Ep #6: Your Biggest Obstacle to Selling

Welcome to the Make Money as a Life Coach® podcast where sales expert and master coach Stacey Boehman teaches you how to make your first 2K, 20K, and 200K using her proven formula.

Hey Diva, welcome to episode six. Are you ready? I’m so excited to talk to you today, but first before we dive into today’s topic, I have to give a shoutout. I want to give a shoutout to my client Jamie. She just joined the 2K for 2K and this is what she posted.

“I want to share a win. I have been in the group for one day. Binge-watched your enrollment videos and signed a client within 24 hours. So I made my money back plus some. I love your enrollment process. Much better than what I was doing, I must say. Thank you, Stacey, I’m celebrating success.”

I freaking love that. it’s seriously – some people, it’s the craziest thing, right? Some people come and they’re so terrified that they might not get their money back and then here comes Jamie and she did it in 24 hours. I always say you can make your money back in 30 days when you join the 2K for 2K, but seriously, you could also do it in 24 hours apparently, just like Jamie.

So Jamie, I just wanted to give you a big shoutout and say you’re a rockstar and I’m so excited to have you in the 2K for 2K. So today for my beautiful podcast listeners, my lovies, I want to talk about your biggest obstacle to selling to therefore making money. Because there’s what you do, and people usually think that this is their biggest obstacle is that they don’t know how to do a consultation or how to sell coaching.

And I do teach my 2K for 2K program, I do teach that exact five-step process that Jamie was talking about, and I do teach how to run a consult session or a mini session, and it is so helpful to have a process so that you’re not winging it every call. So that you can keep what you’re doing, what you talk about on the call constant and not think about it, so then you’re free to concentrate on your client.

But it isn’t actually the most important thing or even the biggest obstacle that is keeping you from selling. So I wanted to share with you today and all of my 2K Divas listening, I know y’all religiously listen to the podcast. Good for you.

But here’s what I want to share with you is what you really need to be working on first to help you identify the obstacle and then overcome it. I think we all have huge missions in life and we really need to get to work, as if other people’s lives depended on it. So let’s dive in.

Let’s get you started on your path to selling coaching, and I really believe, saving lives. So your biggest obstacle to selling coaching is the way that you think about selling and the way that you think about your client. So I just spent three days with my 200K mastermind and they had so much come up for them when it came to selling.

And bottom line, their biggest fear around selling was of being manipulative and pushing a client to do something that wasn’t in their best interest. Their biggest obstacle is misunderstanding what selling is all about, especially selling life coaching, which I think – and I’ve sold a lot of shit – is very different than anything else they could ever buy.

So that’s the first thing to think about, to understand is selling not like anything else you’ve ever sold or that’s been sold to you. There is a huge difference in investing in emotional health versus a time-share in Bermuda. They’re not even close. The impact of each is very different. There are things we spend our money on that give us what I would call a negative result, which means we have less money, we have more stress, like vacations and clothes and alcohol and new cars.

Like seriously think about – people think that vacations are going to make them so happy and then what do they most often do when they’re on vacations? Argue with their spouse, argue with their children, everybody’s miserable. And then there are things that we spend our money on that give us a positive result like healthy food, electricity, healthcare.

I see coaching as selling emotional wellness, no matter what niche you’re in. So the person who tried to sell you a personal massager in the middle of the mall is not the same as you selling coaching to an interested client on the phone. Someone shoving a little sample packet as you walk through the mall, like shoving that in your face, not the same as a client actively engaging with you, setting up a time, getting on a call with you. Not the same things.

Or during my three-day retreat, we gave the example of how a waffle shop might waft the smell of freshly baked waffles outside to entice customers in. That person might not have been intending to eat waffles that day, but then their brain was transfixed to go in and eat one because of the smell. And my clients were very concerned that this practice of manipulation of the human brain and the ability to surge desire in the human mind when it wasn’t previously there is what they would be doing.

But it’s important to think of the positive result that comes from emotional intelligence versus the negative result of eating a waffle every day on your way home from work. And the difference between intentionally setting up a call with a coach to find out if they can help you versus you just happen to walk by and smell amazing food and then go against your will into and eat the waffle, which is a whole ‘nother topic.

