Ep #68: Creating a Positive Buying Experience

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 coaches, welcome to episode 68. Today, we’re going to be talking about creating a positive buying experience. Such a good topic. So, this topic came to me because of an experience I just had as a customer that was super-negative, for me.

And I also recently had a coach in 2K for 2K also post that she recently had a negative selling experience. And I know that this happens to well-intended people; well-intended people, well-intended coaches. Just because you create a negative buying experience for your customer, it doesn’t mean you wanted to. It doesn’t mean anything negative about you at all.

A lot of times, it’s just because we aren’t aware of the difference between a negative and a positive buying experience form a customer’s perspective, or we haven’t done the work on our own mindset to show up from that place. I think this is why so many coaches come to me and they’re afraid to be salesy, they’re afraid to sell because they have had negative buying experiences and they’re afraid to do the same thing.

So, before we dive in, I just want to offer, for you in this podcast, I may uncover things that you are doing that could be creating negative buying experiences for your client. And if that is the case, I don’t want you to go into shame mode or get down on yourself or start pitying yourself or think you’re never going to get it right. I want you to really manage your brain to instead go to gratitude that I’ve done this podcast and brought this to your attention and that you have the solution that I’m going to offer you.

You have to be very careful to not make it mean something about you personally and just be willing to work on it to create positive buying experiences. Now, of course, we can’t change our clients’ thoughts and we can’t be responsible for what everybody thinks about the experience of buying or being sold from us.

We can’t really control that. But from this podcast, I am going to give you everything you possibly can control to create the most positive buying experience for your customer that you possibly can. I’m going to equip you with all of the tools and the mindset that will help you get there.

But understand that I have been selling for 15 years, even before I was selling mops in Walmart, I was selling cell phones for AT&T. I sold all the time. I still sell all the time. And not everyone has an amazing incredible buying experience with me, especially when I was pitching. If I was having a bad day, those were not always positive buying experiences for customers. I will be the first to admit that.

So, we’re all human. Life is 50-50. We do the best we can. But I want to share these things so that whatever you can control in the moment you can control it. You have the ability to because you have the tools and the knowledge that I’m going to share here on the podcast. And I will also say, before we dive in, if you really want to become excellent at crating positive buying experiences for your customers, if you want to nail this, 2K for 2K’s entire program is set up for this.

It’s set up for you to feel powerful selling and for your clients to enjoy you selling to them so much that they want to throw money at you. That is how I teach selling. So, you have so much to learn and it is all inside 2K if you want to take this work deeper.

Okay, so let’s dive in. Let’s talk about my negative buying experience, from the clients’ perspective. I’m going to be the client for a second. So, I went to hire a trainer. And I asked my assistant to set up a trial 60-minute session. The trainer, the day I went, ended up being 45 minutes away and the place ended up being kind of a dump. Not a problem though because the trainer had said they would come to my house. That’s what they told my assistant.

So, I’m expecting to be there 60 minutes for a 60-minute workout. The session ends up being 90 minutes; 60 minutes of which is spent selling me. Selling me on things I didn’t even ask to be sold on, asking me about my nutrition, the supplements I’m taking, teaching me about things I already know. I already have a nutrition coach. I already have a weight coach.

The workout itself was pretty good. At the end, he starts telling me about pricing and starts trying to schedule our sessions. He doesn’t ask if I want to continue. He gets no buy-in from me. No, “Yes, I want to hear more,” or, “Hey, how do we work together?” No buy-in.

When he starts trying to put sessions on the books, I tell him that my assistant will reach out to him, that she handles all of my scheduling. Now, that was an excuse, truly, and an objection. She does handle my scheduling, but in the moment, I was starting to feel pushed and uncomfortable and I just didn’t want to deal with it, which your clients won’t either. So, I put it off on my assistant.

At that moment, we start talking about the schedule and he starts talking about whether I will come there or he will come to me. And he starts backpedaling a bit on being willing to drive to my house. So, then he starts talking about meeting me halfway. But he will need me to come all the way to him twice a week out of my three sessions; 45 minutes both ways during rush hour.

I try and tell him, maybe we should both consider if we’re really up for the drive. So, this is my second attempt at an objection, feeling very uncomfortable. It seems like you aren’t going to fulfil your end of what you told my assistant. I’m not sure I’m willing to fulfill this end. I didn’t realize it was this far away. Maybe we should just take a second to think about if this is a hell yes for both of us because, right now, it isn’t.

I tried. But in my mind, I was feeling very uncomfortable. I was feeling very pushed. And I didn’t really feel like there was room to speak up and say so. So, I started thinking about, I just want to get to my car as fast as possible.

