How To Work Around Your Sales Baggage To Close More Clients with Becky Keen

TRANSCRIPT AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED Diane: Hey, today's guest. Becky keen is a sales machine worth the side of woo. She works with coaches and service providers and is all about smashing limiting beliefs and monetizing or brilliance. Hey Becky, welcome to the show. Becky: Hello, thanks for having me Diane: So let's start off with a bit about your business journey, how you got to where you are today. Becky: This question. I'm always like, where do I begin at? What point in the big business drain do I start? Because. To be honest. I feel like I've been an entrepreneur since I was a child, since I knew that we could make money. All I have ever wanted was to be able to make my own money and to have money inside a bank account that I can access at any point. So, I mean, let's go all the way back. I started my first babysitting company when I was like, 11 years old, as soon as I was allowed to, you know, work and babysit, I started babysitting and then I hired babysitters to work under me because I had, I became actually quite popular in the neighborhood as somebody who was super reliable. And fast forward that to now, any time I. Feel this sense of this is what I meant to do combined with. This is how I can make money. I'm like, okay, there's a business here. So all I have to say is my mind is very it's. It's always thinking, I wouldn't even say strategically, but it's thinking about how can I combine what I love with putting a service or something out to the market. So I first really started to do something I loved when out of high school I sailed around the world. I was 18 years old. I wanted to travel. It was the only thing that was like calling me forward. I didn't have any money. So I decided to drop out of university. I had spent one year studying the sciences, which I quickly realized I hated and. I sailed around the world and realized that there was this whole industry out there where you could travel and make money at the same time. So that was like my first real journey into being an adult and making my own money that led into a corporate world where now all of a sudden I was working in boardrooms and I was I worked as like a Marine expert for big oil and gas companies. At the time I was an employee and after having my own kids I just felt this. I'm sure a lot of people can relate like this stuckness, this calling for something more and bigger and greater than what I was getting, working for. You know, a big company. And so I quit, I started my own consulting company and that's where things really started to shift because I realized that everything I had and everything I had had since the very beginning, you know, as this like natural born entrepreneur, that it was all within me and I could do with it, what I wanted as opposed to. Listening to these outside forces who were telling me, you know, what time I needed to work, probably what I should wear to work. What was appropriate to say in the workplace? Like it all just felt very constricting and it didn't allow me to work. No, it didn't allow me to live in the way that I wanted to live. I had two little kids at home. I had a nanny, I had a housekeeper. It was just like what am I doing this for? Like, why am I working in this way when I could be doing my own thing and being my own boss. So I quit started my own company learned about this whole online world. And it was like, Whoa, this is just, it felt like untapped potential because, you know, I grew up, I don't want to make myself sound old, but I grew up without social media and without a phone attached to my hip. Right. So this whole online world felt completely new to me, but. The more time I spend with like a digital business, I'm running an online coaching business. The more I see how much potential it has, not just for me, but for other women and other creators as well. Diane: Yeah, I think what's interesting is we have really similar journeys, but came to entrepreneurship for really different reasons. You came to it from an, almost an innate knowing that this is what you women to do. And I came at it from a, I can no longer be in corporate. It was no part of me that ever really like as a little kid was like, Ooh, I wish I ran my own business. I'm sure we had very similar experiences of this kind of shock followed by. Okay. All of this baggage that I'm pulling along with me from having been told what to wear, how to show up, what was appropriate to say, don't be so emotional. Don't be so aggressive. All the things women in the workplace are told, but also are told at home. I know that one of your super special areas is selling and the BS that we sort of tell ourselves around selling. And it was only in preparing for this interview that I had this momentary. Aha. I was thinking about like, when I started and first had to do sales calls and like how difficult it was and the things that would show up for me. And the thing that I struggled with the most was not solving the problem on the call. I knew I wasn't meant to do it. I had had the sales training