“The more we sell, the more financial power and freedom we’ll have, the more empowered we’ll feel, and the more we’ll own our voice, speak our truth, and step into the best versions of ourselves.”
We are all constantly selling ourselves.
Whether for work or in your personal life, the ability to sell yourself is one of life’s most important skills.
You may be a business owner who has to sell your services, or you may be an employee for a corporation where you need to sell your value to your boss. Even as a parent or partner, you’re selling your family on what you want them to do.
Because really, selling yourself and communicating your needs to those around you are very similar concepts. You can’t speak your truth if you don’t know how to sell yourself. And you can’t sell yourself if you don’t know who you are at your core.
Teaching my clients how to sell themselves is something I do often. I work with them behind the scenes to get them to a place where they know exactly who they are and have the confidence to get the raise they deserve, attain their dream job, and improve their relationships.
In order to get what you want in life, you have to know how to authentically sell yourself. And that’s why I’m teaching you exactly how on today’s Become an Unstoppable Woman episode.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN:
- The 3 steps to selling yourself authentically
- Why people’s judgements may be stopping you from selling yourself and how to overcome these thoughts
- Why women have a harder time selling themselves than men
- How selling yourself is equally important in your career and personal life
- Why regulating your emotions is the first step in selling yourself
Are you ready to get exactly what you want in life? Tune in at the top of this page.
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
→ Continue the conversation in my free online community
→ Get The 4-Day Accomplish Your Dreams Free Training
Full Transcript:
Episode 130: SELL YOURSELF
This is the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast with Lindsay Preston Episode 130, Sell Yourself.
[music]
Welcome to the Become an Unstoppable Woman podcast, the show for goal-getting, fear-facing women for kicking ass by creating change. I’m your host, Lindsay Preston. I’m a wife, mom of two, and a multi-certified life coach to women all over the world. I’ve lived through enough in life to know that easier doesn’t always equate to better. We can’t fear the fire, we must learn to become it. On this show, I’ll teach you how to do just that. Join me as I challenge you to become even more of the strong, resilient, and powerful woman you were meant to be. Let’s do this.
[music]
Hey there, Ms. Unstoppable Woman, always so grateful to have you listening to me on, hopefully, a very beautiful day for you. Today we’re going to be talking about how to sell yourself. Regardless of if you’re in a selling role or not, we are constantly selling ourselves to the world. If you work, for example, typically at least every year you are selling to your employer, that you deserve a raise and if you aren’t, you should be.
You’re also selling yourself if you’re in any kind of relationship, especially if you’re a parent, you’re selling your kids on doing what you want them to do, or a partner doing what you want them to do, and so many different ways we’re constantly selling. If you really think about it and look at it, and once you know how to sell, especially sell yourself, woo, so many doors open for you. In essence, having my clients learn how to sell themselves is something I am unintentionally most times doing. I’m working with them behind the scenes to get them to a place so that they have the confidence and they feel like they have the skills to go out and sell a raise or to clients or to their partner to do something. Or even I’m selling them all the time on showing up for themselves and going after what they say it is that they wanted.
I’ve had a lot of practice with selling to other people, especially this past year. This past year in my business, I’ve shifted a lot to doing pretty much one-on-one coaching. I have a group program for my established clients called Living The Dream I mention often and so I sell that once a year, but I’m constantly selling to people who want to work with me this one-on-one package that I called the nine-month simple success coaching system. That package is not something that most people would consider low in cost, it is an investment. That has been a big shift for me because in the past it was lower cost. It was maybe a few thousand if that, to work with me.
I’ve really had to up my selling game this past year. Somebody who’s helped me do that a lot is someone I mention often on the show, Stacey Boehman. She is a business coach for life coaches, and she teaches, in essence, coaches how to sell. It’s been such an amazing skill for me to learn this past year and a half or so, as I have worked with her and her and her 2k for 2k program, and eventually, I’ll be working with her in her masterminds. Again, I’ve become very skilled at selling yourself or myself, or however, you want to word it. Today I want to teach you how to do the same.
I want you to walk away from this episode today, having some really clear, tangible ways for you to start to, in essence, open those doors and allow you to get what it is that you want even more in your life. You ready for this? It’s going to hopefully blow your mind a bit.
