How Selling Becomes Icky and Submerges Your Sales Capability

At first, I didn’t understand why some women resist selling. I wondered why it felt so icky to them, and my ego jumped straight to, “You need it to eat and shop if you’re gonna be an entrepreneur. So stop being a coward and just do it!”

But over the last four years, my empathy for my clients (and myself) has grown through actually coaching people instead of just training them on how to sell. In this episode, I share how one of my icky money stories reflected the way I sold to clients and how I rewrote that story to help me sell more.

3:06 - A money story my sister and I took on as children raised in a poor family

6:39 - How my old money story showed up in my sales attempts

8:11 - Healing your money trauma story so you can show up as the salesperson you’re called to be

10:22 - What I work on with clients when it comes to sales and selling

Find me on Instagram or email me at hello@lesliedlyons.com.

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Transcript for How Selling Becomes Icky and Submerges Your Sales Capability

Hey, boss. It's Leslie, your six-figure sales coach. This podcast is created for central movement studio owners who are looking to scale their studios to multiple six figures, or maybe even seven figures. I'm going to share the good, bad, and the ugly of running a six-figure studio because we all know this business isn't all about booty shorts and stilettos. Let's get to today's episode.

Hey, party people. It’s Leslie, your embodied sales and leadership strategist. What are you guys doing? I'm busy making this podcast for you. I hope you guys are well. I hope that your week has been going well. I'm doing fantastic. As usual, thank you for being such a kind audience and inquiring about how I'm doing.

This was one of these episodes that really came up from my own journaling and reflection. Today you get to peep inside of the mind of what self inquiry looks like for Leslie. It’s a dark place, y’all. But I got to thinking like what is it that makes selling so icky for some women? At first, my ego and just lack of compassion and empathy—I'm just going to be candid about it—rolls up and I'm just like, “I don't understand it. Do they not like eating? Do they not like shopping? Do they not like clothes? What is it that they're so resistant to selling? Stop being a coward? Stand up for yourself.” Let's do this.

But then because I've grown so much in the last four years of actually coaching people and not just training people on how to sell, it's increased my empathy for myself first and then for my clients. There's definitely some merit to being an ICF Credential coach, which I am, I have my ACC, that's what's up. But it taught me so much and it taught me to inquire, it taught me to question even my own thoughts.

I sat down and really was like, “What came up for me in my process of learning to become a professional salesperson?” One of the things that can make selling feel icky to you is if you have money trauma, if you've got some wonky money stories that you have not unpacked. Today, I want to share one of my money stories with you, and how that was showing up in how I sold to my clients. But more importantly, how I rewrote that story, and how it helped me to sell more.

One of the things that I learned early on in life, being raised in a poor family, one of those money stories I took on was that money didn't stick around. When you got money, you needed to spend it because if you kept it around, something would inevitably happen where you wouldn't get a chance to enjoy it.

This came up for me, this story was uncovered for me a few years ago when I was talking to my sister, and we were having a conversation just about our childhood and things of that nature. She brought up the fact that, if you guys remember or I don't know your background, but at Christmas time, Christmas is when you got your new clothes, when you are a family of five children, Christmas time was like when you got your new clothes.

Growing up in the hood, we used to like to play the Dozens, like kids played the Dozens all the time, like who could crack the best jokes. Yo mama jokes were never at a loss on us. One of the things that you never did as a kid in the hood was to wear your clothes to school right after Christmas. Oh my gosh, that was like a cardinal sin. You were going to get teased mercilessly because you got new clothes. I know it sounds crazy but this is just what we grew up with so you would never wear your new clothes right after Christmas break. You would never do that.

Well, my sister defied those rules all the time. She would take the jokes. She didn't care. She was wearing her clothes as soon as school started back. As a kid, I never thought anything about it. I just thought that my sister was a lame. That's what lames do. They wear their clothes after Christmas.

But as an adult, telling me the story, it was a money story for her that she actually experienced when things would get tight after Christmas. So typically, the first of the year when bills were due and that sort of thing, my mother would go looking for ways to find money. Basically, she went looking for money because we had bills to pay, and my dad always had really blue-collar jobs.

