SUMMARY

Many speakers, coaches, and consultants say they hate sales. In reality, what they hate is manipulative, impersonal, high-pressure selling that feels out of alignment with who they are.

In this episode of Present Influence, sales expert Katie Nelson dismantles the myth that selling high-ticket offers has to feel sleazy. We explore why sales is fundamentally human, not transactional, and why relationship, curiosity, and courage matter far more than funnels, scripts, or AI shortcuts.

We cover how speakers and coaches can sell premium services ethically, why relying solely on referrals is risky, how fear and rejection really work in sales, and why the founder must stay involved in selling longer than they think. Katie also challenges the overuse of “sales mindset” rhetoric and explains why action, not affirmation, is what actually builds confidence and cash flow.

If you sell your expertise, your voice, or your presence and want a sales process that feels honest, effective, and sustainable, this episode will change how you think about selling.

Find Katie on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/thesalescatalyst/ or go to SalesUprising.com

Here's the link for Katie's video series Feed The Fire: https://youtu.be/WfYrsNgSRoA?si=PaL5n0tRByqnJiOY

Takeaways

Sales is not a personality flaw; it's a human process.

Embracing sales leads to quicker business success.

Referrals should be seen as gifts, not strategies.

Sales is about people before it's about systems.

Mindset is important, but action is crucial in sales.

You can't outsource your courage as a business owner.

Sales is a service in both directions.

Understanding your target audience is key to sales success.

Fear and rejection are part of the sales journey; learn to overcome them.

Building relationships is essential for effective sales.

CHAPTERS

00:00 The Human Element in Sales

06:57 Reframing Sales: From Fear to Service

10:47 Sales as a Reflection of Humanity

17:27 Building Resilience in Sales

21:20 The Evolution of Sales Models

26:48 Simplifying Sales Funnels for Success

32:25 Sales Strategies for Speakers

35:17 The Power of Referrals in Business

40:04 Mindset vs. Action in Sales

43:54 Embracing Sales as a Business Owner

44:45 The Importance of Referrals and Stability in Sales

Visit presentinfluence.com/quiz to take the Speaker Radiance Quiz and discover your Charisma Quotient.

For speaking enquiries or to connect with me, you can email john@presentinfluence.com or find me on LinkedIn

You can find all our clips, episodes and more on the Present Influence YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@PresentInfluence

Thanks for listening, and please give the show a 5* review if you enjoyed it.

Welcome to Present Influence, my name's John Ball and today we are talking about the thing that most speakers, coaches and consultants desperately want the benefits of but quietly hope they can avoid doing... sales. Because if you sell high ticket services, you can't hide behind a buy now button and pray and hope for the best. People need trust, clarity and a reason to choose you.

picked up some truly unhelpful baggage about selling along the way.

You know the kind of thing I hate sales. I'm not pushy. I just want to help people. Lovely sentiments, but it doesn't pay the rent. In this episode, sales expert Katie Nelson gives a refreshingly human take on selling, including why sales is about people before it's about systems, why referral only businesses can get dangerously fragile and why mindset is often used as a smoke screen by people who don't

actually know how to sell. This is one of those conversations that may just make you laugh and then make you rethink what you've been avoiding. Katie is the founder of Sales Uprising and she's been in sales since she was 15. Starting in a call center, she's seen the rejection, the resilience building, the messy human reality of selling, and she's built a business around helping people stop treating sales

like a moral failing. So let's get right into it. Here's my conversation with the amazing Katie Nelson.

Katie Nelson, welcome to Present Influence. There are two reasons why I've been looking forward to speaking to you. One is it's about time we talked about sales. The other is that you're just so much fun and I've been looking forward to our conversation. So welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, John. I've been looking forward to it as well.

That makes me very happy. Let's kick things off with a bit of fruitiness if you like, but what's something for me for you that my opinion or position you might hold on what you teach, what you talk about that might be a little different from what you hear most other people or experts saying?

So, look, now I have tons of opinions about this, John. So I think one of the things is that sales is a system, and that's absolutely true. But before the system of sales is the people of sales. The reason why sales...

Sales is like a lot, don't tell the tech people I'm about to say this, but sales is like on the lagging side of technology. And what I mean by this is that all of the really amazing innovations that have helped support sales and boost sales numbers are all technologically speaking on the marketing side. ⁓ Now.

Mm.

Caveat if you're a product company, you can have a buy now button if you're a services based company You can have a buy now button all of that is super sexy tech but the truth is is that if you're a speaker a consultant a coach and you have a high ticket offer it's unlikely that somebody is just gonna hit a Buy now button, right? It's one of the reasons why present influence is a thing. You're you know, you're creating relationship with the human so I don't

Yeah.

