Ep# 126: 3 Sales Mistakes Women Entrepreneurs Make and How to Fix Them for Ea
Episode Summary
Do you wonder if sales conversations and sales in general will ever stop feeling so awkward and just plain hard?
This episode shares three common ways that women entrepreneurs get in their own way with selling, rather than truly connecting with potential clients and inspiring meaningful action.
In this episode, you will:
Discover the surprising reason your sales conversations might be pushing clients away rather than drawing them in—and how a small mindset shift can completely transform the process.
Learn the secret to making your unique expertise irresistible to your ideal clients, so they’re eager to work with you before the pitch is even made.
Tap into an energetic approach that makes selling feel effortless and authentic, creating results that leave you and your clients feeling fulfilled and empowered.
Tune in now to uncover the strategies that will create more enthusiastic buyers and turn sales into a more enjoyable experience.
Episodes Mentioned:
Ep #15: Learning to Diagnose Your Client's Problem
Ep #47: Safeguarding Against Burnout with Rachel Hale
Ep# 125: How to Go From Overworked to Easily Earning Multiple 6 Figures w/ Meg Smidt
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The Uncommon Way is led by business coach Jenna Harrison, who helps women entrepreneurs feel confident, find their ideal clients effortlessly and avoid overwork so they can manifest money and abundance in their business and life.
This podcast empowers female entrepreneurs to overcome imposter syndrome, perfectionism, and limiting beliefs through somatics, mindset, and spirituality, create 7-figure offers, and build an online coaching business with clarity and alignment.
Episode Transcription
What if sales were suddenly five times easier and more effective? What would that look like for your bottom line?
You're listening to the uncommon way business and life coaching podcast, the podcast that helps women entrepreneurs get clear on signature offers and strategies that sell themselves. So you can lean back and stop the hustle. You will learn to maximize your mindset, messaging and strategy and step into the uncommonly successful business.
And life you are creating. Here's your host, top ranked business coach and reformed over analyzer turned queen of clarity, Jenna Harrison.
Welcome, welcome back to the uncommon way. Today we're talking sales because I want you to be able to enjoy the process of this really magical coming together with your clients. I want them to have great results. I want you to have great results. But so often, we make selling so much harder than it needs to be, and the results we get out of it, and the angst we feel about it, demonstrate that.
But first, I want to thank everyone who was involved with our Black Friday Days of Deals. It was so fun! Fun. And I could really feel your energy and your interest with all the questions that you were sending in and the products you were buying. It was so great to be a part of. It really made me feel a lot closer to you.
And I'm so excited to get to know people personally that I haven't been able to. Before, and I'm so pleased that some of you are going to get your first taste of kind of what we do behind the scenes here at the Uncommon Way and really start to understand the ways in which it's possible to work wiser, not harder.
And because I know that Sally can be so fun and easy. And generate so much important change for your clients and so much profit and growth for you. I thought I'd dissect the sales experience a bit. There are three things that I frequently see women entrepreneurs doing that are making their sales far harder.
So it takes more time for you to sell. It takes more money and resources for you to sell, but it's also extremely aggravating and often demoralizing. But it really doesn't need to be once you implement these key changes, as always, I'll be giving you a tactical tip, a mindset tip, and an energetic tip. You will discover the surprising reason your sales conversations might be pushing clients away rather than drawing them in and how a small mindset shift can completely transform the process.
You'll learn the secret to making your unique expertise irresistible to your ideal clients, so they're eager to work with you before the pitch is even made. And you'll tap into an energetic approach that makes selling feel effortless and authentic, creating results that leave you and your clients feeling fulfilled and empowered.
Okay, here is the tactical mistake that I see. You are solving rather than diagnosing on your calls. What that looks like is you spend a lot of time listening and having them talk about their story and what's going on for them in a sales conversation or online in your content. You're always trying to teach them and maybe talk about their pain points and talk about how much you understand where they're coming from.
Now, none of these things are inherently wrong, but they're just exaggerated. Because then you go into really trying to solve the problem for them, right then and there. You're probably giving them resources, or if you're a coach, you're really coaching them. In your mind, you're thinking, this is it. I've just given them the keys to the kingdom.
I'm giving them all the answers. But in their mind, They're like, whoa, what just happened? They are processing all of this information rather than moving forward in that moment to make a decision about working together. And what that results in is them not being able to make the decision yet. They postpone making the decision.
They leave feeling unsatisfied, even if they can't put their finger on it. Because deep down, what they really wanted was to make a decision. They got on that call with you, or they're having coffee with you, or they're reading your content because they have some issue that they want to solve. And as a service provider, your job is to create the solution for that issue.
