February 4, 2015 by Jesse Koren

How to Avoid Being Manipulative in Sales

True Story:

As I (Jesse) walk to my car, I am approached by a smiling woman. I smile back at her.

I had just dropped my boys off at their classrooms. The sun is shining. My boys are happy to be with their friends. I had just set up a day at the beach with some other families from school. Kids everywhere are chasing each other and making gleeful sounds. I love our school and the community here. I love my life. I am ready to drive home and get to work.

Then this woman stops me and introduces herself as the “Annual Giving Fairy.”

She smiles at me, then peers down at her paper and says, “We need all of the parents to donate at least some money.... We’re going for 100% participation. I don’t think I’ve gotten to check your name off the list yet. And the deadline is Friday. What is your name again?”

My first reaction is to bolt for my car. But I look in this woman’s eyes and I see that she has great intentions. She is on a mission to help our amazing school get funding so it can thrive. She is willing to have awkward, uncomfortable conversations for the sake of her child and all of our children having the best educational experience possible.

So why did I feel so uncomfortable?

Whether she realized it or not, she was having a sales conversation. All sales conversations have the power to feel inspiring or manipulative.

I hate feeling manipulated, as I imagine you do too.

But instead of bolting I decided to stay.

What might I discover from this uncomfortable conversation?

You see, part of our mission is about changing the way selling is done on this planet. So that for generations to come, we, the people who want to make a big difference, can be both inspiring and effective as we change the world.

So I stayed in this conversation, in part to discover more about what makes selling inspiring and effective or not.

Talking with her was quite painful, I have to admit. In fact, after the conversation I felt like I needed a good shower.

But I learned a lot. And I trust that you will, too, if you keep reading to discover what I learned about how to inspire instead of manipulate people.

Here’s the thing...

I trust that you would never intentionally manipulate someone, especially not a potential client. The problem is that when you don’t know WHY a conversation is manipulative, you’re likely to accidentally do it… or even more likely, to spend so much energy avoiding manipulating people that you have a hard time asking anyone to pay you anything.

So in this week’s blog post I go deep into exactly why those first 10 seconds of the conversation felt so awful and what she could have done differently to make the conversation inspiring.

By now, you probably want to learn from my pain and make sure that you’re never THAT person…

Okay, I’m so glad you’re still reading...

Because in order to change the world, you have to get good at having conversations where you ask people to pay you well for the great work you do.

How can you be inspiring and effective (but not salesy) as you change the world?

In order to best teach this, I’m going to pull apart the first 10 seconds of our conversation and explain why it was so slimy and then share how she could have done things differently.

This will give you GREAT insight into attracting clients in an inspiring and effective way.

First, it would help if I define Heartselling™ and Hard Selling:

Heartselling™ is an inspiring conversation that leads to action.
Hard Selling is a disempowering conversation that uses guilt, shame or fear to get a yes.

Heartselling™ is based on the 5 Elements of Chinese Medicine. If you’ve been to the Client Attraction Summit, you have had a chance to get the 5 Elements in your bones... and you know that if any of the 5 Elements is out of balance, the conversation can quickly turn slimy.

In the case of this conversation, all 5 Elements were out of balance.

So here’s how the first 10 seconds went:

The woman stops me and introduces herself as the “Annual Giving Fairy."

She smiles at me, peers down at her paper and says, “We’re going for 100% participation. We need all of the parents to donate at least some money.... I don’t think I’ve gotten to check your name off the list yet. And the deadline is Friday. What is your name again?”

Hmmm...

The first Element in Heartselling™ is the Fire Element that is all about Connection. Asking me to pay money before you know my name??? This creates, as we say in Client Attraction Mastery, a major lean-out.

The second Element in Heartselling™ is the Earth Element that is about Service. This woman was showing up in service to our school which is a great cause that I am totally aligned with. But she wasn’t showing up in service to me. She was trying to get money from me without any regard to who I am, what my life is like, and what I’m most committed to.

The Third Element is the Metal Element of Acknowledgment. This Element allows you to acknowledge your potential client in a way that makes them feel special, significant or awesome. I felt like a number to be checked off of a list. Not very special, I’m afraid.

The Fourth Element is the Water Element of Curiosity. She was curious about me, mainly to know whether she could check me off her list. But was she truly interested in me or my life or my Highest Commitment to my kids and to their school that I love so much? Nope. She didn’t have time... as soon as she got my commitment, she was off to the next parent.

