How to Get Out of Your Own Way When It Comes to Sales Artwork

Uncomplicating Business with Sara Torpey

Business gets WAY less complicated when you keep it human. In the Uncomplicating Business world, we use a simple, flexible four-part framework—ground, plan, connect, sell—to help you simplify decisions, set (and keep!) effective timelines, and show up consistently without burning out. You’ll hear bite-sized solo episodes and thoughtful interviews that turn messy challenges into actual actions, from pricing with confidence to building trust with yourself, your offers, and your community. Come for the clarity, stay for the momentum. Let's create *functional success* - where successful businesses are one part of our successful lives - together.

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Uncomplicating Business with Sara Torpey

How to Get Out of Your Own Way When It Comes to Sales

October 27, 2026 • Sara Torpey • Season 4 • Episode 19

0:00 | 13:32

This episode is for you if you're doing all the right things and still not closing sales - and you have a sneaking suspicion the problem might be you.

This is part four of our series on what's really going on when you don't have enough clients. We've covered connection, planning, and the sales process. Now we're getting into what I call the squishy part: the way you're thinking about sales, and whether that's quietly working against you.

Three things you'll walk away with:

Your logical brain and your emotional brain are probably giving you different answers. Do you actually believe in yourself, in your offer, and that people will buy it? Logically, most of us say yes. Emotionally? Sometimes that's a very different story - and it's the emotional answer that shows up in a sales conversation.
Change is the whole point, and your brain might be fighting it. You can't grow your business and stay exactly the same. If you're trying to do both at once, it creates an internal conflict that makes you inconsistent - sometimes it feels like it's working, sometimes you're in a black hole. Your brain needs to decide that change is okay.
Would you buy what you're selling, at the price you're selling it? If the answer is no, that's the problem - not the clients. You can't sell at a price you don't actually believe in, and you can't convince other people your work is worth it if you're not sold on it yourself.

If confidence is the thing that keeps getting in your way, the grounding mini-course inside the Lab is exactly where to start. 30-day free trial available through mid-November - reach out directly to grab it.

Join the Uncomplicating Business Lab: https://www.torpeycoaching.com/thelab

Grab your free masterclass: https://torpeycoaching.kit.com/freemasterclass

Welcome, welcome to this episode of Uncomplicating Business. I am Sara Torpey. I am a business coach. I work with all the experts that are really good at what they do, like you, but are busy tripping over their business. You know what that's like, and we simplify all of that. So today we are talking about what to do if you don't have enough sales. We have spent the last few weeks talking about the same question, and today we are getting into what people refer to as the squishy part.

Sometimes the reason you don't have more sales is the way you're thinking about sales, not the things you're actually doing. You can be doing all of the right things, and still be still be having issues closing sales because of the way you're thinking.

This is a thing; it happens a fair amount of the time. I think probably 50% of the people I work with have this in the way, and it is something we have to work through. So today, what I want to talk to you about are the questions that I tend to ask my clients when I suspect that confidence or mindset are tripping them up from a sales perspective. I actually just got off a call today with a new client who is in this boat, and these are the questions I asked her.

So, for you, the first question to think about is: Do you actually believe in yourself, the thing you're offering, and that people will buy it? And most of us logically say yes, and emotionally have a different answer. So, if your emotional answer, your like deep-seated fear answer, is different than the actual answer that your logical brain tells you, if there's a mismatch there, please, you know that's something you have to think about. It is very, very difficult to sell. Maybe, it is very, very difficult to sell a tool or a resource that you don't believe in. It is very, very difficult to sell when you're not sure anybody is going to want what you have.

The client I just talked to today was. I said, you know, where is your belief in this, in this tool you're selling? And she said, you know, I know it works. I don't know if anybody wants it. I don't know if anybody's going to ever buy it. So she's got confidence in herself and in the tool, but not necessarily in the buyers, and that's tricky, right? If she thinks she's going to have to drag people kicking and screaming to it.

That's going to be a problem. The second question, this one is ugly, and I am sorry for it in advance. Is which thing is scarier, staying the same or changing? Because the default setting most of us have is that change is scarier, right? But when you are growing a business, the whole point is we're trying to change. If we don't change, the business doesn't grow. And so, for me as a business owner, the scariest thing is no change, right?

When I am not moving forward in change-that's a bigger problem than having change happen. I want change to happen. I want new clients. I want more money. So do you. But new clients and more money are change. They're what we think of as good change, but your brain doesn't know the difference. All change is change, and so it is worth inquiring with your brain for a second to be like, "Hey, are we avoiding change? Is something that's happening here that we are trying to sell something and also stay exactly the same? Because you can't do both. It's like trying to walk on your hands and walk on-I don't know-that's a bad analogy. It's going downhill very fast here. It's like trying to do two mutually exclusive things at once. It's like trying to ride a bike while you're driving a car. It would not go super well. So you trying to stay the same and change all at once creates this internal conflict, and it means you're inconsistent.

