Transcript of Episode

Leah Gervais: So let’s go ahead and share what my five big tips are for not being so salesy or not coming off across as salesy. So first and foremost, this particular question I got from one of my clients, she said, I want to be very clear. She said, how do I be more professional and friendly and not salesy on sales calls? So this word friendly, you know, I understand the sentiment. You want to come off with a good bedside manner. You want to come off as an understanding person. You don’t want to be pushy. I think, I don’t mean in a harsh way, it’s just something that’s the truth. You’re not their friend. You are here to help them with the problem that they got on the phone with you to solve. So if you are any sort of coach, consultant, graphic designer, if you sell a product, if you sell anything, you know from your business, which all businesses do, and you’re on the phone with someone who’s even slightly interested in it, that they put the ball in your court.

So they have expressed interests. Um, they either need help, they want to learn more, they have a pain point that they want to leave E eight or they have a pleasure point that they want more of. And so your job is to show them how you can help make that happen. Your job is not to be their friend and I even have to make this distinction really clear with me with my own clients. I am obsessed with my clients. I feel like I’m friends with a lot of them because they’re so great and I know that like if we were, you know, together all the time, then we’d get along famously. But they’re, they’re not paying me to be their friend. They have friends and a lot of them, like the ones that my mastermind, their colleagues are their friends. And it doesn’t mean that I need to be mean to them, but I need to act in the best interest of whatever they’ve hired me to do, which is to help them build their business.

And sometimes I say things to them they don’t want to hear. Sometimes I say things to them that a friend would never say because a friend doesn’t want to hurt your feelings. A friend doesn’t want you to feel stressed or if your feet feel fearful, a friend doesn’t want to see you in a scary situation. Whereas I know that if someone has come to me and they want to change their life, they by nature, by definition, are going to have to go into some sort of scary situation because they’re going to have to change. It doesn’t mean they need to be in danger or that I need to put them in a situation that is, you know, like actually dangerous or, or scary in the traditional sense of the word. But change means going out of your comfort zone, which scares a lot of us.

And I am not afraid to push my clients there because I know they are capable of it. And I know they’ve told me the goal is that they want to achieve. And I know that pushing themselves out of their comfort zones is required to get there. So all of this is to say, this first tip is to remember you’re not their friend and it’s not actually your duty to act like a friend. You can act friendly. Um, but you do not need to spare their feelings. You do not need to keep them in a place where they’re not afraid. You don’t need to be, uh, you know, afraid of what they’ll have, what will happen to them if they are pushed out of their comfort zone. That’s literally what they’re telling you they want. They want to change something. They want to get out of their comfort zone.

So it is your job on a sales call or making a sale, however you do it, to stand up for whatever they have kind of expressed that they want. So if they come to me and they say, I want to change my life, I want to change in your business. I want to quit my nine to five job. And you know, a friend might say, Oh, you’ll do it. You’re going to do it one day. You’re doing so great, you’re right on track. And you know, it’s kind of my job to say, well then you need to do something different. Like you need to do something more. You need to either scale up your business or you need to spend more time doing it or whatever. And they might not want to hear these things all the time. But because they’ve expressed to me what they want to achieve, I know it’s my job to hold them accountable for that and, and to sell something to them if I know I can help them achieve that goal.

So that’s my first tip is just remembering that you’re not their friend and you are going to have to have difficult conversations with people if you really care about them in a, they want to make real changes in their life. It’s just part of the job. And so releasing this need to be liked. You know, one of my mentors straight up says he does not care if people like him, like he can help them get the result, but he doesn’t care if they like them. I will be honest and say, I wish I was there. I wish I genuinely didn’t care what people thought about me. Maybe one day I still somewhat do. I like, I still want people to like me. It’s just human nature. But I do have the awareness to know that my job on a call is not to get people to like me.

It is my job to help people get the result that they’ve told me that they wanted. So just remembering that your duty is not to be a friend, and so releasing the need to be friendly, to act like a friend, to be overly compassionate in that same way. It’s not, it’s to stand up for whatever they got on the phone with you for. Okay. The second and the biggest mindset shift with this all, which it might take a little while to really sink in, but it’s really important, is that you don’t sell to someone, you sell for them. So once again, we can use me as an example. If someone gets on the phone with me and they have told me they want to hit a $10,000 a month, maybe they’ve, you know, been dabbling. They have an Instagram account, they have a website, they have some services up, but they aren’t really selling them the way they want them to and no one’s really getting it.

They’re not really getting them attraction or whatever the case may be. And I know that I can show people how to make $10,000 months. I’ve done it over and over again. I’ve also done it for myself over and over again. Um, and so I let that person on the phone know that I have a program they can, they can hire me to be their coach. Maybe, you know, they could coach with me. Let’s just say for an example for three months, $10,000, and I can show them how to make $10,000 over and over in their business every month. Well, that’s, that’s not something I’m doing for me. That $10,000 isn’t for me. It is. It does grow my business, but I’m doing that for them. I’m showing them something they’ve told me that they want, if they don’t learn how to do it, they probably won’t do it.

