How to Build Sales Confidence And Get More Coaching Clients

Hello, everyone. I am super, super excited to be coming live to you today with Greg Faxson, the epic Greg Faxson, who I have coached with on two separate occasions. A whole year of my life given to Greg. First one was way back in 2018. I signed up with Greg before my business was even a business. And one of the reasons I knew Greg was just the perfect person to speak. Speak on this topic was because I remember our first ever sales call and I was terrified of what I was about to create. And in that one hour, Greg was able to kind of convey this, like, had this inner confidence himself, but was able to transfer that confidence onto me to give me the confidence to walk out of that call, investing over £8,000, which for me back then was the most I'd spent on anything other than like a house and a car. So I'm really excited to introduce Greg today and to go deeper on this topic. Greg, you want to introduce yourself?

Sure. Thanks, Gemma. Are we back? So I help coaches fill their client roster and one of the things that I've really noticed working with clients, and obviously it's the topic that we're going to be speaking about today, is how much of a difference your level of confidence and belief makes in a sales call. Right. We often will sign up for programs and we'll learn that person's, you know, their signature sales process and there's like an acronym and we're like trying to go through all the questions correctly and your belief makes such a difference. So I'm excited to talk about that. Is there anything that I should introduce or say about myself besides that I'm excited to talk about it?

No, that's perfect. That's perfect. So I feel like before we kind of begin, there's just this big question of like, what is self belief? Like, what are we actually talking about here when we're talking about instilling self belief in a prospect? And in my mind, I'm kind of thinking in a sales call environment. Is that what's on your mind?

Yeah, I think that it manifests in terms of your business growth the most in a sales call. And I think that belief, conviction, confidence, whatever we're going to call it, I think that translates through your business. Right. If you don't have that belief, you might be less likely to put yourself out there. So it could translate into marketing, it could translate into your client engagements if you're feeling like, you know, your lack of belief might actually rub off on clients. So I think that it affects the whole business and all of business is interrelated, right? Marketing, sales, and delivery is all together. But if I had to put it in a category, I'd put it in the sales part. And so how you would know if this might be a problem is if you had a lower close rate than you want or if you were closing 50% of clients you spoke to, boom, boom, boom. And then one month you're closing 10%. Okay, what's happening? This might be the cause. So that's where I'd put it in terms of where it is in the business.

And it sounds like from what you just said then, that we can see variability in our own performance in sales calls over time. And we might be better at this at some times than we are others.

Yeah. So I think. So there's two parts of sales, right? There's two things that really determine your conversion rate. How many clients you get versus how many free consults you have, if that's how you're enrolling. And one is just technique. One is just, do you know the right questions to ask? Are you just totally winging it? Are you just holding a free coaching conversation? Right. So just learning that a structure, a process, even if it's just okay, that's a huge jump for a lot of coaches, consultants, service providers. But why would it be, if you're using the same process, that your conversion rate would change month to month? One reason could be if your leads are better or worse. Right? So maybe you hold like a live event and you get consults from that and everyone's like super warm, Right? That could be one reason for your conversion rate changing. But I often think people put a little bit too much stock in, oh, my leads must have been higher quality this month, which is why my conversion rate's higher. Usually the reason for the change is the second factor, which is sort of the sales mindset or your confidence, your belief.

Awesome. Okay, so what would you say is the role of self belief in a sales school then?

So the role of self belief, and you know, I wrote an email on this earlier in the week, but sales is a transfer of confidence from you to the potential clients. It's a transfer of enthusiasm. It's a transfer of trust, energy. And so the role of that in a sales conversation is like, that's what the sales conversation is, right? That's really what's at the core of it. And beyond the words you say, the questions that you ask this person saying like, is, can I tell from this person's energy that what they have is legit? That they believe in me, that they believe in the offer. So it's core to the sales conversation.

And how do we distinguish? Because I feel like there's two types of self belief, right. Like the self belief you have as a coach, as a service provider in yourself, in your program. And then there's the self belief of the person you're speaking to and whether they believe in you, in their ability to succeed in your program.

Yeah. So there's four types of kind of confidence. There's four subsets within this. When we talk about belief or confidence, I looked up confidence. The Latin root is fider, which means to trust. And so there's four types of trust that we're conveying in a conversation with someone. There's the trust in yourself. This is beyond your program. It's just your self esteem, basically, your confidence in yourself that the things that you do and the things that you want to achieve, you're able to put in work and achieve those things. There's the trust in your offer, the trust in actually what you're selling. There's the trust in your, your prospect, your potential client that they this is possible for them. And then there's the trust in the sales process and sales in general, that this is a service that you're doing for the client and having these conversations. So there's those four types of trust. And if you have trust in all those four areas, then that's mirrored in the client. So the client's able to have trust in themselves, their offer, in you, in the sales conversation.

So this is super interesting. So when we're kind of reflecting on that ourselves, the first place is to look within ourselves or to look at where our prospects are lacking in trust, like where they're reflecting it back to pinpoint our weaknesses.

