# 38 - Selling and the Unknown

Episode 38

[00:00:00] : Hello there. Once again, my good listening friends. This is Rick Lewis with a follow through formula Podcast. This is Episode 38. You're about to hear a conversation that I spontaneously started by calling up a good friend who has a lifetime background in sales. Her name is Tareen E about Julia, and she is always so inspiring when I get stuck on the sales activity that has to go on in any new venture I call tyranny. And she's always good for some words of wisdom in this department. So when I told her of my being stuck and up against the hurdle of having to go out and ask for the sale right now, you're gonna hear the first thing, she says in response to me, describing my struggle, which will give you a sense right off the bat of what kind of person tyranny is. But here's the start of our conversation. After I told her what I'm up against right now, what can I dio if anything? What offering can I give today to help in any way? What are you thinking about? That I can offer help. It's such a vulnerable position to be in to ask someone to buy something that you have or that you think is of value, especially if it's you and your own skills, and it's the last thing I want to do. I was thinking about this today, and then I was thinking about you and thinking I could really use this conversation with tyranny and thought, Well, it could be a very valuable conversation for other people to hear around follow through because in many instances, follow through requires that we sell something if not for actual money. People need to be enrolled and engaged. And we need to do that in a way that is has integrity. And you're just you're someone who knows about that. Can you? Can you? Just So listeners have a context. Just describe your sales background brief sketch of the sales channels you've come through where you got training and experience and what you're doing now. Sure, I had the vast majority of my career. My employment career has been in sales beginning as far back as in my early twenties. I was in started learning how to sell in, Interestingly enough, the fitness industry selling gym memberships when I was 18 and I had some old school but very fundamental training at that time from one of my sales managers. And I just found something that really clipped for May. I'm, uh I love to speak, and I love to articulate, and I love to use words. And so it just fell into place for me. And from there, you know, one sales job led to another, and I found myself eventually in natural products selling vitamins. And that was a 15 year stretch, almost 17 years. Industry, which was a real organic fit for me because I absolutely love natural medicine and organic foods. And it was just hand in glove. So that just spiraled into a variety of leadership roles until I eventually, um let us let a division of my company that I spent 13, 14 years with a lot of division in Canada, and that was a really cool kind of like an MBA and training that I got there. But so, yeah, just always been in sales and it Zbynek love with mine. You got some experience or exposure to this gentleman, Herb when you were at New chapter. And you you've talked so fondly of him and the kind of the apprenticeship you had with him as I understand it, what did you get from him that was so profound? Wow, that's a because that's a long answer. But I'll try to do the Reader's Digest version of that. He was just a leader that he just embodied for me a sensitivity thio service and the rial heart of sales, which is, you know, just something that he really instilled in me, which was surrender and served. So sales is really, ultimately a service, and then surrendering whatever our agenda is in that setting to really listen well and become a keen listener for what it is that the our buyer are would be buyer really needs. And then instead of selling them what we want, we become skillful at selling and what they need. And that's just a listening process. So I would say that her above and beyond anything else, aside from his rock a sense of humor and his delight, his joy in his verb for life, he instilled in me that sensitivity toe listen and to surrender my agenda to serve the needs of the consumer or the need of our buyer, and I think the part that I see you do, the hours we've spent when I've hired you for help and what you do with me, there's, ah, kind of There's definitely a deep listening in a receptivity. I always feel working with you, but you are also listening to yourself. And the way you are with me gives me the sense that you're really being true to yourself. You're being authentic. So how can what can you say about that aspect of listening? That it's actually important that we're listening to ourselves at the same time we're listening to others. If we're gonna make a connection that has a a sales benefit, a transfer of enthusiasm or motivation or decision involved with it, it's a great question. Well, let's start here. I think what you tapped into is the transfer enthusiasm. I could define sales in multiple ways, wanted to surrender and serve. That sort of captures for me the rial heart of it. But it's also at its core transfer enthusiasm, and I think you're tapping into something that really haven't articulated, and that is that transfer of both my authentic enthusiasm for the subject or the content or what it is. I'm selling Thio. Then light the enthusiasm or find where the enthusiasm lives or what's alive, as you might say in the other person. So once I see that what's alive in them, then I'm hitting a nerve, so