do not solve the problem, or there's no reason to pay you. But the thing I used to say to myself was, and anyone who asked me, I would say, but I just can't resist a puzzle. And now reflecting back on that, I'm not who Diane you as, so lying to yourself. It was almost like I needed to solve the problem to prove that I was worth the sale. Becky: Yeah. And I think that shows the level to which our brains, not even our brains society. And I'll just say the patriarch has conditioned. Us to believe that in order to be worthy, we have to be needed. We have to have demonstrated our value. We have to have like, done something. For someone else in order to be worth it in order to be enough. And this is like, it is hard wired into our bones. And so when you become an entrepreneur, like all that stuff is going to come up for you and for anybody else, right? Unless you start to become aware of these condition patterns that we all hold no matter who we are. One of the things I do talk about in terms of sales calls is. Especially for women. Like we are connected and we do have a very intuitive side. I mean, everybody does, but there is something that can happen on a sales call where you give someone a micro transformation or, you know, a micro solution. It's like a little nugget that they can do and implement, but. We haven't solved the entire problem because if we solve the problem, of course, like them potentially, we won't be working together. And then we know they're going to get stuck with whatever the thing is, because it's always easier when you have someone helping you. So yes, sales, money and sales bring up everything because we have, we've been taught and We believe that money equals power. It equals success. It equals all of the things that we're taught to go after when, so that's the energy that we go into it with as opposed to like, what if I'm already enough? What if I'm already super duper valuable and I don't have anything to prove. And. can I hold space for this person on the sales call with me or my potential customer to help them figure out what they want, as opposed to me give them something. I think they need. Diane: when we growing up all the evidence that we see of sales, you know, outside of business is, you know, traipsing along with the parents to buy a car or a refrigerator or, you know, viewing houses or whatever old, traditionally pushy. Industries. And so we kind of, somehow I think just absorbed this idea that the way to sell is this really hardcore pushy make a decision on the call. And then I think it is a lot around that that makes us want to blame the person for not taking the sale versus reflecting on maybe we weren't the right fit. Becky: I think the other thing that happens in that situation is at least the women that I work with is when we believe. And I say, when we buy into the belief that we have to be pushy, aggressive, manipulative coerce, someone could convince even convincing. Like who wants to convince anyone that they have to buy something? Like, I certainly don't my clients certainly don't. So when we buy into those beliefs that we have to be that way, two things, in my opinion happen, one, it stops us from wanting to put ourselves out there and many women. So they have this amazing calling. They have this thing they're supposed to do. And they don't do it because they're afraid of being pushy or manipulative. No wonder. I like we don't want to be that way. And two, the second thing that happens is if we do put that energy out, we actually repel our often our ideal clients, because. They don't want to be treated that way. It feels gross and yucky for a reason. Like there is a reason why would you walk on to a parking lot of a used car or a car dealership? You're like Oh God, please don't come over. Just like, let me look at the cars without you talking to me. Diane: And I think there's something to be said for allowing that to happen on a sales call as well. So I definitely believe that it's totally fine for somebody not to make a decision on a sales call. Do I lose some sales that way? Probably, but I also know there's a whole section of the population who need to be able to go away and think about it and go over the details and look at the cause on their own to come to that decision. And if the only way you can get them to say yes is to almost back them into a corner on a call. That's not how I really want to start a working relationship. Becky: hundred percent, a hundred percent. And some people are just not hardwired to make quick decisions. They, I would call them the information gatherers. They need to go away process on their own. Just like you said, oftentimes those clients, at least I've found. So I'll say to my people, I'm like no, or I need to think about it is often a future. Yes. So if you can handle I need to think about it. Objection with grace. You have just created somebody. Who's going to come back to you in three months for six months. And I've often had clients come to me and say, because you were so nice on your sales call and you didn't push. When I was ready to make that buying decision, I came back to you