I feel like there's not enough emphasis on the human side of the sales process.

I so agree with you. The amount of websites that I've been onto for speakers in similar areas or even different areas myself. And they have other products and services a lot of the time as well. And they have a little bit of information about what they're offering. And then there's just the buy now button. I'm not ready to buy. even know who you are.

I don't even know

you. I don't even know you. Right? So you can go, you can go do, I was on a live stream last night where we were, it was me and tech guy. And I so appreciated him because he was, he's also in sales, has been in sales forever. Just came out with a book. It was great. And yet he would talk about how,

Yeah, I think that's an issue.

Apparently, overwhelmingly, the research shows that buyers will go and do an AI search on you now, right? So instead of a Google search, so SEO is dead, AI is now the new thing, technology is growing. Great, wonderful. It's all for the better of us if we use it in the right way. ⁓ But I thought to myself, do people really do that? And do words in a computer or from a screen of any kind convince someone to buy me?

Okay.

Hope so.

and why would that be and do I want that buyer?

Right. I must admit, I don't 100 % trust AI with results and think stuff it comes back with. Yeah, I'm sure it is. we've, hopefully we've all heard of these AI hallucinations, like sometimes AI makes stuff up. And so you do have to check things out. I think it's far more reliable maybe to check out someone's LinkedIn profile, check out their website, see if they have some history, some testimonials, stuff that can develop a bit of trust.

Don't say that too loud. It's listening. ⁓

and hopefully relationship as well,

You know, you and I are never going to disagree on that point. Like we, you and I will preach at the, from the top of the highest mountain about this very thing. And I think about, so there's this TV show called The Morning Show. I don't know if you've ever seen it. It's an Apple show. Yes, Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon. And so I just saw the episode where there was a deep fake video of Jennifer Aniston. And I thought,

Okay, yeah, the Jennifer Aniston, that one. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, very good.

I think that that's real. Not that I thought that what she was saying was real, because of course I saw the scene where she didn't say any of that, but I think that it is real that something like deep fakes exist, that they can happen, and that as a consumer of things and services myself, how can I continue to stay educated in a way that provides me with facts? And so would...

would an AI search be even the first place or ever a place that I would go to? Do I, to your point, do I trust it?

Yeah, I am not there yet. I don't know. Maybe that will change in the future. But right now I'm going to stick with what I know does work. Yeah.

which is humans, right?

Things like this, like, hey John, hi, I'm Katie, you know? And it also, and that's not to say that AI isn't amazing, right? It can help me organize my thought process better than anything I've ever met, right? I can give it things and say, please help me organize my thoughts and it'll say, okay, what do you think about this structure or what about this one?

Mm-hmm.

And then it gets my brain moving again to say, that's so sexy. So yes, thank you AI, thanks for helping me. So I think that it has places and uses. I just don't know that it's as important in a sales process, not a marketing process, but the sales process as people think.

Yeah.

It's an interesting topic. And I do think AI does, at least at the moment, have the potential to put Instagram filters over all of your life and your business, your branding and everything to make you make you look better than you are. And this is why I think the trust and verify part is so important. So I do love what you're saying there.

Well, that's funny because I'm thinking, can it make my life look better? Because my life is pretty great right now with all of its cracks and crevices. You know, I believe that like where you crack, you know, if you think of a diamond, the flaws in a diamond are what create your sparkle. So do flat things sparkle? Like, I don't know.

Maybe not yours, mine! Maybe not yours.

Do washed over things, do filtered things, sparkle? I don't know.

get what

you're saying. like it. Let me ask you this. there's one thing you must be sick of hearing must be a million times a day or year. But people often hate sales or they say I don't like sales, I hate sales. And I think it's a very detrimental mindset to have. And I want to ask you, first of all, what do you say when you're hit with that? Yeah, I don't like sales. It's not obviously sleazy It's horrible.

I guess you are right. I hear this a lot. And the reason why the company is named Sales Uprising is for that very reason. I would want that person to close their eyes and imagine them grabbing a pitchfork or a torch and having an uprising against their own feelings of hating sales. That's literally why the company is called Sales Uprising. ⁓ I know, not that you knew that.

Well, glad I asked.

But that's what I want to give to people. If you want to be a business owner, if you want to make money under your own steam with the freedom that comes with that and the non freedom that comes with that, all of the things, if you want to run a business, sales is such an integral part. And when you're first starting out, it is part and parcel with who you are. You know, as you grow, you and your business get to become a little bit more separate. But especially when you're first starting out,

Mm.

