556. How to Sell Without Being Salesy

If you feel like you have to be pushy and aggressive and salesy in order to make an impact, then either you were never taught how to sell or you were taught the wrong way. And you’ve probably been at the receiving end of somebody who doesn’t actually know how to sell, and it feels awful. But that’s not the way to sell things. That’s not the way I teach. It’s not the way I practice.

Today we’re going to dive into how to sell without being salesy. So whether you’re trying to sell your kids on putting their shoes on and getting out the door, or you work for a company, or you have your own business, this episode is for you. This is episode 556: How to Sell Without Being Salesy. Let’s go.

Welcome to Better Than Happy, the podcast where we transform our lives by transforming ourselves. My name is Jody Moore. In the decade-plus I’ve been working with clients as a Master Certified Coach, I’ve helped tens of thousands of people to become empowered. And from empowered, the things that seemed hard become trivial, and the things that seemed impossible become available, and suddenly, a whole new world of desire and possibility open up to you. And what do you do with that?

Well, that’s the question… what will you do? Let’s find out.

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Hello, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. This topic of sales is one that’s been coming up a lot lately. We just finished Pro Coach Camp. I know a lot of you participated in that. It was so much fun. But even if you don’t have a business, this is a topic that’s coming up a lot in the zeitgeist for some reason. And I wanted to address it today because it’s a topic I love. I happen to love selling. I love buying. I love having somebody sell something to me. And I think I think about sales in a much different way and teach it pretty different from how most people understand it or teach it out there. So that’s what we’re going to dive into today.

Now, I want to offer to you that you already actually are very good at selling. You are selling things every day. Like I said, you’re selling your kids on getting their shoes on or doing their homework or coming to the table for dinner or doing their chores. And maybe you think, “Oh yeah, and I hate doing that. It’s exhausting.” Okay, cool. I’m going to teach you some things today that might help.

If you work for any other company or you own any type of company, you are in sales most likely. Maybe you are directly the sales department somewhere, but I’m not even talking about that. If you’re an orthodontist, you have to get clients first of all, right? But you also have to sell your patients on following the plan that you have for them that’s going to create the beautiful straight teeth that they want. If you are a teacher, you are selling your kids all day long on listening, on doing their homework, on communicating with their parents, whatever it is you need them to do in order to create the transformation you create, you have to sell them on that.

I used to work for a for-profit university, and we had a whole department there called the Enrollment Team, which was more or less the sales department. But even when I was an academic advisor at that university, I had to sell students on continuing on with their education. We called it retention. So almost any job out there is going to have a sales component. And again, just navigating our day-to-day life and relationships means we got to get better at selling. Certainly, if you’re a coach and you are coaching clients, you are trying to sell your clients on opening up their minds and their hearts, maybe on taking certain actions and behaviors, and you’ve got to sell in order to get clients, right? Sell your programs, sell your offers, sell your books. So every single one of us is in sales all the time.

And if that makes your skin crawl and makes you think, “Ooh, I don’t like selling. I don’t want to be in sales,” then it’s because you don’t understand what selling actually is. So give me a chance and let’s see if we can change your mind by the end of this episode.

Today, I have seven keys that will improve your sales conversions and the experience for you and the person you’re interacting with overall. So like I said, you can apply these in life. I am going to talk about how they relate to your business mostly. Take the learnings and let’s see what you can do with it in your life. All right?

Number one, I want to start with a definition of sales. What do you think it means to sell something? Obviously, we could look it up and get a very basic definition, but I want to offer you my definition because whenever I do, people usually agree with it and they love it. And immediately it lightens the load a little bit when we think about selling.

So my definition of sales is that selling is just influencing someone to take an action that will create a result that they desire to have in their lives. Let me say that one more time. Selling is influencing someone to take an action that will create a result that they desire to have in their lives. Notice I didn’t say it’s convincing someone to do something that I want them to do so that I can have a result I desire in my life. It’s not trying to persuade people or manipulate people or pressure or push people into doing something that I think they should do. It’s not any of those things, right? It’s influencing them, inspiring them, we might even say, to take an action that will create a result that they desire to have in their lives. This changes everything.

