Do you avoid anything related to marketing and selling? Are you scared of talking sales to the point that it ends up affecting your business?
Sales is often a term feared by business leaders. How do I close a deal? How can I sound less annoying when pitching my product? These are probably some of the things you think about when you try to sell your offerings. However, selling shouldn’t be as difficult and scary as many make it to be. You can learn to sell from your own comfort zone!
Stacey Hall has coached thousands of entrepreneurs on how to attract sales, satisfaction, and success. She is a bestselling author, a TEDx presenter, and a leading social media marketing expert. She is the founder of Success with Stacey Hall and of the groundbreaking social media marketing training program, Go for YES, which has helped thousands of people attract more sales, customers, and employee satisfaction and success. Her new book is Selling from Your Comfort Zone: The Power of Alignment Marketing.
In this episode, Stacey gives you a piece of her sales process and how you can sell tons from within your comfort zone. She also gives her insights on how you can turn conversations into sales with her amazing and promising tips!
What you will learn from this episode:
Find out how you can sell tons just within your very own comfort zone
Dive into what the new ABCs of marketing is all about and how can you turn conversations into sales
Understand the role and importance of engaging with people and turning strangers into friends in the world of sales
“Our comfort zone is the place where we feel skillful, confident, and empowered. That confidence allows us to not be brash, to not be pushy, to not be spammy.”
– Stacey Hall
Valuable Free Resource:
Want to find out more on how you can turn conversations into potential long-time sales? Click here: https://www.staceyannhall.com/courses
Topics Covered:
01:51- #1 problem female business leaders face when it comes to their business: They don’t know how to sell their message and business to their audience
03:15: Stacey shares how she shifted people’s perspective on hating sales to loving it
05:26 – Can you achieve sales just by being in your comfort zone?
10:35 – The rubber band effect: How are people similar to rubber bands when it comes to sales talk
12:27 – The new ABCs of marketing: Stacey explains what the Alignment Marketing Formula is
16:29 – Stacey narrates an example of the power of engaging and turning strangers into friends
19:15 – Want to find out more on how you can turn conversations into potential long-time sales? Click here: https://www.staceyannhall.com/courses
20:17 Q: And what I’m going to say, Sarah, let’s pretend you are one of those people. I would say, have you ever made a friend in your life? A: Okay, so see, I’m actually going to ask you the question. So, when you made the friend, where did you meet- just think of any friends you made, where did you meet them?
Key Takeaways:
“You get to the point where you can make a suggestion. And a friend is free to take that suggestion or not.” -Stacey Hall
“The essence is we begin with ourselves. And if that seems selfish, oh, well, I start by thinking about what are my core values. How do I want people to treat me? How do I want to treat other people? What do I feel passionate about and comfortable about in my life? What do I enjoy in my life?” -Stacey Hall
“When we know that we are passionate about something, that we’re good at it, that we can talk about it, belief becomes automatic, because we believe in ourselves.” -Stacey Hall
Ways to Connect with Stacey Hall:
Website: https://www.staceyannhall.com/
Book: https://www.amazon.com/Selling-Your-Comfort-Zone-Alignment/dp/1523001623
Ways to Connect with Sarah E. Brown
Website: https://www.sarahebrown.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/knowguides
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahebrownphd
To speak with her: bookachatwithsarahebrown.com
Full Episode Transcript:
Stacey Hall 0:00
There are plenty of ways to sell something that makes money doing what you love to do, whether it’s corporate or as an entrepreneur.
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 0:16
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the KTS Success Factor Podcast for Women, where we talk about challenges senior female leaders face in being happy and successful at work. I’m your host, Dr. Sarah E. Brown.
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 0:32
My guest today is Stacey Hall. She has coached thousands of entrepreneurs on how to attract sales, satisfaction, and success. She’s a best-selling author, a TEDx presenter, and a leading social media marketing expert. She is the founder of Success with Stacey Hall, and of the groundbreaking social media marketing training program, Go for YES. That program has helped thousands of people attract more sales, customer and employee satisfaction, and success. And she has a new book out, Selling from your Comfort Zone: The Power of Alignment Marketing. And that’s what we’re going to be talking about today. Stacey, welcome!
Stacey Hall 1:24
Thank you so much, Sarah! I’m happy to be in your studio. And I’m thrilled that you asked me.
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 1:28
As I told you, I’m always happy to have somebody who can make sales understandable and doable, because it is certainly not in my comfort zone. So, thank you for being here. If you were to characterize the number one problem that you’re helping female business leaders address, what would you say that it is?
Stacey Hall 1:51
Well, I always say that what I find amongst most female business leaders or entrepreneurs, is that they went into business because they have a passion, and they have a message they want to get out. What causes them frustration is that the message is not getting out for a variety of reasons. It usually is because they’re not really sure who wants to hear that message. They’re looking for validation before they just start talking. So, what I love to do is support women entrepreneurs who are frustrated about getting their message out. And I help them connect with their ideal audience, get in alignment with their message and the message their audience wants to hear from them. And as a result, they increase their income and they leave a legacy that lives on long after they’re gone.