I loving sales is going to get you so much further faster than fighting against the inevitable of what the institution requires for success.

So how do we reframe this in our minds? How can we be thinking about sales in a way that we can love it and appreciate it and think about it for what it truly is, not for the negative associations we may have had before?

This is what I would put forward about that. Think about your feelings about people. Not about the world, not about what you're reading on social media, not about any of that. In your own community, in your own neighborhood, when you nod your head at your neighbor, I want you to think about that. Now, if it turns out, this is going to be controversial. If you don't like people that much, don't own your own business. I don't know how to say it any different.

Go and work

in a lighthouse or something like that.

Go get a job. Like it's okay.

Like you don't have to like people if you have a job. You kind of do if you're a business owner. Because every day is made up of people that have control over something that you don't for your own business. So for sales, if we bring it all the way back to sales, think about what you love about humanity. Think about any births, any people who meant something to you, your mentors, those teachers back in school.

that filled you. Think about the school yard instances where something didn't go right and you were really curious as to why that was someone's reaction. All of the entirety of beauty and ugliness of humans, you get is sales. Like that's really what we are. And so if you can keep curious about that, instead of having

Yeah.

feeling the ick or fear, right? Fear is another big one when it comes to sales. For what reason, I don't know. mean, think about how many times we've failed or been rejected and we're still here. So it can't, somebody saying no to me can't possibly be the whole thing of me. Think about your love of humanity and move forward in that space and allow that appreciation, if nothing else, move you out of the fear state into the courage of doing a thing.

Yeah, I've never really had that sales put in that sort of way or that frame before. So I like that it's given me something to think about. I want to say, how would you say if someone says to you, what is sales? How would you nutshell that and say, this is what sales really is?

Well, so before I answer that, how have you heard of sales being explained?

well, as someone who's, who's worked in sales a bit and, and has even delivered sales trainings at certain personal development events. the thing we've always probably ended up saying is that sales is service. It's a bit trite, it's very overused, but I think he is a good, a good frame still. I, I, until I hear a better one, that's probably one I would still use that it's not, it's not manipulation. It's not trying to get

What just what you want is trying to help people get what they want.

so I really want to grab onto that really, really quick. So if we can say sales is service in both directions. So let's call it what it is. I'm not out of the goodness of my heart selling you something. I mean, I might be, but that's not really the purpose of sales. That's like.

Mm-hmm.

purpose overlaid on top of a sales process or an actual sell. What I love that you said is, well, so even when I've delivered sales trainings in personal development spaces, coming back to the question of, what do I think sales is? Sales is the job that will hone you to its finest point as a human being. It makes you look every day at even the, is this a good deal?

And I don't even mean just for me and my company, right? So of course companies eat, sleep and breathe cashflow. They don't need anything other than cashflow to live. They don't need oxygen. They don't need me loving it. They don't need me to even like it. They just need money to come in the doors for the business to exist. So from that framework, I guess every deal is a good deal. But is it? Every deal affects my company. Every deal, you know, if you run...

say a mastermind, you're a coach and you run group programs. And if the saying one bad apple spoils the barrel or the bunch or whatever of apples it is, then was that good money for you and your business? Does that further your business? Because that one person is in that room potentially disrupting everybody else. And these are the things that as you move past, like just meeting KPIs or just meeting your quota,

Once you grow through that, these are the really quality questions that we get to start asking ourselves as we are serving both for them and us, right?

You've already mentioned the fear, the rejection element of sales. You've already put a nice frame in that, that isn't all of me. And yet, I do understand from the sort of psychology perspective that there is real pain associated with rejection. And there is perhaps to some degree, level of resilience through repetition that has to be built up to, in my experience anyway, that was certainly the case. It was like,

You know, if you ever had a cognitive behavioral therapy, where it's like exposure therapy to the things that you have fear of, right, that kind of thing, to help you overcome phobias and whatever else. So it's the kind of exposure to the thing that you're afraid of, because over time with repeated exposure, it becomes less scary than the thing that's just been going on in your head, otherwise when you're in the reality. And that was certainly my experience with sales as well, that once you've been in that position of

Sure, where you're snapping the rubber band, right? Every time,

especially working phone sales, being on the phone time and time again, constant rejection, but the occasional yeses and that's what you remember that you're there for when you get those, but everything in between is challenging, right?

