548. Pro Coach Series Part 2: How Pros Approach Sales

There are amateur coaches, lots of them. And then there are pro coaches. Not so many of those. And if you’re a coach or something similar to a coach, teacher, mentor, leader, guide of some sort, I know you want to be a pro coach. And that’s why I’m doing a pro coach series to help you identify the shifts that might need to happen to take you from amateur to pro.

This is part two. Today we’re talking about how pro coaches approach sales. Let’s do it.

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?

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What’s up, friends? How are we doing today? Welcome to the podcast. I’m excited to be here talking to you. This is part two of a Pro Coach series that we’re doing. And in this part of the series, I want to talk to you about sales. Now, as you listen to me talk about the way pros approach sales, if you’re thinking to yourself, “I would love to do that, but that feels hard. I have lots of blocks, I have lots of noise, lots of drama, lots of fear, or I don’t have the skills. I don’t know how to do that.”

Whatever it is that comes up for you, the reason I’m doing this series is to help you identify if you could maybe benefit from Pro Coach Camp, which is a two-week live virtual workshop I’m going to be teaching starting February 16th, and it’s completely free. So if any of this resonates for you and intrigues you and you want to come and learn more, make sure you sign up for Pro Coach Camp at ProCoachCamp.com and join me there February 16th. That’s going to be extraordinary. I’ve never put on something quite like this before. I’ve been planning it actually for a long time. We’re going to go big on the value to you there. And again, it’s completely free.

So let’s dive in and talk about sales a little bit here today. So the first thing I want to talk about that pros do when they approach selling their program or their offer is they start with the end in mind, to pull out an old Stephen Covey quote. So in other words, they begin by figuring out what their offer is going to be before they start doing anything else.

Amateurs, on the other hand, start in all kinds of random places. Sometimes they just start by posting social content because that’s what they see people doing and so that’s the only thing they know to do. Now, again, I said this last week, but I want to say it again, there’s nothing wrong with being an amateur. Okay, this is not in judgment of anybody who’s operating in amateur status. We all start out there. And in certain areas, we all probably still are there and as we make progress, there’s always more growth available, right? So I don’t mean this out of judgment, but I’m just saying amateurs don’t quite know where to begin, so they begin wherever they tend to see other people usually, which is either social media, maybe they start with a podcast, what have you.

The best place to begin when building out your business and figuring out how to get clients is with the offer. You need to understand what you’re selling. You need to understand who it’s for and what would draw people to it, because everything else you do is meant to lead ultimately to that offer. So if we haven’t made decisions about what the offer is, then we’re not going to be creating all the other pieces in a way that is going to naturally lead to that offer. Okay? So begin with the offer. You want to have an offer that is exactly what your client wants.

Okay, I got to tell my favorite Simpsons story for just a minute. If you haven’t heard me tell it before, you can look up this clip online, but it’s Christmas morning. Marge says to Homer, “Hey, honey, let’s exchange our Christmas gifts.” And Homer goes, “D’oh! Okay, just a minute.” And he runs out to his car and he starts driving around town trying to find a store that’s open because of course, Homer has forgotten to get a Christmas gift for Marge. So he’s driving all around, but it’s Christmas morning. And so all the stores are closed. He can’t find anything except the Kwik-E-Mart.

And so he goes into the Kwik-E-Mart, but of course, because it’s Christmas morning, the shelves are completely empty. Everybody’s bought all the good stuff or bought everything out of the store. So after a while, this Homer finally goes home defeated, and he just sits down feeling ashamed. And Marge hands him her gift. And he unwraps it and inside is another gift wrapped up with a tag that says, “To Marge, from Homer.” And she says, “My gift for you is a gift for me.” And he says, “It’s exactly what I wanted.” And she says, “I know.”

So I love that. I think it’s so sweet and cute. And I always think about Homer driving around frantically trying to find a gift for his wife and then getting that gift for his wife and saying, “It’s exactly what I wanted.” That’s what we want our clients to think or feel when they hear our offer. Oh, it’s exactly what I wanted. Okay?