Yeah. So the, you know, we were going back and forth on outline for this and you were like, what's the biggest mistake do you think that people make around confidence and sales calls? And I think the biggest mistake that folks make is that they look for the client to bring the confidence into the sales call so they'll sort of like share their offer. And then they're like, all right, if the client feels like they want to do this, then I'll sort of like I'll be able to, you know, sell more confidently. So they're sort of like putting it in the client's court and. But the client, that's not on the client to have confidence in the offer. If you don't believe in the offer, then the client isn't Going to believe in the offer. So the first sale is yourself. So the mistake is not being able to sell yourself on you and on the offer. And that's what to worry about before you look at all right, I'm sold on it. Does this person believe it's possible for them? And I think if you jump straight to looking at the self confidence that the prospect has you, you're missing the most important piece. And as I went through, what are the main ways that we can build confidence? The number one way is to sell something that you believe in. That's the biggest thing. If you had a cure for cancer, you don't need to do affirmations every morning. You're gonna sell the crap out of it. So I think that's the biggest piece. And it's maybe it's not the, it's not the hack, it's not the most sexy because we can't do that right now. Like you actually have to go do the hard work of building an offer that you're like, this is going to help them get the result. This is as close as I can come to basically selling like Advil. Like if I'm, if I buy Advil and I take enough of it, my headache's going to go away. You know, I mean, I don't need to even believe that it's going to work. My self belief doesn't matter. It's going to work. Right. And so the perfect offer, and this is, obviously, this isn't often possible with coaching, but the perfect offer is one in which the potential client doesn't even need to believe in it. Their belief isn't necessary because it works either way. Right. So for you to be able to say like, look, I get that you're not confident on this and don't worry, it works even if you don't think it's going to work. Right now with coaching, it's tough because we can't do everything. We're not selling Advil. We can't do everything for the client. Which is where the second, I guess, biggest thing that you can do comes in. Is it cool if I just keep running through some of these?

Yeah. And then I've got something to go back on you. But what if? But what if?

So okay, so let's stop after number two then. But this is why the second biggest thing is you being picky about who you work with. Okay. So selling something you believe in, that's huge for your conviction, for your confidence, then being picky about who you work with because you can Only truly believe what you're offering in a coaching type offer that's done with you. If you're picky about who you work with, if it doesn't work for everyone, then you can't confidently sell it to everyone. And so a lot of coaches, consultants, they're offering to 100% of the people that they talk to. I went and looked at our, sort of, our stats from the first six months of this year, and we only. I only made an offer to 30% of the people who filled out an application. So, like, that's a big, That's a big chunk. That's a bunch of sales that potentially we're not getting. But that means that when I open my mouth to make that offer, they're one of the 30%. Like, I'm able to authentically say, we don't offer this to everyone. Here's why I'm offering it to you. Because I see 1, 2, 3, I see all of these specific things that's gonna have this work for you. And that's another piece, by the way, when we're talking about how do you transfer this trust, One of the biggest things you can do and have this technically in your sales process is to share with potential clients why you think that they're a good fit. Because if you don't actually share specific reasons, they'll assume you're offering it to everyone and they will have the doubt, will this work for me? But if you're able to say, hey, the reason we're talking about this in the first place is because, number one, you're coachable, like, you're actually listening to what I'm saying, you're not pushing back. Number two, you're really good at what you do. I can tell if I help you get clients, you're actually going to support them. Otherwise, it's like a house of cards and I'm going to help you with your marketing and then it's going to go back down, right? And giving them two to three reasons why they're a fit for what you offer. So selling something you believe in, being picky about who you work with, and when you do pick someone, being explicit about why it's a good fit for them.

Yeah, I had someone reminded me of that on a sales call yesterday when I'd offered to them and they said, so do you think you could actually help me? And I was like, oh, I missed that bit. You know, where you have to really explicitly say, I can help you. And here are the reasons that exact thing you just Said, here are the reasons for sure. So I get the first two points. What if that self belief you have in yourself and your program fluctuates? Because even though you know you can change lives, sometimes you have unsuccessful clients, sometimes just a series of events happen that kind of rocks your foundation and brings in this seed of doubt. And then so often we see that seed of doubt reflected in our cause. So I get that like you have to stand behind yourself and believe in it. But what do you do when you have those moments of doubt and you, you doubt that.

So there's a, there's a few, there's a few things that you can do and the first thing is just validating. Obviously that's totally normal for your belief to fluctuate. It's not do you believe or not, it's how much do you believe in this thing? And one thing that I, that I see happen sometimes is someone will start selling a new offer they're closing, they're really excited about it, they believe in it and then they'll get like a complaint from a client or they'll have, something will happen and then like the close rate goes down because it shook their belief. And so this goes back a little bit to selling something you believe in and being able to make those corrections if you're not getting good feedback from clients. Right. And that will help reboot your belief. If you're not doing anything about it and clients aren't getting results, your belief is going to go steadily down. Then there's just the normal piece of day to day our belief can go up and down. As entrepreneurs, it's like, what's that graph that's like I'm, like I'm on the top of the world, like I suck. Like it's, you know, the actual entrepreneurial journey going up and down. And that's so true. And so one of the things that I share is just having morning routines or structures within your day and your week that help you get back to your grounded place. And whether that's meditation, exercise, things that change your state can be really helpful. So exercise, cold showers, just going outside, going for like making sure you're doing enough of that, where you're not going to get so in your head in the entrepreneurial journey that you're going to be going up and down so much. So having those personal rituals and routines I think are really helpful and for different people, they're going to choose different things. The other thing that comes to mind around this is this idea of like, you know, one of My mentors once said, like, don't play God with clients. You know, there can be a sense of like when a client, you know, achieves something awesome, you get this amazing case study. It makes you feel good because you're like, oh, I did that. And then when a client is struggling, you're like, oh, I suck. But if you really look at programs you've invested in, coaches you've invested in as the client, you're usually not saying this person is solely responsible for my success or failure. Unless you have this weird like in like mesh relationship with the person, usually you get that they're there as a guide to accelerate things or to support you. And so as the coach, you know, we have to also take that perspective and realize that we are not actually the ones. Like I'll tell people sometimes I'll say, look, I'm not going to drive to your house, you know, at six in the morning and like write these emails for you. Like I already built one business, I'm not going to build a second business. You know what I mean? So there's a lot that I can do in my offer, but I can't do everything. So I think acknowledging that helps with the fluctuations in self belief because you're able to let go a little bit of that responsibility that could have you feel low when the client is struggling. And really what the client needs from you when they're struggling is not for you to also be struggling. They need for you to be like, hey, play the long game. You got this, this is normal. And if you're shook and they're shook, there's no one to hold the space, so don't play God is kind of the second thing I'd share. And I think that that helps with the fluctuations in confidence 100%.