Yes, you are right. Again, I can't wait to see if this conversation provides a place where you and I disagree. So I got my start in sales at a call center and we call it back in the day, even though it doesn't feel like it was back in the day. mean, since it was my lifetime, I was in high school. It was my first job. These people couldn't see my face. I couldn't see their face. I was 15.

We'll see.

Some of them I couldn't even pronounce their names. So you know what I did? I learned how to politely ask, how do you pronounce your name? I don't want to get it wrong and be respectful.

because I got tired of being hung up on because I said somebody's name wrong. So what you're talking about in terms of like CBT and stuff like that, you would consider a call center immersion therapy. As soon as you hit the they hung up on me button, another call gets in your ear. You don't have to think about it. when I was working my part-time job as a 15 year old, call after call after call would come in. if, because I can only control me.

I can't control what they hear. I can't control anything that they think or their perspective about this one interaction, this voice over the phone. So all I could do was say, so how can you do that better? How can you make them stay on the phone just this much longer so they can actually know who the heck you are even? Right? And immersion therapy in this way, to your point, I think can really help. You're gonna wanna do it.

You know, what I tell my clients, is that you can't get your business wrong. I mean, you can't, it's yours. So even if it's a failure, it wasn't wrong. My bet is that you learn something. I have owned three businesses. I currently only own one, right? So if you can imagine how many failures I've had between 15 years ago and now, and I'm still here, I've been rejected many, many times in multiple ways, still here.

So when you're thinking about rejection, what I would give to the listeners is that if when you think about sales, you are fearful. One, try to identify what the fear is. Is it just the fear of using your own voice? Because we see this in speakers even. Even if they're doing a TEDx talk, which we all know we're not selling from that stage.

but just the thought of using our voice or putting our opinion out there or our thoughts out there is sometimes fearful. So in that same way, try to identify where the fear is, or it doesn't have to be that deep. Just decide you don't care about the fear and you're not gonna let it be the thing that allows your business to fail faster.

Yeah, I do wonder whether and this may go beyond coaches and speakers, but I do wonder, because I think this maybe came up a bit for me as well, whether part of this fear is not having the level of control over your outcomes that you might do with a talk that you're giving or with a coaching session where you're pretty much in charge of running the show. When you're doing calls or doing sales calls, particularly, you are not so much in that position, you don't have control over the outcome in any, any particular way.

Or maybe you do.

I may

have found, you'll see me writing because those are things you say that I need to remember. So we may have found our first disagreement. So I think that having a sales call is exactly like speaking on a stage. And I'll tell you why. I don't have any control.

over how the audience feels. I can try and that's all I can do in a sales call. I can try. I can only control what's in this five feet of space. Well, five feet plus whatever the width is, you know, I don't know what that is. So, you know, I can only have intention about what I'm putting forward. I can only be as authentic as I am.

And the audience is going to perceive it from exactly where they are at that moment. They're going to come in with their stories and their days and whatever that looks like. I can work to help relieve them of some of that before we get into the good stuff of a talk, but I don't have any control over whether or not they even hear a single thing I say, or if they hear it in the way that I have intended them to hear it. And that's no different than in a sales call.

Yeah,

I do. do agree. And I think maybe my framing was a little off because I do think perhaps a better comparison would be that it's more like when you start speaking or when you start coaching is where you don't have the confidence to be able to get those sorts of results. But and it's the same with sales as well. And when you've been doing it a while,

yeah.

you have more confidence in the kind of outcomes that you can get and more, more managed expectations perhaps. So, so I think my, maybe my framing was more the point of disagreement than anything else.

Dang it.

really look and here's me trying to find a disagreement between the two of us. Like what a weird conversation that is. So you're right. If it's framed that way, then it's literally your three C's. Confidence doesn't happen. You know, the fake it till you make it can work for some people. I'm sure. Have you ever actually tried to identify a place in your life? Here would be an interesting challenge for everybody listening. Have you ever tried to identify a place in your life where you have literally had to fake it to make it?

Keep going, I hope you do.

In looking backwards because you know hindsight being clear in 2020 and all I don't know that I've ever had to do that I've done things scared But I don't know that that's the vibe of fake it till you make it I've done things scared and I've survived all of them thus far

I've never liked the fake it till you make it approach to anything. I don't feel like I've ever really done that. hope I haven't ever really done that. I have had people be mistaken or think I have more status than I've had and maybe been a bit reluctant to correct the mistake. yeah.

I think that's okay. And I think

that the truth of that particular situation was probably somewhere in the middle because you're likely to give yourself less credit. And in that instance, they would be giving you more. So six to one half dozen of the other, probably came out even John.