We want to be selling an Eras Tour ticket to Swifties. We don’t want to sell what we think people need. We need to sell what people want. We don’t want to sell what we think people might want, but to the wrong person. Okay? We don’t want to sell something vague and ambiguous that people can’t understand. You got to create exactly what people want for the people who want it. You want to have an offer that’s like selling a 100 bill for $50. You want to know that there’s so much value there that it’s easy for you to talk about and try and explain to people. And if somebody doesn’t get it, it’s on them. They’re just not seeing it, or maybe we haven’t explained it clearly, but it’s not that there isn’t the value there.

If I were selling $100 bills for $50, I would be very confident explaining to people why they should buy this. And if somebody didn’t understand that a $100 bill is worth more than 50 one-dollar bills, I would need to explain it to them, right? And if they said no, I would be like, “That’s too bad for them, but that’s okay. I’ll move on and find someone else because there are plenty of other people who will see the value in it.” Okay, so you start with the offer. You craft an extraordinary offer that is just what people want.

The second thing that pro coaches do when it comes to selling is they understand that good marketing makes selling super easy, right? Obviously having a great offer makes selling easy. That’s why we start with that. But the second thing is that good marketing makes selling easy.

Marketing is putting free stuff out there for people, right? Creating value for people with little to no charge for it, making it accessible, making it easy to find, making it easy to consume. So it’s usually bite-size for the most part. It saves people time or money or effort, or it provides them a little bit of what they already wanted. That’s what marketing is.

So, let me give you an example. Well, the other thing marketing does, I should say, is it builds trust. It helps people get to know you and trust you and understand the value of what you do. So I want you to imagine that you get a phone call one day that you’re not expecting. Let’s talk about cold calling for just a minute. Like somebody calls you up and they, you answer the phone, which let’s be real, we wouldn’t answer it if we didn’t know the number. But just imagine you did. Back in the olden days before we had caller ID, we used to, right? Imagine the person on the line says, “Hey, I work for Susan Rundquist.” I just made up that name. I don’t know if that’s a real person. Okay. And she is an interior designer and we were curious whether or not you were considering remodeling your kitchen.

Now, Susan Rundquist, who I just made up, is somebody in this scenario that you’ve never heard of before, okay? But they tell you that she’s a top performing interior designer and she does beautiful work and they’d be happy to send you her portfolio or her website or whatever. Are you considering remodeling your kitchen?

Now, if you were not considering remodeling your kitchen, you would probably get off that phone call as quickly as possible. You’d say, “No, I’m not interested, thanks,” and you might even hang up before they could try to talk you talk to you longer, right? If you had kind of been considering remodeling your kitchen, but maybe you hadn’t decided for sure, maybe you weren’t going to be doing it anytime soon, you may hear what they have to say, but you probably wouldn’t want to spend too long. You definitely wouldn’t want them to be too aggressive and salesy with you, right? If you were definitely planning on remodeling your kitchen, then again, you may go, “Well, yeah, actually, I am thinking about that. Send me some things,” but if you’re like me, you would still be a little skeptical and like cautious, I should say. Not skeptical, just cautious, right?

Okay, now we’re going to contrast that with a different scenario. Imagine you get a phone call, they say the same thing, but this time they say, “I represent Joanna Gaines.” Do you know who Joanna Gaines is, right? If you don’t, let me just tell you that she is the wife of Chip Gaines and they are the Fixer Uppers, right? So best known for their TV series, Fixer Upper. I think they have their own network now, but at any rate, the Magnolia lady, right?

So if you, like me, are a big Joanna Gaines fan and you hadn’t planned on remodeling your kitchen, but you got this call, then you might say, “Well, I wasn’t planning on it, but why? What’s going on? I’d love to hear more. What is Joanna Gaines up to? Why am I getting this call? What’s happening?” Right? If you were kind of considering it, but hadn’t decided or not anytime soon, you still, if you’re like me, would go, “Uh, yeah, say more about Joanna Gaines and me possibly working with her.” And even if you hadn’t been planning on remodeling your kitchen, you might say, if you’re like me, “I wasn’t planning on it, but I want to hear what you have to say. What is Joanna Gaines doing? Is she going to be in my area? What’s happening? What is it like to work with Joanna Gaines?” Okay?