But the second thing to think about is this; when you are afraid to sell coaching to someone or you think selling coaching to someone is manipulative, you are taking your client’s power away to decide. It’s the other side of the coin. The person that is enticed in by the waffle smell, it’s like this assumption that they don’t have the ability to make decisions for themselves.

And that might be the case for you is you don’t feel like you have the power to make a decision for yourself, so you’re very worried because you’d be the person that if someone was wafting a smell, you would be the one to go into the store and eat the waffle, right? But I’ve been that person who’s been totally given an actual waffle sample, like offered a waffle sample as I’m walking by in a concert stadium and I was like, “No thanks, don’t really want that.”

I’m not even worried about that, first of all, but what you’re thinking is that you’re taking the power away for your client to decide by showing up and what I want to offer is by not showing up, you’re taking your client’s power away to decide. You are in fact manipulating them by deciding what is for them or not.

When you decide someone can’t afford something before they even get on the phone with you or that it’s bad for them, or while they’re on the phone with you, you are deciding for them what they can and can’t do. You are doing the opposite of what coaching is meant to be about. You are not freeing your clients from some situation they aren’t ready for. You are locking them up in a situation that they are already in.

You are limiting them by your own limiting beliefs about them, about sales, about the world, about the human being’s capacity for change. You are not standing in belief for them. You’re not presenting to them, maybe for the first time ever, someone who sees potential in them for a completely different life experience than the one that they’re having.

You aren’t offering them possibility. You are giving them the same old probability their entire lives have been built on. You aren’t protecting them. I know that you think you might be, but you are diminishing them and everything they are capable of doing and who they are capable of being.

Think about how life changing it is to meet someone who truly believes you are meant for more, sees you already as more than you see yourself. I want you to really think about it. People think selling coaching comes from a place of believing the client is broken and needs help, but it really is quite the opposite. Selling coaching is about seeing your client as perfectly whole and amazing.

And from that place, believing 100% that they can have a life far greater than what they are living if they want to, if they decide. Selling and overcoming objections is just making sure they understand the decision they are making and how amazing they are and how much they are capable of doing.

Like, I’m so glad my mentor didn’t think I couldn’t afford to pay her when I told her I didn’t know how I would come up with the money to be in her certification program. I’m so glad that she didn’t see me as less than. I’m glad she didn’t have a judgment about my ability to be resourceful and blow my own damn mind in coming up with the money.

I’m grateful she allowed me to learn the lesson of figuring out the impossible for me, of committing hard to something and working through it, of believing in myself in a way that I never had before. I’m grateful she didn’t bring her presumptions to our call. I wasn’t limited by her selling me something I couldn’t afford. I was freed from the person I had been and what I was capable of.

I got to start a new journey of becoming a new version of myself that was so much more fulfilling because I got to learn so much about myself in my willingness to show up for myself and fight for a better life. If she had thought, “This isn’t my ideal client, she can’t afford me, I’m harming her by selling something she can’t afford, I’m manipulating her by believing what I have is valuable,” I would still be traveling the country with the stage in my trunk that smelled like onions and slicers in my backseat onto my next road show. That would be my reality right now.

I wouldn’t be sitting in my mini mansion of a house, in my personal office, recording you this podcast, teaching you that you can do more and have more and empowering you to go spread the message to other people. You aren’t saving anyone by believing they need to be saved and aren’t capable of saving themselves. Like, really hear me on that.

This is the biggest mistake coaches make in thinking of sales this way, and truly, it starts with you. So many of you are struggling to believe that you aren’t capable of being this big in the world. How many of you are believing you can’t do it? That investing in yourself will harm yourself? How many of you are thinking right now that you might not be able to make a change and you might not be able to get the results? It does start with you.

If this is where you are, of course you are so afraid of harming other people and putting their financial lives or their relationships in jeopardy by asking them to make an investment in themselves. You have to first start with your own beliefs. So that is the first thing. If this is you, if you’re in this situation, the most important thing you can ever do in working against this big obstacle of not believing in yourself about sales is to start with your own belief.