Yeah

I think one of the things that I feel very fortunate about in my own life was that I feel like I got paid to do sales training. ⁓ Having worked in sales, I think most people may not have that experience as a speaker, as a coach, some will, some probably most won't. That it did give that kind of grounding or understanding of how things work and the chance, opportunity to build up some resilience to

the no's that you're inevitably going to get from time to time. And and to really have a mindset of more just, this is just something that needs to happen for you to have an effective business that has as you say, cashflow things that matter to having a business that works. And so I feel like that, that was like my mentorship, if you like a paid mentorship, and I was very fortunate for that. It helped set me up for what was to come.

one of the things that I noticed with that, and this is this is really just something to touch on as well as that. At that time, it was I was selling courses. And so I was like, what would be called a setter or setting calls for the closer you know, that kind of role. And it seems that a lot of the courses and personal development market and professional development market has kind of away from that model always moving away from that model. I wonder if you have awareness of that if there's anything there that you can sort of speak to about

why that might be and what kind of models maybe people are finding to be more effective right now.

So can I ask you a qualifying question about that? When you were doing the setting, it within the event itself or was it outside?

Yeah, of course.

No,

no, this was from a video sales letter that people would, they would inquire that watch a video and then based on their responsiveness, we had a sense of whether they were a viable lead or not. And then they would get called for a setting for a qualification call.

Okay. Oh, what a wild process of a very large book of business. So to give the audience context, right? These are not things traditionally you would find in even a million dollar institution in the coaching space. I hadn't heard that people were getting away from that, although I can completely understand why the trend may be fizzling out.

Yes.

how I felt about and feel about seeing that type of activity happening. All I see are people who run businesses that absolutely understand the concept of marketing, but don't necessarily understand their audience and the human connection that you need to actually be able to deliver those amazing services to the people who need them. And what I mean by that, and that is not a,

I'm not trying to diss anyone. It's just something, it feels like an easy button. Let me hire John Ball and he'll go ahead and fill up my entire calendar so that all I have to do is talk to these amazing people. Now, if I'm the one who's making the sales call, right? So when you were setting the appointments, who made the, who closed?

And they would be put onto a scheduled call with a closer. So it wasn't, it wasn't me. didn't, uh, only in a few exceptional cases where people were just eager to buy, they kind of closed on the qualification call, but yeah, generally they would go with a, with the closer call.

Okay, so can we take a step back and like give people a picture of what we're talking about? So we're looking at a sales funnel, you guys, and the people who work each part of that funnel. So all the way at the top of your funnel, if you Google sales funnel, you'll see something that can have like up to 20 different straight, like levels of don't look, keep it simple. You know, there's no need to stress out about it. You've got all your people at the top. Those are your prospects. You've gotten them through all of your marketing.

Yeah.

The next line is qualifying them. Now what John did was between the people and the qualification, there was a setting an appointment line. Traditionally, if you're a smaller business, these two things go part and parcel with each other. How do they gravitationally flow from at the top of the prospects to qualification? You were traditionally setting the appointment. So that's what he's talking about.

So if you can imagine an institution large enough to actually choose to pay someone to do that for them, that's what he's talking about. If it's just you, right? I think part of the reason why there could be a shift away from that is because that feels relatively impersonal, Like even just the idea of it, like,

Yeah.

I'm working with a coach who's so busy that they're like, yeah, yeah, fill up my calendar. All I want to do is deliver. As a business owner, I get that because my favorite part of my life and my job and my purpose is the solutions portion of what I do, which is why my whole business exists. And yet, if I want to be able to do that for my clients, they do need to know who I am. If it's going to work for them, if I'm actually going to be able to provide a solution for them.

They need to know me sooner rather than later. And I would rather them, you know, a video sales letter, appointment setters, closers, pushing my sales all the way off onto something that doesn't exist for me.

feels disjointed and like there are a ton of places in that sale where it could go wrong when they finally get to me to deliver.

Yeah.

Yeah, for me, it's not not a process I would use in my own business. And I think there are too many leakage points for starters. And it's a it's a seems like a high friction process as well. It's not a simple process. He's like, you have to go through various different stages. I much prefer a simpler pathway. But then for my business, it is pretty much me. So

Well, absolutely. even if it's, know, the clients that I work with, I really challenge them. And again, they can't get it wrong. If they really, after working with me, can't love the concept of business development, I put out there that the CEO is the number one salesperson of the company. As soon as they fall out of love with their, what they're putting forward as their solutions, the company changes. And if they're,

in a present frame of mind, have to think about if that's a company that they even love anymore, potentially.