So that’s the power of good marketing. So because we know her, because we’ve seen her work over and over again, even if you’ve never bought a single Magnolia item from Target or from her website or anything else, if you’ve seen her work, if you’re familiar with her, and she’s very likable, she’s very talented, then we want to hear what people have to say. So you don’t have to put yourself out there in a Joanna Gaines level or in that way, but the more you do put yourself out there to your people, the more familiar they are with you, the more they love what you teach and what you do, and you personally, that they feel like they know you and trust you, the more likely they are to want to hear what you have to say, which allows you to make offers to people. That’s all selling is, is making offers.

All right, so good marketing makes selling so much easier. That is what pro coaches understand. I want to say one other thing about this because I coach a lot of coaches who say things like, “I’m just so uncomfortable putting myself online, putting pictures of myself out there or my videos or whatever. I just hate seeing myself on there. I don’t want this to be about me.” And I say, “Well, you’re mistaken about the reasons why. This is not about you. You’re not trying to be an influencer. You’re not putting yourself online because you want people to see how cute you look today.”

You’re putting your work out there. You’re putting your message out there. You’re putting whatever it is that you have to offer the world out there to either help people, inspire people, motivate people, serve people, and show people that you have something to offer so that the ones who truly want it will be interested and lean in and want to hear more. Okay?

So you’re going to have to market if you want to become a pro coach. I don’t know anyone who is at pro level, which we defined last week as making a significant impact for people in the way they want to and making the kind of revenue and profit that they want to. I don’t know anyone who does those things that doesn’t do a lot of marketing. Marketing makes selling so much easier. Sometimes it makes it not even necessary at all.

Okay, the third thing I want you to think about that pro coaches know when it comes to sales is that you have to be careful about not selling from your own wallet. This is especially true in the beginning, but even it shifts in ways later on, but let me explain what I mean. So you might be selling an offer that is not something that you could afford. I had this experience years ago when I sold college degree programs online. I was selling an offer that I wouldn’t have been able to afford to buy. So that will get in your head a little bit because you’ll be trying to talk to people about the value and in the back of your mind will be this thought, “I don’t know if I could afford this.”

Okay, so make it something that your ideal client can afford. Make it something that not only they can afford, but they would be delighted to pay for, right? If it’s a 100 bill for $50, but you don’t have $50, it’s still a 100 bill for $50 and there are people out there who do have $50. So in the beginning, this is usually challenging for new coaches, amateur coaches, because they may or may not be able to afford. Although, I will say, “I can’t afford this” is such a subjective story.

A lot of coaches tell me that they want to have a high-end offer and they’re creating a high-value offer. So we know the value is there, but that they, quote unquote, wouldn’t be able to buy that or can’t afford that or wouldn’t pay for that. And I often will go back to their training and depending on where you got trained and how much money you’ve invested in training and just to be able to become a coach, right? Usually their training costs way more than the offers that they’re putting out there. And so I always question it and go, “Really? Because you paid whatever amount they paid for your training or certification or whatever it is that they’re doing as a coach.” And they’ll say, “Well, yeah, I did, but I had to figure out how to come up with the money, etc.” right? I’m like, “Okay, but my point is that when you value it enough, if there’s enough value there for you, then you found a way.”

And you have to just be clear that everybody has their own financial situation and just be careful about selling from your own wallet. Now, as your business grows and you become profitable and you become successful, this might change to where now you have a lot of money. And if your ideal client also has a lot of money, great, but if not, if you have a different offer for somebody in a different financial situation, again, you have to remember not to sell from your own wallet.

Now, whose wallet are we selling from then? I think is an interesting question. Nobody’s. I like to, when it comes to sales, remember that other people’s finances are none of my business. Unless I’m coaching someone and they want to talk about it and it comes up, okay, then great, I’m in. But otherwise, it’s none of my business. It’s not my job to judge whether or not somebody can afford this. It’s my job to demonstrate the value. If I don’t think that my offer could provide tremendous value and the transformation that my client wants, then it’s my job to be honest and say, “To be honest, I’m not sure this is exactly what you’re looking for, but let me tell you about it and you can be the judge,” right?

But I’m not here to talk people into buying something if it’s not going to serve them in their lives. If it’s not for them, a 100 bill for $50, then I’m not going to try to talk anyone into it. But I also am not here to pull a Pretty Woman. “Mm, it’s very expensive. You probably can’t afford this.” And I know you would never say that, but if you’re thinking that, it’s going to impact the way you sell. And so pro coaches know it’s none of my business whether or not they can afford this. It’s my job to demonstrate the value, to believe in them, and that’s going to come up in just a minute. We’ll come back to that. Let’s go to Number four.