At this point, I don’t even know that the session has been 90 minutes. I just know I feel so uncomfortable that I need to get out of there. I have a call later that day and I have to get home and I have to shower and I have to get ready for it. so, I start trying to end the conversation quickly.

I stand up. He doesn’t take my cue to wrap things up. I pull out my card to pay for the session; he still does not take the cue. He keeps selling me. And then – here it comes – having not asked about my thoughts at all about moving forward, I finally interrupt him to ask him if my assistant paid or if I need to. And he says that I need to, and hands me a credit card slip to sign, like he swipes my card and hands me the credit card slip to sign for a $600 charge.

Confused, I ask why it’s $600. And he says, “Oh, you pay for 12 sessions at once.” Now I’m really uncomfortable. Now I think I missed something in the conversation with my assistant and I’m trying to think of what I missed. And now, I feel confused and late, now that I’ve actually looked because now, I know, oh my gosh, I’ve been here 30 minutes longer than I planned.

And I’m feeling so uncomfortable, like uncomfortable beyond the point where I have rationalization to stay calm and handle the situation like a boss. I start feeling so uncomfortable that I actually have the thought in the room  I watch myself do it but I’m so uncomfortable I can’t stop myself – and I’m asking myself, “How much am I willing to pay to just get the hell out of here?”

So, I know it sounds crazy now, but in the moment, my discomfort was so heightened that I actually ask him, “What if we just do six sessions instead?” And I signed for $300 and I leave thinking, “I’ll explain it to Neil later. It’s the stupid tax; the price of not having enough courage in the moment to speak up for myself.”

And then I have the thought, “Good thing I’m rich. This was dumb, but I just want to get the F out of here.” And so, I scurry out. And I text my assistant about all of this, who then tells me the session was supposed to be free. I wasn’t supposed to pay anything.

And as I drive home, instead of shaming myself for not speaking up – although my brain definitely wanted to because I’m a sales expert, so this is my wheelhouse, this should have never happened and I’m a powerful boss and I’m a coach and I have no problem saying the hard things to my clients. I’m going through all of these things.

And then I stop myself and I decide to get curious instead. And I started feeling grateful. Like, I haven’t had an experience like that in a while and it reminded me of being a buyer, like the buyer’s experience and how important it is. I started feeling like I just got my $300 worth of value right there because it boils down to a few things that I want to teach you about today.

Now, by the way, I did get my money back. Michelle called and handled that. But I was willing to let it go. I was like, “You know what, not only is this what I was willing to do to get out of the uncomfortable situation, but now I’ve even learned from it.

So, I’m going to teach you. This is what it boiled down to, for me, when I was thinking about the virus experience. To have a positive buyer’s experience for the customer, to have that positive selling experience for you and a positive buyer’s experience for them, it requires three things; respect, trust, and safety.

So, respect – you have to respect your client’s time. If you say 60 minutes, stick to 60 minutes, no matter what. Unless you tell them ahead of time that it might go over. I think, for one on one calls, you want to really stick to it as much as you can. You will get better at it as you sell. So, you will get to a point eventually, if it is going over an hour, the more you work on it, the better you will get at it; I promise.

But for things like webinars or trainings, you can tell them ahead of time that it might go over. That’s okay, as long as you let them know. You just want to make sure that you lead them to not schedule you into a tight schedule, if you are going to go over.

I had to bust my ass to get to my call on time. Your client shouldn’t be responsible for keeping time. I shouldn’t have been responsible for knowing that we’d gone over. And had I known that it was going to be 90 minutes, if that’s just how it is, I would have planned for that.

So, that misuse of my time felt very rude to me and disrespectful to me, as the client. As the coach, I can clean out my thinking on that. But we’re just talking about me being the client.

The other thing a positive selling experience requires is trust. You have to deliver what your clients expect to receive. I was expecting a workout. I was so annoyed by the 30 minutes of measuring and weighing and touring the facility. I was expecting an hour workout. I wasn’t expecting to go through my nutrition, what vitamins I was on, what my regimen needed to be.

I might not have been opposed to knowing all that and doing all that had I known. I just didn’t. This is why I don’t recommend, if you’re a coach, reeling people in with free coaching calls and then running them as consults. I do think a free coaching call is different than doing a consult call. And I never did free coaching calls.

I did consult calls because I want my client to be bought in on that it is an actual consult where they will be making a decision to buy. When you tell someone that it’s a free coaching, they think they’re just there to get free coaching.