because you didn't treat me the way other coaches had treated me. And I'm like, yay. I also want to say one other thing about the, I need to think about it. Objection. Little tip is. I want to know what they need to think about because oftentimes if we need to think about something and if we're not armed with the information that we need to make that decision, we go off, we swirl in ourself doubt, you know, we feel bad about ourselves or we feel fear. And then we don't make the decision. And indecision is not a powerful place to be. So anytime I'm coaching someone on their sales call, Strategies and techniques. I'm like, that's fine if they want to go away and think about it. No worries. But do make sure you've given them all the information that they need in order to make a purchasing decision. Diane: So how does scarcity and urgency then play into our conditioning? Becky: So when we see a sales page or a funnel or marketing out there that. You know, has a countdown timer and the price is going up and you have to buy this and, Oh, and you also need all of these other things it preys on our feelings of unworthiness. We, which we can often, not even, we often don't even know that it's touching those and triggering those. We've all been conditioned this way and traditional marketing and bro marketing, as we're calling it preys on our like limiting patterns. So number one is scarcity. Like the concept of scarcity is actually a myth. Yes. Scarcity exists in our world, but the natural state I'm going to go super woo here. I'm just going to like push, pull, but it's not even what what's frickin science. If you really dig into it, it sounds boot, but it's science. The universe is inherently abundant. So scarcity in and of itself is a bit of a myth because it makes us think that there's not enough, but not just that there's not enough or that I need to buy it now, but I need to buy it to be enough. And I need this thing in order to be worthy of whatever the thing is. Is. Promising that I'm going to get as a result. So traditional marketing tactics will trigger those kind of subconscious buying patterns that we're not even aware of. I'll give a quick example from my own past is I was looking at this beautiful sales page. I was going to buy the program. It was a high ticket program. Every time I went to the checkout page, I started to cry. And I didn't understand why I was crying until I went back and I read through the sales copy and what the messaging made me feel through whether, and then there's a lot of layers to why it made me feel that way, but is that I'm not enough. And that in order to be enough, I need to take this program. And that's what I don't like. That's where things start to feel yucky for me. Diane: So because the shows up price massively on sales calls and there's a lot of baggage maybe subconsciously just nervous to ask for the money without apologizing, without discounting, without, you know, offering ridiculous payment plans. What do you do? Or what can anyone who's listening to this? Who's got a sales call coming up due to cut through some of that noise I know from personal experience, how much mindset works, some people need on this, but is there anything that people can do immediately to just help them a little bit? Becky: yes, I'm going to, I'm going to say two things. One is I like to use the. The grocery store, a grocery store example. So when you go to the grocery store, you put all this food in your cart, you fill up your cart, you go to the checkout, you put your stuff up, they put it through the machine, and then they look at you and they just tell you the price. They say that's $250 worth of groceries or 500 bucks, whatever the number is. They put the things through and they state the price. They just tell you the price. They don't ask you. They don't say so. Since you're considering buying all this food, I'm going to have to ask you to him, your credit card and pay for this. So, first thing is we're asking, this is a fascinating concept. In and of itself because we're not little children and we don't need permission. We are business owners. We run businesses. Money has to come in and money has to go, Oh, so I never in a million years. I feel like I have to ask someone for money. I am going to share about my offers. I'm going to share both what I have in my store. You can buy this, this or this. What would you like to purchase? What would you like to choose the investment? Is this, this or this? And then I'm going to hand it over to you, the buyer, the customer, the client, and I'm going to empower you to make the right decision that's for you, but what I've done energetically. So, and I say, energetically, if you could see, my hands are like flying all over the place, but I'm separating myself from my offers. So for coaches and service providers, healers therapists, people who are really involved with the actual service they're providing. They feel as if they are the offer. So when they're asking for money, they're thinking it's reflection of who they are of their worth or of their enoughness of their value. All that. It's not, it's a