And if I can add one to that, I feel like a level of distance between you and your service. Because when we start to doubt ourselves, like it's our ego that we're not good enough and our service is much more of a practical thing which we can tweak and improve and learn from and get better. And I feel like when we start to over doubt, we're like merging the service and our being as one thing. Therefore, if this isn't seeing results, this means we're not enough. So just healthily distancing that for me has been helpful and I know has been helpful for my clients.

I love that. And it makes me think of this book, the Alter Ego Effect by Todd Herman, which had like it went, was going all around The Internet marketing space for like a year or so ago. And I like it. And it can really help in this specific context of sales. Having an alter ego for your sales calls. So mine was like Leonidas from 300. Right. Like the leader of the Spartan army. I had like this little necklace that I would like put on, which is like. And having this person who you say, okay, this isn't Greg, Greg on the sales call or in this business context or when I'm leading my team. This is like this super confident person. And people can obviously read the book for more. But I think that can be helpful in this scenario of distancing yourself a little bit. Because the reality is you're not you in the business. You. You're the business thing. And it's weird with coaching because it's a little harder to separate that. But if you had, you know, a construction company, you're not like, oh, this is literally me. You're like, oh, no, this is what's happening with my construction business. And we just gotta fix it, work it out.

Totally. Okay, so can you just like, headline those first two points, then we'll go onto the third one?

Yeah. So sell something you believe in. Be picky about who you offer to. And we talked about within be picky, making sure that you share specifically why this person's a good fit. And then we just also came up with alter ego and having some sort of routine ritual that helps you get grounded.

Awesome. And we've got some questions coming. Maybe we can drop by to them at the end.

Yeah, yeah, I'm game to go wherever. I got a big list. You know what I want to make sure actually is you had asked, which I thought was a good question. How do we recognize in a sales conversation when this might be happening when we're not transferring belief? Well, so we actually take a detour to that to make sure we do that for people. And then I can keep throwing in more confidence tactics as they come up. Is that good? Okay, so there's three of them that I came up with. So how high do they set their goals? So in the sales system, I teach 3C sales system. And part of it we're asking about, you know, what do you want to achieve six months from now? What would you need to see from your business to be happy with your progress? And sometimes people are like, well, I'm at like 2k a month. And if I could be at 2.5k a month, like, that would be amazing. I'd be like, hold on, you don't really need me to do that. You know what I mean? We're talking about 500 more a month. Right? And so sometimes you can tell by how people set their goals what their level of belief is, and you'll actually ask, like, is that really your goal? Or do you think that's just what's realistic? They'd be like, oh, no, my real goal is like 10k a month. But I thought like, you know, maybe I couldn't get there. So that's a little sign that their belief might be low. Okay, so that's one tip off. Two is they'll just ask you. You gave this example earlier. If you don't explicitly tell them why they're a good fit, they'll sometimes ask. If they don't ask, it's already on their mind. You just, you know, you've forgotten they didn't ask, so now you're not going to make the sale. But sometimes they'll ask and they'll say, hey, like, like, do you think I can do this? Or why are you, why are you offering this to me? So they'll literally ask like, I need help with believing right now. And you can go into that. And then the third would be in the actual objections or concerns phase. And usually this comes disguised as a price objection. You know, I don't want to think about it. I don't know if I can invest that much right now. But if you're good at chipping away at concerns by asking questions, using silence, then we will eventually get to, I guess, honestly, like, I see your case studies are awesome. And I don't, I'm not sure if I can do it. And then we're back to the same place. And there's different ways to address those things, but those are three tip offs. Tip offs. There could be more, but those are the ones that come up for me that would show you that they're lacking confidence.

Awesome. And like, it's interesting because those can also come at like different points in the call. Right. And so we're looking to kind of address all of those almost before they happen.

So.

So that we're bolstering their confidence to the fact that we don't see the sign. Or is it that you see the sign and you're like, I need to work harder to bolster their self confidence here?

Yeah, these are, well, it depends on the setting the goals. One, that might be your first tip off as they set a low goal. So it's going to be hard to preempt that. The other two, I think if you're hearing them, you may not have headed them off sufficiently because they're still, obviously they're still on the prospect's mind. So, yeah, ideally, with any concern, any barrier to the sale, a good salesperson is going to overcome the objection before it comes up. Yeah.

Awesome. Okay, so we know how to look out for it. We're on the call. What are the next two things we can do?

Yeah, so I want to. I want to address. Let's address. What do you do if you do get one of these signs? Like they're asking, do you think I can do it? Or it's coming out in the objection phase. What do you do specifically then? And then we'll go back to the general self confidence. So you might think the answer is to reassure them. And sometimes you need to reassure them because they need to borrow your belief. But counterintuitively, I found that what can bolster people's self belief more sometimes is actually being skeptical and pushing back. So remember, one of our confidence things was be picky about who you work with. And our first one was sell something you believe in. So the best sales mindset, in my opinion is coming in saying, this thing I have is amazing. And I'm just skeptical about whether this person's the right fit. Right. Those two at once. We both follow. Talking more, right? He talks about auditioning clients like it's an audition not for you, but you seeing if this client's a good fit for you, which I love. So that's the perfect sales mindset. This thing I have is awesome. It works. What you're doing right now isn't working. And I just have to figure out if you're willing and the right person to change. Okay. And so instead of saying when someone asks, hey, do you think I'm a really good fit for this? Just saying, yeah, you can totally do it. Right. Some vague encouragement. I would actually recommend that you ask a question and say. And oftentimes what I say is, look, you've seen my case studies, obviously. And so for the people who are able to execute, you know, obviously we're not in control of the entire universe. But for the people who execute, they get great results. And so my question for you would be, are you willing to take action even if we have some things that are out of your comfort zone, like, are you still going to be able to do that? And most people are going to say yes. I mean, most people, if they really want the thing, if the desire is there, they're going to say, yeah, I'll take action on it. And so then I say, great, so if you take action, then you're going to be good. Right. Like, that's the, that's the one thing I can't do for you. But if you're truly committed to taking action, then, yeah, I believe that this is possible for you because I've seen it happen again and again. Right. And I think that is much more powerful in terms of like, it's almost like inoculation, the inoculation effect. Like you have someone a little bit, this is kind of political now, but you give someone a little bit of a vaccine, a little bit of the thing and their body mounts a response. Right. And that's what has them be immune later. I think that's much more powerful, is for you to poke a little bit of doubt, have them come back with confidence, to grow the confidence instead of you just fully giving your confidence to them 100%.