All right, so selling yourself. Something I want to start with here is something that Stacey says often, “Selling is coaching and coaching is selling.” I love that quote, obviously because I’m a coach, but also because a lot of times we view selling as slimy and gross and we’re convincing people to do things that they don’t want to do and that’s just not true. Granted, there are salespeople out there that are like that.
We’ve all been to a car dealership. We’ve all had very ugh, gross selling experiences where you just feel like you want to take a bath after you’ve been around somebody like that, but you don’t have to be that way. You can sell from a very, very authentic place for you and for the person you are, in essence, selling to. That’s why, again, I like to look at selling as coaching. All I’m doing is I am coaching, in essence, the person that is in front of me on, in essence, bridging this gap of where they’re at and the value that I can give them by selling them something.
I’m going to give many examples of what this looks like as I walk through all the steps. Just remember selling is coaching. Coaching is selling. That’s it. It does not have to be this slimy thing and if you still feel really icky about selling, I encourage you to just write “selling” at the top of a piece of paper and write all the negative thoughts you have about it. Like, “It’s slimy.” “It’s gross.” “It’s convincing people to do things they don’t want to do.” “It makes me very uncomfortable.” Again, get very clear on all the things you’re telling yourself about selling. Just so A, you can bring it into the conscious minds and then B, start to say, “Okay, what can I shift to, like, in essence, what thoughts can I shift to, so that I start to, at least, view selling as something neutral.” Then once you get your brain on board to viewing selling as neutral, then, “What can I do to really start to fall in love with selling?”
Again, for me, the thought that I have primarily is, “Coaching is selling, selling is coaching.” To me, coaching is such an authentic, beautiful dance, in essence, I do with somebody and so anytime I’m selling, I’m like, “Oh, I’m just coaching them. It’s no big deal.”
Hopefully, you’re still on board of, “Yes, I will sell, Lindsay,” because the more we can get people, especially women, and especially women of color to sell, the more we’re going to have financial power and financial freedom and that too more, we’re going to feel empowered as individuals and really feel like we’re owning our voice, speaking our truth, stepping into the best versions of us.
It’s not fun to know when– if somebody really needs something or you know that you really deserve something and then not to speak it. The more that we can go out there and sell, because men tend to do this very well and that’s what tends to get them more financial rewards, and just other things that they get in life of opening doors for them as little as getting a table at a restaurant that they want, or getting the service that they want at a certain place, or even having the relationships they want to have. Men tend to be more direct. They tend to not hold back when they’re speaking their truth and we, as women need to do the same.
Now I’m very well aware that there can be a stigma with women speaking their truth, especially women of color. “They’re a bitch.” “They’re asking for too much.” “Who do they think they are?” A lot of times too, we may be the only woman in the room or woman of color in the room and you’re like, “Wow, I just actually made it into this room and I’ve just got to keep this position of where I’m at either personally or professionally. I don’t want to rock the boat too much. I need to be quiet and I need to, in essence, play it safe so that I don’t stir any feathers because it’s just such a big boundary shift of me even being in this room.” Where it might be, I encourage you to still push that boundary, still put yourself out there and sell yourself or whatever it is that you’re wanting to sell because again, remember selling is coaching, coaching is selling.
Many times we’re just holding ourselves back from being the fullest expression of who we want to be because we’re in fear of what other people are going to think about us but I’m here to tell you that regardless if you sell yourself or not, people are going to have thoughts about you. Why not let them have thoughts about the authentic version of you versus this watered-down quiet version of yourself?
At least then you’ll be like, “Well, I feel good because I get to live in my authentic truth,” versus being people-pleasing, again, a watered-down version of yourself that pleases other people because again, most people that haven’t done personal development kind of work, like what you’re doing here on this podcast or if you’re working with me or somebody else, they just tend to have a negative mindset and that’s just the way our brain is built.
We tend to fault them or be like, “Oh man, they’re such horrible people,” or, “They’re bad,” but the brain is just built that way. It’s something like we have 80,000 thoughts a day and 80% of them are negative. I might be not quite on with those stats, but it’s pretty negative until we go in there and we change it. Again, people are going to have negative thoughts about you. regardless of if you’re a woman or if you’re a woman of color, everyone’s going to have thoughts.