package, it's a service. It is a completely separate entity. Even if you are the one delivering it, it's part of your business. So I energetically imagine myself, Becky. . I am whole, I am perfect. I don't need anything from anybody else, including your money. That's me. And then over here, here's my, here's my shopping cart. Here's my checkout register. What would you like to purchase? Totally separate. Diane: I really liked that one because I don't think there is anybody. Who cares less about whether you buy something or what you buy than a grocery store cashier. They just couldn't be less connected to you or your shopping or what's in your cart. They're just there to be like, I've added it up and this is the amount of money Becky: Yeah, they will be, they will also, if you say, Whoa, that's way too much, right? So sometimes we present the number, the fee attached with our package or an offer and someone's like, Whoa, I can't afford that. The grocery store clerk is going to say, okay, do you want to put something back? Like, would you like to return something? They're not going to say, I'll give you a discount. I'll give you 15 or 25% off, or they're not going to say, okay, well, how, you know what I mean? They're just going to say, what would you like to do? They're going to leave it to that customer. I coach my clients. I just say detach from the outcome of that conversation, because it's really not about you. It's really not about me in that moment. It's about how can I help that person make a buying decision that is in service to them. And the only way I can do that is by letting them choose and. Not pushing something onto them. That's not meant to be. Diane: I always like to think about truly great sales calls that I have been on as the prospective client and truly awful sales calls that I have been on as the prospective clients, before I do a sales call. To kind of get my brain to be like, I can't remember what those two felt like, what experience do you want this person to have? So, do you have any rituals that you do before a sales call? Becky: I. Usually try to come into a sales conversation. I say as my most high vibe self, but that doesn't necessarily mean I'm like jumping around doing a dance party for me, high vibe. I mean, I could say highest self for me. It means I am grounded. So I'll take just a few deep breaths, you know, on the floor, breathing into my belly. I will connect, I'll say connect with the energy of the universe. So that's like, This force that's greater than us. I let that pour through me and I'm like, I am here in service to this other person. I get really curious, like mentally, I get really curious about where this person is, what they're stuck with, what their vision is, what they're trying to create. And I just bring myself to come to that neutral. Neutral position. I also will do something to make me feel really energetically. Good. So whether that is go put deodorant on, because I'm really sweaty or put lipstick on because I want to just feel a bit, you know, better. Yeah, I'll do something just to kind of connect and ground myself, especially if I'm vibrating really high, which I often am just nature of my energy is I need to come back down and settle. Diane: That's funny that you said that like, I will brush my teeth school, even though all of my sales calls are. On video for me, it's just such a, like a reset moment in your day. So yeah, that's definitely one of, one of my quirks for sure. What is, what's a good place for somebody who's listening to this and wants to get it, but more like, okay, I need to get all like sales. I need to get my sales stuff together. Where's a good place for them to start with you. Becky: So the best place to start if you've never met me before is to hop on over to my quiz. So I have a client attractor quiz and it walks you through. You know how you are meant to show up in order to attract clients based on your unique gifts and there's you get your client results and you also get a workbook downloadable workbook that you can work through to help with it. Diane: Yeah. And then definitely come back and tell us what you got and I'll tell you what mine is. Becky: Yes, people could actually tag us in their ID stories with their results. Diane: I'll make sure both our social media is in the show notes. So definitely tag us. So to finish up, I always ask two questions. First up, what is your number one lifestyle boundary for your business? Becky: My kids, Diane: So time with them or their experience. Becky: all of it. So what vivid memory in my mind of going off to my corporate job, leaving my kids home with the nanny or the babysitter at the time, and looking back to my rear view mirror and seeing their little faces up on the glass, like sobbing hysterically, because mommy was leaving and. So time. So when I run my own business, it's like, I want to be there to pick them up off the school bus. I want to be there when they're, if they have a sick day, I want to be able to reschedule my calls. If they need me, I want to take them, you know, skiing and play hooky and skip school on a beautiful snow day, but also