I remember you asking me that question on, off at sales goal.

I really want to ask it because then when the client's not doing what they need to do, I'm like, do you remember on the sales call how I was like, are you going to do the thing? And then you said, yes, are you doing the thing? I'm not really doing the thing. Okay. So you got to hold up your side of it.

Yeah. And I think that's something you're really good at is flipping that auditioning thing of you're like, I'm meeting you here. Are you going to come step up here or are you going to stay down here? And so every high achiever is like, no, I'm stepping up, I'm ready to meet you there. And they start trying to prove themselves that they're good enough to be coached by you. And that's, I feel like when people say to me on a sales call, am I good enough, you know, to work with you? You know, you've got the dynamic, right. Because people want to meet you where you're at and they're questioning like, like, am I ready? And you have to give them that confidence to prove themselves that they're ready.

Yeah, yeah. And if you're, again, if you're just working with everyone, then it's going to be very hard for the that client to really believe genuinely that you think that they're special. Like, we were talking about a client, I won't share her name, but we were talking about a client who's just been killing it, like six figure launches. Right. And I learned when I, when she came into our program that she had applied to work with me already. It's like, oh yeah, I applied, but I didn't meet the criteria. So you were like, go do this other thing. So she's like, now I'm talking to you like, let's really do this. You know what I mean? So for me to say, yeah, I can help you now is much more credible when she knows that we have a process for figuring out who I can help.

And this is basic qualifying. Right. So often like my basic qualifier for my program is you have an audience of 500 and people tell me like, Gemma, I'm like counting the numbers to get to the point where I qualified to have the call with you. And it's like, awesome, go do the work. You're doing the work.

Yeah. And there's a reason it's, you know, we're not just setting arbitrary benchmarks. We're doing it because we know that those people are going to succeed in the program. And without that, they're not going to succeed or succeed as quickly. Yeah. So that was the piece. In terms of how you actually confront those concerns very tactically, do you want me to dive into some other confidence building?

Yeah, I just want to say I love that so much because I feel like everybody's default would be to reassure and be like, yeah, of course I believe you can do it. And like, here's why I believe you can do it. And even trying to retrospectively do that thing you said to do, which is tell them why you're offering to them, which really needs to come before the doubt. Like, it really has to. Like, I feel there's quite a logical order and if you're retrospectively justifying why you're offering to them, you've sort of missed the boat.

Yeah. Yeah. Well said. Yeah. I want to throw in another point because I remember you had asked about this, which is like, if, if a client is really lacking self belief, sort of like, what do you do? And the first thing I thought of is what I just shared. But the second thing I thought of is if the client really, really is lacking self belief, you don't want to work with them. You know what I mean? Like, we're not here to save anyone. Some, some of us at points we just need like a good therapist. We just need like a good medicine ceremony. Like, we just need to like deal with some of that stuff. But I, I don't have time in my six month program to get them. By the time we get them to that point, like forget about getting Them a full client roster. Like we're just trying to get them that basic self esteem. So if after doing some of these things the person still feeling like it's not possible for them, like gently at that point, I think you let them go because it's just going to become a pain in the ass.

Love it.

All right, so other confidence pieces, a big one is just collecting proof. I'm just amazed by how many people don't take the time to do this in your business because it's such an easy way to just blow your business up. So you should have a process for collecting case studies during and at the end of your client engagements. You should have those like make them beautiful, make them something you're proud of. Like I have if you want to see how I do it. Gregfax.com results like we have this whole process, we have videos and like to me that's something I'm so proud of. Obviously we have the don't play God piece of like I know that these people did it themselves and like why else are we coaching? Like we're trying to help people. So you should have these documented. They're good for your marketing, they're good for your sales because you can share them with clients and they're good for your self belief for you to review. When you're having those lows and you feel like I'm a piece of shit, I suck at coaching. Like you can go look at the case studies like well that can't really be true because I have proof here. So collect proof, review it yourself, share it with clients and be able to say there's a framework, a sales framework called feel felt found. So this can be, we can make this tactical too. So it's like if someone's expressing a doubt of why they can't do it, we want to think of a case study of someone who is in a similar situation and be like, you know, I understand how you feel because my client John felt the same way that blah blah blah, he couldn't do it because he didn't have an audience. And what we found was that he was able to do this and then he has this result. So being able to give people, give people a sense of what's possible with an intermediate piece of proof that fits them really well.

Yeah. And to add, you can also use yourself as the example there.

Yeah, it's, it's as I was doing this jama, I was like it's amazing that I was even able to sell before I did anything. Right. Like there's I think there's a faith that you have to have in the absence of proof to be an entrepreneur for those first few clients. And you almost just have to be like a little bit naive, like a little bit sociopathic, a little bit like you have to. I think there's something with entrepreneurs where it's just like a little bit. I'm just going to go for it and assume it's going to work. I'm excited about it. And so that confidence is hard to build and that's where we fall back on. Exactly. Have you lived the result? Do you have congruence? Do you have your daily routines? Are you investing in yourself? All of that helps.