I want to tell you a quick story. Back to when I worked for a for-profit university. This was a university that was set up for working adults. So the classes were in the evening or online, and it was meant to help people who either never went to college or maybe started a degree and didn’t finish it, to be able to get their degrees while still maintaining their full-time jobs. So these were people who, for the most part, had families. They had lots of obligations. And they decided they needed a degree in order to advance in their career or make more money or for whatever reason, they wanted to get that degree, okay?

So at this school’s graduation ceremony, instead of having a bunch of young people graduating with all their parents and grandparents in the audience, you had parents and grandparents graduating with a bunch of younger people and mixed bag, of course, right, in the audience. It was so awesome to see. These people had to sacrifice a lot to go back and get their degrees, and their kids and grandkids got to witness it and be proud of them, and it was awesome.

And when I worked in the enrollment department, which was again the sales part of our organization at the time, my job was to recruit students to the school, okay? And so this often meant selling them on going back to school. And selling them meant lots of conversations sometimes, lots of follow-up, lots of phone calls, sometimes meeting them in person, lots of overcoming their concerns and objections, lots of helping them get financing set up, and really encouraging and supporting them and influencing them, if you will, to take that action that they wanted that would ultimately make their lives better.

Well, one day I was working at graduation, and a woman came up to me and she said, “You’re Jody, right?” And I said, “Yes.” And she remembered me. She gave me a big hug. She said, “Thank you for not giving up on me. I am here getting my degree today, and my kids and grandkids are here witnessing it because you didn’t give up on me. You kept calling me.”

And that’s when I realized what sales really is, right? Having that woman go back to school helped me in a small way. It helped me to do well at work. It even helped my salary in a small way. But it helped her way more. She was the one who had done the hard work, and she was the one who was going to get the benefit of it. And that’s when I realized I need to be more assertive about selling people, not for my sake, for their sake, because of the benefit for them. And if it’s not a benefit for them, I’m not going to sell anybody. So we’ll come to that in just a minute, okay?

Number two, let’s talk about who you’re selling to. All right? I don’t want you selling to everyone, even people who might be your ideal client avatar, who might be a good fit for your program. You don’t need to sell to all of them. Okay? When people come along and they learn about what you offer, and you’re selling, let’s say you’re selling your program. Even though we sell in all different times, right? Sometimes we’re selling people on reading, clicking, listening, stopping the scroll, subscribing, following. We got to sell in all those areas. But let’s just talk about selling your paid offer, maybe it’s a course, maybe it’s a program, maybe it’s a retreat or a workshop, okay?

You will have three buckets of people generally. When they hear about your offer, you will have people that are yesses, people who maybe they’re already familiar with you, and so they like what you do, and they’re pretty easily convinced that they want to work with you. Or maybe they’re new to you, but they just know that what you have is exactly what they’ve been looking for, and they’re ready to go. I call those yes people. We don’t need to sell to them, right? Because they already are a yes. So I don’t need to influence or inspire them. They’re already going to do it.

The second group of people we have are no people. People who don’t like what you’ve put out there. It’s not what they’re looking for. It’s too expensive. It’s not high premium enough. They don’t like the format, they don’t like the delivery, they’re not ready. They don’t like the sound of your voice. Cool. Those are no people. You don’t need to sell to them. You don’t need to convince them that this is a right fit for them. If they don’t want it, cool. We don’t want to convince them. It’s not a win for anybody, right?

The third group of people you have are people who are unsure. They like the sound of it. They want the transformation that you offer. They even like a lot of things about what they’ve heard from you or what you’ve said. They’re unsure because they have some questions they want answered. They’re probably unsure that this is maybe exactly the right fit for them or that they’re going to be capable of receiving the transformation. They just have some questions. Those are the people we’re selling to. Those are the people we’re trying to influence if they are the right fit. And we need to do some work, we need to do our due diligence to figure out if they even are. And that’s what we’re going to talk about next.