If they get on a call with you, they are so excited about the prospect that maybe this issue can get solved. They really want this to work out. They want you to be the one to help them. But instead, they're just left with more things to think through and think over. I also see women just run out of time on their sales call because they spent so long helping the people, and then they kind of have to fit in this very thing at the end where they're actually talking about pricing and decision making, and it all gets condensed, it's kind of thrown out there really quickly, and you haven't created the space to actually help someone through a decision.
If we're just looking at your content, this results in people hanging around forever but never actually moving into the sales call with you or moving into the, the checkout cart in order to make a purchase because yes, you're giving them good information. But you haven't told them what the real problem is and how you specifically solve that issue and how therefore if they do the work, the results are inevitable.
I believe that this all happens because we are significantly undervaluing the power of a really strong diagnosis. And I have an episode on this entire subject of diagnosing. It's one of my earliest episodes, episode 15, but it's one that even just this week, someone told me they were listening to and got so much value from.
So if you haven't listened to that one, definitely go back and listen to this. And since stories are so powerful, I'll tell you one of the stories that I mentioned in that episode. There was a time when my son was younger and I was really concerned about him. He just did not seem to be gelling with other kids on the playground.
In fact, there was this phase where even every time we would pass children on the sidewalk, he would go, Oh no! Kids! Like that. You have to remember, this was a COVID baby who just had not had interaction with, and an only child, so he hadn't had interaction with other children. When things started opening up and we started going to the playground, I was like, Ruh roh!
Like Houston, we've got a problem. But then I talked to a woman, she was a preschool teacher, and she told me, as I told her this story, she said, Oh, I can see he doesn't yet have the skill of entering play. That rocked my world. Look at me, I'm still talking about it today. She gave me such a gift with that sentence, all of a sudden, I knew what we had to work on.
And more than that, I knew there was something that could be worked on. All of a sudden, it felt possible, it felt simple. And I knew that my worst fears, which is that something was wrong with my child, and this was going to have terrible repercussions throughout his life, It turns out those were unwarranted.
I felt an immediate relief, like, I think tears pricked my eyes. I was just so grateful, so reassured. And guess what I did? I said, Can you teach me how to do that? Or us, can you teach us how to do that? And I hired this woman as of my parenting coach. She didn't need to have some long conversation with me about all of her credentials and she didn't have to go into the problem right then and start trying to solve it.
All she had to do was show me that she knew exactly what's going on. And she had a solution. And that it was doable and solvable if we just followed these steps. Oh, I still feel this in my body. I am still grateful. But where we get in our heads is that we don't believe it can be this easy. We think there's something wrong because of the way we've been conditioned if we're not immediately going and solving a person's problem, right?
That's what we're brought up to do. We're meant to make everything better for everybody around us and to serve selflessly and not require any kind of compensation. Like maybe after two days of cooking for Thanksgiving, it's Thanksgiving by the way, when I'm recording those. They don't celebrate it here, but we are picking Dylan up from school, going to the playground, and then going out to dinner.
So maybe after two days of cooking for Thanksgiving, the grandma or the mom or whatever gets a like, good meal, thank you. Right? And we're supposed to be happy with that, because we're giving from our heart, we're doing it because we want to do it. But then we bring that into our business, and it actually backfires.
What would happen if you believed that a diagnosis could be that powerful? And that there was no way possible for you to really help them with the solution in one call. That the service you were providing, still totally doable, still so important to solve this issue and create the solution for them, but that there was some time involved with it.
There was some process that we needed to go through. And one of the most important processes is that they have to say yes to the change. Okay. Thank you. And put some skin in the game, whether that's money or a free offer, and they have to put time into the game. They are co creating this result with you.
Because let me tell you, when you start to believe these things, Then your sales conversations and your content change. They become much more clear. They become much more enigmatic, much more desirable. And the gift you're giving your future clients is that they feel a feeling of relief. Like I just described to you that I felt with that parenting coach.
And then they get to feel safe enough to make the decision that's going to change their life or their business or whatever it is you're helping them with, their parenting relationship, whatever it might be, but you're not going to help them make that change that I know you want to help people with if they don't feel safe to move forward with you and they're just not going to feel safe if you're spending all of your time trying to solve the problem.
Thank you. On a call or in your content, rather than helping them move forward to the solution that they want. Hey, if you want true clarity about your secret sauce, your people, your best way of doing business and how you talk about your offer, then I invite you to join us in the Clarity Accelerator. I'll teach you to connect all the dots, the dots that have always been there for you so that you can show up like you were born for exactly this.