to speak. I'm touching something that matters, and once that experience starts to happen, then you are. You are selling your That's where we I come to the thing where I've always said sales is the most honorable profession in the world and most maligned. Sadly, because we generally speaking, I would say, 90% of people I've ever worked with in the sales capacity inevitably bring no matter what, what kind of sales person they are, what training they've had. There's often a hidden negativity bias towards sales. Even in the best of sales people, there's a 10% margin. Maybe I'm exaggerating. Maybe it's 80% but there's a good deal of people who are in sales walk around with a hidden bias, that there's a negative connotation, and so often we edit we massage, we carefully manicured sales that we can avoid being vulnerable and really bringing our full um, our full self without the the editing of what is a negative connotation. And I shouldn't do this, and I should do that. So there's an interesting thing that happens. And I think we all have to sort of root that out, especially if we're selling ourselves. You know, we're selling something that we dio or service. Then we must root out this negativity bias and find out what's holding us back. Um, because what we're selling really serves another person at the heart of their need. Then it's the most honorable thing we could do to bring our full self to the sale and transfer that enthusiasm and get the yes, because we know we know without any question that once the sale is made, that person is going to be served by what we have to offer. Doesn't mean there might be some bumps along the road or some miscommunications, but inevitably, what we're selling, it's something of profound value, and so that that's where we have to get ourselves out of the way to let that value that exchange happen. Aziz, Long as we're selling something that genuinely serves another person end up, lifts them or brings them, it's along a value that they look back and say Thank you. They're so grateful. Here's the other piece Rick is It's like they're so grateful. And we somehow in our self criticism or ourself look denial, maybe our belief. We forget how grateful they are that we may be effort to get out of our own way and listen so that we could position what we have to offer directly to their need. And if we if we fail to do that, then that's unfortunate because they walk away and someone else will fill that need that maybe isn't as well suited as you would have been. But that's the trick is that there's no agenda like you're going. I wanna I wanna really know who you are, where you're at, where you're trying to go. And then as a sales person, if you're listening at that point and realizing, Gosh, what I have over here, I believe, could really help you with the problem. You're trying to solve the place you're trying to go, then it's just a sales. Sales should be a form of friendship, of friendliness of like just basically seeing another person in wanting to help them it is. And it wouldn't matter if it was tires or if it was, you know, personal confidence coaching you're offering to others. It's really the essence of that is relationship. And there is There's Onley. That and when we build on that, the only way to relationship clearly is listening and being vulnerable and speaking the truth and making the offer to fill that gap for them and and highlighting the benefits of what they're going to receive. And I think the challenge is when you're selling yourself, um, like you or I have done, and Dio is then having the worth speaking to my worth. I've transferred the enthusiasm, and then I stopped that enthusiasm. When I present myself work because I come from that place of, you know, there's a financial number to my work and so that that's been the rial self observation point for me, working in service, sailing myself to me. Where the challenge comes is like if I have a need for them to say yes in order to feel qualified in standing for my worth, I'm in trouble and they're in trouble like we're both in trouble If I if I have tow, have them say yes in order for my worth to stay intact, because if I'm not again, not again eso our whole, our whole, the whole thing. We've just done where I've seen somebody and they've seen themselves, and we've just empowered them. The integrity of what we've just developed in the value of it is going to be put at risk every time. If I'm not able to stand in my worth and here know about the actual transactional part of the conversation, that's a really great point, Rick. It's like sure, you know is actually the beginning. It's like That's where we really get to know something deeper because the no is just a new inquiry. There's still not enough information that they have yet to fully say yes, because when they say yes, we know there's on our side of the transaction on our side of the relationship. We know that we're going to offer value or or we know there are products will indeed fill that need they have. So they're just really fielding. I need more information, so hearing no is actually really a welcome invitation because it gives me an opportunity to refine or define or clarifies a point that isn't yet fully clear. So rather than saying, hearing your what you're saying is no is a reflection of me, which is not the case so maturing along the sales half is looking forward to the no expecting, You know, that seems like a tall order, but yeah, but it is really the maturity along with sales path is sure along the sales path, we are looking to the no, we're rooting it