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Ever get likes, “OMG this is so good” DMs, and still… no clients buying? 👀 It’s not your content. It’s the moment you go to follow up, name your price, or actually make the invite, and suddenly you feel weirdly exposed, like you’re standing on stage with butt naked. In this episode, Deirdre Martin reveals the hidden reason you avoid selling (spoiler: it’s not lack of skill, it’s your nervous system protecting you) and walks you through a simple 3…2…1 framework to turn “safe marketing” into paid conversations, without spiralling, overthinking, or ghosting your own growth. If you’re a coach, consultant, or ex-corporate service provider aiming for 6–7 figures, this one will help you move forward with sales

For the full list of timestamps, key takeaways, and all resources mentioned, visit the full episode page here: https://deirdremartin.ie/blog/hidden-reason-you-avoid-selling

Let me ask you something.

Have you ever posted something, watch the like stroll in maybe even gotten

a few messages, like, this is so good, but you've still avoided the one

thing that turns attention into money.

The follow up, the dms, the invites, the calls, all the things, and you don't avoid

it because you don't know what to say.

You avoid it because it makes you feel exposed, like totally naked.

And today, if that's you, what I call your exposure leak, we're gonna fix that.

It's the gap between being visible and being paid.

The thing is marketing is usually safe exposure, whereas selling can feel a

little bit more like direct exposure.

So it's kind of like the difference between being at home in the shower naked

or being on stage in front of everybody.

Naked marketing lets you broadcast and stay slightly vague.

That's you at home in your private shower.

Versus selling, which asks you to be specific, where it's literally you

on the stage in front of millions of people, but ass naked, right?

It asks you to initiate.

It asks you to lead a decision, and the moment that you move from

sharing value in your marketing to making an offer with your sales.

A lot of smart, capable founders literally crap their pants.

They pause and freak out.

That's totally normal.

So here's what tends to happen.

You write your message or your email, you reread it, you soften it, you add on.

No pressure.

It's okay if you don't wanna go ahead, but then you don't send it.

Right, or you stay in content mode because content feels safe, it's productive,

it's nice, and it's behind the scenes.

But the thing is, visibility without that initiation is

really actually just performance.

So let me give you two quick client stories because they

help bring this to life.

Client one, let's call them, they hated sales calls.

They literally said it straight out to me.

Deirdre, sales are not my strength.

I don't wanna do them.

There's no drama here.

It's just a full flat out, no, not for me.

And then something shifted for this person.

What happened was her desire to scale started to outweigh her

fear of judgment and rejection.

And then what happened was the whole thing flipped for her.

And when that flipped for her, her sales took off, not because she turned into

someone else, or she was like a sleazy mattress guy, sawing them in half outside

the showroom, trying to sell stuff to people who didn't want it, but because

she stopped letting the fear run her business and making decisions for her.

Whereas client two, client two panicked before every single sales call, like

proper, flat out, panic, palpitations, freaking the fuck out, basically.

So what we did was reps role play.

Time and time again.

Practice, practice, practice, no scripts, a couple of sentences

that she would consistently say so that it felt comfortable and easy.

And for her to take the lead in that conversation to be able to

diagnose if people had the problem that she could actually solve.

We worked through what felt aligned for her, the things

that felt safe for her to say.

So her brains.

Stopped treating every single sales call.

Like she was basically in danger.

Like it was a jaws moment.

Right.

You know what I mean?

And she had her highest ever revenue month recently after we did this.

She hit 25K in her business in one month.

So if you're listening and thinking, yep, I'm visible, I'm credible, I'm consistent,

and I still hesitate to ask for the sale.

Stay with me.

I am Deirdre Martin.

I help consultants and service providers scale with neuroscience backed business

and mindset strategies without sacrificing your health or relationships with the

people that you love most in the world.

Now, I've got three things for you, and we're going 3, 2, 1, because

the last one hits the hardest, and we're building this whole episode

around one diagnostic question.

So I want you to write this down.

Where am I doing safe marketing versus exposed selling, right?

Where are you hiding in the shower?

Bare ass naked, versus being on the stage and asking for the business because

that answer tells you exactly where you're leaking money in your business.

Right?

Here we go.

Number three, busy marketing is avoidance in lip gloss.

Okay.

Posting is not the same as initiating.

