Don’t Do Your Business Dirty! Selling Success Without the Icky Factor
What does it look like to “sell dirty”? Now, I’m not talking about dirty dancing while you sell. This isn’t about sexing up your sales process. I’m talking about the energy behind how you show up for sales. In this episode, I discuss the difference between dirty selling and call clean selling and how the latter address any hesitancy you have about selling due to the ick factor.
2:18 - The biggest dirty selling technique to beware
5:59 - The clean selling energy you need to have when you go into selling situations
10:50 - A different way to respond if a potential client says “no” to you
11:38 - Another thing that helps you establish that clean selling energy
13:09 - How do you really see your clients? Shifting my view opened up so much for me
17:15 - The really liberating thing about being a clean seller
Find me on Instagram or LinkedIn or email me at hello@lesliedlyons.com.
As Mentioned In Don’t Do Your Business Dirty! Selling Success Without the Icky Factor
“Celie leaves Mister” (The Color Purple)
Episode 42: “Behind-the-Scenes of a Compatibility Call”
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Transcript for Don’t Do Your Business Dirty! Selling Success Without the Icky Factor
Hey boss, I am Leslie Lyons, your embodied leadership and sales coach, and this is Pleasurable Profits. This podcast is ideal for owners and leaders of tattoo shops, permanent makeup studios, cannabis businesses, movement studios, sex toy shops, and other industries that are too often left out of the leadership conversation. If you’re looking for a woo meets strategy approach to defining your strengths and values, designing a business that supports you, and creating a soul-driven, and of course, pleasurable plan for profitability, then let’s get started.
Hey, y'all. How you doing? Good to hear from you this week. I'm so excited you’re tuning in. We're going to be talking about one of my favorite things to talk about today which is a process that I actually call clean selling. Obviously, I love to talk about selling on here because I truly believe that when you master selling, you master the keys to your financial life. The ability to be able to create income on demand is probably one of the most freeing and liberating things that a woman can have in her life. I’m always going to be talking about selling as long as I'm around and got the energy to do it because I believe so strongly in what it does for women's lives. When women's lives are improved, our world's lives are improved. Our world is improved.
I want to talk a little bit about what does it look like to dirty sell. The responsible thing is to do clean selling but what does it look like to do dirty selling? I'm not talking about pole dancing, shimmy, and/or hip circles while you sell, I ain’t talking about sexing up your selling process. But I am talking about the energy behind how you show up for sales.
Dirty selling is selfish selling. It is what I think a lot of people think about when they think about salespeople in general which could be one of the reasons that you're so hesitant to sell is because you don't want to be labeled like the used car salesman or Crazy Larry who are doing all of these underhanded, sneaky things to get the sale.
But from an energy standpoint, I'm not talking about integrity, I'm not talking about making sure that your product actually does what it does and it's not snake oil, it actually gets the results it's supposed to get people and it's not some kind of farce that you're pulling over people. I'm not even talking about that because I know the people who listen to me aren't those types of people. But what I am talking about is you can still have dirty selling techniques.
The biggest dirty selling technique that I think exists and something that we all have to be careful of is wanting the sale so bad that you make the sale be the end-all-be-all for the relationship. Meaning that you when you go into the selling situation, your mind is focused on what you will get out of this and not necessarily if this is the right fit for the client, will the client benefit from this?
I wish I could tell you I never felt that way but I'd be lying. There have been years when I was running my business where things were very tight, I mean super tight. Revenue was slow and I was desperate. I had bills to pay both at home and in my businesses. I was like, “I need to get this money and I need to get this money by tomorrow. What am I going to do? Either I'm going to go rob a bank or I'm going to need to make something happen.”
I remember what it was like to show up in selling situations with that type of dirty energy like it's all about me. You can imagine that people can sense that and it repels them. When you show up with clean energy to do clean selling is just the opposite we start with not being attached to the outcome. You've got to release this need to feel like I must make a sale at all costs. Trust me, like I said, I get it, I know there are seasons where we need to make money. I'm right there with you. I get it. I understand it.
