Be the Sherpa, Not the Donkey - EP 023

In this episode, I share some hard learned lessons in sales from my various career and business ventures, and how I’ve shifted my own perception of the sales process from feeling kind of yuck, to one of empowerment and partnership. 

I discuss the importance of ethical practices in sales, the pitfalls of overpromising, and the need for a shift in the power dynamic between service providers and clients–regardless of which side of the table you’re sitting on. 

I dig into the importance of building sustainable relationships based on mutual respect and partnership, particularly in the context of feminine leadership in business.

Join me as I share the mistakes I’ve made, the valuable lessons I’ve learned, and how you can shift your own experience of the sales process in your business.

Key Takeaways

• Sales conversations should feel empowering, not icky. 
• Sales should be a partnership, not a power struggle.
• Understanding client needs is key to effective sales conversations.
• Ethical sales practices are essential for sustainable business.
• Over-promising in sales can lead to disempowerment for clients.
• Feminine leadership is about mutual respect and partnership.

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction and Personal Experiences with Sales
19:03 - Misalignment in the Digital Marketing Space
23:23 - The Importance of a Clean and Ethical Sales Process
25:01 - Shifting from Proving to Guiding
30:10 - Considerations for Buyers
32:36 - Conclusion

If you’re ready to have a deeper conversation about how to maximize impact, profit and pleasure in your business and life, you can schedule a time to connect with me right here >>> 

Did this message resonate with you? If you are enjoying the show, it would mean so much to me if you would take a few minutes to leave a review. Reviews like yours help podcasters like me get my podcast into the ears of more people. Thank you in advance for taking a minute to share your kind words. Rate this podcast on your favorite platform. 💜

Hello and welcome to Pleasure and Profits. I'm your host, Rachel Anzalone. And in the last episode, episode 22, which is called Be(a)ware of the Blueprint, I talked a lot about how we need to be mindful in both buying and in selling blueprint type products. And so if you haven't listened to that episode, I recommend that you go take a listen.

Before or after this, it's totally fine. You don't have to rush over there the second, but I do recommend that you check it out. And in that episode, I talked a lot about buying and selling products and programs at scale. I talked about the pitfalls of claiming to have sort of a one size fits all solution or buying something as a consumer where you think it's a one size fits all solution and how that's never really the case.

You know, much like our clothing, if you buy a one size fits all, I am five foot one and one size fits all never fits me. And so similarly, our products, programs, courses, rarely is there a solution that perfectly fits everybody. And so we have to be aware when we're buying or selling whether or not we're purchasing something that really is customized or really is exactly what we need.

Or if it's something that, maybe the blueprint's good, we can pull some parts and pieces, but we may have to adapt it to fit us. And also to just be aware that we're not making promises to people that our solution will work for everyone because there is no solution ever, under any circumstance that works for every single person all of the time, such as the nature of a blueprint. And so I talk in detail about that in episode 22. And I talked about in there is that one of the reasons that we do this sometimes where we position something as being sort of the cure -all, the solve -all problems, or even when we're in conversation, where we might position ourselves, we might jump in as if we have the ability to solve somebody's problems without really fully understanding the entirety of their circumstances or their experiences or what might be unique to them that would require some nuance beyond sort of just general blanket information.

One of the reasons that we do that, I believe, in my own experience, having done it myself many times as a share in episode 22, is that there's some part of us that has a need, whether it's the need to be the problem solver, it's the need to be seen in a good light, the need to be the person who takes care of things, fixes problems. And we want to do well, we wanna help people, right? We're eager to help people, especially if you're service driven, you are probably somebody who wants to help everybody and you want to believe that your solution could help everybody. But it's just not the case. And when we try to solve other people's problems for them without really understanding the nuance or the detail of the circumstances that they're experiencing, we often are doing both them a disservice and ourselves.

And so I referenced in episode 22 that I have had a huge realization a handful of years ago around how I was making this mistake in my sales conversations specifically, and then what the dynamic was that I was setting up from that. And so I want to dig a little deeper into that aspect and what often happens in sales conversations when we are focused on closing the sale and not on really determining whether or not the service or the product or the program is the right fit for this person. And I have found myself in some really messy situations because of making this mistake. So I want to share that with you, I want to tell you about how I messed up. And I want to tell you about what I learned and how I learned it.