out. We're finding out where there no lives. And in that no, we begin to really explore something much more deeply that we've only scratched the surface of. And once we get Thio, once we've answered that note, If we've done our job well and we know that there's a connection built here, then the obvious the the yes is the next obvious thing. Well, but how so? How do you make the distinction like I'm I'm feeling that there's a way that someone could say no And that no would spark a degree of curiosity. Like if I'm trying to sell something and they say no, that instead of thinking, Okay, this is about me. They've just rejected me. I have to go away and crawl in a hole. Now that I'm immediately curious to know Maura about what's behind that No, because I'm still very interested in them and in helping them. So that's one way to come at it, which is what you're describing. But if I'm like on my last dollar in the bank and I have tow have this sale and then I hear or know and I'm just pushing because I'm hell bent on getting them to sign a contract, regardless of whether it's a fit or not, that's that's motivation for pursuing the no, we're going driving past the no, that isn't gonna help anybody. The answer to the question is approach every circumstance with genuine curiosity. I think that is the really important distinction here is having a a mindset of curiosity, thank you curiosity and the other. So I would call it other reference versus self reference and other reference selling versus self reference selling. And then you answered the distinction in the self reference sales person who comes with the $1 in their pocket and they're pressuring the individual because they need the sale that sales already lost everything about that sale is is that, you know, is defining that kind of the stereotypic sales person that we all have that negativity bias about somewhere in us. That person has given sales the bad name, and and all of us have done it. I've done it course many times, So I don't know if that answers the question that I'm sort of meandering through it for myself. Like, what is that distinction between no and A No, that's a request for more information, and there are both. And it's our job to become skillful at knowing which is which, and we make the mistake sometimes of being the sales person who pushes through and no, and and that's my that's my lesson. That's my learning lesson, to remind me how that feels when I've overstepped my bounds. When I put for my benefit, not, there's and it's happened 100 times. I can't count how many times it's happening over the course of my career. You know, it just does, and then you learn from that and you go, Yeah, it's not the kind of sales person I wanna be, right, And so I modify my behavior and I learned from those mistakes, and I cultivate more skilful means in the next time. Yeah, it's so easy to fall on just one side of the equation, either always being pushy or never pushing enough. And both of those missed aches involved not seeing the other person. Because if you really see the other person, then you're gonna if they really are ready and there they're ripe for this benefit, then you will push. But it will be on behalf of the other person. Where does someone who, like all the stuff I've been talking about in the episodes, are about how to follow through on you on who you really are? How do you give traction through daily action to what you're really here to dio? What's your advice to the person who is just getting in touch with what's really important to them or who they really are or what they have to offer and just feels scared and really, um, just super gun shy about expressing that in any way to anybody else? It's not a common rece, more common than not that the scariest feelings are usually the ones that kind of give me a hint to where I need to lean or move in that direction. They often hold something really valuable in there. So if I'm thinking about starting a new adventure or a new selling something new or trying a new that gives me joy, then it it's more than likely that's that's actually where I'm going. Thio find the most reward and inevitably, that's going to require us selling something to somebody, whether it's our partner selling them on our idea that although it seems risky, I feel I have to do this and I need your support in this way or that way and and ask, asking for that is a is a form of selling so in the context of what we're talking about, sales is that if I'm leaping off into this unknown, but it feels scary, and yet the fear is really pointing to something that's really got juice in it for me, Then I'm gonna have toe also be brave and practice selling my idea, which means just starting to transfer the enthusiasm to whoever is first person. I need to transfer that enthusiasm to if I can ask you for an example of your own recent life leap. As you're moving into copyrighting, you've you've seriously taken your sales background and skills and skilful means. And now you've been for really practicing and learning the art of copyrighting. What are the steps you're taking those scary first steps off putting yourself out in that respect, I'm assuming it's scary for you. Um, well, totally, Completely. I just even hearing you say it. It brings up off butterflies in my stomach, you know? Yeah. So the steps I'm taking are just I would say that this fight is actors. Yes, I just him taking the steps and acting as if, um, you know, fake it till you make it e. I have to just first of all, just putting myself out there on the Web and contacting people I