I think that's a very good way to be thinking about it. How about, since we've been talking about sales for speakers and coaches and the likes and programs, what kind of advice may I mean, I guess it's gonna be fairly fairly generalistic, because we don't have specific businesses as such, but as best you can with your general advice, what are the kinds of sales funnels or processes that work best for those kinds of businesses that keep things

pretty simple, frictionless and effective.

Wonderful. This is how I'll give it to you. I'll give it to you in terms of revenue Because we don't know who we're talking to exactly and so generally speaking When you're in your first depending on how depending on your ticket offer depending on what you're selling But generally I would recommend for the first hundred thousand dollars of business that you sell have it be you

Let me tell you why. will tell you why. know you guys don't like that answer. I can literally hear the groans across the world. Like, Katie, you are sentencing me to the worst. A prison sentence. But here's why. I've been in sales my whole life. If a company wants to hire me to do their business development, I'm an expensive salesperson for any company based on my experience. And

You

If you were saying, my gosh, I don't want to do any of that. I just want to hire someone to do my sales. I think that's wonderful. And I still think you need to sell at least your first 100K because as a quality salesperson, you don't want a junior person. How are you as a non-salesperson going to teach a junior salesperson everything that is you about your solutions? How are you going to do that? Can you afford to even try?

How much time are you gonna spend out of your business to work on that project to get this junior salesperson who you think you're getting at a deal to get ramped up enough to be able to deliver revenue to your business? It sounds like an easy button, right? Always beware of the easy button. So then you're like, okay, Katie, so I'm willing to invest in a senior salesperson. Fantastic, you've got one on the call, John. I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna need to know how long it traditionally takes.

You

for you to get a cold lead to buy. Because I get paid commission as a salesperson. So that affects my paycheck. You as my potential employer kind of owe me that answer. And if you have not sold a dime for your business, you don't have really important answers that affect my paycheck as a senior salesperson. You don't have the answers your business needs, much less a salesperson needs.

to be productive for you.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a very real answer to something we have to think about as business owners as much as might like to pass that off. There's a level to which you need to know how things work within your own business before you can have someone else. How could you effectively manage somebody in that role if you don't know how it works in the first place if you don't have some experience of that within your own business?

much less if you hate it. So think about every company that has a sales manager that actually hates sales. Those poor, salespeople, right? And we've all, for those of us that have been in sales for a couple decades or few decades or more, you know, we've all worked for that boss where they just seem so angry about our production.

Yes.

Yeah. Yeah, I think it's really important. And I do feel for myself as well, one of the things that I do believe in do work towards is, you're going to know so much more about how the people that you're getting on the calls are responding, whether things are working, your outreach is working in the right kind of way, by being actively involved in it in some sort of level, straight on, you're going to get a lot of feedback.

that's going to be really valuable to you and the business, not just on the sales. So I think it's a really valuable element to work

Baby, tell him the good stuff, John. Listen to what this man just said. He told you, yes, we understand that this is gonna be maybe a pain in your ass. You're not gonna like this exercise, especially in the beginning, but eventually you're gonna start to hear the same thing. If you're paying attention, if you're taking notes in your qualifying calls, you're gonna see where that marketing went wrong or...

where it's going right if you're really lucky. Through walking someone through the presentation of how you solve and help and support them with what you do, you're going to actually be able to hear in real time where that call may have gone wonky. There is no more important data for your business to succeed faster than that.

Yeah. Yeah.

No,

but you know, think about it in a different way. If I told John, that's not going to work for you. You, you deliver this, you're saying this, that's not going to work. Do you think that John's just going to believe me? Or do you think that he's going to be like, sure, Katie, whatever you say, I'm going to go ahead and do it my way. And then as soon as he hears that he's like, so you know, don't believe us, go do the work so that you can tell me, Katie, I know you're wrong because I've talked to

You know, I've been able to close 20 people out of 50 people because of X, Y, and Z. And this is where that happened in the conversation. And this is why. That is the nucleus of everything that your business is built on. The connection between you and your client and why that happened and how that happened and when that happened.

As a speaker, sales are a little different to how you might do them as a coach or as a course presenter or those kinds of things. And I you do speaking and you work with speakers as well. Can you speak a little bit to the sales process for speakers and what you might advise there?

Hahaha!

Sure, as far as I'm writing a book on it. So there.

Perfect.

There is something, so here is what is the same. So we're gonna give you what's the same first. You still need to know your target audience. What you have to say is not for everybody, no matter how much you think it is, I love you, but it's not. There's gonna be the people who control those audiences may or may not be looking for you. So one, find your target. If you know who the audience is, find out who books for them. So it's still about relationship.

and relationship far and wide in a very specific place because you want to go deep because you're the expert in the thing that you stand on a stage for. You are literally asking someone to pay you for your breath.

in.