A quote that’s really helped me recently to get over what other people are thinking about me is the thought of what other people think of me is none of my business. It’s none of my business. Even if it becomes my business, that’s just their own thoughts. It really has nothing to do with me. Even if they try and make it about me, of like, “Oh, well, you’ve caused me to feel this way,” or, “You did this to blah, blah, blah.” Again, I have a lot of grace and most times patience for them.
Some days I don’t, especially on days I’m tired, I can get really judgy. Most times I’m very patient with them of, “Oh, they just don’t understand that it’s our thoughts that cause our feelings, not our circumstances that cause our feelings.” They like to just swim in this victim pool of, “Oh, so-and-so did this to me.” They just don’t know better. I show them a lot of love and grace with that.
Even if they’re coming at me, what feels like full force with fire and pitchforks and all the things, according to my brain. It never literally happens that way, but to my brain, when somebody says something negative about me or goes up against something I say, to my brain it’s very scary. Again, I tell myself things like, “What other people think of me, it’s none of my business. They just don’t know better.” Then I do the work I need to do to continue to seek my truth and be the person I need to be and, in essence, sell whatever it is I want to sell if that’s a concept, an idea, something of monetary value. Hopefully, you’re following me.
Something else I want to mention here before I get into the steps of specifically how to sell yourself is something I just briefly touched on there, which is doing emotional work. When you are putting yourself out there, you are becoming more visible. You are seeking your truth. Yes, it does feel good, but it does also feel scary, especially the first few times you do it. To the brain, all these sirens are going off of, “We’re going to die. We’re going to die,” in essence, of even just social rejection because to our brain, back in the day, social rejection that we were banished from the cave and we would die and so our brain still goes there.
Emotional regulation is so important as you start to put yourself out there more and more. Doing the work of healing any kind of trauma that you’ve experienced. If you have listened to the show, you know trauma isn’t just big things like abuse and war. It can be little things of any time we have felt uncomfortable. Anytime we haven’t really shown our light. Trauma can also be passed down to us in our genetics. This has been shown with the research of epigenetics of how trauma is passed down in our DNA. It’s really important that we do mental and emotional work. This is the kind of work I do with my clients. You may do this elsewhere, that’s fine, just do it.
Going in there, regulating your nervous system. I’m going to add in there for most driven women, this is work they have to do. Everybody on the planet definitely has to do it if they have the option to but definitely driven women because as driven women, we tend to want to achieve at a high level. For many driven women, they look to external validation to make them feel better. They have turned to achievement, in essence, as almost a drug of sorts in order to escape some sort of problem or problems they had in childhood.
For a lot of my clients, myself included, we didn’t have the best childhoods. It’s not that it was bad, but it wasn’t great. I grew up in a household where there was a lot of emotional trauma going on, a lot of emotional outbursts. I had a father who didn’t really stand up to any of that stuff. Being especially a sensitive soul, to me, it was like, “Oh my gosh, I just have to figure out a way to get out of this house as best as possible.” Because anytime there was any sort of emotion in the household, it wasn’t being handled and then I took it in very, very deeply. I turned to achievement to be, in essence, my drug out of like, “I’m just going to achieve at a really high level to get out of this place.”
I started achieving. I started to do great things in life. Now, of course, I had bumps along the road. If you know my story, you know all of those bumps. Again, it was like, I still hadn’t gone on and healed the trauma of things that happened in childhood. Then that I kept repeating afterward because I just didn’t really even think I needed that work. I was achieving at a pretty high level. It wasn’t until these past few years when I’ve really had to go out into the world and speak my truth with my business and, in essence, sell myself and sell coaching, did a lot of that shit start to pour up. It was like, “You’ve got to go and do some emotional regulation, Lindsay because–” Yes, it can feel really scary to put yourself out there. It can feel really scary to own your power, speak your truth, to be a confident woman in this world. It just is.
We’ve got to go in there and do that emotional regulation work. The more you can do that, the better you’re going to feel as you go out and sell yourself, but I will tell you, regardless of if you’re doing that work or not, you’re going to have ups and downs. I show up for myself, gosh, two to three hours a week to get coached as a client. That’s a lot of coaching. Two to three hours a week that I’m getting coached as a client. It’s still pretty uncomfortable for me, a lot of the times to put myself out there. Now, some of that is just my personality. The work I’ve been doing lately with my coaches is that I really don’t like visibility. In my perfect world, I would run into the woods and never be heard from again but for some reason, I felt very called to help people in my lifetime. I put myself out there over and over again on things like this podcast with my clients when I’m coaching them.