And so I'm going to go back in time a little ways and share my history with sales. In my mid-twenties I had had plenty of experience doing marketing for brick and mortar, a coffee company with multiple locations was the place where I primarily did marketing. And my boss there, shout out Sally if you're listening to this, my boss there was really well experienced in marketing. She had worked for Ingram Micro and IBM and Lotus and was really skilled in branding and marketing. And so she took me under her wing in the years that I worked there and taught me so much. I have so much gratitude as the foundation of so many things that I learned both in marketing and in operations.

And then shortly after leaving there, again, still in my mid -20s, I got hired for a sales position. And I assumed the people who hired me–they knew me–I wasn't, coming off the street. And they hired me for a sales position. And I was like, great, they're going to teach me how to do sales. And I found out very quickly that they believed that because I had a background in marketing, that that meant that I knew how to do sales. It did not. I had no idea how to do sales. And so I fumbled around for about a year trying to figure it out. There really was nobody to guide me or teach me. And I felt like an epic failure the entire time. It was a really painful year of learning.

I was selling conference packages, and I found out a year after I was gone that the leads that I had generated and the work that I had done started to pay off. And so I just didn't have any understanding of the sales cycle. I just felt like I was making phone calls and having very awkward conversations and nothing was coming of it.

So that really is the only true sales position that I have ever had. And mostly it was me scrambling around in the dark trying to figure it out, trying to teach myself how to do this thing.

So fast forward many years, when I became a holistic health practitioner, one of the first things that I did, I ended up taking a job working for a chiropractor. And so I was his assistant. I was helping him in his office. I was working with his patients in a supportive capacity. all sort of under the guise that I was going to take over the nutritional practice within his office, and so it was a whole new environment I've never worked in. And what he had in place that I feel really fortunate to have been able to witness and learn from was a practice management system. And so, a practice management system is a methodology for bringing in clients, effectively selling packages of health and wellness, chiropractic, nutrition, et cetera, and using this very specific process in order to grow your practice in order to have sustainable recurring revenue from clients. It sounds bizarre and weird even saying it now in terms of it being like a doctor and a health practice. But I think we see a lot more of this stuff happening now in terms of packages, wherever you're going, whether it's to acupuncture, a lot of alternative health and wellness things, there's a lot of people operating this way. And there's a lot of really good reasons to do it if it's done well and it's done ethically.

And so the process that I learned from this doctor looks like this. He would host a free class and it would be a lecture, about a particular topic. People would come, he would feed them. And at the end of the night, he would invite people to come into his office for a free assessment. And then they would come into the office and he would do the assessment And then he would send him away and they would come back a couple of days later at which point there was a plan prepared to go over with them about what the care level was that they needed.

And so he would go over the plan with them, what was recommended for their care. And then he would say, Rachel's gonna go over payment options with you. And he would leave the room and leave it for me to sit and talk through with people what it was gonna cost for the package of sessions that he recommended and what their options were in terms of payment plans, etc.

Now, the whole time I was doing this, I felt a little creepy, like it never felt really good to me. I had a lot of stories and a lot of hang around selling around the dollar amounts that we were talking about around it being attached to people's health and wellness and what that meant. And that was all my stuff that had nothing to do with the reality of the circumstances. And I know that now, but like so many people, I just had kind of a yuck idea in my mind of what it meant to sell. And so it was always a little bit uncomfortable for me.

And so I also learned from watching him, that the way to be effective as a holistic health provider and for people to really see you as an expert and to lean on your wisdom and your experience and your advice and to trust it was really to position yourself as the expert, as the person with the answers. And that's the way we perceive medical professionals, right? And so he really leaned very heavily into that, he was the doctor, he was the answer holder.

And so when I eventually started my own practice as a naturopath, that's how I felt I should show up, that I was the expert. I had the answers and I did the work. I would do an assessment and I would spend so many hours researching to find the information to be able to demonstrate that I had the data to back up the assessment I was doing. It was probably pretty excessive the amount of time and effort that I put into preparing for my sessions with clients as a naturopath.

And so what I found over the first couple of years that I was doing this work is that first I started out that way and I was like, yeah, people, they listen to me and they do what I tell them to and they're coming in and they're asking me for advice. And I felt really empowered. I felt really important. I felt like I was doing things the right way. I was being good at this job. I was being a good naturopath and I was building a business the way you're supposed to build a business. That's how I perceived myself in those circumstances.