You can post every single day of the week three times a day and still avoid the

actual moment where money changes hands because posting feels like I'm being

helpful, whereas initiating feels like I'm being judged for being salesy and pushy.

And your brain hates that judgment.

And often the people whose judgment you are concerned about are.

Colleagues, past colleagues, people you don't even work with anymore.

Friends who are never gonna buy from you, family people you love, but they

don't pay your bills, pay your mortgage, pay for you to go on a fabulous holiday.

And there's this widely cited.

Study published in science showing social rejection.

It's so fucking hard.

It literally can feel like physical pain in your body.

And if you have ADHD like me, well then sometimes you can feel that even more.

So when you feel that spike before you send the DM or the follow

up or the email, whatever it is, it's not you being dramatic.

It's your brain treating rejection like threat, and your nervous system

is being activated as a result of that.

And it gets sharper when you've got credibility because now

your reputation is at risk.

Like, what the fuck?

So the fear isn't.

I'll look silly.

The fear is if they ignore me, what does that say about me?

The fear is if they say no, it proves I'm not worth the price.

A lie you're telling yourself.

The fear is if I follow up, they'll think I'm needy and I look desperate.

What total bullshit all those fears are, right?

That's identity, threat, identity, threat triggers, avoidance, and that

avoidance is keeping your business small.

What I'd love for you to do is just to reflect on this, do you

post more when you're avoiding follow up and be really honest.

You don't need to share the answer with me or anybody else, but just reflect on that.

And here's the thing that I would love for you to note, is that most founders

actually don't need to do more marketing.

You have ideas galore already, and your marketing is probably.

Already good enough.

But what people need, what founders need is they need to turn their

marketing into paid conversations without spiraling into a panic.

When it comes to asking for the business, and I'm gonna say something here that

might sting a little bit, and that is.

If your marketing is designed to get like ruptured applause

instead of actual conversations, you're not building a business.

You're building that stage, the stage where you've got your clothes

on, but really you're better off if you're bare ass naked.

So next, let's move on to, from going from posting to initiating those conversations.

Okay.

Real talk here.

A lot of people treat outreach like direct messages, like it's a

little bit of a personality test.

They might send one message and then spend the next day decoding the reply or

the tone of the message or the silence if they didn't get a reply, or the fact

that the message was seen or the whatever.

And so what happens is that decoding, it's actually decoding a story where

you have no idea whatsoever about what the recipient meant or was

doing in their lives, and you've made up a story in your brain around

what's happening to that message.

So what's better to do is to use structure, not.

Hype around sales, not positive affirmations 'cause you're trying

to manifest the crap out of it.

But structure, and what I mean by this is that if you place

volume, as in, if I send 100 dms.

Before the emotion, what actually happens is it helps with what's called

exposure therapy and exposure therapy.

Research shows that repeated controlled exposure reduces anxiety over time.

So what ends up happening is your nervous system adapts when it learns.

Oh.

We survived that, and that's why reps matter.

And that's why volume can be really impactful and helpful because when

your brain anticipates rejection, it generally, it's naturally

gonna flip into threat response.

And when it flips into threat response, you.

Over edit.

You delay, you second guess, you start fixing things that aren't

broken, but then you do that just to avoid sending the follow up.

The problem with this is, is that the fortune is in the follow up.

So here's an action step I'd love for you to take.

If this is resonating with you, pick one piece of content you've already posted.

Pull out 10 people who engaged with your piece of content, who liked

it, saved it, replied, watched, open whatever it was, and start

10 human conversations with them.

Don't pitch to them.

Don't try and sell to them.

Literally, just open a door.

Try this, right?

Hey.

Saw you engage with my post about whatever it was.

Curious, is that something you're navigating right now?

That's it.

One sentence, calm energy.

And just 10 people literally go out there and test it.

And on a scale of one to 10, what I'd love for you to reflect on

is how much does your mood decide whether you send messages like that?

How much does your mood determine whether you do outreach and initiate and be

proactive in your business with sales?

And hey, if that number is high, I think maybe it might be ready for

an identity reset because this is really all about identity work.

And go and listen to a previous video that I recorded, which is

called Think Like A Seven Figure Business Owner Before You Become One.

It helps reinforce the shift from waiting to leading.

Alright.

Now for the one that's gonna hit the hardest, oh.

And I am going to be direct pricing.