And, and I think that point you just like point out is really important because at the beginning when you don't have the proof and you're like, yeah, I can help you with this thing. How do you know? Well, it's just going to be awesome. Let's work together, let's work on this thing. And there is this like an arrogance and cockiness you have as a new entrepreneur that literally fades as you progress. And you look much more to like the practical proof you have. I've never really considered that before and I think it is naivety, isn't it? And like, I guess that's where it's really helpful to borrow your coach's confidence in yourself and a willingness to fail. Right. I remember you saying to me like you have to be willing to get on 50 sales calls and hear no 50 times until you learn to get better at it. And I did it. And that's literally learning how just to show up when it's hard, when you don't necessarily have the self belief and fail so many times you begin to see the tactical stuff which you need to get right. Because like you said, there's two elements, right? There's the confidence and there's the tactical stuff and you can be tactically very good with little self belief. You'll still make sales and you can have a lot of self belief and be rubbish at sales and still make sales. We want to meet the two in the middle, right?

Yeah, well said, well said. Yeah. It's like you're. That naivety fades over time and hopefully you replace it with proof before it bottoms out. So I alluded to this but I think it's worth saying is almost a separate confidence building thing. If you're not investing in high end offers yourself, it's gonna be very hard to sell it. It's, it's maybe not like you know, I think people in this space talk about like the law of the mirror and like you have to any objection you ever had, like if you ever waited to invest in coaching, like no one's gonna sign up with you. Like you, you know, I mean, like I like, let's be real, like you, you know, it's not that cut and dry, but. But yeah, if your first sale is yourself, right? So if you aren't investing in coaching in general or you're not investing in high end offers, then it's going to be harder to sell it versus if you've done it, you're like, well I bought it so you know, it's valuable for me so I'm going to sell it. That's another thing too is sometimes I've seen people will invest in a high ticket offer with people who really don't care about their clients and they'll have a bad experience and then it sort of like sours their confidence in selling high end. So like be really careful about, you know, who you're investing in and make sure that if you have a bad experience, you still get, you still ROI from it. You still get your money. Like, even if this sucks, I'm still just going to work hard enough where I'm going to make it good for me and then I'm not going to stop doing this. I'm going to take that as my tuition to know what to look for in the next program that I do. And sometimes this is probably worth underlining. Sometimes you'll have clients come to you and they've been burned by another coach. So, so that's affected their confidence. It's probably worth talking to that specifically of how you do that tactically is I'll usually ask questions like, you know, if the person's married, I'll say like, oh, like your wife. Is that the first person that you dated? They'd be like, oh no, I dated like a bunch of people before that. It's like, oh, aren't you glad you didn't stop after the first person? First person I'm not dating again, right. Or like, hey, like, do you, do you like, you drive, I assume like if you ever gotten in a car accident or dinged your bumper. Oh yeah. It's like, did you stop driving? No. You learned from it, right? So sometimes stuff doesn't work out. That's your tuition to know what the right opportunity is and so that you can help restore faith that way. Sometimes people who've been burned need a little longer sales cycle. So it's like not going to be a one call close. It's like keep building that trust. Anything on any of that before we keep rolling?

Yeah, I just wanted one thing just popped into my mind, especially if you're like an earlier entrepreneur is what gave me confidence at the beginning in myself before I delivered the result is you said, do you have confidence? You're a good coach. And I was like, yeah, I'm an awesome coach. I've just not delivered the result yet. He was like, you were like, so go be a good coach. Like you can coach people in anything. That's what coaching is. Right. So like you can, you can borrow belief in one aspect of yourself. Even if you're, you're newer to serving in like a new niche or a new message. Um, just look for where you're most confident right now.

Yeah, that's so good. That's so good. And I think that's true of a lot of what we're talking about is like try to find what you can transfer over. This is something that I use with clients too. Like once you actually get the client is if generally the person who comes in is going to be, that's going to be an area of their life, they're less confident than another area. That's why they're hiring a coach for it. They haven't quite figured it out yet in some sense. So it's like, all right, what, what do you feel really confident? Well, like I'm great at this sport or I'm a great mom or. Right. Whatever it is, it's like, all right, how can we transfer that over? And so I think that that's a great best practice also for working with clients. Yeah, use it in the sales call as well. Okay, what else do we have here? So I have, I have a little like journaling exercise. This is actually helpful, just confidence even if you haven't delivered the offer, just continuing to bolster that self esteem. So, you know, I have a prompt. Today was a success because so I have these little prompts in my journal at the end of the day that I keep on my bed. And today was success because it's helpful. Because if you're a high achiever, you could actually be, you could be keeping promises to yourself and you could be doing what you need to do, but you almost don't even recognize it unless you reflect on it. So just having some things at the end of the day where you're saying, hey, I, you know, I set this goal and I followed through on it or I was Uncomfortable in this situation. But I still spoke up. Have giving yourself props can help keep that confidence and faith level high in yourself, regardless of what's happening in your program or if you're a new coach or if you're a seasoned coach. So another thing I have here, I'm curious for your take on it actually is guarantees. So if you have a guarantee for your program, it will help a client bet on themselves because you've removed the risk. Right. And we're actually talking internally about creating a guarantee for my program. There's pros and cons to it, but having some sort of guarantee for your program and there's lots of different types that you could do, it doesn't have to be this unconditional money back at the end of your program. That's definitely one way to transfer belief. Because it's like I don't even really have to believe in myself. The program's always so good. They're guaranteeing it. If I suck, there's no risk to me. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Yeah, well, I think like we're in such a skeptical world, like we have to leverage reducing risk. And I think sometimes people's. People's worries are really valid. Like what if I join your program and it's just not the right fit for me, like energetically or I start the content and I think this isn't the way I want to do things. And I think not considering how we can leverage that in a sales situation is naive. So I've gone quite hard on the guarantees I offer now, but it's not money back. I offer it a three month. This is from Tacky Moore. A three month. Love it or leave it. So, you know, my program's nine months. People come in and at a three month part, we either part as friends or they carry on to the rest of the program. So we, we go hard on that three months and what they want to achieve to give them the confidence to stay the course.