know telling them doing now that maybe knew me in the past. And I have gotten work just just by doing that and that since the very successful, you know, reasonably successful, not very successful but reasonably successful had success that doing now just reaching out to people I've known in the past and telling them what I'm doing and acting as if I am a crappy writer like I put myself out there, but the first thing I did kind of like along the leaping thing that you're talking about on your podcast is I did something crazy and I took copyrighting school exactly the way you're describing on your podcast. As I said, Why don't I love you? Like I spent 20 some years really mawr in sales and now, you know, in a wrote a book and I love writing but I love sales writing. I love the clever slogan I love the quick, quick I love this smart sentence. You know, I'm not a novelist. Eso I said, Well, what can I do with all those skills? And I just said, you know, a light bulb went off in my head. I said, What about copyrighting What I could do. And so I just took the life leap and I studied online copyrighting course and just devoured every little course I could, you know, smaller or larger course, and I just it let me up. And that's where I had my That's where I got the tip, you know, like I said earlier, it's that scarier than heck. Don't know what I'm doing clueless. I was aimless, clueless, uncertain, didn't have a direction, knew all I knew Rick was, couldn't go back to what I had been doing. That's all I knew. And to quote, you know, one of my favorite offers, Liz Gilbert, she says, Oftentimes the only thing we do know is not this right. And that's all I knew was not this right. And the rest was a blank slate, No clue. E just hung out in uncertainty so long and many times to a profound level of discomfort, profound wanting to just fill that discomfort gap so fast with anything like just fill it with a job. That and every time I tried to do that Rick, my guts just turned inside out or I go to the job interview. That was my old my old way of being and and I just felt that sick feeling in my stomach like this is not it. I cannot do this again. Eso with that. That's all I had. I leaved. I had a feeling a gut feeling and I said, This is something I could do And boy, it Wouldn't that be fun? I would love that. I have no clue how to do it. And then, you know it just one thing led to another. It was that sort of, you know, Hansel and Gretel the breadcrumbs and just took one breadcrumb at a time. And every time I took a bread or follow that crumb in that direction, it felt right in my body. And so that's my answer to you, is it? Just keep following the breadcrumbs to when you feel it in your body. And there's a feeling in your body that this is something I enjoy and this likes me up. It may not lead Thio, you know, financial, you know, wild financial success, but will need thio the life I enjoy living it. Will it lead to serving others with something I have to offer in the world? And I kept getting a yes, and so I just followed each of those yeses and there were a lot of there still are a lot of Eddie's and twists and turns. They're happening as we speak, but anyway, I kind of rambled off there. But that's kind of my answer is not this and then being very keen toe listen Thio to what my body knows, and that is it. That's a journey of multiple benefits for me personally, because I tend to go into my head and out of my body pretty quickly, and I default to my head and strategies. And so that's not my comfort zone is hanging out and discomfort long enough to start feeling what feels right and trusting. My feeling is more than my head and then having discernment about what's the next step right? That's excellent. That's so valuable to hear the way you just described that I love the the not this checkpoint of just honoring that. And that's it takes so much courage to do that to when that little feeling is coming up. That voice of No, not this I think is done. I feel you know this is over. This is not going anywhere and the courage to just then refrain without the new thing yet without the next stop being clear. But it seems absolutely essential because if you don't make that, if you don't create that clearing in your own presence, how could you? Possibly you would never have any incentive to look for the thing that's really alive. Oh so true God, she just nailed it. It's like I kept going back to the comfortable and it was a ziff every time I did it and it wasn't like a simple thing. It was like, you know, getting on a plane and going to an interview and dressing up and arriving at the interview, you know, being pitted against two other sales leaders in my category and coming home on the plane. And no singer was on the plane that, you know, just descended on me. Like I pray I don't get that job e against my better wish. You know, it was like the voices in my head were arguing that you need that job, your bank account swindling, and then I get on the planet that like, Please, please, please pick somebody else because I don't wanna have to be the person that I don't wanna have to make that decision. I would rather, you know, I'm kind of joking with you, but there was that war in my mind, and I remember two or three incidents was where I did that just pursuing the old thing because it's what I knew. And yet every time Rick, I would just be a wave of like, sick feeling in my stomach. I could not work in this environment again. And so it just took several times where, against my own intuition, my own deep knowing that I was spinning