EP # 151 - Authentic Selling. How to Make Sales Feel Natural and Effortless

How do you lead a sales conversation without feeling like a pushy salesperson?
It's about mastering the skills to ask the right questions and guide clients toward informed decisions that are best for them.
In today's podcast episode, we go over these techniques, emphasizing the service mindset over the sales pitch. Join me to learn how to turn your conversations into opportunities to help.

Important sections:

Understanding the True Nature of Selling (00:01:08) Exploring the perception of sales and the desire to sell without feeling sleazy or pushy.

The Importance of Clarity in Sales (00:03:56) Emphasizing the significance of clarity in understanding who to help, how to help, and why you are the best choice to help.

Developing Sales Skills and Processes (00:15:24) Discussing the benefits of having repeatable sales processes and mastering sales skills to engage with clients effectively.

Practical Tips for Overcoming Sales Anxiety (00:20:23) Providing actionable tips to ground oneself, focus on the ideal client and reinforce the notion that selling is about helping.

Mastering Skills and Gaining Clarity (00:24:05) Discussion on improving skills and gaining clarity to double business without adding more work.

Effective Marketing and Selling (00:24:45) How actions can be more effective, converting more clients, and attracting ideal clients through improved marketing and selling strategies.

Ready to double your business without adding more work?
Book a sales call with me here https://calendly.com/maggie-s2l/discovery-call

Transcript

**Maggie Perotin** (00:00:00) - Hello. Hello, everybody. Welcome to Diamond Effect Podcast, episode 151. First, I want to thank all of you who reached out to me and gave me some ideas or the topics that you wanted me to cover on this podcast. And I reached out to a bunch of you through email. I also asked here on this podcast and I appreciate your response. And hey, if you are hearing the first time that I'm asking for some ideas of topics that would help you and you're like, Maggie, I wish I could do it, you can still do it. Reach out to me via email Maggie at Stairway two leadership.com. Maggie at Stairway two leadership.com and tell me what are some topics you would love for me to cover, whether because you haven't seen them on this podcast. Now you have 150 episodes to go through first, or maybe you would like me to go deeper in any specific topic. I'm happy to do it on. Those could be, of course, topics that will help you move your business forward.

**Maggie Perotin** (00:01:08) - So thank you. Thank you for those of you who reached out and gave me your ideas. So for the next few episodes at least, I will be actually talking about your prepositions of topics. Today is one of them. And the first one, and we'll talk about selling in a way that doesn't feel icky. And that's definitely something on the mind of my clients. And very often women. As women, we definitely don't want to come across salesy and icky, but I'm pretty sure even when male clients want to sell in a way that is of help to their clients and that they're not being perceived in a way like the stereotypical car salesman, that it's sleazy and a bit offputting, right? Because a lot of us have that idea of a salesperson, of somebody who is pretty sleazy and wants to convince people to either buy something they really don't want and get them into buying that, or sells an item or a service that is not of the best quality, but for the price, as if it was this luxurious thing.

**Maggie Perotin** (00:02:30) - Right? Like I'm thinking car cars, for example. And I think we've gotten this as a society, often through movies or maybe books that we've read or maybe even experience that we've had with maybe, unfortunately, people who didn't learn sales in a proper way. So then as business owners, and especially when we get into it and start selling, the first thing on your mind is, oh my God, I do not want to come across as salesy, sleazy or putting on any of that. And unfortunately, those type of perception very often limited business owners from selling and they limit themselves from offering their services and all the help that they can do to their clients. And as a business owner, the thing is, you'll always be selling. That's your primary responsibility. A goal of business is to help people in exchange, so give them value in exchange of them paying us and the business and the business making profit. Right? So without sales, there is no business. And the last thing you want is limit the growth of your business because you're not selling and not because you don't want to, but because you have all those presumptions and ideas how people could perceive you.

**Maggie Perotin** (00:03:56) - And of course, we don't want to be disliked, or we don't want to be perceived as salesy or sleazy and untrustworthy. So in this episode, I will definitely talk a lot about mindset of sales, but also about skills and clarity that when you have them, it helps you overcome maybe some blocks that you have. So let's get started then. First things first is that in order for you to actually sell in a way that doesn't feel icky on your end, you need to understand that true selling in its core, it's actually helping people by solving the problems that they have in want solved, or helping them get what they want and need. So not only need, but also want. So imagine going to a grocery store or even a restaurant and you're hungry, right? And you really want to buy some good food, either grocery and make your own or at a restaurant and you're. Going there. You really need it. You're hungry or you really want it because you love great food. And the restaurant owner or the grocery store owner saying, no, sorry, I can't really offer that because I feel like I'm salesy and I don't want to be perceived this way, so I can't sell it to you.