So when that client comes along that needs to lose 50 pounds to create a healthy body for themselves, that is free of disease so they can live to see their kids get married and bop their grandchildren on their lap and they say they don’t have the money to pay you because they are afraid maybe they can’t make the change and a different life is available for them because they see themselves as a little broken and unfixable and not really worth the effort, you will stand for them.

Or at least have a conversation about the money and about the results without your mind spinning out in judgments about them and who they are and aren’t, and instead you’re focused on them and who you see them to be and how valuable you see them as. So much so that they are worth figuring this out to get help. That, my friends, is what selling is all about.

Selling coaching saves lives. It creates lives. It is far from this nasty thing that you think you have to do to finally get to do the thing that you really want to do, which is coach your clients. Selling is coaching your clients. Selling is being a coach and standing for what coaches believe in. Selling is beautiful and amazing and heart-centered in every way, unless you bring your own baggage with you. And then it feels awful and pushy and convincing and manipulative, and then you don’t get to help your clients.

You don’t witness transformation over and over again and you don’t strengthen your own understanding of what’s possible in the world. I remember a time when a handful of clients came to me and I sold them coaching, and I used to carry the weight of their results on my shoulders. Some of you might know what I’m talking about.

But I remember how heavy my own weight had been and how light it got session after session, and how grateful I was that someone was willing to take a chance on me and was brave and stood for me. So I kept standing with my clients and now years later, some of them have six-figure and multiple six-figure businesses, marriages that are happy beyond belief.

They finally got rid of the guilt of an abortion and had their first child, they walked down the aisle to be married to the love of their life without their mother, who they lost to cancer and felt love instead of pain. They healed their marriages after betrayal. Now, I carry that around. I carry that around for every email I write, for every offer I make, for every webinar I do, for every Facebook ad I run, for every podcast I create for you.

And each client I take on, the load gets lighter and lighter as I believe more and more. The message gets stronger and stronger and I sell more and more. We’re at a time in the world where anyone can change their life and have the life that they truly desire. We’re the deliverers of that message, of that mission.

With every single sale we make, we get closer to changing humanity. People think sales is just this thing you have to do to get clients to coach, it’s a means to an end. No. It’s where the transformation begins. The transformation of saying yes to something greater, to a better life, to a bigger you. You have to remember that.

Otherwise, you’ll be worried about all these other things, about you manipulating people and pushing people and not giving them an opportunity, and you’ll miss the opportunity. But not because the client isn’t ready, but because you’re afraid and you don’t see it as an opportunity. You are focused on the worst possible case scenario that it could be, which is that your client won’t get results because you’re not good enough and you don’t know how to coach them and you’re just selling them something so you can make money.

Instead of thinking this other thing, which is so possible, which is you’re offering them a transformation of a lifetime and an opportunity to become who they’ve always felt they were meant to be. Skinny in their body, with an amazing relationship, with lots of money, with a better relationship with their mother or their kids. What if you just didn’t put your own thoughts behind your opportunity? What if you just didn’t bring that to the table and you just shared how life-changing coaching was and you let them decide for themselves?

I did. I got to decide for myself. I didn’t have the money, but someone presented me an opportunity to change my life and become someone bigger and better than I’d ever imagined myself to be, and they let me decide if I wanted to work really hard to figure out how to come up with the money. They let me decide how committed I was to doing that. They let me decide if I wanted to say yes or no.

But so many of you are deciding for your clients ahead of time. You’re deciding by not even coaching them when they have an objection, by just agreeing with them and believing them and being like, “Yeah, you’re right, you don’t have the money. Yeah, you’re right, you have tried everything, it probably won’t work for you.”

Don’t be like every other person in the world for them. Be the person that’s willing to tell them they’re wrong. They can do it, they are capable, they are amazing. They’re perfect as they are, but they are capable of more. They can figure it out, they can come up with the money. And when you take them to that place, they get the opportunity to see themselves as far more capable than maybe they’ve even thought of themselves.

What if you let them go there? You can’t even get there when you’re all up in your own shit. When you’re all up in your own shit. When you’re all up in your own judgments carrying around your own belief baggage, this is it, y’all. This is the biggest obstacle you will ever have to selling. You can focus on the transformation or you can focus on the fear of manipulation.