It means that sometimes it feels like it's working, and sometimes you're in a black hole. It means that you're fighting against yourself, and you know that takes a lot of time and energy, right? Like it's really frustrating. So it's time to check in and really decide that change is okay.

The next question is more of like a how question. It's how do you practice belief and confidence because it is a practice. We have talked about this on the podcast many times. Here and if I can remember, I will push you to some other episodes. It's like how do you practice trust? We did all of 2025 here was about trust. How do you practice trust? What does that actually look like? If you go back to the beginning of 2025, there's a bunch of episodes about how you actually practice trust.

This is how you practice belief and confidence. How do you practice that? The client I was just talking to today said to me, you know, I always give myself a couple of minutes to meditate before I do a coaching call, so that I can sort of clear my mind, settle into my confidence, settle into myself. And I said, "Well, how come you're not doing that same thing before a sales call? She just kind of looked at me like, "Oh crap, right? I have another confidence, another client. Sorry, who every time she makes a change in her business, she needs to almost restart the practice of belief.

So last year we changed her business model. She changed from someone that was focused on a higher number of lower-paying clients versus a lower number of higher-paying paying clients, we shifted her model in the last 18 months to fewer clients, higher pay from each one, which has been great in what she really wanted, and also she's had to come back time and time again to practicing belief and practicing confidence in this new way of working, because the work is actually pretty much the same. It's just she's getting paid more by a given individual, and it throws her brain off, and she gets freaked out. So, what we have learned is every time we change a model, every time we're doing something new, every time something feels different in our brains, whether it's actually different or not, we need to go back to, oh wait, I still belong here.

Oh wait, I still have all the skills I had yesterday. Nothing actually is new besides the way I'm doing it. I still know what to do. I was talking to a client who owns a professional organizing business recently, and she said we years ago noticed in her that in every job she does, she does this amazing thing.

She starts the job. She like if she was cleaning out a house, she at the first week of the job is like this is amazing everything is great everything's going well. Week two she's like great great great we're making progress great. Week three she's like holy God we're never gonna finish this it's never gonna work everything's going wrong it's dirty it's messy it looks like a disaster she calls it the trough of despair and then she's in the trough of despair for like a week or two, and then it's like, oh, this is going to be great, and the client's really happy. Every single job she does has a trough of despair, and recognizing that lets her come back to like, oh wait, I've done this before, and her confidence. So when she has that crazy trough, whether it's in a sales process or in her client work, she knows it's like normal and part of the process, and she's not going to die.

The last thing is, you know, the first question is like, do you believe in your solution yourself and that people will buy? The question that actually comes alongside of that that I'm going to end with here is: Are you sold on your offer offered by you at the price point you're offering it? Because here's the thing that happens: I have recently had a client come to me, and she said she's selling a service. It's at $1,000 a month, so $12,000 a year. And then she said to me, "I would never pay anybody that much for this. Well, here's the thing: if you're never going to pay anybody that much for it, no one's going to pay you that much because you don't actually believe it should cost that. You believe it should cost less. So are you sold? Would you buy?

Do you think other people would buy for the thing you're selling at the price you're selling it at? It's a rare thing in my world that somebody is overpricing something. Actually, and the service this client is selling is entirely worth the price she has, but if she doesn't, if she wouldn't be willing to pay for a service at that rate, it's really hard for anyone else to, right? And and affordability, you and I both know is in the eye of the beholder.

It is what's affordable to one person isn't to another, and those people might have the same amount of money. Everybody's got a different version of this, and so if you are not sold on your work, your expertise at your price, if you wouldn't buy it, you have some questions to answer, you know, what would it take for you to be willing to buy it, or do you need to adjust? Like, what is it that you need to adjust? Is it your belief, or is it the price? Because it's one of those two things for the most part.

If you are having a hard time with clients, with having them come your way, and you think it's confidence in the uncomplicating business lab, I have a mini course on grounding and getting grounded in yourself, on plugging yourself into your expertise, your skills, your value, your knowledge, your experience, and how to build the practice of doing that on a regular basis, so that you don't become untethered, floating around wondering what the hell you're doing here. It is a practice to stay in your confidence, to turn down the noise in your brain that tells you you shouldn't, that you don't belong, and to continue forward. This grounding course is about that practice.

It's like five little mini lessons. It's within the lab, and if you want to start the lab with a 30-day free trial, it is here for you through the middle of November, for about another month. So if that's something you want to play with, come try it, because I want you to have the clients you want to have, the people who need you want to be served. You want the business to grow, and so these are the things that matter in sales.

These are the things that matter in getting clients, and the sooner you start making moves to implement, to change, to adjust, to be okay with change versus staying the same, the faster you're going to get where you want to go. If you have questions for me, please don't hesitate to reach out. You know how to find me. I'm Sara at TorpeyCoaching.com.

You can find me on the socials, although I don't really answer Instagram messages because I'm hardly ever on Instagram. So find me on LinkedIn or Facebook, and if I can be a resource to you, please let's talk. I'll talk to you soon. Have a great week.