However, that being so attached to “If I don't make this sale, I'm going to starve. Or if I don't make this sale, somehow my product isn't worth what I'm charging for it,” if I don't make this sale, you're making it mean all of this b*llsh*t that isn't really true.” Your mind, especially the reptilian part of your brain that makes you go into fight, flight, or fawn, that part of your brain that you activate, that's what happens when you take this desperate “I've got to make the sale at all cost” energy into selling situations. It's like your body starts having this visceral very unhealthy reaction to the sales process.
If you're going to feel like that every time you show up to have a selling conversation, no wonder you don't want to sell. The first thing I want to encourage you and really coach you around is being okay if the client says no. This will not be your last opportunity to sell. This will not be your last sale that you're ever going to make in life. It'll be okay if this person says no. It'll be amazing if the product's a good fit for them and they say yes. But you got to be okay with “This may or may not be the right solution for my client.”
When I go into selling situations, I often have—and I've talked about this on our podcast before—it's like you have to believe in your product or service at such a level that you are advocating for it. You truly believe that if your client doesn't buy your product or service, their life will not improve.
For example, I have started micro-dosing. I am what the kids would say “I'm involving myself in the Mary Joanna.” While I don't smoke it, I am micro-dosing, I'm taking pills or edibles to help me sleep at night. Now here's the thing, I've been having issues sleeping since my mother died in 2020. It was just recently when my friend got involved, got her grower's license in the cannabis business that I was even really open to having conversations about how cannabis could possibly help me with my sleep and my lack thereof.
Once I took it, this was the crazy thing, so I've been talking to my friend, she's been doing cannabis for years, she's now in the business, she's told me about it but she didn't really advocate for it. I remember thinking, so it was someone else who I met through a colleague who I was just sharing about how exhausted I was and she was like, “You need to try these gummies.” She gave me the brand, looked it up, and she had such a passion and a fervor for it like, “Girl, I was in a similar situation.”
She had lost her mother. She was cranky, frustrated, couldn't sleep enter in this cannabis, these cannabis gummies and she's like, “It was literally life-changing for me.” Look, here’s the situation, I got two situations. I got a good friend who I trust and know who was involved in the business, have access to products, all of the things but wasn't really advocating for it and then I meet somebody who I have a very nominal relationship with at best but her enthusiasm around it convinced me to try it.
Truth be told, when I tried it, it has, it's changed my sleeping life, guys. I'm getting so much rest using it. My life is better for it. I just keep wondering, “Why didn't my friend, she's my girlfriend, why did she hold on to this information? Why didn't she give me more information? Why didn't she try to convince me that this is the route that I should go?” I'm sure she probably felt as though because hey, you're going to do what you're going to do, she wasn't attached to the outcome clearly but the enthusiasm about the product makes a difference.
I'm not saying don't be enthusiastic about what you're selling. You have to believe that what you're selling has the ability to transform someone's life. When you really believe that, you can step back and take your foot off the gas in a selling conversation and be like, “Okay, I've done my best to present my case,” and either you want this or you don't. But trust me, if you’re saying no to this, you're saying yes to keeping your life stagnant. If you say no to this, you're saying yes to keeping yourself in the same place that you're in right now next year.
You're saying no to me but you're saying yes to the problem that you say you want to get rid of. You're actually coming in alignment and in agreement with that problem because you're not taking me up on the solution. That's one way to look at it or another way that I look at things is that, “Oh, I just may not be the best person for you to do business with.”
I know you're clutching your pearls thinking about that but you may not be the best person for someone to do business with. Your product or service may not be the best fit for them but that doesn't take away or that doesn't play down how amazing your product or service is. It's just not a good fit for them now or ever. It could be the case.
But either way, clean selling says, “I believe in this product so I'm going to fight for it. But once I fight for it, once I've presented the case, I'm not going to be attached to the outcome.” The other thing that helps with clean selling is that you've got proven results. One of my favorite things to do, before I go on to a sales call, is to just take a moment and look at some of the testimonials from people who I've successfully helped in the past.