**Maggie Perotin** (00:05:19) - How would you feel? Right? First you would be surprised. Be you would be, oh my God, please let me buy it. I really wanted and needed. And if they didn't, you would probably, maybe get even angry about it. Especially if you're hungry. You would get angry seeing like, what I wanted. Let me get what I want. Especially that I want to pay for it, right? I'm not trying to rob you. Whatever. So if you think about it this way, if you think about that restaurant owner or grocery shop owner, the fact that they're refusing to offer you their services, right, to offer you their product, then it's easy to understand that by doing so, they're kind of selfish. They're focused on how they feel, and they don't want to feel that way. Rather than focus on helping you get what you want and need. And that seems reasonable, right? That seems like. Yeah, like, why would they be focused on them and how they want to feel instead of helping me and getting paid for it, which is what they want because they have a business.

**Maggie Perotin** (00:06:20) - So what I want to offer here is that it's the same in your case, when you refrain from marketing or selling in your marketing and making offers, or having call to actions in your social media for people to buy from you or your emails or whatever, when you refrain from doing it, it's a little bit selfish. You are focused on you. You make the marketing or selling about you and how you would feel because your brain is telling you that you will come across as salesy and people won't like it. But you don't really know, right? It's just your brain telling you, rather than focusing on helping your people because your people want what you have, they wanted and needed and are ready to pay for it. And they want to pay for it because otherwise, why even have a store? Why even have a restaurant that tells and being open that tells people, hey, come in, get my food, right? So it's the same for you. Why even have a website? Why even have a social media profile? Why even go to networking and tell people you have a business and you can help if you really don't want to help because you make it about you and how you feel and how your potential client can perceive it.

**Maggie Perotin** (00:07:38) - Perceive you. I know that right off the bat, I'm giving you a bit of tough love, probably here in a top coaching, but I wanted you to switch the mindset and flip the script and see how this is actually true. Rather than worry about how you would come across to people when selling. However, having said that, to get to that mindset and that type of angle where you really believe that the services that you have helped people and you selling them is the best thing you can do for them, right? We can always offer some tidbits of free stuff through our marketing or samples or whatever, but those tidbits just help our clients just a little bit. And usually they don't have a permanent result that we offer, whatever that is, whether it's a relaxed body because you're a massage therapist or finish basement because you're a contractor, or certain results like me when I'm a coach or my clients really get to grow their business through my help, right? Consistently, and they get the skill to repeat that rather than I give them one tip and it gives them like a micro result.

**Maggie Perotin** (00:08:46) - So to get you into that mindset, it starts with clarity. And there's three types of clarity you need. The first one is being really clear of who you can help and also who you want to help. Because as a business owner, we get to decide. We get to choose who you want to help, and you don't have to be helping everybody, right? So being clear or who you can and want to help and also why so in business terms is like being really clear of who your ideal client is and your mission mission of your business. Why am I doing what I'm doing? Why did I even create that business in the first place? When you have that clarity, it creates purpose. It creates conviction for you to say, hey, I have value to offer. I can help people. And when you have that, you're more driven to go out there and share about what you can do and about how you can help, right? Meaning you're more driven to actually go and sell.

**Maggie Perotin** (00:09:52) - And I will give you another example that's not related with the business, but it will help you kind of wrap your head around this concept is. Imagine you saw a movie or read a book and you loved it. And the first thing that came to your mind after you read it or after you saw a movie, it was like, oh my God, my best friend Maggie needs this because I know Maggie. I know what she's going through, and I'm pretty sure this would help her. What would you do? You would come to me and text me going out of the movie theater, or the moment you finish the book saying, oh my God, I've seen this movie, I've read this book. Maybe you need this, you need to watch it. You would sell that to me, convicted that it would help me. Right? So this is what selling is about. And when you know your ideal client and why you want to help them and you know their problems, you know what they're going through, you know what they want.