[Unable to transcribe] an investment. If they really want to learn that then I’m letting them say stuck. I’m not helping them at all. So selling is something I’m doing for them, not to them. So that is a really key difference. And for those of you that are watching this that are in my side hustle program, you know a lot of you, some of you guys are health coaches, some of you guys are working in personal development. Some of you do other business work for, you know, like marketing for businesses. You can help people so much. I mean think about what you could do if you help them with their health. If you help them get in shape, if you help them feel really good and really confident and really, you know, in really fit, you could extend their life, you could make them older parents, older grandparents, you can give them more energy so that they can do more with their kids. You could give them more energy so that they can do more of what they love so that they can make more money in war at work. So selling to them is not about you. It is about them. It is about how you can help them and it is in service to them. So that is tip number two. Remember that selling is something you do for someone. It is not something you do to someone. 

All right. The third tip, and this is going to sound a little harsh, hopefully I don’t get too much pushback for this, but it was something that helped me. My third tip for getting over your fear of sales is simply to get over yourself. And I say that with love. And I say this with someone who used to take herself way too seriously because I thought so much was riding on this and I was afraid of what people would think about me.

And I was afraid of what if I didn’t do a good enough job and I was afraid of being too pushy and I was afraid of all these things that are very normal in the beginning. I really did take me realizing and remembering that, you know what, I’m not the first person to make a sales call. I’m not going to be the last person to make a sales call. I’m just a person who has normal nervousness and normal fears, but I can get over those and I can do what’s best for my business and for my future clients. And I can remember that all the fears that I have probably aren’t going to come true anyway. And even if they do, I’m a strong person. I can handle it. You know, I’ve been through worse and because I have such big goals, I expect to go through worse again.

Every time I have a challenge, I remind myself this is a great stepping stone for the much bigger challenges I’m going to have with the much bigger successes I’m going to have. So just kind of remembering that your fears are not unique. And again, I’m not trying to say this in an insensitive way, but it really can help to just remember that what you’re going through is not unique. Other people have felt that way and they’ve gotten over it too. So are you going to let yourself be one of the ones that stops, that let’s those fears of being salesy keep you stuck like so many do? Or are you going to be one of the ones that remembers? You know what? These fears aren’t that big of a deal. I’m not that big of a deal. I’m doing the best I can. That’s all I can ask of myself, but I’m just going to go for it and I’m just going to see what happens.

Because even if my worst case scenario, fear comes true, they hate me, they hang up on me, they tell me I’m salesy. It’s okay, you can handle it. This person does not define your self worth. This person does not define who you are. You know, it is just a call. It is just a conversation. It is just an offer. Um, you are just a person. Um, and you’re an amazingly powerful, bad-ass, incredible person and you’re just doing the best you can. We can’t take it that seriously. We just can’t. So tip number three is somewhat of a perspective tip. Just getting over our own fears a little bit. Remind, reminding ourselves that we’re not the first people to feel these fears. We’re not going to be the last, but we can be one of the ones that take ourselves out of the game if we take them too seriously.

Step four in helping yourself with sales. This is really key and I want everyone watching this to really marinate with what this looks like for your unique offering. But you have to develop a need when you’re selling something. So you need to tap into why this person needs whatever you’re wanting or selling. Now, I don’t want anyone messaging me and being like, Oh, well, I’m not selling something that’s a need because I’m not selling something that makes you more money, that is essential to your health or is essential to your life. You know, everyone always thinks it’s easier to sell a need if it’s like, um, I don’t know if it just seems more essential or whatever the case may be. I mean, I guess you could use my example like when I am really connecting with people and they make it clear that they need to change their life.

Like they are no longer available to go to this nine to five anymore. They are no longer okay with saying you’re going to be an entrepreneur one day and then not doing it. Or they’re no longer okay with making just enough to get by, but not making an abundance of money. So obviously that’s not a life or death need. But to some people when you get to a certain point, it feels like that. And I’m not trying to be overdramatic, I’m just trying to say that when they get to the point where there’s no other option for them, but to move forward, that’s when they need it. And that’s when sales are about them, not about you. So we’re going to think of kind of two extreme examples here. On the one hand, I want you to think about a situation in which you have a need.