That energy for me reminds me of why I do what I do and the fact that what I'm selling is not snake oil. It definitely works for those who work it. It definitely works for the person that I created it to work for. The person who has a very specific problem that needs this very specific solution, it works.
When I take a moment to remind myself of “Look at how many people you've helped,” again, it lets me go into that sales conversation with you clean. Not only do I think this product is the best thing since sliced bread, I've got clients who agree with me and we want you to agree with us. We want you as a new client to join us and to experience of the benefits but I recognize that you are an autonomous, resourceful being who's capable of making decisions for yourself. I'm going to honor that process.
As a salesperson who is being clean, using clean selling techniques, how do you really see your clients? I know I had to do some work on that myself over the years and not stepping over into a savior complex where I felt like if someone didn't work with me, their life was going to crumble and fall apart. It's like the Color Purple curse. If you've never seen the movie Color Purple, what are you doing with your life? You need to see it.
But there's this point in the movie where the main character Celie puts a curse on her husband and basically who's been very abusive to her entire relationship if you can call it that with him. But when she's finally getting away from him, she sticks her finger out at him and basically tells him that until he does right by her, everything that he puts his hands on will fail.
I'm going to link that segment in the show notes because you need to see it. It's just powerful. That's the type of curse that I used to be putting on my clients who didn't do business with me, with people who wouldn't do business with me. I'm like, “Well, that's fine. If you don't take me up on this product, your life is going to be hell.”
I even sounded like the Wicked Witch of the West when I said that, “Your life's going to be hell.” Honestly, I had to reframe how I saw my clients. Now, what I believe is that I attract the type of women who are serious about their business, they're serious about growth in their business in a sustainable way. They're serious about leaving an impact on this crazy world that we live in. Because of that, I respect that woman so much that I trust that if she chooses not to go with me, she will find another solution. I really believe that.
That shift in how I see my clients, how I see prospective clients opened up so much for me in terms of my own coaching style, it allowed me to give myself grace in terms of what my role is like in this coaching relationship, all the things because I decided to be clean about my selling process. I decided to have clean energy.
What I would say to you is if selling still feels very icky to you, check if you're doing dirty or if you're doing clean selling because I'm willing to bet you, if you can get your energy clean, if you can go into every sales situation with the surety and the security of knowing that what you're selling is transformational, you've got receipts, and then hold a vision that your clients are fully capable of making good decisions and that you trust their decisions because there's always something at play that you may or may not be aware of that the client knows, so if you trust their decision, it'll take the pressure off of you and you'll show up to selling conversations as just that.
Ain't no pressure. Think of it like a first date. Ain't no pressure here. We're not deciding if we're going to marry each other on the first date. We're just trying to get to know each other to see if we're compatible. That's exactly why when you want to work with me as a coach, you’re considering working with me as a coach, or getting support from me in any capacity, I invite you to what I call a compatibility call. You can find out what happens on those calls in a previous episode. I'll link that in the show notes as well.
I call it a compatibility call because that's how I look at it. Ain’t no pressure here. We're just trying to work to see if we work well together and that this is a two-way street. This is the final thing I'm going to leave with you because I've talked about clients not choosing you but man, you want the real liberating factor, you want the real moment is when you say no to a client.
When a potential client wants you but you see that you're not going to be able to serve them best, whether it's a personality conflict that you can sense already, there might be some values that you have that they would be pressing up against and you don't want to put yourself in that situation, when you're on a date, when you're just on a compatibility call, you may find out that this client ain't right for you.
It doesn't matter how bad they want you, you don't want them. Man, the freedom of knowing that you don't have to take every client is the reason why we going to sell our hearts out in 2023. We're going to keep our pipeline so freaking full. The waitlist of people who want to work with you, the people who want to get on calls with you, we're going to keep that pipeline so full that you will only want what's best for your client and for yourself. 2023 is all about us selling well and leading well. I am so happy that you've decided to join me on this ride. Alright, my loves. Until next week. Y'all be good. Grace and peace. Clean selling only, people. Clean selling only.