So number three, you need to ask people what they care about instead of telling them what you think they should care about. Okay? Do not make this mistake that most sales people make. They launch right into, “Here’s why my program’s great. Here’s why it’s going to work for you. Here’s what other people have said they love about it. And here’s why I think you should buy it.” None of us responds well to that if somebody hasn’t done their due diligence of asking us questions first.

This is like going to the doctor and saying, “I have headaches,” and the doctor saying, “Here, take this pill or use this treatment,” without asking any more questions about how long have you had these headaches? How severe are they? Did something trigger them? Do you have them at night? How painful are they on a scale of one to 10? If the doctor doesn’t ask any questions, we don’t trust that doctor has the right treatment plan for us because he or she probably doesn’t or very well may not, right?

So you have to ask them questions about what they care about. What are you looking for in a coach? What’s the most important to you? What is your ideal scenario? What do you like about things that you’ve tried in the past to solve for this problem? What’s worked well for you? What hasn’t worked well for you? What have you disliked or what hasn’t served you in the past? What concerns or questions do you have? A lot of people are afraid to draw out concerns and questions because they think it means the person’s going to say no. But guess what? People who don’t ask questions are either just yesses already, but that’s pretty obvious, or they’re just going to walk away and be nos. The people who ask questions are interested. They just have questions. And the only question you can’t answer is the one that you don’t know they have. Okay? So you want to ask them lots of questions before you even make your offer. Ask questions.

I remember one time someone came to my door. This was many years ago, but it was a young person saying that they were selling magazines and they were trying to raise money for college or something like this, right? And they launched right into why they thought I should buy a magazine subscription and how it would help them and how I would be helping this person and, trying to play on my desire to serve others, okay? So that’s fine. I do want to help others, and most people do have some of that within them. But the poor kid, I said to him, “Let me just stop you right there. Before you start selling a magazine like this, you need to ask the person who answers the door, ‘Do you read magazines? Do you like to save time? Is convenience important to you? Is saving a little money important to you?'”

Ask me some questions first. And if I say to you, “Yeah, I love magazines,” and “I do love saving time and money,” and you can say, “I have a great opportunity for you that will save you some money, save you some time, get you the magazines you like, and you’ll get to help put me through college.” That’s like the bonus on top, right? So you ask questions first.

Years ago, I had moved into a new city, and so I was looking to sign up for a gym. And I like going to classes at the gym. Especially at this time in my life, I wasn’t doing any strength training, and so all I wanted were aerobics classes. Remember step aerobics? I did step aerobics and kickboxing and all the high impact classes that I can’t really do so much today. But at any rate, that’s what I wanted. So I went to the gym that I thought might be a good fit. What happens when you go to the gym? They have you talk to a personal trainer who is a personal trainer and also a salesperson, right?

And so I said to the trainer, “Hey, can I see your schedule of classes? Because I really like classes, and I just need to make sure there’s the kinds I like and that they’re going to be at times I can go to.” And he said, “Oh, yeah. We have a schedule somewhere, but I’m going to have to find it. Hold on. I’ll have somebody hunt it down for us, but in the meanwhile, let me take you on a tour of the gym.” And I was, “All right.” I didn’t really want to tour the gym, but I decided, “All right, I’ll humor this person.” And then he proceeded to show me the weight room and how great the weights were. And I was like, “That’s cool, but I don’t really lift weights. I know I probably should, but I’m not really interested in that.” And he said, “Oh, we have a brand new women’s only weight room that’s only for women. Let me show you that.”

And meanwhile, I was, “Can I just see the schedule?” This is before schedules were online so easily, right? And he kept being, “I don’t know. We can’t find it right now. Just a minute.” And he insisted on showing me all the things that he thinks are great about the gym, all the things he thinks I should care about in the gym, right? And if he would have just paid attention and said to me, “Yeah, let me get you that schedule, hold on,” I would have looked at that schedule and signed up right there on the spot. And he could have saved himself and me a whole bunch of time and effort because I didn’t need to see the weight room. Even if he thought I should, it didn’t matter. That wasn’t what was important to me.