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 2:44
So, do you bump into many people like me that are just a little bit fearful of the whole sales process or sales, in general?
Stacey Hall 2:47
If I was asked to create it as a percentage, let’s say 99% of the people that I’ve supported, my clients, my prospects, people I see everywhere– that sales is a dirty, dirty word!
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 3:08
So how do you reframe this so that people can start listening and acting on it?
Stacey Hall 3:15
Okay, so the very first thing, and I’m not the first person to say this, and even in my book, Sarah, which is behind me, the Selling from your Comfort Zone. I’m not the only voice in this book. I made a point to gather voices who have been doing sales by not getting out of their comfort zone and have been very successful at it for years. So, what is it that we all have in common is we don’t make sales something different than what we do in everyday life. And that doesn’t mean we’re always going around selling people. We recognize that human beings are human beings, that we meet people. We meet people in the grocery store. We meet people at restaurants. We meet people. Now we meet people on social media. We don’t put targets on their heads. The first thing we think about is not they’re a prospect. We think they’re a person. So, we replace the prospect brand with the person. And then we just start getting to know people. What inevitably happens when we make friends and those friends trust us? We get to know people. They like us. We like them. We trust them. They trust us. They’ll come to us and say they’re struggling with something. They’re in pain. A child is hurting. They’re not sure what to do about this situation. They’ll ask for advice. We happen to have some things, usually, that can help them because we made a point to develop friendships with these folks. Then, it’s a suggestion. It’s not a, “I got to make the sale.” It’s a suggestion. And so that’s what I call my alignment marketing formula when you get to the point where you can make a suggestion. And a friend is free to take that suggestion or not.
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 5:20
And is that the essence of selling from within your comfort zone? Or is there more to it than that?
Stacey Hall 5:26
It is the essence, but it starts, and that’s the other thing. Though, I think we all, everybody in the book does differently than the majority of folks. And I’m going to give credit to the majority of folks who have done a very good job of following the sales training that’s mostly out there. The problem is that sales training trains people to do two things. First, they tell you to get out of your comfort zone. You can’t be comfortable and make sales or be successful. I say, BS on that! The second thing they teach is to expect objections. Because the way that they teach people to go out and make sales is going to produce objections. But what if there was another way of meeting people and getting to know them that doesn’t produce objections? That’s what I teach in Selling from your Comfort Zone. That’s the steps! So, the essence is we begin with ourselves. And if that seems selfish, oh, well, I start by thinking about what are my core values. How do I want people to treat me? How do I want to treat other people? What do I feel passionate about and comfortable about in my life? What do I enjoy in my life? And Sarah, I can just go on for the next, whatever, from here. So, I know you’ve got other questions for me, but I’m saying when we start from there, recognizing our comfort zone is the place where we feel skillful, confident, and empowered. That confidence allows us to not be brash, to not be pushy, to not be spammy, but to be confident that the right people are going to want what we have when we make suggestions. And then I teach you in the book how to follow that, although I’m happy to share some of those steps here, too.
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 7:26
And I am going to ask you about that. But when you’re doing that, when you’re actually in your comfort zone like that, you’ve got to be sending out energy that is a lot more positive. And you’re kind of attracting people as opposed to pushing people because they just naturally want to be with you, the right ones.
Stacey Hall 7:46
Yes, exactly! And the other ones don’t matter. I don’t know if you’ll laugh at this or cry. I wasn’t sure what to do at the beginning, either. No, I just laugh a little bit. I had somebody tell me once when I was teaching this approach at a workshop because I don’t follow up. I do not follow up the way it’s taught by other trainers. And they always say your sales, right? The profits of the follow-up. I do no follow-up! I had a woman get very angry at me. And she said, “Well, I would-” How rude basically is what the essence was. She said, “If I hadn’t followed up with that particular person 13 times, I would never have gotten the sale.” And I looked at her and I said, “Have you gotten another sale since?” “No, but I wouldn’t have gotten that sale if I hadn’t followed up 13 times.” In my world, that energy could have gone into meeting 13 people who wanted to say yes!
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 8:47
Yup!
Stacey Hall 8:48
And then stay.
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 8:49
And that feels much more natural to me.
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 8:57
Hi, this is Sarah Brown, again, the host of the KTS Success Factor Podcast for Women. I hope you are enjoying this episode and gaining some tips and inspiration on how you can be happier, more successful, and experience less stress at work. If you would like to learn more about how you can take control of your career, and do it your way, visit sarahebrown.com. There you will be able to download a free chapter from my book, Let Your Personality Be Your Career Guide. It contains information and exercises on how you can identify your unique interests, strengths, and needs and translate that into career goals that are just right for you. Now back to this informative episode!
