Welcome to Uncomplicating Business. Hi, I'm Sara. I'm glad you're here. What we're going to talk about is continuing the conversation we've been having over the last month or so about what is going on in your world and your business if the thing you are struggling with is not enough clients, not enough income. 

What we started in talking about this a couple of weeks ago, the first episode was, you know, okay, why don't I have more clients? Is it the lack of connection? Are you not talking to enough people? We worked through that one. The next question is like: Is it the plan? Are you not giving things enough time to work? Are you changing too often? Are you not trusting yourself? Right. The third question you can ask yourself that I always ask in lines up with the framework that I teach in the Uncomplicating Business Lab is what's your selling process like, and this is the part where people like crawl under their desks. Actually, I had a connection call with someone this morning, and I said, you know, she asked me what kinds of businesses I support, and I said, well, you know, I we were talking back and forth, and I said some of the people that come my way are the ones that say like, well, you know, selling and sales isn't for me. I'm not good at that. And she sort of like put her little head down and ducked and was like, oh, I recognize that. And so this is the question for you: if you know that the part of business that you avoid is sales, right? 

So the question in, do I have enough clients? You know, why don't I have more people coming towards me? Is it the way you're selling? And in often cases, when I say, "Is it the way you're selling? the real question is, "Are you Selling enough, right? Are you talking about what you do enough? Are you out in the world enough? And this is not go stand on the rooftop and yell about it. This is not go be on every platform because none of that is required. However, you do have to talk about what you're doing, and you have to take ownership of it. So here are today some of the questions that I think it's really helpful to work through if you are wondering where all the clients are, and you're concerned that it might be your sales process. If you're like, oh yeah, I meet new people, I have a solid goal and a plan, and also I don't talk about what I'm doing. 

This is me. This is for you. Okay, ready? So, question number one, you may or may not like. Ready? What responses from people are you avoiding like the plague? And what I mean is this: Are you really worried that people are going to be like that costs too much, so you don't talk about price at all? Are you really worried that people are going to be like God, she's annoying, so you don't repeat yourself? Are you worried that people are going to be like, "Oh gosh, she doesn't belong here. Who does she think she is? So you downplay your expertise. All of those things are things that hurt how you're talking about your product, your service, and hurt your sales because you're avoiding a particular outcome, which is you know a not necessarily the outcome, and b, like inevitable, right?

 Here's the thing I say to people all the time: whatever you're worried that someone is going to think about you as a business owner, they have already thought, right? I often worry that I am being far too much, right? People are going to be like, "Oh my God, she's a lot, and then one day I realized that like people have already thought that of me, like plenty of people have thought that of me, and I haven't like perished on the spot yet. I haven't burst into flames. I haven't melted into a puddle, so I can just carry on. Because as much as there are people who think I'm too much, there are people who think I'm just right, and you can't be too much for your own people. So for you, what is the thing that you are avoiding like the plague? That you're like, oh God, I hate that, right? 

I don't want people to think I'm salesy, so you undersell, right? Are you avoiding people thinking that you are only in it for the money, right? There's something we all avoid. I have a former client. Well, if not former necessarily, she comes in and out of coaching. Actually, she comes back when she's ready to try something new. Who? What she has been worried about all along. Is getting too much business, right? She is sort of disaster planning for what if I get too busy, and so in an effort to avoid getting too busy potentially and feeling overwhelmed, she just didn't talk about the things that she was selling, and what that meant is she never had enough to do, and she so you know the one avoidance of getting too busy held her back from being busy enough. 

When we sort of kind of worked through the idea that she's still in control of her calendar, even if 10 people come at you today. You can say no to some of them, or you can say, "Hey, I can start with two of you now and two of you later. Like that is a problem we solve when we have that problem. Right now, the problem is not enough people, and we have to solve the problem that's in front of us first. Right. So if the problem is not enough people, and you're worried about too many people, let's solve not enough people first. So once we worked through, like, okay, but even to get enough people, you have to be talking about it. And she got more comfortable. Lo and behold, now she has enough people. And there are times where she's got more people than she can manage coming at her. But what she has learned to do is she has made different programs along the years. 

She's started groups. She's lots of different containers. Sorry, the words went away for a second, and that has allowed her to continue to be visible in new ways and really enjoy the work and not avoid getting more because she's worried she's going to get overwhelmed. The next question is, where are you underselling? And the answer is somewhere for sure. I say this because I think there is imagine like a straight line, a horizontal line in your brain. 