So that’s when we start feeling like this person’s trying to sell me because they’re not listening to what we care about. So if you ask the right questions, the person will tell you what they care about. And then when you go to describe your offer, you can match the parts of your offer to what the person cares about. This is really basic, but so many people overlook it.

All right, number four, always tell them straight out if you don’t think your offer is the best fit for them. This is not wrong to do. This is not you not selling. Guess what? Your stuff is not for everyone. You’re not for everyone. You’re not. If you are, then you’re doing something wrong, right? So if my client says, “I hate being on Zoom. I don’t own a computer, and I plan to never buy one,” then I would say, “I don’t think my program is right for you because we do the majority of our coaching via Zoom, and so it’s probably not what you’re looking for. Do you have some in-person coaches you could go check out? Because it sounds like you’re going to want to look for that.” Right?

Sometimes what they care about is something that I can’t offer them. Now, 95% of the time, what they care about is something I can offer them because most people understand they don’t have to have a 100% match. They just want to know that for the most part, they’re going to get what they need and that what they get is going to enable them to make the transformation. So if my person says, “Well, I’m open to Zoom. It’s just not my favorite,” I might stop and say, “Well, let me be honest with you. We do most things on Zoom. And let me tell you why that actually works really well for a lot of people. You’re not the first person to tell me they would prefer it in person, but here’s why it works really well, even though I would rather be in person with you too,” right? And so you can address things, but be honest. I can’t emphasize this one enough. And again, it seems like a no-brainer. Of course, we would be honest. But sometimes when we get into a sales situation, we worry that if we’re honest, we’re going to turn the person away or we’re going to talk them out of it.

And I’ll tell you what, being honest helps people understand that they can trust you, and then they’re more comfortable. Most of us understand that there’s not always a 100% match. But if we feel like we can trust the person, they’re going to tell us the truth, they’re going to be honest, we’re willing to give up some of our top desires even, right?

I have people sometimes ask me about The Lab Coach Access, which is where I help coaches. I had someone just the other day say to me, “Hey, I’m in the midst of growing a team, and I’m trying to learn how to manage people and how to find the right people to hire and how to structure my team and all of that.” And I said, “That’s so awesome. Congratulations on your success. To be honest, that’s not one of the pillars of my program. It’s something I know a little bit about, but mostly we’re focusing on marketing and sales and getting clients and building the business from a marketing standpoint. So you might want to check out this coach or that coach.” And I gave her a couple of other names. And she said, “Thanks so much for being honest. I really love your coaching style, and I think I want to be in your program anyway.” And I was like, “Great.” That wasn’t my intention, right? But being honest goes a really long way.

What I don’t want is somebody coming in my program feeling like they got tricked, they didn’t know what to expect, and me feeling bad knowing I convinced them or hid information. Occasionally, I even have someone who I can just tell is so resistant to my strategies or my style, or they just have so much disbelief in themselves. And mostly those people just go away, right? And they just are nos and they move on. But occasionally they will come and ask me all kinds of questions. And at some point, I do say, “You know what, to be honest, I feel like you have so much doubt about this that I don’t recommend you do it because if you don’t believe this is going to help you, it probably won’t. There’s only so much I can do. And this just may not be the right fit for you.” I say that to people if that’s really how I feel.

And you know what? Half the time, those people come back and say, “You know what, I think I do want to give it a try.” And half the time they don’t, and I’m fine with it either way. I just want to feel like I’m doing the honest thing in telling people what I see. That’s my job as a coach, right?

Number five, make it safe and easy for people to be a yes or a no. Just don’t leave room for indecision. Okay? Now, I want to be clear on this one because I feel like there are some techniques and tactics out there that I do not like when it comes to this one. A lot of people do teach this. Get people to a yes or a no, don’t let them be indecisive. But I hate it so much when I go to a sales call and the person says to me, “Do you think you’re going to need to talk this over with your husband before you make a decision?” And this is usually at the beginning of the call before we’ve even talked about anything, right? And I say, “Yeah, I’m definitely going to talk this over with my husband before I spend ten thousand dollars or whatever it’s going to be with you.” And they say, “Well, why don’t you go get him? Or should we reschedule this until he can be here?”

