March 5, 2015 by Sharla Jacobs

Transition into a Heartselling Conversation (without being salesy)

Has this ever happened to you?

You’re at a live event and you’re hoping you’ll meet someone who would be a good client.

You strike up a conversation and it becomes obvious to you this person might be a good match for the work you do. And you want to gracefully transition from just a social conversation into a Heartselling™ conversation, without seeming intrusive or pushy…

So how do you make this transition without it feeling awkward?

It might go something like this: you’ve just met Jane at a live event and you’re having a friendly conversation during one of the breaks. She’s tells you a little about herself, including how she knows the host and what she does for a living. You’re both feeling pretty connected with each other. You acknowledge her and you see her brighten even more.

She asks you what you do and you share your What Do You Do Statement.

Then, you position yourself as an expert, while sharing your humanity vulnerably. If you’d like support with positioning yourself, see our last two blog posts entitled: Why Clients Cancel (and What To Do About It) and How to Position Yourself (If You Don’t Feel Successful Yet)…

When you have a hot what do you do statement and position yourself well, they will want to know more about your services (if they have the problem you solve).

If they ask you more about what you do, we recommend that you resist the temptation to tell them about your process or your title. Instead, you can share your story about why you’re so passionate about this work.

Share your story in a way that both positions you and lets them know that you understand their pain because you’ve lived through the worst of it and transformed your pain into an amazing life.

This is where the magic transition phase comes in:

If they are still leaning in, you can ask:

Do you have anyone in your life who struggles with _______(problem) and might want _________ (solution)?

This gives them the opportunity to say, “Yes, I have this problem.” Or, “I don’t have this problem, but I know someone who does.” This is so essential, because if they have the problem you solve, it can feel very vulnerable to admit it. This question gives them plenty of space to choose to trust you (or to wait until later to give you their trust).

Either way, you can congratulate yourself, because you have successfully transitioned from a social conversation to a Heartselling Conversation, without being pushy or sales-y.

We share more at the Client Attraction Summit about how to continue the conversation without ending up in the “sales box.”

In the meantime, we’d love to hear what you think about this...

Let us know what you think in the comment box below.

February 25, 2015 by Sharla Jacobs

Why Clients Cancel (and What to do About It)

Have you ever had a new client cancel right after signing up?

We were leading our Client Attraction Mastery Event last weekend and I decided to make this video for you before I left the house.

If you want to understand why this happens and what you can do to avoid it happening again, watch this video.

Let us know what you think in the comment box below.

February 19, 2015 by Sharla Jacobs and Jesse Koren

How to Position Yourself (If You Don’t Feel Successful Yet)...

About seven years ago, I (Jesse) was at a party and my former life coach approached me and said, “I’ve heard that you and Sharla have become quite successful. Congratulations!”

I was speechless. Us? Successful? Really? Is that what people think about us?
Why was I so surprised and embarrassed?

Sure, we had made $732,000 that year (in our third year of business together), but it didn’t feel like we had arrived... not even close.

I knew our struggles so intimately. I knew how many people we wanted to reach.
We weren’t even close to where we wanted to be.

Four days after that party, I entertained the idea that we really were successful.

I realized that in comparison to some people we were successful and in comparison to others, we were failures.

I discovered that nobody had the power to determine whether we were successful or not.

So, if success isn’t an objective truth then what is it?

Success is a choice as to how you see yourself.

If you look for evidence that you’re successful, you will feel successful.

If you look for evidence that you haven’t “made it” yet, you will feel like a failure.

After that party, I CHOSE to start seeing Sharla and I as a success.
And we attracted more success to us.

Even if you just started your business, you can see yourself as a success.

Look back at your life and find tons of small successes that have made you the incredible human being that you are today.

No matter how unsuccessful you may think you are, you get to CHOOSE how you see yourself. And you get to choose how you describe yourself to other people.

No matter how unsuccessful you may think that you are, I guarantee that you are at least two steps ahead of many people on this planet who could use your help.

And two steps ahead of your people is ALL you need, if you want to be of service.

In last week’s blog post: How to Position Yourself as an Authority Without Sounding Arrogant, I wrote,

If you are trying to help someone get to the top of a mountain, would you rather get underneath them and push them up? Or stand above them and pull them up?
It’s a LOT easier to stand above them and pull them up to your level.

So as long as you are two steps ahead of the people you want to help, you are in a GREAT position to help them.

But how do you convey you are two steps ahead of them, without sounding arrogant, egotistical and full of yourself?

And what do you do if you’re just starting out or you’ve just been in business for a very short time? Or if you’ve been around for a while, but haven’t quite “made it” yet, then how do you position yourself?

As we shared in last week’s blog, if you just list your accomplishments or your expertise, with no humanity, you will sound arrogant.

So it’s important to share your humanity and your expertise.

Here are some true examples from our life that might spark ideas for how you can position yourself by sharing both your humanity AND expertise.

How many people we’ve helped:
(Humanity) We struggled a lot in the beginning, but we never gave up. And, because of our perseverance…
(Expertise) we’ve been fortunate enough to be able to help over 25,000 people.
The collective results of our clients:
(Humanity) While we have had some clients who have not gotten any results,
(Expertise) we do have a LOT of clients who are making six figures and attribute their success to what they learned from us. In fact, if you pooled all of our clients together, we could conservatively say that our clients have made tens of millions of dollars with what we have taught them.
Our personal results:
(Humanity)In our first two years of leading workshops, we gave our heart and soul to our participants, but never earned more than $1,000 for the workshop.
(Expertise) Recently, we led a live event that brought in over $500,000 in one weekend. We feel so blessed to have learned so much over the last 10 years.

If you’ve helped a lot of people, gotten great results for your clients, and had tremendous personal results, you can use the three ideas above to help you decide how to position yourself without being arrogant.

But how do you position yourself if you’re just starting out (or if you’ve been around for a while, but haven’t quite “made it” yet)?

Here are some ideas to get you started:

Use Your Personal Story.
Your personal story (we call it Your Hero’s Journey Story) is the story of how you faced something (and got through to the other side) that you now help your clients face. You can share how you walked through your own “dark night of the soul (humanity)” and are now living an amazing life (expertise). If you are someone who walks her/his talk, this also positions you in a way that has your Potential Clients believe that you can walk them through their dark night of the soul also.
Your Image.
We recommend you dress two notches higher than your potential clients. Many people make the mistake of continuing to dress how they do when they’re with friends when they’re doing business. We recommend you dress like you’re making 6 Figures. Dress in a way that is both elegant (expertise) and uniquely you (humanity).
How Long You Have Studied Your Profession (Personal Development PLUS Your Niche).
Here’s a great template that includes Humanity and Expertise:
“I’ve studied personal development and________ (your niche: health, money, beauty, or love) for many years. During this time, many people have been drawn to me, and asked for my support. Enough people have approached me that I decided quite some time ago, to dedicate my life to helping a LOT/hundreds/thousands of people overcome this problem.”

Here’s how to come up with your own Positioning Statements:

Step 1.
Make a list of all the different ways you can position yourself as an authority in your field (be truthful, of course). (If you are struggling with the six positioning strategies listed above, we are happy to give you 10 more in our Client Attraction Mastery Home Study Program (we’re launching on March 31^st, so stay tuned).

Step 2.
Write up phrases you can say in conversation, in your emails, or on your website that bring humanity and expertise to your communication.

Step 3.
Practice saying these phrases in a safe place. You can practice in front of the mirror or with a good friend. You can also come to the Client Attraction Summit, which is a very safe place to practice positioning yourself in a community of heart-based people.

We’d love to hear how you feel about this. Let us know in the comments below.

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!