There is a continuum, like a number line that goes from underselling at one end to overselling at the other, but overselling is never something we can hit. And so, in our quest not to potentially oversell someone, not to be like the slimy sales guy in the movie, we undersell. We don't talk about things enough. So it's like, okay, I know I should say that three times, but I said it once, and I feel like that should be enough, right? I was just talking to a new connection this morning, and she was like, "My least favorite thing is when someone builds something wonderful and smart and amazing and a really nice tool, and they put it out on LinkedIn once, and then a month later they're mad that nobody got it, because once is not enough. 

That's underselling, right? Like, how many reminders do you need to remember to take your keys to the car with you? And or maybe that's just me, and I need a lot of reminders. But if we think about the way we live our day-to-day lives and how we remind ourselves of things, and then what we expect people to be able to remember in terms of what they're buying from us, our expectations and our our actions are very different, right? You expect to say it once, and that's going to be enough. But as a buyer, that's not your habit. As a human, that's not your habit. So, where are you underselling? Where are you not talking about it enough? And yeah, you have to potentially oversell in order to not be underselling because the continuum is from underselling to overselling. There is no balance point in there that says perfect selling. 

That little balance fulcrum doesn't exist. This is not a teeter totter. This is really just a if you're underselling, you're not overselling, and overselling is where we want to try to hit, but we never do. The next question is, is what you're selling clear, visible, and easy to say yes to? 

For example, I have a client who came to me recently, and she said, "Okay, I know what I'm offering, and and then explained it to me, and it took 10 minutes. And I was like, "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! How? And I said, "Okay, how do people say yes to this? And she was like, "What do you mean? And I said, "Well, like if somebody is interested in what you're doing, how do they say yes? And she was like, "Well, you know, they could, and gave me a list of next steps. It was neither clear, or visible, or easy to say yes to. And in every case, easy to say yes to does not mean it's a checkbox on a website. But it's imagine it like a plant in a pot, right? We have to define the container of our offer for people. 

So, if you want to grow a plant, imagine somebody gave you a beautiful seedling, and instead of giving it to you in a pot, they handed you a handful of dirt with a plant in it and said. Off you go. When you went to maybe you took that little handful of dirt and plant home and you put it on your counter. When you go to water, what's going to happen? Stuff go everywhere. There's dirt everywhere. You're always losing bits. It's like oh my gosh, the plant falls over. It doesn't have a container. There's no boundaries. There's no shape. The container, the offer for your sales, your service, is what gives it shape and makes it clear and easy to talk about. 

So, if your plant pot is 16 sizes all at once, is 62 different patterns, and also sometimes doesn't exist, it's really hard for people to say yes to you, right? It becomes hard for you to talk about. It becomes hard to make it visible if the container is not clear, if the the shape is not straightforward, right? It's the difference between I offer six months of coaching. Here's the price. We meet every week, and well, when you come to coaching, we make a package that fits you, that sometimes is longer and sometimes is shorter, and sometimes meets every week and sometimes doesn't, and the cost varies based on who the person is. And I'll be honest. For my coaching, that's also true. But that's not how I present the container to people because it's too hard for people to hold on to.

 Our brains are too busy. I give them the container. I say most most clients we meet every week for six months, and then if they say to me, "Well, here's what works better for me, we we adjust. Or if I think that person is better suited by every other week, I might say that. But I don't lead with everything is movable, because then people are like, "Oh gosh, it could be anything, right? It's very hard to say yes to everything is movable, but it's a lot easier to say we yes to it's six months and we meet every week, right? So that doesn't mean that's what every person who comes to me signs up for, and that's at my discretion and theirs. But at the same time, the container is clear, right? The container is understandable, and it is easier to talk about coaching or a service that has defined a defined container than it is to talk about a host of maybes and we'll figure it out when we get theirs. 

This is not perfect for everybody. It depends on your service, but everyone I have ever worked with has a version of their service that we can make a clear container from, that we can make it easier to make it visible and easier to say yes to. So if you're wandering around and it's taking you a long time to explain what you're offering to people, like this is something that needs adjustment. The next question is, when I wrote this one down, I laughed, but it was-it's true. Are you treating sales and selling like a conversation or a let a lesson? Because here's the thing: as a former teacher, as a forever teacher, I like to teach a lesson. I have a tendency to do this, but in fact, sales is a conversation. 

So I can't be like, and here's how you have to do this, and here's what should look like, and here's what you're doing wrong. My job is to say, hey, what are you up to? What's hard? Ooh, I've heard that before, and here's what I have thoughts on about it. Right? It's not for me to come down and be like, if you don't do this thing, you're gonna fail. It's not a lecture. It's not a lesson. It's a conversation. So when you are talking about your container, when I say, "Hey, it's six months of coaching every week, I don't then also say to people, "It's six months of coaching. It's every week. You're gonna follow my protocol. I have this little less. I have a lesson that you're going to learn every week, no matter what you actually need. And if you don't sign up, you're like you're going to die without it. Like that's not. I don't. I don't need to convince them. I don't need to scare them. You don't need to scare them. 