Two, in essence, selling myself to the world with posts on social media, when I’m on consult calls with clients like what I just had this last month with my Living The Dream launch with my established clients. I’m constantly putting myself out there and, in essence, selling to them either something of monetary value, like a coaching package or selling concepts and ideas for them to open their minds. That opens me up to criticism. That opens me up to rejection. That opens me up to even just visibility. As I said again, I am naturally a very quiet and shy person. I’ve always been that way and granted, I could do mindset work that could change it, but that just feels the most like me. I continually do the work to put myself out there because I know that the stuff that I’m selling, be it a concept or a monetary package is so helpful to this world. My belief in that is what allows me to continually do the work to emotionally regulate and put my shit out there. I just want to throw that out there. Emotional regulation is so, so, so important.
Now, let’s talk about what are the actual steps of you selling yourself? Well, it’s not that difficult at the end of the day. It is, but it’s not. The first step is become very clear on what it is that you want. For example, a client comes to me, “Lindsay, I want a new job.” We have to sit down and get very clear on what it is that they want. They may not have all the pieces yet. I’m typically a person that I have some sort of idea of what it is that I want, but it isn’t until I get into action, that’s when I can start to clarify even more what it is that I want and what I don’t want. At least, I want them to have some general idea of, “I want to make this amount of money. I want to be doing these sorts of activities or exercises,” whatever you want to call it in my job. “I want to be around people who act and do things like this. Maybe I want this distance from my home or I want to work from home.” Again, as many details as you can get, and they’re possible. That’s what they have is their first step. Get clear on what it is that they want.
For me, if we’re looking at it with my business, I am very clear that I only sell two things in my business. That’s nine months of one-on-one coaching that everybody has to go through and then once they make it through that nine-month process, I really sit down and say, “Is this somebody who I think would be a good fit for my Living The Dream process? I will tell you, not everybody after those first nine months makes it to that next step. I have to really sit down and say, “Is this somebody who I think could be a great fit for that program?” As I said, and again, not everybody makes it. It’s not saying that certain people are better than others. It’s just, “Is that the right fit or not?”
Then if they are, then I throw it out there to them of, “Hey, okay, now we’re done with nine months, but here’s where I would love to go next with you, and here’s why.” I sell that again. I get very clear on what it is I want. In that, it took me a while. It took me a couple of years in my business to try different things. I had low-cost products. I had a little bit higher-cost products where I had some one-on-one attention and not others. As time went on, I was like, “Oh, I just want to work with people for nine months and I want to go all-in with them, I want to give them the ultimate level of support through those nine months. I want to have 20 one-on-one calls, and here’s what I want the process to look like.” I then had to move on to step two and all the other sets, but that’s what I knew I wanted.
I knew what I wanted to was from trial and error first off, but then too, I have done a lot of work on knowing who I am authentically. Something that I talk about often on the show that I do with clients, it’s the puzzle of you. We put together their strengths, and their values, and their purpose, and their admirations and all these different pieces. I think there’s 10 or 11 pieces in this puzzle. From there, it’s very clear on, “How does this person work best? What is it the things they want most?”
For me, I have strengths like connectedness, individualization in there, activator, input learner. Then I have values like freedom and experience in there, and I could talk about so many other things. I hone in on those because when I wasn’t doing this nine-month process, and I was doing more self-study stuff, I was really connecting with people, and that’s a strength of mine, I love to connect with people. I didn’t really get to learn about people. Again, I have a learner, I love learning about people and individualization. I just can intuitively know who somebody is and I wasn’t getting to use that. Then my activator strength is all about getting other people inspired into action, and that’s the core of coaching, especially one-on-one coaching.
Then my value of freedom is, I want to have freedom, yes, for sure, and so how can I build in a one-on-one practice, while still maintaining my freedom in there, and giving other people a great experience while giving a great experience to myself? Again, I had to keep going back to that puzzle of me with my offer of what feels good to me. What is the thing that I want to deliver most? Again, it’s so important that you think about yourself. Many times, we think, “What is it the other person wants or needs?” Then we adjust ourselves to fit some sort of mold of whatever they’re wanting, which is fine.
There’s not necessarily anything wrong with that. If you’re in a space where you just really need a job, you may mold yourself to be the person that they want to have in that role. Just be clear though, that you always have a choice, on you fitting a mold or not. You’re not a victim to your life, you’re making an authentic choice to mold yourself.