The Fifth Element is the Wood Element, which is about giving your people a choice. She started with this Element and when you start by asking someone to give you money, without connecting, serving, acknowledging, and getting curious, you come across as pushy, obnoxious, and you have people want to say no, even if they do really want to say yes.

In this case, she sprinkled in some guilt. She said a few moments later, “If all of our parents don’t participate in this annual fund, we’re a lot less likely to get grant funding.”

She also sprinkled in some shame. “We need all of the parents to donate at least some money.... I don’t think I’ve gotten to check your name off the list yet.” What if we’re the ONLY parents who don’t donate and then our school can’t get those badly needed grants??? How embarrassing would that be?

And a side of fear… I thought to myself, “I could ruin funding for the entire school.”

Now the truth is that because she was so bold, and because so many parents absolutely love our school, she will probably be effective in getting every one of the parents to donate. But even if this type of selling is effective, there is still a cost.

In this case, the cost was that I joined a conversation with three other parents who were talking about how turned off they were by this whole Annual Giving thing. Every one of them gave money, but didn’t feel good about it.

So there was a short-term gain for the school, but a long-term problem.

It’s little turn-offs like this that can result in a month or two later deciding to take their kids out of this school and find another. And then, while they may have gained a $25 donation, they lost an $1,000 per month tuition fee (or more if they have multiple children enrolled as we do). Ouch!

This is why, at the Client Attraction Summit, we teach that the long-term relationship is ALWAYS more important than the short term sale.

If this had been a true Heartselling™ Conversation, this is one way it could have gone:

Hi my name is _____________! I am the head of the Parents’ Liason Committee.

Do you have about 2 minutes?

Acknowledgment.
Great! First of all, I saw you earlier with your two boys, they are both so amazing... and I love how you are with them.

Connection.
I don’t remember your name, though...

Oh, great, Jesse! Very nice to meet you.

Service.
I feel a little awkward in this role, but I am here in support of our school and all of our parents and all of our kids... doing my best to help us get the funding we need to have this school thrive.

Curiosity.
How has your experience been so far?

Give them a Choice.
Great! I love it too. That’s why I donate $100 per month, on top of the regular tuition.

Because I truly want to see my daughter and your boys and really everyone thrive.

You sound pretty inspired by your experience here at our school. You may not know this, but a donation from you goes even farther than the monthly tuition. We’re close to the end of our Annual Giving Fundraiser. And if we get 100% parent participation, we will be eligible to receive some big grants that could bring this school to a whole new level. Would you be open to making a donation?

If this was how to conversation had gone, I would have HAPPILY donated money. In this case, I donated because of my commitment to the school and in spite of this unpleasant experience (and truthfully to avoid guilt, fear and shame).

Although this conversation was about donating to our school, I’m sure you can translate this to your own conversations with potential clients and learn from her mistakes.

We would love to hear how you see the 5 Elements apply to any Heartselling™ Conversations you’ve had.

Let us know what you think!

January 21, 2015 by Jesse Koren

A New Paradigm of “Selling From the Stage”

We just got back from leading an amazing Client Attraction Summit. We were SO inspired by the Coaches and Holistic Practitioners who showed up and the transformations they experienced!
And truthfully, underneath everything, Sharla and I were both feeling really anxious prior to the event.

We weren’t anxious about whether people would love the event. After hearing from thousands of people that this event had changed their life, we were very confident that this event would be an incredible turning point for the coaches and holistic practitioners who were coming.

Quite honestly, we were anxious about the HUGE changes we had made to the Summit.
In July of last year, we embarked on a bold and scary journey to dramatically change an event that over the last 9 years had brought us nearly 15 Million Dollars in sales.

What if these changes didn’t work out from a financial perspective?
Would we have to revert back to a model that was effective, but no longer aligned with us?
No!!!! We REALLY didn’t want to do that.

We REALLY wanted this new model to be effective... a model that provides so much more value to our clients and is aligned with our values of inviting our attendees to continue working with us from a place of wholehearted love and respect.

This past weekend was an inspiring, challenging, powerful, transformational event for our clients... and for us. We learned a LOT.

Here’s a little background to understand how we got to where we are today...