**Maggie Perotin** (00:10:49) - It's easier than to feel about your services and what you have to offer, the same way you would feel about that movie and so on. So it's easier to go out there and share with the conviction as they need this, and I need to share that with them so they can make a decision, but I want to help them. The second part of that clarity is knowing how you help, right? So knowing how your clients will get from where they are now to where they want to be, how you're helping them overcome challenges and problems, how you're helping them achieve what they want. And also the third part is why you're the best to help them with that, why you are the best positioned and skilled to help them with that and not somebody else in your industry. Right? Because we all have competition. And think about it this way. Your ideal clients are already out there. They're looking for what you have to offer, and all they need is to make a decision where they're going to buy and from whom.

**Maggie Perotin** (00:11:54) - So I always say, why wouldn't it be you? If you're the best positioned with your skill sets, with the offer you have and how you do it and so on, why shouldn't they choose you? So you need to be clear on that. Why they should. I always say I'm the best coach for my best clients. It doesn't mean I'm the best coach for everybody, but for my ideal best clients, I'm the best person to help them. And I have a clarity on why that's the case. So then when you have clarity about your services this way, then for example, when you are on a sales call or when you are in your sales process, whatever you do right, you can not feel attached to the outcome in a way that you know would make them feel uncomfortable, because the energy when we're attached to the outcome, meaning wanting to sell, wanting the client the energy, is that off putting energy, right? But when we are calm and grounded and we're unattached because we're clear and know how we help our clients and all you're doing is sharing that and letting them decide, then you make it about them.

**Maggie Perotin** (00:13:07) - You actually have space in your brain and in your energy to focus on them, make it about them. And when we focus on others and helping and serving, there is no room for feeling salesy. There's no room for feeling sleazy because we're not in our head thinking about it. We're focused on our client and talking to them and thinking how we can help them. Now, what I wanted to say is that clarity doesn't just magically come onto your brain, right? It actually requires reflection, intention, or work and thinking it through and then putting it into words and practicing that. So that's called messaging right? In your business practicing that. So it's very clear also for the client. So not only it's clear for you but you can also clearly and simply communicate to your client. And sometimes that's a challenge right. That's what I help my clients go through. We actually have exercises and I guide them step by step through some questions and prompt to get it out of their brain and help them communicate it.

**Maggie Perotin** (00:14:18) - And the first step is you need to get clear, right? If you're not clear on who you're helping, why you're helping them, how and why you're the best choice, you can't expect your client to be clear. There are no gonna come up with that on their own, right? You need to be clear first, and then you need to learn how to communicate it to them. It's kind of like you learn a language. You need to understand what you learn first in your brain, to then to be able to speak the words and put them in order for another person to understand you in that language. So just to recap so far, we talked about first understanding what selling really is. The. True selling. It's helping people, helping your ideal clients solve problems and get what they want and need. The second part of it was having clarity on three things on who you help and why, and how you help them, and why you're the best person to help them. And now we're moving on to the third part of being able to think about sales.

**Maggie Perotin** (00:15:24) - Not in a way that feels icky, but that feels natural and therefore help you just sell in your business without all the mind. Drama that might be happening is having sales skills, or developing and mastering sales skills. And also having a sales process helps you and your clients. And here is how. When you have a sales process that is repeatable and clear for you, it makes it easier for you to find out on individual client level. What do they need? What do they want, how you can help them. And then you can explain that, right? Because think about it this way marketing you do that on a more global level, right? So we're talking to multiple people, especially if you're on social media and you're posting and you're kind of attracting people. But even in networking, when you talk to people, you're talking a little bit more generically, right? So people get interested, they get to know you, like you, and trust you. And then when they individual people or companies, whomever you serve, come to you and now they're interested in buying from you.

**Maggie Perotin** (00:16:33) - The sales process is about learning, going even deeper and understanding their needs, their problems, their wants, and tying that to how your services help solve that or help them achieve that and the sales skills come into place, they allow you to lead that process, ask the right questions, not allow clients to go on a tangent. Sometimes that gets you to misunderstand what they want and need, because our clients sometimes don't even know how to explain things, right? So they help you lead the conversation so you have enough information to create more of a custom solution for them. And then it allows you also to give them enough information to make a decision what's best for them. And that happens. Yes. Whether it's a sales call or sales presentation or even I'm thinking like, if you're a therapist or if you're a massage therapist, the client comes in, they already want a massage, right? But to deliver an amazing service, you would still want to ask them and you probably do. Okay, well, what are the areas that are bothering you or what is exactly that you need so you can customize that service to them? But what happens when you don't have a clear process or you're not as skilled at selling, is you spend a lot of thought time or kind of like energy and time in your brain worrying about what to ask.