They’re not prepared to make a decision to buy. They feel a little violated if they’re asked to make a decision to buy when they weren’t planning on it. And I don’t think a free coaching call, unless you’re doing your free six-week coaching, which I think everyone should do to get coaching under your belt and feel more confident, but beyond that, just offering one-off free coaching calls, we could do an entire podcast on this, but I just think you have to check your intentions.

It’s never going to create the same result that a consult would do. And yes, you might get less consults and you might get more free coaching calls, but the result you will yield will be greater when you sell them appropriately as consults and you prepare your client for making a decision to buy and to how that call will go.

And then, the third thing is safety. And that’s what I want to really dive into today. You have to create an environment for honesty. A client can’t be honest if safety hasn’t been created. You have to create the environment where your client is safe and feels safe to be honest.

You want to find out what your client is thinking no matter how uncomfortable it is. We teach this in 2K for 2K. We call it being the seeker of truth. You want to get to the truth, not to the yes. Getting to the truth is the most important, so it requires you to create that safety.

So, to do that, you have to pay more attention to your client than your own wants and needs. You can’t be too busy trying to make a sale to miss that your client doesn’t feel comfortable to be sold. You can’t be invested in the sale so much that your client feels like they will be hurting you in some way to say no or that they’ll be making you uncomfortable.

There was no opportunity for me to speak up. He didn’t look for any of my cues. He didn’t pay attention to any of my body language, any of the words I was saying. What he was very invested in was getting me to commit and pay him. And it was very obvious. There wasn’t room for any of my concerns. Even when I voiced them, they were just ignored.

How this shows up sometimes in coaching, how I know that my student has done this with one of their potential clients is they’ll post saying that the client said yes and then sent them a message and said this. So, if your client ever says this, you know you have not created safety.

So, the client will say, “Oh, I know this isn’t what you wanted to hear, but I need to wait on coaching.” Or, “I know this is going to disappoint you, but I really just can’t move forward. I thought about it and I’m a no.”

Whatever they say, I know something about you, you’re going to have a reaction. You’re not going to like this. You’re going to be unhappy. This isn’t what you want, but I’m going to choose to do this… that is always a sign to me that the client felt personally responsible for meeting your physical or your emotional needs, and therefore, on the consult, did not get their needs met. And that’s why they’re backing out.

The client isn’t supposed to be taking care of the coach. And that is what they’re having to do when they have to say yes for you to be happy and sufficient and in belief about yourself. So, you have to create the space where you take care of the client. And the client never has to worry about your feelings or wellbeing.

And the way that you do that is by genuinely not needing your client to say yes on the call, by being in sufficiency and belief about yourself, and having no expectations of your client. This is also when you will coach at your highest level.

When you create this environment, you will get honest objections from your clients, their honest hang ups. You’ll hear about them. And what’s even better is they will be looking for you to help them through it.

Sometimes, I want to buy something – as a consumer, I want to buy something and I am stuck in my thinking and all I’m looking for is I just want someone to tell me what I need to hear to buy it. I’m actually looking for that.

I want you to pay attention to your own buyer’s experience and yourself when you’re buying things. I’m looking for them to go the extra mile and comfort me, or ease my concerns, or address the objections that I have. Your clients are too. And if they aren’t, if they are on the call telling you flat out they can’t buy and they don’t have money and they aren’t looking for you to be their guide, it means you didn’t build enough trust on your sales call for them to see you that way and treat you that way.

And before you say, “Well how do I do that?” Don’t start dissecting your calls. Dissect your brain on the calls. Your thinking and your energy is what creates this.

What I mean by don’t start dissecting the call is just don’t go to the how. What do I need to say to them? What do I need to do on my consults? Your thinking and your energy is the only thing that creates this, no matter if you’re following my sales process or anybody else’s. it doesn’t matter. You can do them both step by step by step by step, five different kinds, step by step by step by step. You can try all the sales processes, but your thinking and your energy is the only thing that controls this.

When I was pitching and I didn’t need my audience to like me or buy from me, I sold hundreds of units and made thousands of dollars. When I needed them to like and buy from me, I sold nothing, no matter how good I was. Even when I was the best of the best at the top of sales, I could have entire days where I sold nothing because in my brain I was needing them to buy from me and I was needing them to like me. And I was needing them to behave a certain way during the sales process.

So, in 2K for 2K, we have an entire module on building sufficiency and creating a stronger mind to coach from on your calls. I highly recommend, no matter how much money you’ve made, you join and learn this. I have coaches making $300,000, $500,000 a year that struggle with this in their sales copy, in their webinars, all of their selling, even at that level.