Eleven years ago, we attended one of the most powerful seminars of our entire lives. Several times throughout the seminar, we watched our mentor make an invitation in front of about 2,500 people to invest in his programs. Our jaw dropped every time, as we saw hundreds of people run to the back of the room to invest thousands of dollars.

We wanted that! We wanted to change lives. We wanted to inspire people. We wanted them to run to the back of the room to invest thousands in our programs.

So we decided to model what he did. We invited everyone we knew to attend a workshop and instead of charging them, we gave them full scholarships. 88 people showed up. And we were especially nervous because we planned to make five offers to invest in our programs throughout this 2-day event.

Even though we were really, really “Sexy” (this means “made lots of mistakes” at Thrive Academy) we counted up the sales on Sunday night and our jaw dropped again! We did it!!!! $33,000 in one weekend. (This was almost double what I had made in an entire year as a Wilderness Therapy Counselor for teens, just a couple years before.)

We booked another event with the same format. And another, and another... Pretty soon years had gone by. We didn’t question the model because it was working and our clients seemed to love it.

It wasn’t until we re-branded two years ago that we stopped and thought deeply about our business.

We realized that underneath our Heartselling™ teaching is our intention to change the face of how selling is done on this planet.

We realized that no matter how great our content and how heartfelt our offers were, inviting people to invest in five different programs in only 2 days and encouraging people to run to the back of the room to sign up, was no longer aligned with who we are.

But we felt stuck because whenever we didn’t give people a reason to sign up right away, our sales would decrease dramatically.

People would stand up at our events and tell us that they wanted more time and space to think about our offer. And, we told them we wish that we could do that. But we found that if we didn’t give people a reason to sign up right away, they would think about it, and think about it, and think about it, and never make a decision.

But, deep inside, we knew there had to be a better way.

So we started searching around for a new model... a model that was heartfelt, in integrity and effective. We spoke with our friends and colleagues in the industry and created a blend of the best ideas we gathered.

In September of last year, we tried it out. We changed the Summit from a 2-day event with five offers, to a 3-day event with only ONE offer (plus a small Philanthropy offer).

We made our offer on Saturday afternoon and encouraged people to think about it overnight... to talk with their partner before investing, to read our folder that contains lots of information about our programs... and then if it feels like a fit, to apply for a spot in the program.

We encouraged them to NOT make a rushed, impulsive decision, to get a clear yes or a clear no. They were so happy about us giving them space to sit with their decision that they burst into spontaneous applause at the end of the offer.

After the Summit was over, our clients raved about it like never before. And a greater percentage of people signed up for programs than ever before!

In December, we led another Summit. And the same thing happened! We got better feedback and nearly half the people signed up for our programs.

But this past weekend, we were more anxious than ever. What if September and December were just flukes?

We realized that we actually had more on the line this time. We could never go back to the “rush to the back of the room now” way of selling. So we wanted more than ever to prove that this new way of attracting clients was MORE effective than our old way.

And I’m glad to say that despite our anxiety, it was still an incredible weekend. About half of the attendees signed up for our program. And here are a couple of things people posted in our Thrive Facebook Group after the event:

“Hello Everyone: I am one of the new Thrive members that has started just this week. I already feel so blessed to be a part of this amazing community. I hope to meet many of you in person over the next year and beyond. I can't wait to build a thriving coaching business ($10,000+ monthly) doing what I love to do... I truly believe I have been waiting for a community such as this one my whole life...”

“Hello Everyone! I am still riding the wave of motivation, inspiration, clarity, self-expression, and ecstasy in living out my life's purpose in a successfully financially way!!! I am so grateful to have met many of you over the weekend and been guided by Sharla and Jesse in such a deep and empowering way. Thank you for sharing your time, expertise, and beautifully sexy selves with me…”

Here is a picture of our new Thrivers who chose to invest in themselves and their vision to help more people... aren’t they amazing?

So, we can pull out a few lessons from this:

Sometimes it’s hard to stray from an archaic model that has worked magic in the past, but no longer feels aligned. Stray anyway.

Sometimes it’s scary to disregard a mentors’ advice that no longer fits your value system. Disregard anyway.

Sometimes it feels like you have to choose between being effective OR bringing the most heart and integrity to something. Keep looking until you find heart, integrity AND effectiveness.

What are your thoughts on the old paradigm of selling vs. this new model? We’d love to hear in the comments below.

We'd love to hear from you in the comments below.

Let us know what you think!