Hesitation is exposure avoidance in disguise.

If you hear yourself say, I don't know if I can charge that.

What you're really saying is, I don't know if I can handle

someone saying no to that price.

And this is where marketing and sales have to hold hands because marketing creates

context, whereas sales creates commitment.

If you're marketing is vague when you ask, the ask feels abrupt.

But if your marketing is clear, when you ask.

The ask feels like the obvious next step for someone to take.

And where people start to feel pushy is that when they've asked without

maybe asking for permission first, so pushy is pressure without permission,

whereas if you're clear with your marketing, then it's leadership.

You're asking people to take the logical next step to solve their

problem, and I need you to hear this.

If someone has the problem you solve and you stay silent, that's

not humility, that's hiding.

You're hiding from the reality of your business and how.

Like all of those people that you can help.

So if this is you, if you hide from saying your price, if you

don't feel confident in your price, if small pricing is keeping you.

Smaller in your business.

Here's what I want you to do.

I want you to say the price you'd love to charge for, I'd love for

you to say this, say your price out about 20 times, at least before your

next call, not to pump yourself up.

The reason is to stabilize your nervous system, and what I mean by that is.

It's exposure therapy saying it.

It means that when you come to asking for it on your sales call,

it's just gonna come out easily.

And then choose one sentence that you can say without

apologizing in your sales call.

So basically what I mean by this is when you get to the point where you

know you've diagnosed that the client has a problem that you can help them

with, here's what I want you to say.

Based on what you've shared, I'd recommend X. Do you want me to walk

you through what it looks like?

And then if they say Yes, amazing, then they're gonna say, well, how much is that?

And you're gonna say, my price is, or the cost is, or whatever phrase

that you've determined right now.

Here's what I'd love for you to just reflect on with this part, is

that where are you adding extras or discounts or disclaimers because you

want to avoid judgment or rejection.

Because here's what happens and is, is a little bit of an identity shift.

If you're waiting to feel ready before you lead the decision and that conversation

with people, you are asking to be chosen.

But if you are waiting to be A CEO, then you need to get in the arena.

You need to be a gladiator in the arena and not a spectator on the side.

So let's name what happens when this doesn't change.

If you stay a spectator, if you don't ask for the business financially,

you're gonna keep producing marketing to compensate for a conversion gap.

You're gonna have more output, more content.

You're probably gonna be on more platforms 'cause you think

that that's what's needed.

Whereas initiation then stays optional.

Those sales conversations are where you're waiting to be chosen, but

emotionally, you're gonna carry this low grade tension because you're gonna

feel stressed about money because the pipeline depends on referrals

and hopes instead of reps. Leadership wise, planning is probably gonna stay

fuzzy because you can't make decisions.

You can't predict what your revenue is gonna be, so you're

gonna delay making decisions.

Growth is gonna feel personal because the business still relies on you being

really brave on the right day, and what fixes it at this root is simple.

It's uncomfortable, but it's so simple.

You build exposure tolerance through structured reps.

You stop using marketing as the finish line and start using it

as the opening line, the gun that fires at the start of the race.

So go back to the diagnostic question I shared with you at the start.

Where am I doing safe marketing instead of exposed selling?

And if the answer is you're doing follow up pricing, making the invite,

asking for the decision, then amazing.

Well done.

You're building reps, but if you're not doing any of that

stuff, you're missing strategy.

You're missing reps and you're not gonna have that beach body if I'm

going to the gym that one time.

Okay?

And this is exactly the type of work that I do privately with my clients.

So if you're sitting at that stage where you know what to do, but you're

not doing it consistently, then book a call from the link in my comments.

We'll identify exactly where exposure avoidance is leaking revenue.

And we'll build a structure so that you can build your reps plan to make

marketing and sales work better together.

Okay, quick little recap here.

Three was Busy marketing can mask avoidance.

Two volume before motion.

Mm, reps create range and one, stop softening the offer.

Be clear and ask for it bravely.

So your move today is go and pick one piece of content you posted recently

and start 10 conversations with it.

Just be genuine and look to create rapport.

If you got value from this, share it with one entrepreneur who you know is visible

but still may be hesitating with the ask.

And if you want my eyes and your exposure link, book the call from the

link below, and do me a favor, rate review, subscribe, and until next

time, keep mastering your business.