Come join us and supercharge every other tool or tactic you'll ever learn from Facebook ads to manifestation Just go to the uncommon way comm slash schedule and set up a time to talk. I can't wait to be your coach All right, let's talk about mindset The mindset mistake that I see women making is that you don't understand, you really, really don't know that your secret sauce is enough.
So when you deep down don't believe it's enough, you start doing compensatory things. It might look like you are, quote unquote, stuffing your bra in your offer. So you're trying to add on a whole bunch of other different things to make it be more valuable and more worthwhile. But then, of course, it's not simple enough, and the message gets diluted, and your people aren't really sure if it's for them.
Or you may be completely missing the mark. As you heard in my episode last week with my client Make Schmidt, she was a successful business coach selling all the things SEO and marketing and mindset, but there were price issues. There were client issues in the ways that they were canceling calls and not really showing up fully for the coaching.
And there were tons of overwork. And there was tons of overwork. Because it was like she was scrambling to get all of these crumbs at smaller prices with non perfect fit clients. But when she really integrated, Well, first of all, identified what her secret sauce was, and then integrated the value of that to people.
She started bringing on dream clients where they hardly had to get through the conversation before they were like, Yes, sign me up. Full price, pay in full, here you go, when can we start? I have another personal example too. I did the same thing for years. Before I was coaching Just About Clarity, I believed people in business wanted so many other things.
And so I was talking about shortening the sales process, and I was talking about finding your ideal clients, and I was talking about everything, and I too brought on less than ideal clients. Clients who didn't really understand just how transformative it is at any stage of your business to step back, look at your business and get clear.
And honestly, since I didn't have a coach who was really specialized in helping people with these kinds of things and alignment and all the things that I help clients with now. It took me having to get so angry about something. It was honestly, it was somebody who asked for a refund. And in that moment, I was having this internal conversation with myself where I was getting so fired up thinking, are you crazy?
I would have given my left arm to who knows how much money. To have had somebody help me with this when I was really feeling unclear, when I was really unaligned and I couldn't make sense of what I was really here to do and how to turn that into a business. And even at other points in my business when my business was evolving and all of a sudden things didn't feel clear again.
I would have given anything for someone to really help me through that, dial things back in, get everything aligned so I could just accelerate my growth. And when I said that to myself, it was as if a little, like the clouds opened up and a little ray of sun came through and I really felt like someone was saying like, now you get it.
Now you finally get it. And that is when I started talking about Clarity for Clarity's sake, and how amazing it is, and I made hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars just with Clarity. Just selling Clarity. I wasn't even really selling business results. Just clarity. Now, my business has evolved again, but I learned the lesson from that experience that I really want to share it with you, too.
There are millions and millions of people in the world. There are probably tens of thousands of people who just want to buy an outfit for their chicken. Yes, these people exist. They're buying little clothing, little disguises, and things like that. You know, dress up costumes for their chicken. Okay. So you can definitely find enough people for your business that just want that thing that comes easily to you or that you have learned through hard knocks.
Whatever it is, I believe it's. Things that have been showing up for you throughout your life that you were really placed here to work on, right? That you, through your wiring, through your experiences, through design, through all sorts of things, have come together to make this unique perspective, unique way of thinking, of problem solving, of, of seeing this particular topic and no one else can bring the solution that you do.
To your future clients. When you stop trying to talk to all of the other people out there. And start talking to your people and calling them in and believing strongly enough, knowing in your soul that you create like this magnetism towards you. You will start seeing very different results and you will start having very different sales conversations and different responses to your content.
It is possible for people to land on one piece of your content or one sales page on your website or one interview that you were having in a podcast on, you know, as a guest or one referral or something, and they come to you, they book a call and they say, this is exactly what I've been looking for. I knew that you were the one that was meant to help me and I just want to know how to get started.
Thank you. It's not a problem in our business if we have to nurture people. That's not your job to worry about how they come to you. I just want to paint the picture of what's possible so that you're opening yourself to people coming to you in all sorts of ways and to it being a right fit. A match made in heaven.
Or a left brain want match. Or whatever language you want to use about it. It can be that good. Go Your job is to know what you're about, to keep talking to those ideal people, and letting them know that you can help them, and then everybody else, them and the universe and all the other players, they do their jobs and take care of the rest.
You just have to do yours. Okay, let's talk energetics. What I see as a huge mistake, energetically, is that we move into convincing energy or proving energy rather than staying and standing in your welcome energy. And what it looks like is a lot of the things that I've already mentioned. When you are believing that you need to convince people or that you need to prove yourself, you're going above and beyond.