And after a while, again, it started to feel kind of like, don't know if this is really the right way. What I became aware of was that people were in fact just coming in and asking me to tell them what to do, tell them what to eat. I remember a particular client I had been working with for a while. She was working on making all sorts of changes and improvements to her nutrition and her lifestyle. And she said to me one day, is it okay if I eat tortilla chips, but like if I only eat like five tortilla chips, and then if I have them with like tomato salsa or if I have them with guacamole, is that okay? Is that okay if I eat that?

And I just remember thinking well, how do you feel when you eat that? Do you feel good? Does it upset your stomach? Do you feel heavy? Do you feel sluggish? I started to realize that the dynamic I had created was one in which I had all the answers, therefore I had all the power and that people were coming to me to solve their problems for them. And they were wanting me to solve their problems with herbs and instead of going to a medical doctor to solve their problem with medication.

I suddenly had this awareness of how absolutely disempowering that was for my clients. That I was effectively removing the power from them to be in charge of their own health and wellness, their own experience and bringing it into my hands where now I'm the person who's giving permission to eat potato chips or whatever. And I suddenly felt really...gross about the entire dynamic of the situation. And I started doing my sessions differently. I started asking more questions about what people wanted, what they were feeling, what they believed to be true. But I was just sort of experimenting with this. Like I didn't have any example of anybody else having done this work this way or having witnessed anyone doing this way. The entire dynamic of all of my training, the people I learned from this doctor that I had worked with and observed in his practice and my experience of having gone to holistic practitioners was all around this dynamic of the practitioner, the healer is the expert and the client or patient is there to be told what to do and to be led and guided and directed by the practitioner.

So here I am now doing this work as a holistic practitioner and realizing I really don't like the dynamic of this. And so part of this dissatisfaction was sort of just doling out advice and feeling like I needed to do it quickly and efficiently and at a low cost and that it didn't really feel like a truly supportive environment. It felt like I was just replacing the Western doctor and replacing a medication with an herb. And it didn't feel holistic to me. It didn't feel like the holistic wellness work that I wanted to be doing or that I hadn't set out to do.

And so it was around this time that I started working with the very first business coach that I ever hired. And one of the shifts that I decided I was gonna make was into more online, more of like a coaching kind of dynamic versus people coming into me for clinic appointments. And so she shared with me what her sales process looked like. And in fact, I had purchased from her, so I had been through her sales process. So I already knew what it looked like and I knew what that conversation was.

She walked me through this really clear, simple, clean, dynamic, beautiful sales process. And I started using it and it worked 100 % of the time. And it felt good. It felt empowering. It felt aligned. It felt like I was having the most meaningful, significant, purposeful supportive conversation for both parties, both the person I was talking to as a prospective client, and for me, it felt really mutually nourishing. It was fantastic.

And when I look back at that now, it's something I'm very aware of is that I actually had a sales conversation with her about working with her one -on -one. And then I told her I wasn't ready. And she said, reach out and let me know. Like no hard sell, no push, no nothing. She said, whenever you're ready, let me know. And a year later, I emailed her and I said, I'm ready to do it now. And she said, great, here's the contract. And it was that simple she didn't come chase after me. She didn't try to convince me. She didn't try to lean on, you know, all the pain points that everybody tells you to lean on in order to get somebody to buy. She was honest and had integrity and trusted that the timing would happen when the timing was meant to happen. And it did. And a year later I signed on with her. I learned this beautiful sales process with her. I then was using it for an extended period of time and having great results with it. And then something shifted.

And what shifted was I started working behind the scenes. So I went from doing the holistic health work to helping other people to do the work and their businesses. So it was behind the scenes, helping speakers, authors, coaches, I was doing the marketing and the business strategy work for them, which a hundred percent is more my lane. I love that so much. And what I found was that most of the people who are doing that type of work in the world don't love the business and the marketing side. And I was doing it first as a subcontractor. And so I wasn't having sales conversations. I was just getting hired. I was just getting sort of brought in continuously to support behind the scenes.

But being behind the scenes and supporting other people in their campaigns, I was witnessing what they were doing and how they were selling and what this world of online marketing was really about. And in those spaces, it was very often about the hard sell. It was about having a sales goal and we're gonna hit the goal no matter what. It was about targeting people and bringing them in to make sure that they got convinced that this was going to be the thing for them. It was so driven on dollar amounts, hitting revenue goals and being able to claim a level of growth and claim a level of enrollment. And it was not in most cases really about supporting people in the best way possible.

That was not the case 100 % of the time. There are people that I worked with that 100% had big hearts, very caring, taking care of, but a lot of what was happening, you know, this was 12 years ago in the digital marketing space was that it was just about like driving revenue at whatever cost. And it felt so terrible to me. It was really, really disheartening.