boundaries that I don't want my business to. Infiltrate and affect them in the sense that it impacts like their version of their lives. And I don't mean, I mean, I'm always talking about my business. We talk about business at supper. I'm at, you know, my husband, we're watching TV, I'm getting messages from clients. I don't mean that. I just mean like, I don't want them to be a part of, I guess it's more like my online profile. It's like, people know I have kids, but I. Joel. There's a line in the sand there for me where it's like, they are separate. And when you work with me, you have access to me, but you most certainly don't have access to my children. Diane: yeah, that makes complete sense. I will also just say that Becky lives in one of the most beautiful places in the world. So if you do follow her on social, you might not get to see a lot of her kids, but you will get to see you horses, skiing, swimming, running, just stunning part of Canada. Yeah. It's kind of upsetting. Maybe don't follow her. No, but do nobody do okay. Second up, what is the worst piece of cookie cutter advice you've been given as an entrepreneur? Becky: Oh man. So the worst piece of advice, I would say, Oh gosh, there's so many, but I think the one that sticks out into my mind is that you should only sell one thing and. So there are coaches out there who are like, you should only sell high ticket. There are coaches out there who are like, you should only sell courses. There are people out there that say you should only sell these tiny little offers. And I'm like F that like, let's sell what we want to sell. And maybe it's a low ticket. Maybe you have a low ticket, a medium ticket and a high ticket. Maybe have a combination of offers. Like let's not give. One piece of advice, because what works for you is not necessarily going to work for me. And that is based on 8 million different factors. So yeah, I don't, anytime someone's like, you have to do it like this. I'm like F you know, I don't, I'm going to do it my own way. Yeah. Diane: That's an interesting one because that's definitely one that is incredibly prevalent at the moment. If I hear one more time, one client, one offer $1 million, one client, one offer $1 million. Like basically until you have a seven figure business, you have to just sell one thing. And while I can see the logic in it, for some people, that's going to feel almost impossible. Becky: And restrictive. Diane: Yeah. That's what I mean, like they going to feel like they're almost going to do a really bad job of selling that one thing because they resent the one thing because there's actually like seven other great ideas. One of which might be the thing Becky: Yeah. And many of us, especially entrepreneurs, we are multi-passionate. So if you try to box me into only ever having one great idea for the next 50 years of my life, like shoot me now doesn't work. I have crazy ideas, 10 times a day, so I need to be able to explore and create. Get feedback from my audience and then, you know, change it, tweak it. And I love having a range of offers. It makes me feel completely expansive. That works for me. Diane: Yeah, I will say though, your offers are still in a suite or in a customer journey. So it's not like, I just want to clarify that this neither of us is saying, did you have permission to sell two middle-aged men looking to buy business coaching one day and the next day you're selling teenage girls Becky: Yeah. Not saying that at all. Diane: You know, I joke with the extremes, but that is not what we're trying to say here, where we're trying to say, like, you can do a range, you can taste, you can try, but everything's still has to feel sort of cohesive. Becky: Yeah. And can we also add that sometimes in order for it to feel cohesive? I've been running my online business now for five years. This year, my small ticket, medium ticket and high ticket offers. They feel very cohesive. One leads into the next naturally, but it was a journey to get there. Like you probably aren't going to hit the Mark right off, right out of the gate. Diane: yeah, I would agree. I think this is probably in the last 12, 18 months that I have felt that mine is an actual journey. To each other in the same way. So yes, patients, but we had to both had to try a lot of different things in order to get that. So start the one offer. Awesome. This has been so much fun. It's always a pleasure chatting with you. I always feel so hyped up for the day now. So, what is the best place for people to connect with you to chat to you? I know people are going to have questions or want to carry on the conversation or get a bit more Becky energy in their lives. Becky: The best place right now to find some Becky energy is on Instagram. I am back underscore Keene, K E N, and people can come find me, send me a message in the DMS. I do check my dams regularly. I'm probably a little bit addicted, but I love having conversations with people over on the ground. So that's where you can find me as of now. Diane: yes, definitely go and check that on for the sunrises awesome. Thank you so much. Becky: Thank you for having me.