This episode is inspired by some feedback I received over on Instagram a while back.
I was sharing on Instagram that I was feeling all the feels about showing up on social media and Instagram stories in general.
I honestly think I was just tired that day, but I’m committed to keeping it real so I shared what I had been journaling about.
That is oftentimes what I’m sharing on Instagram stories; it’s things that I’m journaling about, it’s things that are happening in the moment behind the scenes, some of it business, some of it my personal life.
I’m not particularly “edutainment Tara”, so that is really what we were talking about was that I was struggling to identify with where I fit since I’m not a TikTok girl and I’m not an edutainment person and sometimes I feel really boring, because I’m showing up and talking about things like consistency, focus, motivation and building your business and mindset.
And that’s just not always the flashiest of things.
In sharing this, I opened myself up to feedback.
This is something that used to really freak me out; asking for feedback and being afraid of what I would hear from people.
Afraid I would take it so personally, and it would crush me.
I’m a lot more thick-skinned these days than I have ever been in my entire life.
In sharing this on Instagram stories, I opened myself up to feedback.
Things people shared with me were the things that they respected about me, admired, and appreciated about the way I show up.
And then there was some very helpful insight as to what people are thinking but aren’t saying when they are consuming my content.
Whenever someone is courageous and generous to share the thing they’ve been thinking, give what they shared some intentional thought.
That is really what I’m doing here today.
The question this person raised based on her feedback to me was around the way I am always encouraging people on Instagram to DM me, and ask me questions or answer a question that I’ve put out there or voted on my poll.
It;s a question that I’m sure many people have thought: “If I engage with you, will you turn around and hard sell me?”
In the Wild West of the online business industry, I can see how this person has this thought.
People hard sell you all the time; sometimes you walk into a car dealership and there is a hard sell coming for you.
For some people who use social media to share their business, this might even be true.
There are certainly stories out there that I have heard about people given the hard sell.
From my experience though, what has been more true for me is that when I engage with people on Instagram, specifically in their DMs, I’m completely ignored.
If I’m reaching out to someone, it’s because I respect their work and know how it feels to be acknowledged for the content that they create or I’m actually interested in building a relationship with them because I do want to buy something from them.
In which case they are dead-ending the customer when they ignore that DM or not recognizing a buying signal when they do not respond to that DM.
I want to share how I think about my DMs, hard selling, how I think about prospering from my work, and why I don’t believe in the hard sell.
There are seven, very specific reasons I’ve laid out to share with you here today.
1: I’m Here To Serve
My first reason I don’t believe in the hard sell is I’m here to serve.
When I show up and do my most important work, it changes the lives and businesses of others.
Fact: a lot of women come to me and while their businesses have grown, they tell me that it’s their husbands, friends, and parents who notice a difference in who they’ve become. Which makes me happy, and I take it as a sign that the world wants more bold women at the helm.
When and only when I change a life, do I then deserve to prosper for my work. Do great work, get paid great money, that’s kind of how I see things as a servant leader.
I help enough people, that’s saying, if you help enough people get what they want, you too will succeed and get what you want.
2. I’m here for ease and efficiency, and hard selling is none of those things.
There is nothing in my ideal client archetype or my values around selling that involves dragging people into a sale, because that means I’m going to be dragging them through a program.
My sales calls are more like, “Hey, I’m so happy to be on this call with you today. I see you have X, Y, and Z goals and have stated that you think A, B and C might be standing between you and this goal.”
I have an intake form that people fill out, and I have some information before we even get started. Then I usually ask them, “What makes you think that? What makes you say that?”
My end of the call usually sounds like “normal, normal, normal, you aren’t alone. You aren’t doing anything wrong”, because so many times people think that they’re some kind of outlier, that they’re the only one who’s confused, frustrated, hasn’t figured it out, isn’t getting this thing…
The reality is that I work with people like them all the time.
They’re perfectly normal.
They aren’t alone.
They’re not broken.
Their business isn’t broken, and they’re not doing anything wrong.
I really like to take that opportunity on a sales call to listen to this person who’s in front of me; oftentimes getting on a sales call with anybody, let alone me, is something that can make you nervous or even excited or give you all the feels because you’re actually going to sit down and confront the thing that has been standing in your way.
If I think this person is a good fit for one of our programs – which are all high touch, so making fit is extremely important and at the top of my list – I’ll say, “Here’s how I can solve that problem. Does that sound like something you’re interested in?”
If it’s a yes, we find a payment structure that supports your business’ cash flow.
This is one of the reasons why we start enrollment conversations so early for the mastermind. We offer generous payment plans to help small business owners with their cash flow, because the number one problem that the majority of small business owners have, probably ranging all the way up to a few million in revenue, is capital.
It’s a capital problem.