And when you have that need, no one needs to sell you on it at all. Well, an example would be your refrigerator breaks, your refrigerator breaks. You can’t have any food in your apartment or house. You can’t cook anything. Maybe you have kids. It’s not an option to go forward without a broken refrigerator. You need a fixed refrigerator, so you’re not going to call, you know, the hardware company or whoever sells refrigerators. I don’t even know. But you’re not going to call them and go back and forth about whether or not you need this. Can you afford it? Is now the right time? Do you have enough money? Should you wait for your bonus? You have some travel coming up like all these excuses that people come up with when it comes to investing in themselves. You don’t do that when you need something, so you need to make really clear to your client or customer, excuse me, what about your service they need? Okay, let me take a sip of water.

The same thing is true. If you go to the doctor or the ER, the ER, all right, you’re not going to go in and be like, I broke my leg. I need surgery, but is now the right time? I just, I don’t know. You know, I’ve got a lot of other stuff going on. Excuse me. We’re trying to redo our kitchen and so I just don’t know if I can pay for it. No, you need to fix your leg. The doctor doesn’t sell to you. The doctor sells for you because he’s doing this for you. So you need to have your clients need your service so you all can tap into that same need. You don’t need to be selling something as urgent as a refrigerator or fixing someone’s broken leg. You all can tap into that urgency when you have a clear connection with the client about why they need to do this.

And honestly, if you can’t do that, if you can’t show them why they need this or if they can’t see why they need this, they might not be your ideal client. Um, and that doesn’t mean you get to just be like, Oh, well you don’t know how bad you need it, so I’m going to hang up on you. That means you can honestly say to them, is this a must for you? Do you really want to change your life? Are you just talking? And hopefully you know, that can make them see. And if they say, and I don’t really want to do this, it’d be fun if it happened. They might not be your ideal client anyway. So that’s okay to let them go. But you really need to, to bring up the urgency. Why does it matter to do it now? What’s going to happen if you don’t do it now?

What’s going to happen if you stay stuck, et cetera. Um, and on the flip side, obviously probably everyone watching this is like, well, I don’t sell anything with as much need as fixing a broken leg in the ER. So do I, does my offering have enough need? Well, let’s take something like Chanel or Louis Vuitton. Does anyone really need to spend $4,000 on a handbag? Probably not. You know, you can make the argument that we all could survive without it. Yet they create a sense of urgency. They allow, you know, they, they have the marketing’s such that people identify as this, this is essential to them or it’s a big goal for them or they’ll do what it takes to make it happen. They really, really want it in their life. It’s almost a need. And so that certainly is not, you know, a lifestyle must, but they are able to make it clear that if this happens in your life, your life will change by X, Y, and Z.

Whether that’s true or not, I’m not here to argue, but you have that same ability to really show someone what will happen if they have this and why they need for it to happen. Okay. So that is my fourth tip to create the need. And then my fifth tip is just finally stop thinking and start selling. There is no substitute for practice. There is no substitute for getting yourself out there. After this video, I challenge you to book five discovery calls or send five sales emails or five outreaches on social media and start sailing. Dang it because there’s no substitute to practicing what, you know, what I just said, and really feeling into what it means to sell for someone, not to them, what it means to identify the need that they have for your product or service, what it means to get over yourself and realize that you can do this.

You know, and your fears aren’t bigger than you. I personally am at a point in my business, I’m a little hesitant to share this cause I don’t think this is gonna resonate with everyone at all, but I personally, personally, amount of point where when I get on a sales call or if I’m emailing someone or someone reached out to me because they’re wondering about working with me, I almost take myself out of the conversation. Like by which I mean I almost take Leah out of the conversation. I really think about giving and creating the space for them to tell me what they want, what they’re trying to accomplish, why they haven’t accomplished it, and if I have a product or service that is going to help them do it, then I just make that really clear to them. It’s almost like I’m channeling a higher power, to be totally honest, or that sounds kind of weird, but I just am at a point where I so firmly believe that this is what I’m meant to do with my life and what I was placed on this earth to do.

To empower people, to empower women through entrepreneurship, to help them see that they can make more money than they think they can. Yeah. [inaudible] Get out there more than they think that they can. Yeah. [inaudible] you know, make the space for what they need. If I can fulfill that role, then it’s divinely there and that has come with me practicing all of what I shared. So much of realizing that me selling is for someone. It’s not to them that I am just a person that is doing what I’m good at. That can help someone then that’s great. And really like listening to people about what they feel they need to change in their life. A lot of times people don’t even listen to them. So those things have allowed me to come to the place where sales are just no longer about me.

It’s no longer something I get nervous about. It’s the only thing I’m worried about. I just know that if I am meant to help someone, I will, and I am able to show them that I can help them. If they’re not the right fit, that’s okay. There’s other people in the world who need what I have to offer. So anyway, I hope that this was, I’ll tell you guys this, Eric, these are the five mindset shifts that I recommend making. If you are nervous about sales, if you don’t want to be salesy, get out of your own way and go sell. So I’m going to get off this fam. Have a great Friday. You guys.

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