**Maggie Perotin** (00:18:05) - Like, how do I get the information out of them? What should I do? what they're thinking about me. And so once again, your brain focuses on you more because it doesn't know what to do. Right? Rather than just be clean and grounded and focus on the client. And when you spend that time in your head, then what also brain does is it wants to control the outcome. It doesn't like the uncertainty. Or are they going to buy or not? And either you come across as a little bit attached and pushy, or you give up ahead of time, right? As opposed to when you have the right process, you have the skills. You believe in, the value of what you offer. You trust and believe in your client to be able to make the best decision for them. Your brain is more clean. You can get detached from the outcome, you can focus on them and just have a conversation, right, learn about them and so on. And those are skills that you can learn and you practice them when you know foundation of how it works.

**Maggie Perotin** (00:19:12) - And then you get feedback from somebody like me, like a business coach on getting better. That's what I do with my clients, right? I help them develop those skills. Now, part of the sales that's also follow up. But when I was thinking about this episode, I will actually create a separate episode, probably for next week just on follow up and how to follow up without feeling salesy and pushy because our mind lights likes to go there, right? It doesn't want to come back. It doesn't want to follow up. It will tell you no, they don't want it. They change their mind or it they want appreciate you following up and so on. And so we'll create a separate episode on that. Now before we finish, I have three tips for you. Quick tips for you how to help yourself in marketing or the sales situation moments. Even if maybe you don't have a business coach yet, or you haven't started developing your sales skills, or you don't have a lot of clarity yet, but yet still want to practice not feeling icky and not feeling salesy because you don't want to come across that way.

**Maggie Perotin** (00:20:23) - So tip number one is before you market. So before you create a post or make a video or however you do marketing for your business, just spend 30s imagining your ideal client, a person who you can really help, who wants that help, and who is actually searching for that help. So imagine a person googling right now, best contractors in the area, or family photography. Or how do I secure a mortgage for a house when I'm an entrepreneur and don't make a lot of money? So think about them. And in your marketing post or the video you're about to record, talk to them to that one person and imagine how delighted they will be, how relieved they will be when they find that post, when they find that blog or that video and learn that you can help them. Because usually our brain by default likes to focus on, oh my God, what will other people think? How will I come across? But it focuses on people who don't necessarily want our services. It focuses on our friends or former boss or whatever that is.

**Maggie Perotin** (00:21:41) - And I'm speaking from experience and IT brand knows that those people are not our ideal clients. Therefore, they might have thoughts about what we do that are not what we want, right? But ultimately the post is not for them. The post. The video is for your ideal client, so you need to redirect your brain to think about them. So the way you feel will be different and that energy will come across in your marketing, I promise. The second tip is that before a sales call or a presentation, or that more intimate individual conversation with a potential client, so somebody who expressed interest in working with you and buying your services, take a minute or even 30s to ground yourself, to be present, to get your mind, stop your mind from thinking about what you have to do or what you've done or whatever else happened before. But clean the mind from all the thoughts and get grounded and present. So when the conversation starts, you can focus on the person on the other side, right? And you can do that by doing some breathing exercises or quick meditation or whatever, just closing your eyes and taking a cup of deep breaths.

**Maggie Perotin** (00:22:56) - It doesn't have to be long, but that way you clean your thoughts and you will focus and you will relax. And again, that will allow you to focus on them and helping them. And then the third thing that can help you is if you need a reminder that selling is actually helping and solving people's issues and helping them get what they want, and not trying to convince them to buy something they don't want or need, or being or selling. It's also not being untrustworthy and dishonest and trying to sell something of a lower quality. For a high quality price. You can put a sticky note on wherever your computer, your mirror, wherever you walk is just put. Selling is helping. I help my clients and here is how, right? So just for you to see that over and over again. So your brain starts believing it not only at the logical level, because logically we can get behind it, we understand it, but almost at the subconscious level. So you believe it in your bones.

**Maggie Perotin** (00:24:05) - How you think about it by default will change if you allow yourself to practice that. So that's what I had for you today. And if you're ready to double your business without adding more work, because by mastering skills and gaining clarity, you don't need to work more. It's just your actions are going to be more effective. Your marketing you're selling is going to be more effective. You convert more clients to paying clients. You're attract more potential clients that are really your ideal clients and not random people. So if you want to do that, let's talk. I will teach you that through my top SEO framework will double your business without adding more work. And how you do it is by booking a sales call with me through a link in the show notes. Other than that, see you next week by.