One will have you serving way more clients, helping way more people, and proving that thought to be true for you is that coaching is transformational and changes lives. Now, at this place that I’m at, I have so many examples and stories to think about. You guys, I seriously had a client that came to me – I’m going to leave you guys with this story.

This is how much I believe in this work. I had a client come to me and I’m going to give probably the exact details a little bit off but this is basically what happened. We went to high school together, she came to me, she called me up during – at the time I was launching a program called Diva Business School and she called me and she said, “I don’t know if you can help me. I don’t have a business, but my life is falling apart. I’m 60 grand in debt, I’m in foreclosure in my house, my marriage is falling apart, and if I don’t do something my whole life is going to crumble around me.”

And we did this entire call and I really knew I could help her because your thoughts create your results and I knew I could help her become someone different because I’d been there. My life had fallen apart. I was a disaster when I first started coaching and I had no money and I was losing my apartment and I lost all my furniture and I lost my relationship.

I knew how to help her. I really had that belief. Even just if I taught her and she saw the concepts of your thoughts create your results, I knew I could help her. But even me, I was like, that’s a lot.

And so here’s what I told her, I said, “I know I can help you. But the thing I think you need to think about is how serious your situation sounds and how much you’re willing to commit to doing everything. How invested are you? Are you willing to listen to every single thing I say? Because we don’t have the luxury of you not listening, of you not going out and trying things, of you not doing the work. It sounds pretty serious, so I think you should take time and think about it. I really think you need to know what’s on the line and if you know you’re in this much debt and you’re losing your house and you’re losing your marriage and you’re going to spend more money in Diva Business School, I just want to make sure you make a really solid decision to become someone different through that process.”

And so she took a couple weeks and I feel like it was like, maybe three weeks later she came back and she said I’m in, I’m doing this. And then she went and got a job at Starbucks with zero ego, with zero I’m too good to make coffee for people. Just I’ll do whatever it takes, I’ll get me a job at Starbucks. And she got a second job, she was a mom, she had a full-time job, she got a job at Starbucks and she enrolled in Diva Business School.

And I remember I used to teach things like little concepts that I would teach, she would write them down on Post-Its and put them on her computer at work and everywhere. And all day long she would be thinking about how she could apply the things I was teaching her into her life and within a year she had paid down over 40 grand of the debt, saved her marriage, completely changed it, turned it around, got her house out of foreclosure, and decided she wanted to become a coach and that that was going to be her new way to make money.

And two and a half years later, I think roughly, she’s now a financial coach who helps other people pull themselves out of situations that they can’t possibly ever imagine pulling themselves out of. That is why you never think offering your coaching is manipulative or pulling someone into something or harming someone. Your coaching is an opportunity to save their life.

And all of your thoughts – like if I had brought any of mine to the table, if I had brought my beliefs about debt, if I’d brought my beliefs about going and getting a second job when you have a kid and a full-time job, if I’d brought my beliefs about time or how exhausted she would be or how awful her situation was, or that she shouldn’t do it, if I’d brought my own beliefs that maybe it wouldn’t work, if I brought anything to the table, she might not have the life that she has now.

I really want you to think about that. So what I do is I bring nothing to the table. I present this opportunity of coaching, of changing a life, of becoming someone better, of meeting your greatest potential, of getting what you want in life. I just present the opportunity and I coach my clients and I show them their mind and I believe that they’re whole and perfect and capable of amazing things. I believe in them more than anyone has ever believed in them in their entire life because I know what that feels like to have someone do that for me, and I just give them the opportunity and I let them decide how hard they want to fight for it, if they want to take it, how they feel about it.

If you do that, you will make so much money. Alright my lovies, have an amazing day. I will talk to you next week.

Hey, if you are ready to make money as a life coach, I want to invite you to join my 2K for 2K program where you’re going to make your first $2000, the hardest part, and then $200,000 using my proven formula. It’s risk-free. You either make your 2K or I give you your 2K back. Just head over to www.staceyboehman.com/2kfor2k. We’ll see you inside.