I find that to be so offensive. I really do. I don’t need someone to tell me how to communicate with my husband. I will communicate with him when and how I choose. And same for my husband. I don’t need someone to tell him to get me to sit in on a call. Like we’re babysitting one another. It’s perfectly reasonable for people to want some time to go discuss it with their spouse, not in front of you, the salesperson, okay? So please don’t do that. It’s a terrible tactic, I think.

Instead, here’s what you do. After you’ve asked lots of questions, presented your offer, matched it up to what they said, invited more questions, and spoken to them, then you simply ask them, “What do you think? Does this seem like a fit for you? Do you want to move forward?” Make it easy to say yes, which means you have to ask for the sale. “Are you ready to go? Should we get you signed up?”

And if they say yes, then you have a very clear process. For me, it’s usually, “Great. What I’m going to do is send you a link. You’re going to get it in your email or however you send it, right? And you’ll need to sign up and make your payment within the next 24 hours. After that, I give your spot to someone else. Does that work for you?” right? And if they’re a maybe, like, “I think so, but I need to think about it. I want to talk it over with my husband,” etcetera.

Can you hear the kids outside my office? Just sweet children playing. Sorry. If they’re a maybe, then same thing. If they say, “I just want to go talk it over with my husband first, or I need to look at my schedule, or I need to whatever else,” then it’s the same process. “Great. No problem. I will hold this spot for you for the next 24 hours or 48 hours or 72 hours, whatever you want to give them, right? Does that give you enough time to talk it over? I’ll go ahead and email you the link. You’ll need to make your payment and submit everything by this day at this time. If you don’t, I’ll go ahead and assume you decided not to, and I’ll give it to the next person. How does that sound?”

It’s a really simple, clean, easy, low-pressure way to make it easy for people to be a yes or a no. The ones who don’t sign up are a no. We don’t have any indecision anymore. We have yesses and we have nos, and then we move on.

Number six, do proper marketing so that you never have to sell yourself or your program. You’re only selling people on themselves. Okay? Let me say that again. If you do marketing the correct way, you do not have to sell yourself or your program. You are selling people on themselves, on their ability to have the transformation. What do I mean by that?

The way we market today is by putting out lots of free or really inexpensive content. We help people. We make podcasts. We make YouTube videos. We make social media content. We send emails. We write books. We write SubStacks. However you put out content, if you’re doing it correctly, people are getting lots of value. They understand that you’re a professional, that you’re good at what you do. They see that you can help them. What they’re not sure of is whether or not they can do it.

One of my favorite people to listen to, Myron Golden, says, “I don’t have to convince people that I can help them. You know how they know I can help them? I already have.” And that’s when you know you’re doing your marketing correctly, and it makes selling so much easier.

Okay, number seven, remember that they will benefit from taking the step more than you will and have your conversations from that knowing. You need to remember that going into it. It is more of a win for them if they say yes and more of a loss for them if they say no than it is a win or a loss for you. I promise that is true.

How many opportunities are there for this person to get the transformation that they want? I’m not saying you’re the only one. I’m just saying there’s probably only a handful. And there’s only one person that does it your way. And you may be one of just a few. But how many possible clients or customers exist for you? So many. If they say no to you, no problem. You move on to the next person. There’s plenty of potential business for you. If they say no to you, though, they miss out on this opportunity, and maybe they will find a better fit. I hope they do. But there’s a good chance they won’t find a better fit. There’s a good chance they’ll just keep putting this off and never get the transformation they desire.

And that’s why I’m not afraid to spend a lot of time really trying to inspire and influence people to take action. It’s okay to remind them of the consequences of inaction or of different choices if you really understand that this could be best for them. And you don’t have to do this in a pressure-filled, creepy way. I ask questions like, “Is there anything else you’re considering?” Especially if they say something like, “I like it. It’s just more money than I can afford. It’s more than I want to spend. It’s too expensive.” I say, “I totally understand that. It is a lot of money.” And then I ask, “Is there anything else you’re considering that would be more affordable that you think would get you this result?”