my wheels, even applying for that role, spinning my resume and then getting us faras to get on the plane to go to the interview, knowing I was already making a knowing that I was wasting my time. But I had to do it repeatedly until it became abundantly clear that I had to step into the complete unknown. And, you know, for many people, if they're listening to this, who it all relate, they may have been a smarter individual who didn't have to do it. Treats Z on waste Everybody's time. They maybe got it on the first round like, No, this isn't working anymore. I need to just really step into something new. But for me, it took multiple times of doing that. For me to be have fully let go. Yes, stand in the presence of complete like naked Don't know, have no clue. Where is it going to come from? Watching the savings dwindle and knowing that I had all these gifts. I had all the secures. The other interesting things were talking I had. I probably you feel I don't know if you feel this way, But it was this interesting conundrum, like 15 20 years of cultivating those skills and asking myself, Well, what for? You know what for? What were they all for? Do I just give all those things up? What was? So I went through a really kind of crisis of faith as well in that period of time, which is another topic for another day, but very essential for me. It was very much wrapped up into really letting go, like, really, really letting go so many layers of identification and suspending a remedy like letting that discomfort be long enough. That's something new could emerge out of nothing to your earlier point, like it's like That's what it takes. And again, I don't know who's listening or will be listening to those, if at all. But I have no answer for it other than it is. I would say that period of my life was the most profoundly instructive, more so than any other period, and now, oddly enough, wreck. It's like I don't know what the antics of the question is. Why all those years when they wasted, did I do I throw all that away? And now it's kind of emerging like, No, we bring with us that embodied wisdom, whatever it is we've done in our lifetime, and everybody has a cachet of embodied wisdom. They bring with them to the next thing or the next chapter. Okay, and it's just in there, and we don't really have to think about it. But it informs the new things somehow and always does. It informs the new thing, But the new thing informs us. You know, the new thing is educating us in your ways. And then that embodied wisdom is carried with us working with you. I just wanted to say this. You had this question of what? What? You know, What about all that sales experience? Um, I just walking away from it. Is that ever gonna do any good? But I'll tell you what the role it plays in your copyrighting consulting is profound. I mean the marriage of those two skills. What you now know about copyrighting and your sales background is profound and really, that whole process of, um, the time that I was having you help me with my landing pages was incredible. It's so help me get clarity about what I'm doing and who I'm talking to and what I'm offering. So I just wanna, In your case, um, I would say it wasn't lost at all. That time is being put to really good use. And even for some people, I think that would just always be the case. And it's that cross pollination. When someone moves from one domain of expertise to another, they're now becoming something that there's no competition for, because there's nobody else out there who has the blend of having been, you know, ah, landscape er, who is now on architect or you combine player who's now a school teacher. You know, you know this unique marriage that emerges, and that's I think you're tapping into something that I wanted to add, as this is the journey of life and the scariest parts. In hindsight, E could just remember this trick when I'm going through the scary parts. It's like the scariest parts are always aren't they the richest and it's our ability to hang out and not rush it, cause if I could learn that lesson in hindsight, it's so analogous to being pregnant. It's like we want to rush to the next thing and we want to rush through the scary part to get to the good thing, right? This is why I called you. I had this feeling in my my bones today. I was like, I need to call tyranny. And I think this is gonna be valuable to other people. But you know, everything you said in the last hour but especially this last bit is just booing me up right now in my my spirit is just like Ah, yeah, that's what I needed Thio be reminded of the way you just said it. So thank you so much for what you always bring. You could cut. You can cut all the other stuff out. We just want to cut to those less anything you want to cut and add it. Feel free, e. I hope whatever we did talk about, there's something of value I don't know and I just really enjoy Thank you very honestly. So honored You think of me and I if ever we can have these conversations. I'm always buoyed up by them and your process to. So I'm so grateful. Thank you. Okay, well, so good place to end their. This is Episode 38 of the follow through formula podcast. I've been talking to Tareen Eboo Leah, a good friend, conscious sales person and now copywriter, finger and presence, lover and person lover. You love people. That's what always comes through. It's what I always feel is I just feel so seen and accepted by you and what you do. And you just done it again today. So thank you. Thank you. And I'll be back tomorrow. So thanks everyone for listening. Take care.