Then I still encourage you to do the work, to really figure out who you are, because, in essence, if you’re going to show up and be somebody else at a job, for example, the job I had before I had my business, was I was a grant administrator for a college. That I already knew because I had been doing some of this “puzzle of you” work at the time, I knew that did not fit my strengths at all. It’s a very detail-oriented job, I am more of a big thinker. It’s sitting around looking at numbers all day long, in essence, which is not my strength at all, but I really loved the hours of that job. I loved the amount of money that I made for the little work that I did. I loved the flexibility because, in essence, I worked very little every day, and so I had a lot of time to build my business. I was very intentional and I was okay with fitting the mold of what they wanted for that role. I knew who I was at my core too, that I could go to. Some of the women in that role, they would show up every day, we wouldn’t really have that much work to do, they didn’t really like their job but they didn’t know who they were and so when they were bored, they would just sit around and watch movies all day, or piddle around with different personal projects. Which is fine, there’s nothing wrong with that, but they didn’t really know where to go to next.
Again, it’s so important that if you’re going to mold into anything in your life, be it a job or something else, you still know the core of who you are, and so you can, in essence, transition back into more alignment and more authenticity as you continue to grow. Total side tangent for you there.
Coming back to step one, as you’re starting to sell yourself, is become clear on what it is that you want out of, in essence, the selling agreement. I want to give you one more example there, is let’s just imagine you are selling a person on a concept. Many times I am, in essence, selling my husband on certain behaviors I would like for him to adjust to. [laughs] Many times I’m coming at him, and I’m going to give you a very personal example. On Sunday– I’m recording this on Tuesday, so a couple of days ago, I did the dishes for him, typically he does the dishes, but I did them. I do not dry them to detail like he does, even though we have this really nice dishwasher, in my mind, I’m thinking, “Why doesn’t the dishwasher dry them automatically?” but I regress. Anyways, I dry them as best as I could, put them up. He comes into our bedroom that night and he’s like, “I really appreciate you doing the dishes, but if you’re not going to dry them all the way, then you need to do blah, blah, blah.” I was like, “Okay,–” I’m not going to tell you what I said, because it was a very long weekend, I probably didn’t handle that correctly.
Then the next day, which was yesterday, I was like, “Listen, once again, it’s not what you’re saying to me, it’s how you are saying it. Please, do not come to me after a long weekend, and criticize me for something that I was doing out of the kindness of my heart. I’m not a very detail-oriented person. I understand that you want everything to be perfectly dry because you’re worried about–” His thing is mold in the sippy cups. I’m like, “We use a ton of sippy cups for our son every single day. There’s not going to be all the standing water that’s going to sit there and cause mold. I see your point. I know you really want that.” He’s an Enneagram 1, by the way. If you know what that means, you know where I’m going with this. I’m constantly selling him right now on talking to me in a different way when he has “Criticism.” I’m constantly selling himself on that.
What is it that I want? Step one, I want a husband or anybody in my life really, who offers me criticism in a very kind way, and asks me before they give me the criticism, “Would you like some feedback?” If he came to me, “Hey, I saw you did the dishes. Would you like some feedback?” In that moment, I would have said, “No, no, I don’t want feedback right now. It’s ten o’clock at night, I’ve had a long weekend, I want to go to bed.” Later down the week, he could freely ask me again, maybe in a different headspace, “Hey, Lindsay, would you like feedback on your dishes?” I may or may not say yes. That’s what I’m asking him.
I’m continually selling to him in a personal relationship, to please give me criticism in a different way. You can see it’s uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable to speak our truth in that way because I know it’s going to cause even more tension between us, by me sticking up for myself there versus saying, “Okay, you’re right,” dah, dah, dah. The depth of my soul, my truth is, “No. Okay, I hear your message, but you did not deliver that the right way. We need to continually work on this because I am not going to put up with you talking to me that way.” For him, on his end, he’s like, “Well, I’m not going to continue to put up when you miss details,” that’s what always his argument is. I’m like, “Okay. I will continually work on these details of cleaning everything, to what I consider perfection, but you’ve got to deliver it in a different way.” Step one, again, become clear on what it is that you want.