Now, sometimes the answer is, “No, but I just can’t do it right now.” And I say, “No problem. Definitely, I hope you don’t give up on this desire and dream of yours. You know where to find me if you need anything.” But mostly the answer is, “Yeah, I don’t know, but I’m going to look around.” And I say, “Cool, I want you to do that because I want you to find the best fit. Don’t forget to ask this question. Don’t forget to make sure that you have this benefit because you said that matters to you,” right? And I might just give them a little guidance and then send them on their way. And in my mind, that person’s a no unless they come back and want to talk to me again.

So again, remind them of the consequences of inaction or different choices, but only because you care about them and their success. So the analogy I like to use to teach this one is it’s like you’re offering one hundred dollar bills for fifty dollars. Okay? If I’m selling you a one hundred dollar bill and in order to get it, you need to give me fifty one dollar bills, then the truth is, this isn’t for everyone, right?

Who would this not be for? Who would not benefit from getting a one hundred dollar bill in exchange for fifty one dollar bills? Well, I’ll tell you who. A baby who doesn’t understand the value of money and is just going to put that one hundred dollar bill in their mouth. Not for them, right? How about a billionaire who doesn’t want to be bothered with going to the bank and going inside and getting fifty one dollar bills from the teller so that they can come back to me and give them to me in exchange for the one hundred dollar bill? Their time and the energy that takes is worth more, so they don’t care about my one hundred dollar bill for fifty one dollars, possibly.

How about somebody who just hates Ben Franklin and loves George Washington and is Mod Podging a table with one dollar bills? And so they need as many one dollar bills as they can get a hold of. Okay. Well, that person doesn’t want my one hundred dollar bills for fifty one dollar bills. But for most other people, it’s a great offer. They should take it. And if somebody doesn’t understand that it’s a great offer, if they’re saying to me, “But why would I give you 50 bills for your one bill?” I need to explain how money works to them again. And if they say, “It sounds great, I understand it, but I don’t have fifty one dollar bills,” I would say, “Well, how are you going to get a hold of it? Because if I were you, I would definitely do everything I could to get a hold of it.”

Now, these aren’t exact words I’m telling you to use when you’re selling. I’m telling you this is the mindset you want to be coming from. And if you don’t feel like you’re offering a one hundred dollar bill for fifty-one dollars, then you need to revisit your offer and you need to make it better until you see that it is that.

Now, there’s a bunch of other things I teach when it comes to selling. And I wish I had time to teach all of it to you on this episode, but I hope this gives you a good head start. I’ll tell you that if you execute these seven keys, then people will leave your sales calls, whether it’s a consultation or a webinar or however you sell to people, they will leave that exchange happy and better off.

And that is always my goal. Whether this person is a yes or a no, I want them to see that I believe in them. I want them to feel my support. I even want them to get some help and some of my expertise. And I offer all of that anytime I’m doing a sales call, whether it’s a group call or an individual call. My dad always used to tell us growing up, “Always leave a place better than you found it.” And I try to practice that even with people that I’m interacting with, especially on a sales call. I want them leaving going, “That was worth my time,” whether they’re a yes or a no.

So listen, don’t be afraid of selling. It’s something that you do that serves other people. And it’s going to be necessary to create what you want in your business and in your life. Thanks for joining me today, everybody. I’ll see you next time on another episode. Bye-bye.

Oh wow, look at that. You made it to the end. Your time and attention is valuable, and I don’t take it lightly that you made it this far. In fact, it tells me you might be like me; insatiably curious about people and life and potential and connection. Maybe you have big dreams but a small budget and no time. You’re tired, but bored. You’re content, but dissatisfied. Sound familiar? Come to a free coaching call and see for yourself what’s possible: JodyMoore.com/freecoaching to register. That’s JodyMoore.com/freecoaching.