? If that's true, you can write that down. Many people feel better about selling if they think of it as serving. I serve my clients this way, I serve them when I help them and support them in the sales process.

What is a sales call or a discovery call? What is that process? To me I mean literally, I call it this time all the time, it's a sacred process, it's a time when somebody has been incredibly vulnerable, they've come to you and they've said we have something that we need to work on. Either we have this challenge or this problem or this opportunity, we can't do it ourselves. We need help to do that, I think that's an incredibly vulnerable ask. So, as we dig in and explore with them in the selling process, like, what's up? What have they tried? What worked for them? What hasn't worked for them? What are their dreams, their desires, their disappointments, their hopes? As we explore that over discovery calls and in the sales process, what happens is they, the potential clients very often experience insights into their own process and into what they want and why that hasn't happened for them before. They experience all kinds of insights that come from the questions that we ask them and the information that they're putting forward, that whole collaborative discovery and exploration process that we do together, it really does serve people. It's amazing the insights that I've seen, even from people who don't end up moving forward with someone's services.

A lot of times the best thing we can do is to help someone figure out what their next step is well, all the time it is but sometimes the next step isn't taken with us. Sometimes I've talked to entrepreneurs and I've said, I think you need to get a day job. I don't think you want to do this anymore. Sometimes I've said I think the next great step for you is actually what my colleague does. And I'm going to send you to her because I think she can serve you better than I can. So if we don't keep an attachment to an outcome and we intend for the time that we spend selling in quotation marks to be serving them, then it's a much less hateful process. I think the word I love is Lead.

I'm a Leader and what I want to do is from the very time I take that call and I begin the sales process I want to lead someone to what is the right next step for them and I think it's amazing you really set up the client relationship in an amazing way, if you take leadership from the very beginning, like literally from the booking of that appointment, you take the lead, you tell them what to expect. You are leading in the call and you lead them to the right next steps for them. It's incredible what can happen with that and what I think is so amazing about it? Is that the decision that they make when you lead them to that next step, very often that next step means an investment. Investment means that money and that is the commitment that comes with that decision and with that commitment it sparked, that's the beginning of transformation.

So if you're doing transformational engagements, which I've spoken about in past podcasts, if you're doing those, transformations begin in the sales process. It begins as they're exploring, discovering, getting insights and making decisions and oh my gosh, when they make a decision to invest a big amount of money with you, a transformational amount of money, that first of all it burns up so much stuff, just like so much stuff falls away from them in that big decision. They're like, well, I got to say goodbye to all of these things. I'm going to invest a lot of money in this next step and transformation has already begin.

I've seen people who, between the time they invest in the time that program started, make tons of sales, you know, leave partners, make major decisions in their lives that it seemed like they needed the program but actually, the catalyst was the decision. That is what is possible in “selling” selling, right? Like selling isn't necessarily what people think it is. It's something really special and important who I'm serving when I'm doing sales calls. I'm serving the highest good of all concerned, I'm not interested, I'm not committed or attached to someone investing with me in a way that would serve only me. If I'm committed to serving the highest good of all concerned, then that means the person who's investing, it means their colleagues, their community, everybody who's around them, name the word.

How high a good and how expansive a good can we support when we do this work? So in a sales meeting, if I'm trying to decide the price or if I'm trying to decide to offer, I will always think what's the highest good of all concerned? Should they do this one or should they do this one? It's got to serve everyone. If I don’t want to fulfill this one, that one doesn't serve me. If I think that this is the best thing for them but now that I've learned their circumstances, I don't think so anymore. I've changed my mind. Then I have to tell them that, it's really got to be in your interest, their interest, and in all of those who will be affected by this decision and when you take that responsibility again, do you see how benevolent this process is? To me, it's the most moving, intimate connection that can happen as part of business, which isn't always that, you know, regarded as a place for that kind of thing to happen.

I would love it if you would, this week, take note of the language that you use around selling, if you would just filled in the blank of like selling is or when I think about doing selling, I feel or, you know, the worst belief that I have about selling is X, if you would just note those down and see if you could reframe them in the lightest way, don't try to flip them to their opposite because a lot of times the opposite is too extreme for you. You don't have to say I love selling, but you need to say the truest thing for you, so I want you to note those down this week, and if you need any help reforming your beliefs about selling and doing a better job of communicating your value and helping those people decide if you are the right fit for them, if working with you is the right next step for them. Then just reach out to me. I would love to help you find positive, supportive affirmative beliefs about selling.

And for today, I'm Samantha Hartley, wishing you a profitable and joyful consultancy.