And it was sort of one of those things that it was like, I was just in it up to my eyeballs. And at some point I was like, how did I end up in here? How did I end up swimming in this water that feels so yucky to me? And I just want to get the fuck out of this water.

And it was sort of one of those things like, the, the frog in the boiling pot of water, I was just in it. I was doing work. was behind the scenes and then it was like, okay, now I'm helping out at this event. Now I'm, in the sales conversations. Now I'm, getting deeper and deeper. Until suddenly I realized I was in boiling water and I was not happy with it. I was not okay with it. And I found myself in some really, really uncomfortable situations where I just felt like the way sales were happening felt so unethical and so just gross to me that, yeah, that I had to extract myself from these situations.

And so, as I've shared in the past, I was being hired for certain things, but I had this other perspective and these other experiences I was bringing in. I was sort of being a Jedi behind the scenes, like getting, you know, sort of my two cents in in places where they probably didn't really belong, but I knew I had something of value to add. Eventually I left all those contracts. I went on my own. I was like, I'm going to do this, but I'm going to do it my way. I'm going to do it in a way that feels really good. and I want to be doing the strategy in a different way, where it's really centered around integrity and long -term goals and the impact that we want to have in the world and not just on chasing top line revenue in order to be able to claim somewhere that you increased your revenue year over year by whatever percentage.

And so when I started doing that work, this was the first time that I'm back in this place where I'm having sales conversations. And there was that element of feeling like I needed to prove that I could do this. I needed to prove that I could do it on my own. I needed to prove that I had my own value to bring.

And so I found myself in sales conversations, not over promising because there was a 0% chance that I would not deliver So I wasn't over promising. What I was doing was promising that I could do it, that I could fix it, that I could make it happen, because that's what I felt like I needed to do in order to validate that they should hire me. And I needed to close the sales. I needed to make the money, right?

But I got to this place a few years ago where I had taken on a number of contracts in a short period of time and...and I was really excited about them. I was on this massive momentum wave. I was super amped up about it. I was getting referrals left and right. I was sort of at a place where I was contemplating if I was gonna start an agency and hire subcontractors, Like I was saying no to clients because I didn't have the capacity to do the work that I wanted to do for them or that I knew I could do for them myself. And so I started to think about subcontractors. I started to think about different ways that I could continue to grow the business and take on more clients without me being the one who is actually hands -on in everything. And I knew that wasn't the thing I wanted to do. I'd actually been in that place once or twice before and consciously made the choice that that was not the thing I wanted to do. But I was in that spot again.

So I was really excited about these great new clients that I was bringing in. And then over a period of some months, I realized what their expectation was, was really out of alignment with what I had sold them, with what I had articulated in a contract, with what was the conversation that we had. And I don't let balls drop, so I'm going to show up, I'm going to get the stuff done, and we'll sort it out after. Like, that's always my approach. I think that comes from working in the restaurant industry. You don't stop in the middle of a shit storm and try to figure out what caused it. You get through the shit storm and then afterwards you go, okay, what do we need to do differently so that doesn't happen again?

And so I worked my way through these number of contracts and towards the end of that time period, I was exhausted and I was really unhappy and just thinking about like, what the hell, how did this happen? I thought I was getting these great new clients. My close rate was like 90% in sales conversations. Like I thought I was killing it. And then I was spending a day with a coach and he said something that it really was like somebody slapped me in the face. We were talking about sales conversations. He was sharing his sales process and I had been through his sales process, so I knew exactly what it was. And surprise, surprise, it was really similar to the sales process I had learned a decade earlier: very clean, very elegant, very simple, very ethical, really beautiful sales process. And I had apparently forgotten in those years.

And this is what he said that just smacked me in the face. And this is entirely paraphrasing. These were not his words 100%. But this is what I heard. And this is the story that this is the the version of this I really settled in for me.

Never tell a client what you can do for them. Because then you have to prove that you can do it and the onus is on you to make it work. Instead, let them tell you what they're ready to change, why they wanna make that change, what they're willing to do to create that change. And now you become the guide, the sherpa, instead of the donkey carrying the load.

And I realized that in these sales conversations that I had had in the previous year, that I was so eager to maintain this close rate and I was so excited about taking on newer, bigger clients and bigger projects. And I really thought I was on this great trajectory, that I was so committed to riding that wave that what I was doing in my sales conversations was telling them how I could fix all of their problems. The dynamic I was setting up by doing so was one in which they just had to tell me what the problems were and then it was my job to come in and fix them. And the power dynamic was that the entire workload then would be on me and not on them.