Yeah, yeah. And so there's three types of. For folks listening, there's three types of guarantees you can do. Conditional, unconditional or release of service. So unconditional, we all know it's just no questions asked. Money back. You could do that for different time periods, right? You could do that for 30 days. Unconditional. You do that after the first coaching call. If you hate it, I'll give you your money back. Right. Or you could do it full program or something in between. There's conditional, like you, you'll get your money back here If XYZ conditions are met and then there's release of service which means like you don't have to keep paying, right. If you're not this, if you don't love it or if you're not at this point, by this point in the program, you don't have to continue with the payments. And so it's worth considering and getting creative on what could I do there because that is going to help. Even if it doesn't increase the self confidence of the person, it will lower the risk so they can get in even at a lower confidence level.

And what I love about offering like the release of service guarantee, it makes you step up, right? It makes you step up and go, right. So people can leave at the three month point I have to show up and deliver such incredible value. And that leaving isn't on their mind unless they're the wrong fit. Right. And then we want them to leave. We literally want them to walk out the door because six more months of them in your program is going to be like pulling teeth. So I think it's, it's great to like reflect if you feel uncomfortable about the idea of giving a guarantee. Like what are you actually uncomfortable about delivering on?

Sure, exactly. Yeah. And we're, we can talk about this offline but we're working on something that's just absolutely, absolutely insane. Makes me really nervous but I think will be exciting guarantee wise. So okay, we've talked about. So now we're at like, well now we're at just like little tactical hacks. Just like things that just easy things that you can just do. You don't have to change your whole offer. You can just do them and they'll help stand on calls if you can. If you have a standing desk or something like that. It's going to change actually how your, how your lungs are operating and know talk better but also the confidence is going to come out because you're gonna be standing whenever. Okay, so here's something that's a little bit weird. So for like the weird folks here, you're gonna like this. I don't do this anymore. Probably a mistake. Probably get back to doing it. For years I had an essential oil, this one specific essential oil blend. And when I started it was just when anytime I closed a sale, I would smell it anytime I close a sale. So I was creating this association. Like you feel good when you close a sale. Like I'm the best, I smell it. And I was creating this smell association and then once I did that a few times then I started smelling it before a call. Right. So I was priming this feeling. Then I would start smelling it before the call and it would put me in the state that I had been in when I closed the sale. And that can really help. So a little hack, it's not going to change your whole life, but that can really help with getting your state right pre call if you've primed it by smelling something or doing something when you've closed the sale. All right, what else do we have here? Yeah. Have a sales process that you love. Like, have a sales process that you know and that you love. Like, that's just going to help with confidence. I know that's sort of the tactical piece, but it relates to the mindset piece because if you feel like you're winging it or you feel like there's a part of the sales process that feels awkward to you, then you're not going to be as confident. So if you just know you have something to fall back on, you're naturally going to be more confident in a sales conversation.

Yeah. And can I caveat that with, like, you have to love it, but if you're learning sales, you have to be willing to try some uncomfortable questions because they will feel uncomfortable like the first times you say them. So if you just like, oh, I'm not going to ask them what's hard or frustrating because I don't want to. Like, then it gets them all emotional and I feel all bad for taking them to that emotional place. Then you're not open to really learning, like, about how sales is an emotional decision and we have to take people to that place to allow them to make the decision in the first place.

Yeah. Yeah, it's gonna be uncomfortable. Every sales conversation is basically, you're sitting across from someone who's. Who hasn't changed because it's uncomfortable. And you're basically saying it's time to change and they're trying to stay in their comfort zone. And your job is to do what's best for the client, which almost always means taking them out of their comfort zone. So, yeah, if you're not willing to get uncomfortable, you're not gonna be able to take them out of it. And I really like how you said that because I'm sure you've seen this newer coaches, especially people who are, who are like heart centered or who are just connected, they're good people. They'll be like, oh, I don't want to ask it that way because it feels pushy or like, it feels like dishonest. Or out of integrity. I'm like, are you sure it feels pushy or are you just feeling awkward saying it? Right. Like, because let's be really clear about what's ethical and what's not. And sometimes there is an ethical concern and we'll change it for them. But most of the time you're just doing something that's uncomfortable and it's easier to sort of justify it with like, oh, it seems pushy. And it's like, this isn't pushy. This is just leading, helping be a leader for the client, you know, in something that you believe in. Yeah. So being honest with yourself about what the resistance is, is important because sometimes.

Clients will say to me, I don't feel like it's any of my business to know that about them. And yet they're talking about like this life changing thing that they want to help them with, but they don't want to ask them, like, how do you feel about that?

Yeah. And it's like, this is gonna be an intimate relationship. Like you're gonna be coaching client. Like that's gonna have to start at some point where you're asking them questions about themselves, they're revealing things about themselves. Like, it's gonna be a coach. Okay. So another one I have here is don't be desperate. It's hard to be confident when you're desperate. So, you know, I have this con, this concept of like hila, high intention, low attachment. So going into sales conversations with the intention to support this person, the intention to figure out if it's a fit to audition them, to help them get a high level game plan of what they need to do next. Right. So having some strong intentions, not being attached to the sale. It really helps if this isn't your only call of the month, you know, to not be desperate. So like making sure you're on top of your lead flow, things like that. But also knowing like, hey, if this really isn't the right client, even if I do get them, you know, that's just going to be a pain in my butt for six months. So that helps with confidence as well. It allows you to see more clearly and not like fool yourself and be like, oh, like in the back of my head, I know this person is going to just be a pain in the ass for six months. But like, I'm feeling desperate so I'm just going to ignore that and just tell them they're a great client. Like, that's not a good look. It's not going to work out.

I have a Question for you.

Yeah.