Step two, what does the other person want? This is very important, and this is where you get out of being in a slimy sales position. You know what it is that you want, think about what they want, go into their shoes. I’ll give you an example of when I’m doing this on a consult call. I sit down with somebody, in essence, ask those first basic questions, “How did you find me? Where do you live? What was it that attracted you to me or me to you?” Then we get into what we call the Wheel of Life. We go through all these different areas of their lives, like relationships, health, finances, career, et cetera, et cetera. They’re telling me all the things about their life. Telling me what they want to gain in order to make that area of life a 10.
Then I ask them very directly, “What is it exactly you want to get from coaching in the next nine months to say it was one of the best investments of your life?” They clearly tell me what it is that they want, and I repeat it back to them. I’ll even maybe throw some things in there of like, “Well, here’s what I hear, but you’re not saying that. Is that true?” Then from there, I sit with that and I say, “Can I deliver these results to this person?” I really get intentional, “Can I make that happen for them?” If I believe that I can, and most times I believe that I can, and most times I believe I can even do more, and I share that vision with them. I’m like, “Listen, in the next nine months, you think we’re just going to do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but I actually see that we’re going to do dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, on top of that.”
Now, sometimes I do get people who have these huge dreams for nine months, and I’m like, “Ooh, we’ve got to scale it down.” I had a consult the other week, she’s currently making, I think 30,000 from what I remember, and her day job is a part-time job. Then she wants to start a business in the next year and make 100,000. I told her, I was like, “Man, I don’t think that we can do that in the next year. I really think that we could get to a place where we replace that 30,000 of income this next year,” and so that’s the vision that I see, and I brought on other things that she wanted to work on beyond that.
Again, it’s like, I get very clear on what it is that they want, and then I check in with myself, “Is this something I can deliver?” Because that’s part of selling yourself too, is you’re building trust with other people. If you go around and you’re selling a bunch of stuff that you can’t deliver upon, you’re going to maybe have a little bit of progress here and there, especially at the beginning, but then people are going to find out that you’re not true to your word and you’re going to burn some bridges along the way. I’m seeing this happen in a personal relationship of mine.
He’s gone out there for a few years and it’s lasted a few years shockingly of selling things that in my mind I did not think he was qualified to be selling. I thought he was way in over his head, but he’s a very good wooer. A very good salesperson, in essence, almost to that slimy salesperson place, and he hasn’t delivered on some of those things, and so he’s lost clients. He’s losing a lot of finances. He’s built this million-dollar life that now I’m not quite sure he can sustain because he wasn’t being authentic. Not only for the client, but to himself– Anyways, I digress. Again, it’s like, you’ve got to become clear on what it is that the client wants and how you can deliver that.
Now, if you’re in a corporate position and you are, for example, having an annual review, or you have just a meeting with your boss or whatever, if you have never asked your boss or the people in charge what it is they want out of the role that you’re giving you really need to ask that. I would be asking it often, and I would be asking for feedback often and this where again is where emotional regulation comes into play because sometimes they’re going to say things that hurt and that make you very, very uncomfortable, but it’s much more important for you to ask those questions and to hear that feedback and then be able to adjust versus not hearing that, and then continually just moseying along until you come to your annual review and you’ve found out that they haven’t been happy with your work. When you’re asking those direct questions, what it is that you want most from this person in this role, or from me in this role, then you can ask yourself, “Is this what I want too? Can I deliver this?” You get to intentionally decide, “Do I want to make this work even if I don’t want this,” or, “If I don’t feel that’s authentic to me?”
You can decide, “I’d rather keep my job right now. I’m going to intentionally decide to give this to them, even though I really don’t want to,” or, “It’s not in my zone of genius,” or, “My puzzle of me,” or whatever you want to call it. You’ve got to get really clear again on what it is that they want. Then too, what happens then is if you continually ask that question, say of your employer, “What is it that you want? What is it that you want?” You deliver on that, then you have all of this information to go and present to them and say, “You have told me you wanted X, Y, and Z, and I gave you X, Y, Z, but I also gave you A, B, C.” Or you can just say, “I gave you X, Y, Z, and so I am ready for my raise.” [laughs]
I encourage you too, when you’re having those direct conversations with your employer or anybody else, get very clear and say, “Okay, if I deliver X, Y, Z, will that mean that it will get me closer to my goal of working from home,” or, “having more vacation time,” or, “increasing my pay,” or, “getting me into position so then I can move roles and be in this other role?” Be very clear with them about what you want as well. It’s this two-way street of having open, authentic conversations.