One of these conversations in particular, remember having the person said to me that they wanted to create an evergreen funnel, and they said to me, everybody keeps telling me I can do this. You know, this person and this person and this person, they all tell me they're making all kinds of money doing this, but I've never been able to get it to work. And I said, well, yeah, I've got all kinds of people making money. I've built all sorts of these kinds of funnels. I've got all kinds of people making it work. I can do it. I can do it for you. And then proceeded to spend almost an entire year having this circular conversation where this person would say to me, I don't know, I've never seen it work. I don't know, you're gonna have to show me, you're gonna have to show me.

And the best comparison I can give to really give perspective to this is can you imagine starting a romantic relationship with someone with the intention that you wanna get married and you wanna make a life together. And them starting out on that first date saying, yeah, I don't know, these things never work out for me, but I don't know, maybe you could do it, maybe you could be the one. And you're saying, yeah, yeah, I can show you, I can show you that a relationship can actually work. I can show you that this can work. And then continuing month after month after month to have that conversation. Like you would never ever ever do that in that dynamic.  And yet that's what I was doing in this business relationship was continuously saying, I got it. I'll show you, I can make it work. I've done this lots of times, right? And so I was in this energy of needing to prove myself.

And a couple of other client relationships I found myself in that same time period it was a similar dynamic. There were some differences, but clients came to me saying, I saw what you did for this person. I want you to do the same thing for me. And I was like, yeah, sure, let's do it. And I have found myself in some of these situations where I got in and found out that they hadn't been honest with me about the revenue they were generating, either over -inflating or under -inflating. They weren't transparent about the size of their existing audience, or about their team and what their team's capacity was. And so I had found myself in these really messy situations where I effectively said, I can do for you what I did for this other person. And then got in there and found out that none of the circumstances actually matched what that other persons were.

And so again, it comes back to this poorly balanced relationship dynamic where one person holds the power, the other person has to prove. And that's not a partnership. That's not a relationship that is sustainable. That's not a feminine empowered relationship.

And so I had this realization that I had been setting up this dynamic through my sales conversations, that then when it came time to get the work done, that I was the one who had to carry the load and do the work and prove that these things were possible and it took all of the onus off of the client to carry their own weight, to provide the resources, to be in a true partnership. And that's not sustainable, that is not sustainable.

And so my invitation to you here is to consider if you're finding yourself in relationship dynamics with clients, customers, where you are feeling like it's on you somehow to prove that your process, that your tool, that your system works. Then I would ask you to consider how you're setting up the sales conversation, what that dynamic is, and whether or not you're showing up in the energy of, can do this. My system works, my process works, I can do this for you. Or whether or not you're showing up in the energy of, tell me about what's going on, share as much information with me as you can. I think I can guide you through this process, but we would be partners in that. Are you willing to partner in that with me? Here's what my expectations are from my partners.

There's one more layer of this that I want you to consider. And that is when you're on the other side, not when you're making the sale, not when you're the one in the sales conversation and the energy that you maybe are showing up with in those conversations, but when you are buying, when you are considering investing in someone.

Are you showing up in those conversations ready to partner, understanding that everything is a relationship, that everything requires input and engagement from both sides? Or, are you showing up with an expectation that whatever this person's work is, whatever their service is, that you're gonna hire them and that they then need to prove their value, they need to prove their worth for the investment that you just made.

Are you showing up in those situations as the person holding the power over somebody else and requiring them to be the donkey? Or are you showing up in those situations and those conversations as a mutual partner as well?

I believe that the way to sustainable business, that the way to sustainable growth, that the way to creating the impact, the profit, and the pleasurable lifestyle that we all want is really dependent on relationships that are at their foundation partnerships and not in dynamics of taking advantage of power or being in a position of being taken advantage of from power. And that is what feminine leadership means. That is what feminine energy in business means. It does not mean putting girl power on your coffee mug or claiming to be a feminine leader. It means that you treat everyone as a partner, that everybody has a seat at the table, that our conversations are mutually respectful, that our exchanges are mutually respectful. And that's really what's at the heart of all of this. And so I invite you to consider how you show up, whether it's on the selling side or on the buying side and how you can show up even better, how you can show up really in a relationship of partnership from whatever side of that table you're sitting on.

Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate your time and your attention and until next time, I am wishing you even more pleasure and profits. Take care.