How do we ensure that we do sell from a place of integrity and don't, like, slide into Jedi sales manipulation, which some people do really well. And I've had clients be like, I bought a 40k program from someone, you know, who sold me the world. So how can we be confident without manipulating?

Okay, I might ask you to rephrase that because I thought you were going a different direction.

So we want to show up with total confidence in our program, in ourselves, in the person we're speaking to. But we also don't want to manipulate to the point of promising the world. Right. So we have to have a healthy sense of realism with the client. We don't want to just say, yeah, you can achieve your wildest dreams. So I guess I'm wondering where the line is, where we slip into sales manipulation and how we can, like, follow the tips you've given today and be really in integrity with what we're offering.

Yeah. So I think that a big part of actually comes down to intention. Are you. Are you here to add money to your bank account, or are you here to help someone? If you're here to help someone, it sort of naturally resolves that question, because you'll be more honest about what's possible. You'll be more selective about who you let in. If you're here to make the sale, then of course you're going to do what you think that you need to do to make the sale. So I think that's the. It's not necessarily the easy answer, but I do think it cuts to the core of what your intention is, and that sort of fixes everything else. Like, everything else sort of like, is encased in the intention and takes care of itself. Otherwise, you go back tactically, you go back to things like having a checklist. You know, I mentioned share with a client, why you think they're a good fit. Like, I have a checklist. There's three things. And so. And I actually make sure that I go through it each time so that I don't fool myself and bring the wrong person in. I'm like, there's three things I look for in a client. This, you have it. This, you have it. This, you have it. Right. And I've also started separating my calls into two calls. So I, like, almost never do one call closes. Now, it does lengthen the sales cycle, which, like, isn't necessarily what you want for a business, but conversion rates very high. And it gives me a pause in the same way clients sometimes want to pause. It Used to be like, clients are, let me think about now. I'm like, hey, let me think about it. Make sure that you're actually the right person. So schedule a follow up call. Sometimes that helps too because you get some distance. Sometimes when you're in sales mode, you're just like, I'm in sales mode. And then if you know your, your script or your template, you're just like, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I'm doing this. And then I make the sale. And then after you're like, oh shit, you know, I fucked up. So having some pauses there either in a conversation or across conversations. And in terms of not selling the world, like you know your case studies, you know, it's possible you can speak to them realistically. And I've actually found that over promising in the beginning. I think it can help raise your conversion rate to give higher promises. But really it doesn't help. It really doesn't help you because the gap of how referable your service is is the gap between what you've promised and what you've delivered. If there's a huge customer surplus, right. What you've delivered is way higher than what you promised, then that gap is how likely the referrals are gonna come in the repeat business. And so it's very short term to over promise. And I think having that understanding in your bones helps you not do it. So we want the minimum amount of promising, or I won't even say promising, cause we're not really promising things, but the minimum amount of expectation setting that we can do and still make the sale is really what we're aiming for.

Awesome. So as we just wrap up, can you recap on the four main points you shared to increase confidence and then any last minute tips you have?

Sure. So, all right, so let's do this. So we talked about biggest mistake is that for sale is yourself. And sometimes people aren't sold and they're looking for the clients to sell them doesn't work well. So then we went through a bunch of tips. So the top four was believe in your offer, sell something you believe in, be picky about who you offer to. We talked about I don't know what we want in the other top four. Maybe you can help me. We talked about don't play God.

Yeah, it's because in your email you said there were four.

That's why I was saying four types of trust. Yeah. So less how do you do it? But the four types of trust. So it's trust in yourself, trust in your offer, trust in your prospect, and trust in your sales process. So those are the four types of trust that lead to confidence. And then we went through lots of different ways to help bolster that trust.

Awesome. So I would love to, like, I'd love to finish on if you have any reflections on this question, like bad advice people give regarding sales calls that kind of send people down a route that's either going to lead to bad conversions or bad habits.

All right. Bad advice that people give. You have to close in one call, I think is bad advice. Yeah. I think it's good to practice that when you're getting used to sales. Otherwise, you never learn to actually talk about objections. You just never even talk about concerns. If you don't have the challenge to start closing in a single call occasionally. But I think closing bad in one call, no matter what, is bad advice and leads to bad habits. What else? Feel free to jump in. Feeling stumped?

Well, I feel like there's a piece around when people start, you know, like, you should give your clients a win on the call. So people start, like, giving feedback or coaching them, trying to almost get them to see the value of their program through the sales call itself. And you just end up helping them to the point where they don't really need your help because they're so excited to go implement the thing. You just tell them.

Yeah. So there's an interesting thing that happens where we don't want a client to be not confident. We also actually don't want a client to be overly confident. Yeah, right. Because if a client is, sometimes clients will come in, and most people have experienced that here, where it almost seems like there's not a problem. Like, they're like, no, I got this. I can do this. And then at certain points, like, why are we talking? I thought. I thought we were talking because there was something that you needed support with. It sounds like you're good. Did I miss something or are you good? And if they don't perceive that there's a challenge, or they don't perceive at least that it's hard enough that they need some support or they want to accelerate it, then why would they buy? And so we don't want no confidence. We don't want overconfidence. We want a realistic amount of confidence. So one of the things we were going back and forth on on Voxer is when you share the steps to your program, clarity can create confidence. Them being clear on, oh, here's what was missing. And here's specifically what we're going to be working on. It doesn't feel like this vague thing that's like breeding self doubt. So when you outline steps of. Do you want to talk about what we would do together if we were to work together? What sounds like you need help with these three things? We want to keep those specific enough so that we want to actually say them. If we don't have a game plan at all, it's going to be hard. We want to have them specific enough so that they know what we're talking about. So if I'm talking to someone, I'm like, all right, your close rate's a little bit low and it means that you need a lot of consults to fill your client roster. Right now it's like 25%. I'd love to see it at like 35, 50%. So we're going to work on strategies to help you raise that close percentage. That's number one. And then I'd go two, three, four. Right, Right. So we want those to be clear. We don't want them to be so specific that it feels like, oh, we're just going to do that in one call or you don't need to. Yeah.