Now, I know not everybody in this world has the capability of having open, authentic conversations. They can be, in essence, what some people call unsafe people. I am very aware that you may be walking into a conversation at times with people who, in essence, aren’t emotionally regulated, and that’s where again you’ve got to pick your poison, in essence. You’ve got to really decide–
I’ve had many bosses who definitely needed some psychological help. For example, the boss I had before the job I have now, or my business now, that boss had a lot of issues and me having these kinds of conversations with her, she probably would not have been able to handle it. I didn’t feel like I needed to have those conversations with her because, to me, I just wanted to get the F out of that job as fast as I could. For many of my clients too, the more they emotionally regulate, the more that they see that they’re not surrounded by people who can have open authentic conversations without being overly triggered, then they want to switch roles completely. Again, many different topics we could talk about here like finding a job place with emotionally regulated people that are open and authentic, and safe.
That could be a whole other conversation, but if we’re just looking at selling again, clear on what you want, clear on what the client or the other person wants. If we go back to my husband example, I want somebody to speak to me in a certain way and ask before they give me feedback to make sure I’m in the headspace for that, and he wants me to pay attention to the detail more. I know what he wants, but I’m also staying true to what it is that I want along in that process. Because at the end result, we just want to have a really nice, happy marriage where we’re both feeling authentic to ourselves. We know what the end goal is, but we have to hold our boundaries along the way. All right.
Then the third step to selling is bridging the gap if there is one. Sometimes, for example, if I’m on a consult call, they tell me what it is that they want. I know what it is that I want in regards to, “I want to put them through this coaching process.” I’ve had a client once, this is a couple of months. I said, “Yes, I want to do this nine-month process with you.” She’s like, “Well, I only want to do six.” I said, “That’s a no, I do nine, and that’s what I do.” She was like, “Okay, that’s fine. I just wanted to test and see if you could do six.” I was like, “No.” Because I was so clear on what it is that I want, which is that process.
Then again, sometimes you have to bridge the gap between what it is you want, or what the other person wants. I gave the example that with me and my husband, we’re bridging the gap of he still wants to present these details that I miss. I still want to be treated and talked to a certain way. We’re bridging that gap along the way, and sometimes that gap isn’t quite the gap that I wanted or the one that he wanted, and we’re still figuring that out.
With a client, if I’m on a consult with them. It’s like, “Here’s what it is that I want. I want to take you through this nine-month process to get you these results.” They know what they want, which is the results. Sometimes then it’s like they’re sold right away. “Okay. Yes, right. Yes, nine months, I’m ready.” They even know the investment cost, let’s go, but sometimes they’re like, “Ugh,” like a consult I had a couple of weeks ago. “Ugh, I don’t know,” I’m like, “Well, is the results worth that cost to you?” “Yes, it is.” I’m like, “Okay, then what’s your objection?” “Well, I just want to go make the money first,” is what she told me.
I said, “Great, you can go do that, but I’m telling you this next year, I want to help you replace your income, which is 30,000, so we’re going to replace the income. You’re going to make your investment back that way and you could go and make it right now, but you only have the tools and the skills, and the support that you have right now. Why not invest before that?” Again, she could do whatever she wanted. I’m not trying to convince her of anything. I’m just presenting her with a different option in order to bridge the gap for her and for me so that we could get started on coaching because I know I could get perfect results. That’s where the tricky part is sometimes. Because a lot of times you’ll present what you want, they’ll present whatever it is that they want, and there’s some sort of gap there, and a lot of times that comes out as objections.
“Well, the cost,” or “Well, we’d like to have you work from home, but dah, dah, dah.” Or if I’m looking at my husband example, “You just don’t want any feedback.” I’m like, “No, that’s not it. I want feedback, but I want it in a certain container and I want to be talked to a certain way.” I’m bridging that gap, bridging that gap, bridging that gap, and this is where it gets, like I said, uncomfortable. Because we think an objection comes up and we’re like, “[gasps], oh, no, I did it wrong.” “Oh, no, something’s gone off.” “Oh no, this is–” It takes the uncomfortable level to a whole new extreme. You’ve again, got to emotionally regulate enough to stay in that discomfort of, “Oh, we’d really love to offer you the raise, but we just can’t this year.” Staying in that discomfort of, ooh, probably feeling rejection or anger, frustration, even maybe sadness and staying in that for just a minute and then saying, “Why? Why can’t you give me that raise this year?” “Well, because we’re cutting costs because of COVID.”