You really want to make sure that you work on this every single day, building sufficiency and the mindset of navigating your clients’ thoughts instead of your own.

Okay, so now let’s talk about after the call; between when they say yes, if they do say yes and when they pay. Because there is a space between when they say yes and when they pay and it’s so important for you to create safety there too.

You’re going to want to check in on them, just to be kind, to check in, to remind them. It’s all a no. Do not check in. even if you have a call scheduled and they have not paid and it’s the night before, you can message them that morning, the morning of the call and only then. And I’m going to give it to you; only with this response.

You can go to the show notes if you want to actually get these exact words, “Good morning, our session is at 10. Just make sure you make your payment before the call, or we can take care of it over the phone. Whatever is easiest for you. Talk to you soon.” That’s it. That’s all you can ever say.

I’ll say it again for you, “Good morning, our session is at 10. Just make sure you make your payment before the call, or we can take care of it over the phone. Whatever is easiest for you. Talk to you soon.” That is it.

If you are doing anything else, stop it. Anything else only ever comes from your fear that they will not pay. That little sentence that I’ve just given you is gold. And the reason it’s gold is because the thought process, the mindset that created it, that I created it from, is full of abundance and full of belief that this client 100% will pay.

And most of the time, they will. That’s what fascinating. If you don’t freak out and scare them away – which I’m going to give you an example of that happening with a client – if you don’t freak out and scare them away, they will pay. Most humans wait until the absolute last minute to buy something.

Every time we do a bonus for 2K for 2K, every time, our final day is the highest. And it will even show when I go into our – we use Stripe as our payment processor and when I go in, to look in, the next day there will be a ton of money that shows up for that day for all the people who paid after midnight.

And that always serves me to think, people just will use any amount of time that you give them. That is just human condition. And what’s so fascinating is that every single time that I’ve done that, the morning of, almost every single time the person is like, “Oh yeah, oh my gosh, thank you, I’ve been totally so busy,” or they have some reason.

And I’m always so grateful I didn’t jump to the conclusion that they weren’t going to pay, that they were backing out, and then take action from that place.

So I want to tell you what you checking in is like for the client. So, my client Laura posted in 2K about a buying experience she recently had, and I’m going to read you the post that she posted.

She said, “I had a very interesting encounter with someone trying to sell me something and thoughts about money and thought maybe it would help someone else too. There is a local photographer who is just starting out here and I have met her networking and her pictures are really nice, like six or seven on a scale of one to 10.

She sent out an email Friday morning offering 60 pictures for $500. My thought is, that’s super cheap. And I’ve seen her pictures and I wanted pictures. I’m in. Perfect.

I replied back to her on Friday early morning and she responded at 2pm Friday with, “Here’s what I need from you to move forward.” I end my Friday at 3PM when our nanny leaves and I calendar my time for non-client emails, which isn’t until Monday.

So, I got an email Saturday morning from her. I didn’t respond. Then again from Sunday from her. And it felt super graspy. I replied to her Sunday and said, “I will get back to you tomorrow. I typically don’t answer non-client emails on the weekend.”

She said, note to self for next time, just don’t even respond. And then today, I got another email. Laura, look, all I need from you is your physical address so I can send you the invoice. Would you please give that to me?” I’m reading this dramatically just so y’all know so you get the point.

She said, “I closed up and, like, this is just a no. Turned me off so much, my thought was then, even if she came back to me and said it was free, it would still be a no. if my one on one coach who I was working with said those words to me, neutral circumstance, my thought would be like, oh my god yeah, right away, I don’t want to lose my spot because the energy would have been totally different.

It was great reminder for me that, number one, it is not about the price. And number two, we can say the same words or copy someone else’s, but if the energy behind it isn’t authentic and genuine, it can come off weird and creepy.”

So, listen, y’all, weird and creepy is what it comes off when you text your client checking in about their payment. And let’s really pull this experience apart. Your client is just like Laura. She ends her day at 3PM when the nanny leaves. She doesn’t check her email for non-client emails until Monday.

That’s just something she does. And your clients, if you get people ghosting you and not responding to you, the thing I want you to think about is what did you do that created that?

Laura felt so uncomfortable in her buying experience that’s he was like, “I should have just not responded. I should have ghosted. I should have ignored,” right? Your clients ignoring communication with you is an action they’re taking based on a thought they’re having and I just want to offer that the thing for you, for you to take responsibility, I would think that you created that. And I would ask yourself what you created that from.

Your action, something you did became their circumstance that they had a thought about. Their thought created them to feel weird, and then they ignored you. That’s what actually happened. And you want to figure out what you did that created them feeling weird.