Oops, see what I did there? I got off track. I totally gave away Number four in Number three, but that’s okay. We’ll just expand on it. Number four was to clean up your judgment of other people’s financial abilities. Okay? It’s really not any of our business. And if somebody really does value something and is inspired and motivated and determined and committed, then they will come up with creative ways. And we don’t want to be the one to squash their dreams, right? We’re coaches. We’re supposed to help inspire people to believe more in their dreams.

I’m going to just tell one story, which is I had a woman years ago when I was doing private coaching and I did one-on-one, I called them mini-sessions. They were like small consultations and coaching sessions. And this was a woman who what she wanted coaching on, because I always gave some free coaching on those calls, she wanted coaching about her money, okay, and her financial situation. And so I learned a lot about her finances on that call. And I learned that she and her husband are both past retirement age and not working, that their money was really difficult. Okay, and that was literally what we coached on was trying to pay her regular bills, right?

And so in the back of my mind, this started to creep in, right? Like there’s no way this woman can afford this program, and nor should she probably be paying for it right now. She should be paying her regular bills and buying groceries and things like that, right? Not buying this coaching program that is sort of an extra luxury, we might say, right?

So when it came time to make her the offer, I was very honest with her. I said, “Listen, I’m not sure if this is something you want to invest in right now or not, but I do think this program would be beneficial for you, but I’ll let you be the judge. Do you want to hear about how my program works?” And she was like, “Yes.” So I explained to her all about the program. She loved it. It was exactly what she wanted. It would help her evolve in many ways that she wanted to. And I gave her the price and she said, “I don’t have that kind of money right now, but thanks for your time.” And I said, “No problem.” Well, guess what happened? A few weeks later, she reached out to me and she said, “Jody, my daughter asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and I told her I wanted her to purchase me your program. That is what she’s giving me as my birthday present.”

Okay, so I was so glad I didn’t just tell myself, “Oh, she probably can’t afford this. Let’s not explain how valuable this is or help her believe in herself,” not just because then I had a client, but because even if she hadn’t come back and gone through my program, I want her to know that she’s capable of creating what she wants in her life. That’s what I’m trying to do as a coach. Your judgment of other people’s finances feels like just a nice thing to do. It’s selling you short in your business, but it’s selling your clients short as well. And pro coaches get that, and that might come with time and practice. I’m going to teach you more about how to get there at Pro Coach Camp, but you’ve got to get your head around that.

All right, the fifth thing that pro coaches understand is that a no is as good as a yes, we just don’t want maybes. Okay? So this is something that I learned in sales a long time ago, but it serves me really well as a coach when I’m offering my products and services to people, is I am not here to convince people that they should buy my stuff. I’m here to help people make a decision either way. A yes or a no. A no, if it’s, “I don’t like that,” and I literally say this. If you guys have ever come to one of my webinars or done anything where I was making you an offer, you’ll hear me say things like, “Look, if you don’t like my style, you don’t like the way I teach, you don’t like my voice, you don’t like the looks of me, whatever, cool, no problem at all. I’m not for everyone. This program is not for everyone. This may not be what you’re looking for. No problem.”

What I don’t want is for you to give up on yourself, on your goals, or your dreams, or your life, or making things better, right? And that is genuinely how I feel about it. I’m okay with people saying, “No, I don’t want it.” Obviously, I want people to say, “Yes, I do want it,” too. I’d love some of both of those. But what I don’t want are the maybes. And not just for my sake, but for my client’s sake. A maybe is, I think it’s Brené Brown that calls it the miserable maybe, or is it Brooke Castillo? I don’t know. Anyway, the miserable maybe is that I just can’t decide. It’s obviously something about it is appealing to you and you’re feeling drawn to it, but you’re not making a decision, you’re not committing. So you have this brain chatter about it, but you’re not actually taking action and moving forward in your life. I think that is almost does more harm than good.

So I don’t want my clients living in that miserable maybe. It also doesn’t serve my business, right? Because I don’t want to go follow up with people and chase people down and try to convince people or figure out what’s happening. Like that is not how I want to be spending my time. And other people tend to not like that either, right? We just run into this weird dynamic of chasing and follow up and it’s just not ideal. So as a pro coach, you’ve got to help people either be a yes or a no. And you can absolutely do it if you have a system that is set up accordingly. And again, if you don’t have one right now, or you’re not sure what that means, come to Pro Coach Camp. I’m going to explain it all to you in more detail.