And that's backfiring as we've already talked about. You're not really sure that you're a perfect fit. You may not even know exactly who your perfect fit clients are. You're not really sure that they value this thing that you're selling enough to pay for it. You're not really sure that they believe or that you believe you're capable of delivering on it.
And this can manifest in all sorts of ways. Maybe you become kind of a little braggy on your call. Maybe you become clingy in your language. They can start to sense how much weight you're putting on this, how much meaning you're making of it, whatever their decision is, and it just feels heavy to them. It feels like more than they are.
able to give and want to give at this moment, and they step back. They start to doubt, like, if she's so convincing and proovy, then maybe she's not the expert that I thought I was going to be speaking with. Now, a lot of women get in their heads about this, and their fear of doing this kind of attracts it, and they start manifesting it more.
So, I don't want you to always be second guessing yourself on these calls, being like, oh no, am I, do I want it too much, am I too convincing, am I too proving? Because that won't be helpful either. Just like with manifestation, you want to move in to the more positive opportunities for yourself. So, rather than not being convincing, you want to be allowing.
And what that looks like is your welcome energy. If you had the cure for cancer, and this person signed up and was interested in saying yes to this cure for cancer, the place you would be in is, I know how scary this has been for you. I'm excited you found your way to me because I have this solution, right?
Here's how we developed it. Here's how we know it works. This is exactly what you'll have to do. And here's the price. You're welcome for all of the work that I have done over my lifetime, really, to create this solution for you that is so valuable. And we're not saying that from an ego point of view.
We're saying it from like, That deep, heartfelt allowing and recognition. It's like when a friend has been going through a hard time, and you have been there for her. And she turns to you after the smoke has cleared, and she looks you straight in the eye and says, Thank you. Thank you. And you aren't trying to push that away.
You just receive it deeply and you say, Oh my friend, you are so welcome. That is the energy I'm talking about. What that results in is so much felt safety for your future clients, which is what they want. I've been feeling some anxiety. They've been feeling some confusion. They want to feel safe and held.
They want to feel like, you got this, together it's not a problem, we're gonna make it happen. You're welcome that I've read all the books. You're welcome that I created a solution. You're welcome that I was born this way and it really doesn't cost me that much to do this thing or to see these things about you or to think in this way that's really challenging for you right now.
It's all good. We're good. We're going to get through this. When you shift this, you will be amazed at how Your conversations feel how it feels for you writing content and how people respond to it. How people come out of the woodwork, how people who've been waiting and watching all of a sudden book a call with you.
How very just laid back and casual the conversation seems. It's as if it's a done deal from the start. When you have all the pieces in place, when you don't have to think about how you're going to convince somebody, and if your secret sauce is enough, and how exactly you're going to solve their decades long problem in the space of this 60 minute call or this post that you're putting out or this article that you're writing.
When that is not in your head, And you can be really grounded in this beautiful give and take exchange with your, your welcome energy. Then you finally get to have the business that you've been wanting. You don't have to have as many sales conversations or put out as many posts in order to create even better results.
You don't have to spend as much money on ads when your conversion rate is higher, and you don't have to be all angsty and worried and asking yourself if this is even worth it or what you're doing wrong. We were on the call the other day, and we were thinking about, like, the meaning we make of it if we feel disappointment, right?
If we've got a big lunch going on or we've, you know, someone said no to us on a call or whatever it is, what we're making that mean, and it was like three things. We all had variations of these same three things. And it was, I messed up, right? I did something wrong, or they don't like me, or this is never going to work.
All of us at all different stages of our business had thoughts that sounded slightly differently, but at the root, it was all these same three things. Brains will be brains, but there's a difference between having like a thought come into your head and being like, oh, that thought, right? I don't really believe that anymore.
Versus other times in your life where it feels so real and then you're up at night thinking about it and it affects your self esteem and you can't quite concentrate over Thanksgiving when you're with your family. Because you've got this real playing in your head. So, let's shift all of these things. I want you creating more change in the world.
I want you stepping into this uncommon lifestyle that is absolutely available to all of us. It's unprecedented time in history. We're so lucky to be alive now. And it all starts with these things you've learned. Don't make the mistake of solving rather than diagnosing. Don't underestimate your secret sauce.
Know that it is enough for the people that are meant to work with you. And step into your welcome energy. You do have a solution for people. You are that expert now. All right, my friends, I hope you have a wonderful week and I'll see you back here next time.
Thanks for joining us here at the uncommon way. If you want more tips and resources for developing clarity in your business in life, including the clarity first strategy for growing and scaling your business, visit the uncommon way. com. See you next time.