That Christmas-day experience she wanted us to have. But January 1st, reality hit, the bills were due. So she would go to the closets and anything that we had not worn, she would return it because we need it to keep our lights on. That story is a sad story. But it left a mark on my sister and also on me that I had never unpacked.

It fed into the narrative that money doesn't stay around and good things don't last and those sorts of things, so you better just do it now, take advantage of it now because tomorrow isn’t promised kind of a thing. Well, how does that show up in your sales situations? So glad you asked. Here's how it showed up for me. In sales, there are two types of caricatures and sales. You've probably heard this before. There are farmers and then there are hunters.

Hunters go out and they're looking for these big deals. They're one time. They look to make money in mass amounts. Where farmers, they see deals, they go deep in relationships, that sort of thing. Well, because of my past and money stories like the one I shared, it made me a hunter. It also made me very transactional in my sales process.

That hurt me because I didn't see my clients as customers to be served. I saw my clients as marks on my belt, notches on my belt. I saw my clients as a means to an end. My business did not change, my selling career did not change until I could start seeing myself as a part of transformation.

But just knocking one deal after another, don't want to do the customer service, don't want to do the follow up, like all I wanted to do was go out and get the next deal, that came from “money doesn't stick around.”

I wonder if you've got some stories that's making the sales process feel icky for you and what can you do to heal that money story, to heal that money trauma so that you can show up as a salesperson that you know you are called to be.

Once I got over it, once I went through therapy—because that's how I got over it, I went through therapy—and just started saying, “Why do I have such terrible money habits? Why is it that I have this thirsty energy around selling? Why did I panic if I wasn't going to meet my number or the thought of me not meeting my number, why did it put me into this tizzy? Why did it make me like crazy Larry?”

Do you know who crazy Larry is? He's like the one in the middle of the night show, you're watching commercials, and he's the mattress sales guy and he's got a damn chainsaw and he's cutting through the mattresses like, “Somebody come get me. Somebody stop me before my manager gets here. I'm crazy Larry, and I'm just slashing prices.”

That crazy Larry story is what I now call thirsty energy. That can come from a place of “If I don't make the sale today, who knows when I'll get the opportunity to make more money?” That’s a money story, y'all, that needs to be healed, that needs to be unpacked, so that you don't have this thirsty “I've got to constantly cut my prices or I've got to constantly give somebody a discount in order for them to buy from me.”

It could also be a story of worthiness like I could go on and on and on about the types of money stories that might be present that are showing up that’s making selling feel icky for you. One of my goals, when I'm working with clients, is to make it so that selling feels clean. Means that the emotions around the sales process feel light, it feels integral, it feels mutually beneficial, not just for you but also for the client.

Oftentimes when we're doing this work, this is the thing that comes up that makes people resistant to doing it because they don't want to deal with the money stories. They just feel like, “I'll just stay away from selling. I'll just serve-serve-serve. I'll just keep giving more content. I'll just keep putting things out there so that I don't have to deal with these uncomfortable emotions that rise up for me around money.”

I get it. It's hard. But you're worth the work. Your clients need what you provide. Your clients need the best of you. But more importantly, you need to be the best of you. Selling is a noble profession. This ickiness that comes up, this negative energy that comes around selling is giving sales a bad rap.

As I say all the time, nothing happens until someone sells something. As a small business owner, literally, it's a matter of you eating or not eating. It's the matter of you haven't clothes or not having clothes. It’s the matter of you prospering financially or having to file bankruptcy. You've got to heal your relationship with money so you can heal your relationship with selling as that is the lifeblood to your business.

I hope this was helpful. I hope that I've caused you to think a little bit about “What money stories am I carrying that may be negatively impacting my business?” It's something to talk about with your therapist. The next time you go see your therapist, have this on the agenda, get some support to unpack that. Because once you unpack it, you're going to unlock the ease that comes with being a part of a transformational selling process as opposed to the icky energy that's a transactional sales process.

All right, my loves. You know the deal. If you need some help, if you want to get your sales messaging right, if you want to sell it in a way that feels easy and natural to you, hit me up in my DMs. I'm doing one-on-one work now. That means my eyeballs, my energy, your genius, let's make some fucking money. Hit me up at hello@lesliedlyons.com or hit me up on IG, @lesliedlyons. Until next time. Grace and peace.