You don't even want to scare them. Like none of us want to do that. That's not a fun way to sell. And it doesn't feel like it's in keeping with your integrity or keeping in service to the person you're trying to support. But at the same time, it's important for you to be in conversation. So, like when I write a post, when I do a video, when I make a podcast, I think a lot about would I say this to an actual human being? Would I, if you and I were in conversation right now, would we be talking about this? And the answer is yes. Like I'd be happy. I did a podcast interview yesterday. We talked about some of this stuff on that interview yesterday, but it really matters to be in conversation. 

So if you can't imagine how somebody on the other side of the conversation is going to respond or be in conversation with you, it's probably too much of a lesson or a lecture. If it's something that they're going to feel kind of cowed by or like put down by, even if you don't intend it that way, if it's going to make them feel worse or less or smaller, you're not in conversation, right? That's not that's not the point of the sales process. The point of the sales process is to say, here's this thing I have for you that I think is going to help you. You person on the other side of the conversation, tell me if it fits, and then we continue to talk. And if it doesn't fit. Tell me why, and let me help you find the thing that does.

 Maybe it's because the resource I have needs adjustment, or maybe it's because you need a different resource. That's all. That's sales. Period. That's everything. The last question is, who are your easy yeses? So in your world right now, what I think a lot of time people don't realize is that there are people in your world right now who want to say yes to you. They just haven't had the opportunity. They are the people that are like, "Oh, I always want to do that with you, and you haven't said to them yet, "Well, let's do that, or they are the people that are kind of secretly in the background planning to work with you at some point. They are the people who haven't hired you yet, but will. Like I met somebody a couple of weeks ago. I will tell you that she will be a client of mine, either in the lab or in one-on-one coaching at some point. 

I can't tell you when, but I am 100% certain that she will will work together at some point because I get her and she gets me and I just know it's going to work out and that's super fun. I don't need it to be right now, but I know she will come. She will be an easy yes because she totally gets where we're going here and we are on the same wavelength of how we do things. And so, for you, who are the people in your world like that? Who are the people who are ready to say yes, or close to ready to say yes? And are you talking to them? 

Who are your easy yeses versus who are you trying to drag Into sales because sometimes the teacher in me wants to make sure everyone likes me, everyone has the opportunity to say yes to me, everyone gets on board. But that's not the job of my business. The job of my business is to serve the people who want to say yes and want to be here. It is to serve the easy yeses, the hell yeses, as they were. It's not to serve the maybes, or the people who aren't ready yet, or the people who I'm not for. 

The same is true for you. And so, if what you're doing in selling is trying to talk people into it who are no's, right? I talked to a colleague the other day, and she said, you know, I think maybe when I'm selling, I'm not talking enough about like what it means. I'm talking to people who aren't ready yet. And she said, I have to explain better, you know, that they're not ready. And I said, well, or the alternative would be to talk to the people who are ready and say to them, you're ready if versus you're not ready because it's a different. It's nuanced, but it is like I'd rather talk to the people who are ready and assume that in them than to point out to the people who aren't ready that they aren't. It's that sounds that might sound weird, but think about it for a second. So, you know, for her, it was like, how do you take the how do you take the conversation and focus it on the people who get it? How do you take the conversation and focus it on the people who could say yes sooner than later? How do you take the conversation and turn it away from the people it's not for, because they already know who they are, and so as you're thinking about sales and selling, think about what would it look like for you to sell in a way you loved, because that's a thing.

 Like I sell in a way I love. I love just talking to people. I love meeting new people on one-on-one. I love when I meet somebody and I think like they're going to be a client because they then say to me like, "Oh, here's this thing I need from you. Here's how you could help me. And it's like, "Oh, great, amazing, let's go. And if this is where you're stuck, come into the lab because inside of the lab is where selling for weirdos lives. Selling for weirdos is one of the best things I've ever made, hands down. And I have two kids, and they're great too. But selling for weirdos is up there with them. It is a course about sales and selling. It is really about working through the process of being grounded. 

Sales using connection to create sales and being invitational, selling by giving versus selling by convincing. And if this is what you're stuck on and what you're working on, you're like, I am definitely underselling. 

Come into the lab, work on selling for weirdos. Say to me, Sara, where do I start? And I will point you there. And then, as you're working and you have questions, what you'll say is, Sara, I have this question, and we'll deal with it, because the lab is the support that you need to work through the course with a real person in real time. So, come into the lab sooner than later. I'd love to see your face, and I'd love you to be a part of the community because it's a great place, and we get a lot of progress because together we're accountable. So if sales is the thing holding you back, let's make an adjustment. Let's uncomplicate it, and I will see you in two weeks.