“Yes, but I delivered everything you told me that you wanted me to deliver and you’ve cut costs in these other ways so I don’t understand how I’m getting short-changed because of X, Y, Z.” Again, it’s like that’s where the work is, is being able to stay in the moment, stay in your body, feel the feelings of the discomfort, and still asking the hard questions. Still, in essence, I want to say pushing, but I hate the word pushing, of just stretching the boundary of what you’re being told and really speaking your truth. I’ll give you an example of this too.
Recently I was talking to a client about something and I pushed on her a little bit and I said, “Hey, I really wish that you would’ve done or told me X, Y, Z, in this way.” She came back to me, and she’s like, “Well, actually, I wish you would have done dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.” There was a part of me that was like, “Yes, she’s right.” I said, “Yes, you’re right,” and dah, dah, dah. She, I felt was talking to me completely out of my truth. I came back and I said, “Yes, you’re right on this, but to me, you’re not right on this, but that’s just my thoughts and my thing.” It was much more comfortable for me to just give in to her and say, “No, okay, you’re right, I’m not going to do dah, dah, dah.”
Instead, I’d still continue to push that boundary a little bit more. This is, in essence, what I’m doing in coaching when I’m coaching clients all of the time. They’re coming to me and saying, “Lindsay, I want this result.” We’re coaching on something, many times what we call the ego part of their brain, or an intermingle will come and say, “No, it’s not this,” or “No, it’s not that.” There are some times I have to say, “I want you to look at that differently. I want you to see this in a different way.” Or sometimes I’m just flat out saying, “No, that’s not what it is. It’s this, and I need you to sit with that for a second.”
For example, if they’re blaming their boss over and over and over and over again for their lack of success, then I have to sometimes say, “I need you to look at what you’re doing in this situation to cause you to not have the result you want.” I’ll give you another specific example here with a client recently. She invested with another coach for a business thing, and she did not get the results she wanted from it, and she was, I’m not saying venting in a bad way, but she was just telling me about it, and she’s like, “I really wanted this result from this program.”
I went back at her and I said, “Well, when I think about the name of the program, and what she said she was going to deliver, I think of that it’s for people who are X, Y, Z, and you wanted people that were A, B, C. I just really want you to get clear is, did she promise A, B, C, or did you just misinterpret her our X, Y, Z comment to mean A, B, C.?” It’s comments like that. That’s a little uncomfortable, that’s making people kind of– Calling them out, in essence, in some ways. That’s the work, my friend, is filling that gap, really understanding how to be in the moment with the objections and to talk through them.
I hope you have some nuggets from this today. This is the kind of work that is so great to have when you have an ongoing coach that you can lean on to talk you through these kind of moments, and in essence, to regulate your nervous system so that you can have these kinds of conversations time and time again because as I said, we’re constantly selling ourselves in the world. Even if it’s not in our careers, it’s with other people, and getting them to, in essence, do what we want them to do, but not in a manipulative, unauthentic way, but in a way that we still get what we want, they still get what they want, and then we can come together and all live deeply fulfilling lives.
Thanks for tuning in. I’m so glad you were here. I’m so glad you were learning about this today. Now go out there and go sell something, my friend. If you ever need any kind of support, feel free to reach out to me for a free consult. Just go to lindsayepreston.com/apply to apply for that consult and let’s start talking about how I can help you change your life. Until next time, my friend, bye.
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Hey there, Miss Unstoppable. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode. If you enjoyed it, share it with a friend. Send them a picture of this episode via text, via email, share it on social media, I’m sure they would be so appreciative to know these strategies and tips on how to accomplish your dreams. If you are ready to guarantee you’re going to accomplish your goals and dreams, then it’s time to start coaching with me.
In my nine-month simple success coaching system, I am going to walk you every single step of the way to ensure that you get the goals and dreams that you want. The first step is to apply for a free 60-minute consult call. Just go to LindsayEpreston.com/apply to get started. As always, my friend, remember, you’re only as unstoppable as you believe you can be, so believe in yourself. You got this.
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