All right, Number six, and this goes back to what I touched on a little bit briefly, but my job as a pro coach and your job as a pro coach when it comes to making offers or what some people call sales, okay, you have three jobs. Your first job is to demonstrate the value. Demonstrate the value. How are you going to demonstrate the value? Now, is it going to be valuable to everyone? No. When I demonstrate the value of what I do, the people who would get the most out of it, the people who it is valuable to, recognize the value. But the people who don’t, don’t recognize it. And that’s what we want. We want people to go, “Oh, that’s,” remember Homer Simpson? “That’s exactly what I want. That’s exactly what I need.” That was powerful. We want them to feel the emotion of the transformation that we provide. So I need to demonstrate the value. That’s my first job.

My second job is to believe in my client more than they do. This comes up a lot when you’re making offers because as you describe whatever it’s like to work with you, what your program is, or how it goes, they’re going to have lots of self-doubt that will come up. Now, if you’re an amateur coach, you turn their self-doubt into doubt about you and your program. And I’m not saying they don’t have questions about you and your program at times. They might, but mostly what they’re doubting is themselves.

For example, if they say things like, “What percentage of people are successful that go through your program?” Let’s say you’re a health coach and this person wants to lose weight, and they ask you, “How many of your clients are able to lose weight going through this program?” Amateur coaches hear that question and think that the client is saying, “I’m doubting your program right now. I’m wondering if your program’s any good.” Pro coaches hear that question and they know that the client is most likely saying, “I’m doubting myself right now. I’m doubting my ability to be successful, especially because most of them have tried a bunch of other things before and weren’t successful. So why would I be successful now? Why would this be any different?”

Okay, so your job is to just demonstrate the value, believe in your client more than they believe in themselves, because if you can believe in them more than they believe in themselves, they can borrow some of your belief. And then finally, your third job is, and this again, I alluded to before, create a system that does not allow for indecision. And that is something, again, I’ll be teaching you how to do at Pro Coach Camp. It’s not pushy, it’s not aggressive. I don’t believe in getting people on a call and saying things like, “So we’re going to decide today, yes or no. Are you with me?” I’m not talking about those kind of sales tactics. Okay? I’m talking about a really loving, generous system that feels good to you and feels good to your clients, but does not leave room for indecision.

Okay, last thing that pro coaches know is that most people, I was going to say all people, but, you know, that’s dangerous. So we’ll just say most people are procrastinators and we need to give them a reason to decide now. I fit in this category of most people. I don’t know about you, but when it comes to many things in my life, I’m very good at procrastinating. I’m very good at doing it at the last minute. That is when I tend to get the most inspiration. That’s when the motivation kicks in, that’s when the ideas come, that’s when we’re the most brilliant is at the last minute when we have to get it done, right? And for whatever other reason, we could debate whether this is a good trait or a bad trait, but it is just human nature.

So you have to give people a reason to decide now. Notice I didn’t say give people a reason to be a yes right now because a no is just as good as a yes. I’ll take a no and I’ll take a yes. I just don’t want maybes. But we need to decide right now, or we need to decide by a certain deadline in a reasonable amount of time. What we don’t want is this big long indecision. And people will procrastinate decisions more than anything else, right? So we simply give them a reason to decide right now. It might be a bonus, it might be a deadline, it might be that the doors are closing. There’s all kinds of things you can do that actually make it really fun and take good care of your customers as well. The ones that are yeses are going to be delighted with it. The ones who are nos are just going to become more immediate nos and get out of the miserable maybe, which serves you and it serves them.

So we need to give them a reason to decide now. We’ll talk about a lot of those reasons and come up with what’s the appropriate one for you at Pro Coach Camp. So again, make sure you join me, ProCoachCamp.com. We want to become a pro when it comes to selling. I don’t want you to be an annoying, pushy, aggressive. I don’t want you to be someone that’s not you. I want you to find what is authentically you that serves you, serves your business, and serves your clients. That’s what pro coaches figure out. All right, you guys, thanks for being here today. Have a beautiful rest of your day. I’ll see you next time.

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.