Right? you're going to have to be able to communicate and luckily you're a speaker. So this should not be a problem about how that's going to work and the impact that it's going to have on that event. And so in some ways, Dawn, it's almost all speakers are not going to like this. Unpopular opinion alert. It's almost an easier sell.

Because one, the people who do bookings, we'll call them bookers. They're called all sorts of different things and depending on your industry, they have other names. But the people who book the events, the ones that are going to pay you for your breath, they don't always get out of the office. So if you can create a really sexy list of those people, you can make your sales calls one after the other, get on Zoom. You can do this all day, every day. You can be selling your breath eight hours a day.

three days a week in your business. Right? So, whereas coaches and consultants, it doesn't really look like that, right? We're out amongst the people. There's a lot more. You're still going to need to network. The people will want to see you. They want to see your presence. mean, think about you on stage. You're a physical being, how you dress, how you carry yourself. It all is part and parcel with your sell because it's you. So it is a little different.

but in some ways easier.

I think that's a great way to think about it. I want to follow on from that, because I think one of the important elements for a speaking business, particularly for coaching businesses as well for pretty much any kind of business really is referrals. And so I wonder how much how much of an important part is referrals in the sales process? And how should we be thinking about approaching referrals when it comes to having a successful business?

I love this question. Okay, so for those of you who are out and about and you network a lot and you hear people say, I have a referral based business only. And you're thinking, want that. I need to give you some context. Where that's really a thing is when you're first in your business and maybe you haven't delivered yet, this is where you get referrals from your people that you know, like and trust where they're saying, you know what, John, go work with Katie.

She's a dear friend of mine. I haven't worked with her in this capacity, but she's gonna give you the good stuff like nobody's business. I know her this and I heard that this is what you need. So go get it from Katie. This is where your friends and family may buy what you're selling. That's a great place to have referrals. So right in the beginning of your business, it helps get you started. I need you to pay attention as a salesperson because you wanna know after you've delivered to them.

Would they buy you again? Would they buy you for the same reasons? If they didn't come to you through a referral, how would they have preferred to have found you? Right? So there's some really great juice in the beginning of a business that you can get from your referrals. At the end of your business, when you are making consistently all the cash that your business needs to be happy and healthy,

Mm-hmm.

all the cash that you need to be happy and healthy and whatever the vision was for the happy and healthiness of all the people you know, it's being provided for you. Another great place to have a referral based business. You can know that you have done the work, that you are well known, that this is something that will continue. You have created something that will continue to provide you the money that you need to live and the freedom that you want to use to live it.

Beautiful. That's the whole point. Isn't that why we're all here? Right? Isn't that our personal Mount Kilimanjaro's, right? Like these Mount Fuji, these huge mountains that we're climbing in this business, this is what we're looking to create. In the middle of those two bookends, referrals are going to be great. You will always ask for them. And yet it is a hundred percent your job to keep that cash machine flowing. So if you think my referral partners are failing, I'll give you an example.

100 %

At the beginning of the year, had a lovely woman come up to me and say, tug me on the sleeve at an event and say, I'm gonna need you. And I said, you know, I don't get a whole lot of people who say, I'm gonna need you. That's, you either need me or you don't need me. That's interesting. How can you predict that you're going to need me? She's an amazing consultant in organizational development and leadership. She's brilliant. Her brain just makes you so happy. Anyway.

Right.

She has had her business for three years. She's run her business to three quarters of a million dollars. Sexy. The whole world changed.

at some point recently. And she could see that based on the changes in the world, and look you guys, it doesn't even have to be political. In times of stress and strife, your referrals don't come as easily because the people who give you referrals are actually just focused on having their own life. They're working on, like your energy turns in, right? Even if I had business to give to someone, I may be so, whatever is going on in my own life,

Yeah.

that I don't remember to pick up the phone and give that referral to someone. And it's not their job. No offense to you, but it's not their job to feed your face. They do it because they have bandwidth. So in times in the world where there is less bandwidth per human, your referrals are gonna dry up. And she saw that coming and she said, I just have a feeling that I created this beautiful business, I've done this beautiful work, and I don't know how to do business development at all.

I couldn't tell you how I got a client. I may be able to tell you who I got a client from, but I've literally worked my referrals over and over and over again and built this amazing business, but I don't know how to do business outside of that.