Like you're going to go post in this Facebook group with this post and they're like, oh, like I could just go do that. Right.

Yeah. So I don't know if that's, I don't know what advice is given around that or if there's bad advice, but I do think that's worth awesome.

So, I mean, there's a couple of questions, but do you have time to answer a couple of questions?

I got all the time in the world. Let's do it.

But before we do, like, do you just want to tell everyone like where they can find you more about you?

Yeah. So gregfaxon.com there's just a ton of free stuff. There's a lot of great articles. So get on, get on my list somehow download some freebie there. If you search Greg Facts and Overcoming Objections, you probably find an article that will get you to like a PDF I have of like how you can respond to some of the most common objections because that's one of the things that we discussed today. So I'd recommend, recommend that you do that. Gregfaxon.com apply is where you would go if you're like, I actually want to talk to this guy and get some specific support with it.

And if you, if you type in like coaching anything, you, you'll see that Greg Faxon actually comes like at the Top of Google for like most topics with regards to coaching.

That's the goal. That's the goal. Like, I was working on like our three year vision for our team and I was like, we want to be the knot of marketing. Like when, when my wife and I got married, everything we searched always went to this one website, which was the Knot. Like how to choose a bridesmaid. It was like the knot, the knot, the knot. So I'm like, that's what we want to be for getting coaching clients. So we're working on it.

Love it. Love that girl. Awesome. So let me throw some questions at you. How do you manage client expectations? This person's an infant sleep coach and some parents expect a newborn sleep 12 hours a night, for example, over a day. And sleep is never 100% perfect. Even for adults. When they lose confidence, then they lose confidence in the methods.

So this is client expectations. So people have already come in. Is that how you're reading it?

Yeah, yeah.

So the first thing I'd say is maybe look at what expectations am I setting in the sales call that's creating this context for them. Is this something that I said that had them believe that that was possible? Is it something that I didn't say? And they made an assumption of what was possible? And I actually have to be a little more upfront to be like, hey, just, just so you know, like, your kid's not gonna be sleeping, you know, 12 hours every day. Like right now they're sleeping two hours. So, like, I'm good at what I do, but I'm not a magician. Do you know what I mean? We're gonna chip away at improving it little by little. So maybe setting expectations in the sales call, otherwise you gotta do it mid engagement. And most of us have had sales where we've made the sale and then we've realized it actually influenced the way the client was showing up in the engagement. We actually have to have sort of a heart to heart. And whether it's on their expectations or how they're showing up and be like, hey, I noticed that this is what you're expecting and it's just not realistic. Here's what, here's what you can expect. That's probably what I would do, would be a really direct confrontation of it. Do you have other ideas that come to mind?

No, I think that's great. And then the other one I just say is like, deal with that in your marketing, like those base questions of what's realistic so that they come to the call, they're taught they know they're going to be the best clients, right?

Yeah. You could answer it, even proactively, and how you set up your offer and like, what the promise is or what the goal is of the offer. So if the goal of the offer is like your kid sleeping through the night as defined by eight hours, then they know what to expect.

Yeah, for sure. So I feel like we sort of dealt with the other questions. Like, one was, do you give feedback or coach on the sales call?

Do I give feedback or coach? Yeah. Yeah, I would say that I do. Most of the call is going to be you asking questions. The person who's asking questions is the one who's in control of a sales conversation, not the one who's talking. So silence, asking questions. The way that my sales process works, there's clarify, connect, and close. So in connect, that's when I'm connecting what their goals are and what they want to, what we would actually do together. That's where I would do a little bit more feedback. And I don't know if I'd call it coaching. If you do coaching in a way every sales conversation, my friend Toku McCree says it a way that I really like. Sales calls are a coaching conversation on commitment. A coaching conversation about commitment. Right. It's like that first conversation you have to have before you coach. The little things, just being like, hey, are we doing this? Are you really going for this thing that you say that you want? And what are we going to have to address for you to get there? So in a way, it is a coaching conversation, but you can certainly coach yourself out of the sale by getting down a rabbit hole or two granular on one issue that gets brought up. So any coaching or feedback I'm giving is diagnostic. It's helping them see what's not working and what's needed to reach the goal. Because if someone misses that, like, for example, if someone doesn't believe they need help with sales, then that's a whole part of my offer that they're not gonna see the value of. So there might need to be some education and coaching around. Like, hey, out of 10 conversations you have, how many people do you enroll? 20, 20%? Do you see how if you enrolled 40%, you'd need half as many consults, really help with your marketing. So then they're like, oh, I see it. So then when we talk about that in the. In the close part of the offer and we talk about we're working on sales because of this, they actually see it as a problem. If I can't get them to see something as a problem. I'm not even going to talk about it in the offer. They don't see it as a problem yet. We'll get there. So that's, that's when I would do coaching or feedback on. They're just looking at the problem the wrong way. We need to change their thinking and some way.

Yeah, I love that. Thanks, Greg. You got a whole lot of love in the comments saying thank you. I'm going to wrap this up because I have to pick up my son in like three minutes from school, so great scheduling on my part. So a massive, massive thanks to Greg for coming into our community, which we now have men in Greg as well. Just, just a little bit. I just want to tell the group this. Greg came up with the Facebook group name Mummy's Got Clients three and a half years ago and I've loved that name for so long. Someone said the other day it sounds a bit rude, you know, like we're all prostitutes. And I said, that's literally why I chose it, because it sounds so funny. But I've now changed the name. We are now welcome to all genders. But I feel sentimental about that name.

Yeah, things. Things have to evolve. But that was, that was a good name.

It was a great name. Great name. So simple. Right? Awesome. Thanks, Greg. Thanks all for tuned in live. We had like 60 people at one point, which is awesome. So thanks everyone. We will see you all later.

Take care. Bye.