It’s just the only way you can improve is think that you actually created their thoughts and feelings, is to take that responsibility and that ownership and figure out if you did cause them to feel weird and ghost you and ignore you, what could it have been? You will be able to find an answer every time that helps you be better for the next time.

And the other thing that I want you to think about is you are too busy being an amazing life coach to be weird and creepy. If you’re being weird and creepy, you are not being busy enough being an amazing life coach. Think about that. When I had 14 clients, I remember one time – this only happened once – but I remember a client saying yes and not paying me and I didn’t even notice.

In fact, we hadn’t actually set a time. I always made my clients set a time, so I don’t know in that specific circumstance why I didn’t. But we didn’t set a time to start our calls and I didn’t remember for weeks later that the client hadn’t paid and they hadn’t ever started.

I was like, oh yeah that person was supposed to start coaching with me. I was too busy serving my clients and creating more clients who want to pay and who will show up for their calls.

So, a lot of you guys are going to ask, did you reach out to that person? No. If she was really interested in coaching with me, she would have contacted me. I just let her non-response be the response. Some of y’all need to do that.

And I just kept going. Because what I was spending most of my time doing was focusing on people who were paying me and who wanted to pay me. That’s all I let my brain think about.

The other thing to consider that some of you, when you’re in a lot of fear about not making money and not making it as a life coach, that you don’t have space to think about, so I’m going to give you this little prompt, is that giving your client time and space, regardless of whether they said yes, giving them space to pay allows you to find out if they’re actually committed or not.

You have to check yourself if you want them to be committed no matter what and pay you so that you make money and sign a client. If you’re thinking abundantly and strategically as a coach who is performing at their highest level, you’re going to want to filter the people who aren’t committed for the people who are because you’re going to only want to work with the people who are truly committed.

You want to give them the space between saying yes and paying. So, I don’t ever recommend taking their credit card on the phone. I know people do that. That’s a tactic that someone’s teaching people. And I don’t’ recommend that.

Number one, I felt very called out when I was just expected to drop $600 after a 30-minute workout right then and there on the spot without having any opportunity to talk about it, any space to voice my thoughts or concerns at all, and no time to think about it.

If you give your clients space and comfort to bring up their objections, they don’t need time to think about it if they’re allowed to work through it on the call with you. But if you don’t let them work through it on the call, they definitely need time and space to think about it after.

I wasn’t given any of that. So, I don’t like that and I don’t want to have my clients do that. I want them to have the space to commit truly, no matter what they’ve said on the call. I want to give them that space to make sure they’re committed. I’m going to prepare them for their brain and their brain’s desire to make them freak out and not move forward with it.

I’m going to prepare them for the fear that can come up. But I’m going to give them the space because I want to make sure they’re really committed. They’re going to be better clients that way. And I think you want to give them the space on the call even to think about this decision.

You can’t do that when you fill ever silence with teaching so that you don’t have to feel uncomfortable. It’s okay to have silence on consults. It’s okay for you to say the price and give them time to think about it. It’s okay for you to ask them what their thoughts are and give them space to think about it. It’s okay for you to tell them about your program and wait.

You can create spaces for them to think. You can tell them to take as long as they need. I will literally tell them, “I’m fine, I’m not going anywhere. Take 30 seconds. Take 60 seconds. Actually, think about it so we have the opportunity to talk about it. But you can have that space. I’m just sitting here.”

And I hold that space for them, for them to have the space to think about it. Say the price, give them space. Ask a question, give them space. Create space in between the words you say, by allowing there to be room in the conversation for your client to speak up. This all comes from your sufficiency level on the sales call.

You don’t need to freak out about the how. It all comes from just being sufficient. You will get better and better and better at creating safety for your client and creating space for them when you aren’t in a rush to get somewhere, to get to a yes, to feel good about having accomplished a consult call, to get through it, to say all the steps, right?

When you’re not in a rush, you have time to give space. So, I want you to think about this. What do you need to believe to give your clients space to pay, space to think about the price on the call, to think on objections, and to tell them to you? For me, my thought is there is room for no in this conversation. That space will create such a positive selling experience for your client.

Alright, that’s all for today. If you want to take this work deeper, I cannot encourage you enough to join 2K. The entire program will teach you how to create this space; marketing, when you’re making offers, when you’re selling, when you’re overcoming objections. Every step of the process is created for you to be in your highest possible sufficiency, your most logical thinking, your highest capabilities as a coach so that you can create the most comfort for your client. And when they feel comfortable, they’re going to want to throw money at you.

Alright, I’ll see 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.