This is good stuff. I love it when I'm in an episode where I know that I'm going to be listening to this over again, because there's so many different nuggets of what you shared, especially what you said about what we can really learn from the referrals that we get as well. I love that question. I never thought that before about how would you have preferred to hear about me if you weren't a referral? That's a great question. So much gold in this.

I want to maybe move on to perhaps wrap things up a little bit with something kind of fun that I've been looking forward to asking you because I think I'm going to be so interested with your answer in this. Having done a number of sales courses and programs and even done a bit of sales training delivery myself in the past. A lot of the a lot of these courses and programs have big sections or segments on mindset, mindset so important, it's about mindset, we have to have all that. How important

Do you consider mindset to be in sales? Is it being made too much of a big thing of, is there a more basic sort of way of thinking about this that might be more helpful?

my gosh. I don't think I've ever been asked this question. This is going to be a difficult one to answer. I wouldn't want to get my sales training from a mindset coach. And I think that when you make sales so much about mindset, it opens up a place for people who have no expertise in sales to teach you about sales and say it's all in the power of your brain. And that's a lie. How's that? mean, I've never straight off the top of my head. And I teach mindset.

It works.

And it's a part of the equation. You want to know the other part of the equation? Action. I'm just doing it. You know what? Everybody here, I challenge you. Pretend you're me at 15. Just do the work. I didn't have a mindset when I was 15. I was like, I want to be able to pay for me to go to the movies without asking my parents for cash.

You know, like it wasn't complicated. So there was no, in the beginning of a sales career, there's nothing to do with mindset. As an adult, don't bring your baggage to your sales table. Be courageous. That's really the mindset. That's what you need. Take your courage, pick it up, take it with you. Know that you, it's not about knowing that you're going to get the deal. It's not about the end. It's about the journey.

Which I know, that's so cliche, but it's so true. It's about what you learn about you and the most important part of this, your customer, your client, your audience. It's about them. Quit being so egotistical.

It's a great answer. Put you on the spot, but it was a great answer. Thank you. I know that I've got so much value out of our conversation today. And I don't doubt that our listener has as well. they're probably going to want to know more about you, what's coming up for you. How can they best get in touch with you find out more about you? What have you got coming up for them?

Well, Sales Uprising has a contact us page. Sales Uprising everywhere is me. I'm trademarked. I have a registered trademark. YouTube, if you really, if you're having a bad sales day, there's a couple of seasons of feed the fire, right? Cash flow is oxygen for your business and oxygen feeds fire. So you can go grab a couple of

fun tidbits that are super edible about sales in a really fun way, you guys. I'm on LinkedIn, Katie Nelson, the sales catalyst at Sales Uprising, all the places.

I will make sure there are links in our show notes for people to go and check you out and find out more about you. But Katie Nelson, this has been such a good conversation. I've learned things today that I didn't expect to learn. And I've got some interesting perspectives and things to think about that you've given us a lot.

to think about, know we don't need to worry too much about the mindset. You just need to be a bit courageous and everything else. Go and listen back to this episode. If you missed any bits, go on, I'm sure she some good stuff. This is a good reference episode. So Katie, thank you for coming and being my guest today.

John, I was not lying when I said I was very looking forward to this conversation. So I appreciate your time. I so appreciate the opportunity to move your audience even just a little bit closer to loving their sales and their sales goals. So thank you for giving me the opportunity.

Wonderful. Thank you.

that most of the speakers who I've worked with and coached over the years do not love sales. But for those who do or are ready to embrace that aspect of their business, I see them progress and get the bookings and get results much sooner than those who don't like sales or who are very reluctant to dive into that.

So I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Katie Nelson. And if you're feeling slightly called out, well, good, that means it's landed. Here's what I'm taking away from this conversation. Sales is not a personality flaw. It's no dark art. It's a human process. And if you want the freedom of being a business owner, you don't get to outsource your courage. Katie also made a brilliant point about referrals. They're a gift, not a strategy that you can bet your entire future on.

especially when the world gets noisy and everyone's bandwidth starts to disappear. If you want stability, you need a repeatable way to create conversations, not just hope that someone remembers you at the perfect moment. Now, if you want to learn more about Katie, head to the show notes for links to sales uprising and her content, including her YouTube series, Feed the Fire. And if you found this episode helpful, well, do me a favor.

Make sure you subscribe to the show that you're following us or present influence and share the episode with one person who you know says they hate sales while simultaneously wanting a thriving business. Yeah, well planned that, right? So thanks for listening to this episode. I hope it's been valuable for you wherever you're going, whatever you're doing, have an amazing rest of your day. See you next time.