OH SH*T I'm in Sales?

INTRO

Most women whom I work with definitely did not go into business so they could become professional salespeople. None of them woke up one day and said to themself, My life would be complete if I could only have the chance to convince someone that they really need to buy something from me. And wouldn’t it be great to spend most of my days thinking of ways that I could get strangers to want to solve a problem they didn’t really know they had? Yup! That would be awesome! If you are someone who had this dream, I haven’t met you yet. And to be completely transparent, you can stop reading this book, you most likely don’t need it!

Becoming really good at sales is more often than not an afterthought for women who are super excited about starting their own business.

Now, everyone has their own reasons when it comes to why they are self-employed, but most involve the fact that they are really good at something and want to help others get good at it too. There is something they are passionate about, something they have figured out over the years and have some sense of pride knowing they have expertise in this area. Then one day, this little seed of a thought forms in their mind about how cool it would be to spend all their time doing this thing for a living. They dream of making money doing it, that’s for sure. But rarely does the thought of HOW they will make that money enter into their minds. If it does, they have watched or listened to some online guru tell them that all they have to do is put it out there and they will buy. Kind of like Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams: Build it and they will come.

Let’s take life coaches as an example. Your traditional life coach has most likely done a lot of self-development work. At one point in their life, they found themselves deeply unhappy about some aspect of their life. Maybe it was over a relationship, maybe it was over money. Sometime in their life they felt that something was lacking and they were not quite fulfilled. So they went on a journey to successfully improve their life. They most likely hired a coach who was amazing and helped them through a process that yielded great results. The transformation wasn’t easy, but the exhilaration of having their life transformed created a renewed sense of purpose for them. Every day as they walk through life experiencing a completely new way of living, they say to themself, I can’t believe how great I feel and I have GOT to help other people feel the same way!

Another example might be a woman in a dull job, working for a company where she enjoys what she does. She’s very good at it, but she feels somewhat unfulfilled. Day in and day out, she goes to work to make someone else money. Maybe she isn’t respected the way she would like to be. Maybe she just doesn’t respect the people around her or the values of the company she works for. But there is something nagging at her deep inside that causes her to think, Hey, I could be doing this for myself, in my own business, instead of putting money into the pockets of other people. I’m going to start my own business.

There are a million scenarios about why women want to build their own empire, but none of them started because that voice inside of her was saying, I can’t wait to go out there and sell myself!

Can I get an amen here, lady??

That brings us to how the idea for OH SH!T I’m in Sales? was born. As a sales coach and business strategist, I have witnessed many of these moments of awakening for my clients and for women that I meet when networking, that painful moment when an entrepreneur realizes that to achieve the goal of becoming a successful business owner, they have to become a successful salesperson. Yup, this is the OH SH!T moment that hits them squarely between the eyes and the fear and dread start to bubble up in their gut. They realize they have gotten themselves into a pickle. To be successful at their dream, they have to learn to love the one thing they never thought they would ever have to do—SELL!!!

This is the make-or-break moment for most entrepreneurs. If they could visualize a road that forks not once, but three times, leaving three different paths they could choose to go down, that’s where they are, right at that junction in the road of sales. If they choose the first path, they stay in fear, dread, and avoidance of sales and eventually their business will wither and die. The second path is where they dig their heels in and work like heck to figure out how to DO sales. While this path is leading them closer to running a successful business, it’s still a tough road to follow. While they’re going through the motions, doing all the things they need to do to generate revenue, they’re still in resistance and it’s an uphill climb that can be tiring and only yield sporadic results. But the third path is the choice that leads them toward embracing the fact that sales can be fun and that they don’t have to resist or avoid it. They can make sales their BFF and watch their business soar!

I consider it my job in this book to help you understand exactly how easy it is to choose that third path and never look back again. Whether you would classify your current relationship with sales as toxic or just passing friends, this book will help you understand why you want sales to be your new BFF and how you can get there.

We’re going to take a journey together that will be interesting and hopefully fun for you. First, we are going to dive into what I really mean when I say you have to make sales your new BFF. Whenever there is a problem to solve, and, believe me, if you don’t enjoy selling, you do have a problem, gaining an awareness and deep understanding of what the problem is and where it comes from is the first step to solving it.

After that, I’m going to introduce HOW to not only enjoy selling, but will do it by teaching you a repeatable process that will help you create a completely new perspective around sales. My desire for you is to use this process for the rest of your life. We will call it your automatic attitude adjustment tool. You will have it in your back pocket and think of me each time you find yourself in a situation where you have fallen back into old ways of thinking about sales. You will pull it out, work through the steps, and get back on track in a heartbeat.

Along the way, I will share stories of other women who are recovering sales haters. We will talk about where they started, what they did to shift their perspective of sales, and the results they got once they successfully followed that third path. What I’ve learned from my over 15 years of being involved in sales training is this: People learn best from each other. I can transfer information to you (that’s another way of saying teach), but the learning actually happens when it is set into context that makes sense to you. Something you can really resonate with. So I’ve got lots of those examples for you in this book as well.

Learning to get comfortable with selling can actually be fun. Trust me, I got you on this one! Let’s get started!

CHAPTER 1

MAKING SALES YOUR BFF

One night, a casual acquaintance of mine, someone who I knew from a women’s group I was a member of, called and asked if I was interested in coming to a wine tasting in her home that upcoming Friday night. Because I had no life at the time, I hesitated for about a tenth of a second and said, Sure!! What time? I’m not someone you would think of as a wallflower so it didn’t bother me to think about the fact that I wouldn’t really know anyone there. I can generally talk to anyone and especially if it was about one of my favorite subjects—wine!

Little did I know that this was the beginning of an amazing relationship with a group of eight women that has lasted for more than 20 years. As we mixed and mingled with each other that first night and were treated to a guided wine tasting experience that the hostess put together, it was almost like seeing the individual stars in the sky start swirling into a pattern and becoming the cosmos. By the end of the night, we all decided that we had so much fun, that we wanted to do it again. We decided to meet monthly and rotate the hosting responsibilities. This meant that each month someone would organize the wine