January 15, 2015 by Jesse Koren

The Question that Changes Everything

We’re busy getting ready to lead the Client Attraction Summit in San Francisco tomorrow.

We are expecting a room full of amazing people who are flying in from all over the US, Canada and the UK to be here…
And truthfully, our energy is pulled toward how to make this event life-changing, powerful and as awesome as possible.

When it was time for writing the weekly email and blog post, we realized we didn’t really have the time, and honestly didn’t want to with everything we have going on. (Please don't take that personally, LOL.)

“Should we skip the blog post this week,” I (Jesse) asked Sharla.

"Definitely," we both agreed. But we both knew how important it is that we keep our commitment to send you a valuable article or video every Thursday.

So we asked ourselves one question that makes this whole thing fun, easy and doable...

It is a life-changing, paradigm-shifting question that we've asked ourselves hundreds of times and really is at the heart of our success. This question allows us to stay consistent, when most people would give up.

This quote is one we took to heart many years ago:

“Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.”

- Tony Robbins

“What is this life-changing question?” you ask…

"How can this be easy?"

We asked ourselves, “How can it be easy to both keep our commitment to providing value every Thursday, without draining ourselves or taking up too much time?”

So, when we asked ourselves the question, this short and hopefully highly valuable blog post idea came to us.

What would be possible for you if you asked the question “How can this be easy?” anytime you were overwhelmed, frustrated or just didn't want to do something and were thinking of breaking your commitment?

That's it! How's that for an easy article?

We'd love to hear from you in the comments below.

Let us know what you think!

December 23, 2014 by Jesse Koren

How to Make the Internal Shifts Necessary to Achieve Your Vision

We hope you've enjoyed this mini-course on how to make sure 2015 is the best year yet.

We want to end this series with some serious inspiration. This will be especially powerful for you if you're feeling stuck in your business or your life.

Jacob and Zach meet Santa on the train to Christmas Town

Here is a story from my own life on the external shifts I made to achieve my 2003 Vision to have a full coaching practice...and how you can do the same:

It was February of 2003...I (Jesse) was stuck in a dead end job I hated. I knew that I was supposed to help LOTS of people (just as an acorn is meant to become an oak tree).

I just didn't know HOW to do it. In fact, I had tried to get coaching clients for an entire year, but I couldn't get one private client to pay me a dime. And that's why I was stuck at this dead end job.
Eating a lot of cake and cookies and pizza to try to stuff down this gnawing emptiness.

Until I had an awakening. It came in the unlikeliest of places... from my girlfriend (now wife) Sharla. I had watched Sharla struggle to get clients, and wasn't surprised because I knew how hard it was.

But then she hired a business coach. Within three months, she filled her practice to the brim with clients. My awakening came when I realized there was nothing wrong with me... I just never learned the skill of attracting clients.

In that moment, I went from feeling sorry for myself and jealous of Sharla's success to... competitive! I told myself, "If Sharla can be successful, I can too." Three months later, I got five new clients.

How did I go from seriously depressed to five coaching clients and on fire?

In order to go from zero to 5 new clients in my first month of business, I changed four things:

1) I Became a Student of How to Attract Clients.

I realized that I was not the first person in the world who had ever struggled to get clients, so I started to look for a mentor. I discovered that I could do it gracefully and with heart (which was SO different than what my mind told me about sales and marketing).

I watched Sharla and how she attracted clients with ease. I modeled the questions she was asking potential clients. And I breathed into her confidence. And I invested in an expensive business training program. I wasn't used to paying thousands of dollars for a seminar, but I knew that I wasn't going to get results until I learned how to become a master of attracting clients.

2) I Created a Physical Reminder to Keep Me Motivated.

This is a little strange, but I hung 15 postcards with pictures of animals and people all over my office. The postcards told a secret story of who I had to become and what I wanted to accomplish in one month. I looked at the postcards constantly and smiled to myself as I envisioned telling my boss that I was going to quit. I didn't tell anyone what the postcards meant to me. It was my little secret that kept me inspired and excited.

3) I Let My Dead-End Job Fuel My Hunger to Be Free.

Instead of continuing to get drained by my dead-end job, I let my pain and emptiness inspire me to get out...F-A-S-T. I breathed in to my pain and allowed my pain to make me bigger, stronger, and a better coach. I got HUNGRY for change.

4) I Offered a Free Coaching Session to Nearly Everyone I Talked To.

