Getting Over The Fear Of Selling Coaching

When I started with my coaching business, I was terrified...

The scariest part, by far, was embarrassing myself with a crash and burn business. I had already been successful as a corporate executive, and I wasn't about to show up to a life coaching business and fall flat on my face.

Ironically, this same fear caused me to do exactly that.

I fell on my face.

Business 101 - you're supposed to make money solving problems faster than you spend it to solve the problem. 

In my case, I spent far more than I was making for a long time and it was mainly because I was afraid to sell my services.

I was so afraid to sell my services, that after 6 months of hemorrhaging cash for coaches, courses, masterminds, networking companies, you name it, I finally made my first sale, for $10/hour to my best friend.

Now that, is embarrassing.

The only way to blast past this, was to learn to love the sales process, and that was a journey that took me some time, but now, it allows me to be genuinely proud of what I've created as a business, and that's exactly what I want for you, Coach.

You got this. Enjoy the episode.

To Your Success,

Amanda

Getting Over The Fear Of Selling Coaching

Transcript of Vlog - Aug 15, 2020

I know how to scare a coach. It's the word "sales"... mmhm, makes them run the other direction when they're first starting out with their coaching business. And I know exactly what that feels like, but we're going to talk about why coaching sales don't have to be icky. It does not have to be a big sleaze Fest, um, and selling can actually be quite a rewarding experience.

Exactly. So let's take into it. So we're talking about how sale selling doesn't have to be icky today, and we have some things to keep in mind as you sell. The first thing is you're selling something All the time, all the time, all the time, every interaction you have as a human has some degree of sales going on. It's convincing somebody of your idea.

It's asking who wants what for dinner? All of these are some degree of selling. Yeah, exactly. It's really fascinating. When you dig into persuasion and rhetoric, I'm a bit of a nerd on these things. Oh, I love this topic. And just even the clothes that we wear or the words that we use or the way that we speak,

we're convincing people that we are, who we are and what we represent all the time. It's literally inescapable. So to be afraid of it is kind of like being afraid of your own shadow Part of the human situation. Absolutely. Especially as social creatures, we're constantly having to interact with others. And that means we're constantly some degree selling. So if you're afraid of that human interaction in that sales process,

it's going to make life really hard for you as a human. Exactly. Now I know what you might be thinking. Hey Amanda. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what about the money part? I get it. Cause I was so scared of selling my first six months at that I was a serious coach. I didn't tell anybody about my business.

She was a closet coach. I was, yeah. I was so afraid of being judged for selling the service. And when I finally did sell the service to my best friend, it was for $10. It was, it was like an $80 package. Yeah. And then they didn't show up. Yeah. It was not so good. Um, but the thing is,

is that at the time, if you think about it, I was afraid to sell this idea that I was a coach, right. Money or not. There was this fear of standing for something and standing in the power that my coaching process can help. How could it be worth that much kind of thing? And therefore you played small and it felt icky as a result.

Exactly. Now here's one thing I will tell you that absolutely helped alleviate so much pressure. And that was that it's their decision to make whether they coach with you and invest with you, not yours. Absolutely. They get to decide what they do with their resources. And you're not an icky person, right? You're not going to use Jedi mind tricks to convince somebody instead,

you're going to let them make decision for themselves. Exactly. So just keep in mind that when you're selling your coaching, you're not forcing anybody to do anything. You're not manipulating anybody to do anything. In fact, if you're following what we teach, which is consciousness based, selling, it's all about keeping things above board. It's all about keeping things about clarity and connection with each other,

but also with the goal of the client, it's all about their success. It's not about you tricking them into having a better life already. It's the light side of the force for sure. Yeah, exactly. Now the other thing to keep in mind is that if you're ever worried about whether maybe it's icky, maybe it's not icky. And you're wondering if there's a bright line there is,

and that is consent. Absolutely consent keeps it from being icky. That means you're asking, do you want to have this discussion? And they're saying yes or no. And obviously if they say, no, you honor it. And if they say, yes, well that's consent. Yes, exactly. I didn't believe this. At first, when I first learned this principle,

but people prefer to say yes, they prefer to keep going in a conversation. They don't want to walk away from a conversation unless they really have a reason to do so. So by asking consent, I think a lot of times people don't want to do that because they're worried that they're going to plant this idea that they can walk away. And just like I said before,

it's their decision to make. So if you're suggesting like there's the door, they're not going to suddenly remember the door was there. They knew that all the way along the way. Absolutely. Yeah. So the final thing here is just keep in mind that we have this negativity bias. Um, yes, especially around sales, but just in general, we tend to look for things that are risky and scary and about.

75% of the data that our prefrontal cortex is processing is kind of dealing with things that might be threats. They might be bad. We've evolved that way. That's what kept us alive when there were lions and tigers and bears. Exactly. So we tend to remember those negative experiences with sales first and foremost, just because that's the way our, our bias and our mind is,

is set up. Right. But I'm going to encourage you to remember those awesome purchases. Everyone's had one where they spend money, but they loved what they got or they even learn something through the experience. Exactly. So think about the times in your life where you've made like a big investment, maybe it was your first car, or maybe you bought a house or a piece of jewelry or something,

a great handbag me and just really intentionally focus your attention on what made that pleasurable. Why was that a really nice experience? And what could you learn from that to inform the way you show up with your sales? Now we wanted to leave you with something that could actually help you in making, um, less, less kind of tension in the of sales,

kind of to make it a more fun process for you. Exactly. So what we suggest you do is sit down and brainstorm with a pen and paper. Why is your coaching process awesome. Right? What makes it valuable? And maybe think back to times when you've coached someone, even if you don't have any customers yet you've coached someone even for free or in,

just in kind of passing and they got a great outcome because your prospects experience. Yeah. Write those things down, post it somewhere visible. So then the next time you're talking to somebody about the value of your services, you get a little reminder to, you've got a little cheat sheet. All right, we'll see you next time. 

Hey Amanda, here. Be sure to tune in for our next The CRUSH Method Show by following us on www.amandakaufman.net/blog, or you can look up The CRUSH Method at the YouTube at the Facebook's of the Instagram and even on Twitter, we'll see you next time.