It’s a cash flow problem.
I’m not looking to add problems on top of problems.
I’m looking to provide business owners with solutions for their most pressing issues.
3. I will always make more than enough money to support my family.
It takes a lot of time, consistency, and patience to rewire your mindset, your neural pathways.
There is no overnight fix here for your thinking and to improve the quality of your thinking. That needs to be a continuous goal is to improve the quality of your thoughts.
This fundamental belief that I’ve been working on for the last five years is, “I will always make more than enough money to support my family”.
More importantly, not only do I believe this for myself, I believe it for you too.
Whether you work with me or not, I hold this belief.
This is one of my most generous beliefs and I hold it for everyone and anyone, that you too will always make more than enough money to support your family.
You will always have what you need when you need it.
Beyond that belief, I’m an exceptional money manager. I don’t live sale to sale.
My emergency funds have emergency funds.
This is actually a result I personally drive for with each of my clients. We will help you gain financial literacy, cultivate the habits, and create the income you need to build wealth.
I did not learn this in school.
I did not learn this in a textbook.
I did not even learn this from being successful.
I learned this from suffering in financial hell for five years, and then declaring bankruptcy, and then having to rebuild my finances and my wealth over the last decade.
All of the businesses we work with are self-funded, and we’re damn proud of that. It takes a level of finite financial responsibility and belief in yourself to go out and provide that financial stability for your family.
4. Bold leaders are here for the humans.
Be helpful, be human, be humble.
That is my personal philosophy. That’s what we do better than anyone else.
We drive for results, hold bold visions, and support our clients in going after their bravest goals while honoring the human experience.
We celebrate, we cry, we strategize and we know when to take our owners offline, unplug their systems, and force them to recover.
Do you know that the immense amount of trust that I need to build with a business owner whose family depends on their income to tell them that they need to take a month off from their business so they can restore and recharge because they’re getting too burned out, and that we need to be thinking about endurance and the long game?
The amount of trust that that takes to have that conversation would be destroyed in any kind of hard-sell sales call.
And by the way, that business owner had their best year after that.
Hard selling and deep trust, they’re mutually exclusive. They don’t go together.
5. I love my work too much to compromise my enjoyment and legacy for anyone.
That’s a boundary, full stop.
6. Multiple revenue streams, the power of data, and extreme ownership.
One sale, one sales call for me has zero impact on my business.
Multiple “no”’s on a sales call, or multiple not ideal clients showing up for sales calls would cause me to do a debrief with my team and look at the data so that we could take full ownership over what was happening with our sales system.
This is never a person problem, it’s a business problem.
It’s a systems problem, a marketing problem, a messaging mismatch, something is happening there and it has nothing to do with you the person who is getting on the sales call with me, so there is never a reason for a sales problem because I take ownership over my system.
7. I’m clear on what’s my business and what’s someone else’s business
I think this really just comes down to why I’m not here for a hard sell. This means that I care, but not that much.
I know what my job is.
My job is to show up for a sales call with generosity and space to connect with the person in front of me, to get to know them, to listen to you, and understand who that person is in front of me. If I can help them, I let them know and I let them know passionately.
If I can’t help them, I’ll be honest about that as well.
If the person isn’t into me, doesn’t think my service is the right one for them, they’re coach shopping.
This happens.
They’re just looking for different coaches and they’re not sure who it might be or if they show up with a laundry list of reasons why they can’t, that’s their business.
I’m not going to coach them through buying from me.
I’m not going to judge them for their reasons.
That’s work that they need to do on their own.
Or if they say yes, we can work on that through that together. But it’s really not for me to hard-sell them through their objections.
I look to cover the majority of sales objections before people even get on a phone call with me.
I very rarely even get objections; we’re just having a conversation because covering those objections happens way earlier in my sales system than it does on the phone, and I make sure of that.
Now, somebody might have questions about our programs or our services, that doesn’t mean that’s an objection, and we can have a conversation answering all their questions, absolutely.
But in terms of trying to coerce them or coach them through objections, lots of people may do that.
I’m sure that there are salespeople who are going to tell me that I’m wrong in this thing, in this belief that I have.
I just don’t do it. It’s just not for me. It’s not where I want to be spending my energy and my time.
Now, to the person who popped into my DMs with this gem of a topic, I appreciate you.
You gave me a wonderful opportunity to think more deeply on something that is important to all business owners, and I hope all of you who are listening to this right now, are thinking about this for themselves and are going to take this prompt and go expand upon it for themselves, because I would love to hear from you.
Do you believe in the hard sell or not?
And what are your reasons either way?
What are your reasons for the hard sell?
Or what are your reasons why you don’t believe in a hard sell?
Head on over to Instagram and share your thoughts with us. Be sure to tag me. I’m @theTaraNewman.
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