Armed with my business training and my newfound passion, I was public about my enthusiasm. In one month I did at least 10 free sessions. Not everyone wanted to continue working with me, but five did. (We now know that Free Consultations are much more effective than free sessions, but we'll save this for another post.)

I gave notice in August of 2003. Several months later, Sharla and I joined forces and attracted 16 new clients in one month. That's when we knew that we had mastered this thing we now call Heartselling™

That was over 10 years ago. Since then we've taught our Heartselling**™ System to over 25,000 people.

I hope you're inspired by this story. But inspiration, by itself is not enough. Inspiration fades. Commitment stays. I invite you to take this a step further than inspiration and actually write up a story about all the amazing things that are going to happen to you in 2015.

Yes, that's right, write about your success before it happens. Because your mind hates change, even positive change. By writing the story of your future success, you are preparing your mind for the change that is coming next year.

Here's to an epic 2015!

Let us know what you think!

December 17, 2014 by Jesse Koren

How to Make the Internal Shifts Necessary to Achieve Your Vision

In our last two blog posts, you discovered our tips for How to Get Clear on Your Vision for Income and Impact and How to Get Clear on the Vehicle You’ll Use to Achieve Your Vision.

Once you get clear on the vehicle you’re going to use to achieve your vision, it’s not uncommon for fear and doubt to creep in. This is why it’s important to avoid taking blind action when you feel fear or doubt. Instead, we recommend you check your mindset and set yourself up to be emotionally, mentally and spiritually positioned to achieve your vision.

These four steps will help you make the internal shifts necessary to achieve your vision.

Step 1: Celebrate!!!

Make a list of your Top 10 Victories of the year (no matter how big or small).

Then celebrate your victories in style with high 5's, hugs, a celebration dinner, a sweet kiss with someone special, a hot tub or a massage.

Celebration attunes your Spirit to success... so that instead of “turning around failure” you’re building on success.

Step 2: Set Both Happy and Ecstatic Goals.

Fill in the blanks:

1. I'd be happy if I worked with ____ (# of clients) each month by the end of 2015.

2. I'd be ECSTATIC if I worked with ____ (# of clients) each month by the end of 2015.

3. I'd be happy if I was making $________ each month by the end of 2015.

4. I'd be ECSTATIC if I was making $________ each month by the end of 2015.

If you have more goals in addition to clients and money, you can write these out, too.

The key is to keep your goals simple enough that you’ll remember them in three months.

Step 3: Imagine you achieved your ECSTATIC goals.

Journal about WHY this would be so awesome! What would the increase in clients and money make possible for you? How would this benefit your whole life?

If you feel ecstatic about your bright future, you can stop here. You don’t have internal shifts to make around your vision. Just keep breathing in to your excitement, as if you were fanning a flame to make your excitement bigger.

If you feel excited, but also discouraged about the gap between where you are and where you want to be, then move on to Step 4... It’s time to make some internal shifts.

Step 4: Transform yourself.

If you are feeling discouraged, your goal might be so BIG that you have no idea how to get there. If this is the case, then you may want to shrink your vision until you feel more comfortable.

If you are getting a “HELL NO,” to this suggestion, that’s great! Keep your big vision and work on both your inner game and your outer game. The rest of this article will help you with your inner game. As for shifting your outer game, we suggest finding a mentor who has achieved a vision as big as yours... and then follow their system.

How to make inner game shifts:

If you can’t see yourself achieving your vision, it’s probably because you are empowering past failures.

The most successful people in the world have failed MANY times. They understand it’s just part of the game. What makes them successful is how they relate to their failures.

Here is a VERY powerful process to turn your relationship with failure from terrible to amazing.

Take out a fresh sheet of paper and draw a table with three columns and five rows, that looks like this:

In the first column, write down your 5 biggest failures.
In the second column, write down the insight or lesson from each failure that still benefits you today.
In the third column, write down the gift(s) you got from each experience.

Here’s an example from my own life:

Now make another table, but this one will be for your successes.

In the first column, write down your 5 biggest successes.
In the second column, write down the biggest insight or lesson you received from each success that still benefits you today.
In the third column, write down the gift(s) you received from this success.

Here is another example from my own life:

When you do this simple, but powerful exercise, you will transform your relationship to failure and increase your ability to attract a lot more success to you.

Let us know what you think!