Ep. 07: Asking for Sales Without Anxiety Pt. I

Intellectually, if you are a business owner, you know that you need sales to keep afloat. 

But this is where all the anxiety and fear can bubble up and prevent us from sharing how to work with us, much less making an ask directly to people who seem interested.  

We’ve all experienced when people do this wrong. I started avoiding LinkedIn altogether because of how my inbox would blow up from people scraping my data and sending me pitches without knowing anything about my business. 

Or what can feel even worse, people asking you questions like they’re genuinely trying to build a connection when instead they’re trying to find an “in” to sell you.

It’s all gross, and you’re right to be turned off by that. But that’s not what sales *has* to be. That’s what capitalist patriarchy has taught us; it had to be if we want to be successful.

Just like with everything we’ve been talking about in this series, you have to find your way to do this. That’s how you go through your sales process with confidence and out of an irresistible desire to share your offer with folks for their benefit, not yours.

Adding Value to Earn Asking for a Sale

It’s not a revolutionary act to say “hey, offer as much value as possible,” but let’s go a bit further because that’s been warped to the point of being manipulative.

What does “value” mean? I found out recently there’s a whole subfield in philosophy called axiology that discusses this, which is weird but also makes sense. Value is subjective. 

However you choose to define it, and we will in a few moments, is what the bad actors don’t realize. They’re trying to extract from something that’s not there. They believe they’re entitled to our time, attention, and money.

That’s why they get left on read or blocked.

Instead of entitlement, we want to earn it from the people who were trying to reach with our message. 

The way that I approach that is by offering:

✦ Support and encouragement when they’re going through a hard time

✦ A new way of thinking about or approaching a new problem

✦ Help get a quick win that builds momentum toward their desired result

✦ Keep them aware of new and developing news in your subject of expertise, and analyze the context and why it’s relevant for them

✦ Building connection by showing the person behind their business so folks can gauge whether there’s a fit based on shared values and vibes

I’m sure you can probably think of a few more, but for the purposes of sales, there are two I want to focus on. 

One often precipitates the other: getting someone to consider a new perspective to what they’re struggling with, and momentum toward their desired result.

When I was a tech consultant and nurse and on the fast path to burnout, I knew I wanted to pursue entrepreneurship. But I didn’t know what that would look like. I went through a certification program from the National Society of Health Coaches.

While I don’t have that credential anymore, I learned models and techniques I still carry forward in marketing and sales.

The model is called the transtheoretical model of behavior change. You don’t have to know all of the details, but it says that people do not make changes in their lives, even health changes, because they should. 

We need to connect what we’re trying to change with what’s important to us and discover our own motivation.

Marketing helps them get to this point. I have a content series about taking this model and translating it to marketing that I will release soon because it’s already mostly completed. If you’ve downloaded my companion resource, you’ll be notified.

In sales, we are not convincing people that they need to act. They should already know that and be ready to take action. 

With sales, we should be identifying those who are ready to take the next step and giving them the information they need to make the right decision for themselves.

Which brings me to my concept of flagship content. We already talked about this in the last episode on the content ecosystem. I was talking about focusing on framework building content first, and your flagship content is your content and comprehensive, intentionally structured to provide a smaller result that naturally leads to the larger transformation your paid work provides.

The issue here is we often see what others do and think we need to do something as elaborate or resource-intensive, but it’s really up to us.

I’ve seen folks do a free revenue calculator. I’ve seen folks hold weekly coffee chats and create community that way. 

What matters is that it’s substantial enough that people have real actionable takeaways and give them a sense of your approach, method, unique teaching style. It’s the free trial or the test drive. 

The main decision you should make as you decide what will be your flagship content is whether it will be time-sensitive or evergreen. This will often depend on the offer and your capacity.

Workshops, summits, and 5-day challenges inherently have a timed component so lend themselves well to having a call to action that’s also time sensitive like a group cohort. They can be a lot easier to set up, but then you have to do a lot of promotion to fill it and 

Evergreen flagship content is great for us low-capacity folks who don’t have predictable capacity to host a monthly workshop or office hours. It can be a lot to set up,  ,but once it’s done, all you have to do is polish and optimize when you have the spoons.

Examples of evergreen flagship content are:

✦ Private podcast or audio series
✦ Video series 
✦ Email course
✦ A community space on Skool or Discord (among others)
✦ Quiz
✦ Book
✦ Asset collection like stock photos or Canva templates
✦ App or template

ACTION STEP

So this one is going to be twofold: first, we’re going to plan what will make for good flagship content. Think about your offers and the transformation they provide in your clients’ lives, businesses, relationships, and finances.

➤ What’s the first thing you work on together?

➤ What insight or perspective helps folks shift out of surface-level thinking into understanding the root cause of the issue they’re struggling with?

➤ Do you have a resource, workshop, or template you use with clients that could stand alone? 

Then, notate somewhere whether you plan to do a time-sensitive or evergreen. Mark it down in your calendar and start telling your business besties or shout it out in the Storyspark Lounge. 

Give yourself a 4-6 week buffer if you need to create new content. This is why it helps to take something you’ve already created, but often you’ll still need a landing page, follow-ups, and maybe other logistics. Don’t overcommit and then beat yourself up, something apparently I still need to be told because it’s what I did with this audio series.