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 9:51
So, one of the things that resonates with me because I’m always extolling to the people that are listening to me is to get clear about your interests, your strengths, and your needs and stay there. Because when you’re there and you’re happy, you’re going to be more successful and people are going to be natural- people that should be will naturally be drawn to you. So, I like the whole concept of selling from within your comfort zone because you, in essence, do that. But you’ve got some other catchy phrases that are memorable in your book that I want to delve into because I think they will help to explain your approach. So, tell us a little bit about the rubber band effect.
Stacey Hall 10:35
I have some, by the way, you and I are completely aligned. I just so love you. I love what you teach and how you share it and how you support your clients. The rubber band effect is how we expand and grow because that’s what other people say to me, “Well, you don’t grow if you’re in your comfort zone.” Well, that’s not true! I learned to do something that I want to learn to do more of that, or I want to take those skills and expand them into a new area. So, if we think of the zone in which we feel empowered, as having a circumference. That circumference is like a rubber band, and that rubber band will give. Every rubber band has give to it. You can make it bigger. If you go slowly, it will be able to encompass more. If you go fast, you are likely to break it. And there are all sorts of phrases in our vocabulary about being bent out of shape, being pushed to the breaking point, and reaching the breaking point. This is what people are saying. That’s what happens when we tell them to get out of their comfort zone. They fall apart! They do. They go into fight or flight according to numerous psychologists who have studied this.
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 11:54
Or in my parlance, they go into stress, and then they exhibit behavior that is counterproductive.
Stacey Hall 12:01
Exactly.
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 12:02
Yeah. So okay, that’s a great memorable thing. And all the more reason to stay inside your comfort zone. So, one of the other things that you do in the book is you make sales pretty simple. First of all, start with you understanding what you’re passionate about and understand what your comfort zone is. But take us through the three steps that you have for getting people to say yes to you.
Stacey Hall 12:27
Okay, well, there are two sets of three steps, so I’m going to go with the first which is the Actual Alignment Marketing Formula, or what I call “the new ABCs”. Alignment is exactly what you just talked about. This is a sad statistic, and it’s recent. I’m pretty sure it was from HubSpot who did a survey. 55% of people say they feel they’re selling the wrong product. I say to myself, “Then why are you selling it? What’s keeping you there? There are so many products to sell.”
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 13:01
These are like entrepreneurs that are feeling like they’re selling-
Stacey Hall 13:04
Sales to end, corporate salespeople too, across the board, salespeople!
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 13:08
Wow!
Stacey Hall 13:09
Yeah, who responded to a survey 55% of the people they surveyed say they’re selling the wrong product. What that says to me is innately they know they don’t have a connection to it. So, I’m going to give a quick example of this first of the three. So, it’s alignment, belief, and consistency. And you touched on it already. Let’s say somebody loves to work out, but they don’t think they can make money at working out. They’re not you know, some celebrity star. But you can make money by being somebody who loves to work out. You could sell fitness equipment. You can sell gym memberships. You can do coaching about why it’s important to be fit and healthy. There’s tons of information out there! And there’s, you know, there’s plenty of ways to sell something that makes money doing what you love to do, whether it’s corporate or an entrepreneur, right? So that’s what I mean by alignment. And when you’re aligned, then it’s really easy to find people who are interested. Social media has made it so easy to find people who want to engage in those conversations. They’re looking for fitness equipment. Go where people are talking about fitness equipment. Or they’re comparing gym memberships, go where they’re talking about joining gyms, or any place where they’re having a conversation about fitness, okay? Belief is the key ingredient, right in the middle, because it’s the one that causes breakdown the most. So, think of beliefs for avoiding breakdowns. When we know that we are passionate about something, that we’re good at it, that we can talk about it, belief becomes automatic, because we believe in ourselves. A company to ask us to believe in them requires us to trust. There won’t always be everything we trust about the company. The minute we have a kink in the belief, we no longer feel wonderful about representing that product or service. So, we have to have 100% belief, and the only place we can have that is in what we know we can stand on for ourselves. From there, then we take consistent action. And this is where the other three come in. It’s another consistent action– building an audience, engaging with that audience, and then building trust to the point where you can make suggestions and sell products or services to that audience. So, consistency is three parts– build, engage and sell to your audience. Alignment, belief, and consistency are the three new ABCs of sales.
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 16:07
Okay, I think I get that, but let me play it back and see. If you follow this, anybody can do it, because you’re just seeking out others who have interests that are similar to yours. You’re engaging with them. And when you get to know them, you’re making suggestions just like you would to a friend. Anybody could do that!
Stacey Hall 16:29
Yes, that’s it! Engagement is not, how do I present my product? No! Engagement is what’s something you enjoy, Sarah, something you’re passionate about and you love, outside of business, just out of curiosity?
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 16:41
Rowing.
Stacey Hall 16:42
Okay. I am not a good rower yet. My husband’s into kayaking. That requires rowing, it’s a different kind of rowing than you. And if I wanted to meet people, so let’s say, I represent a pain product. Sarah’s just told me that there’s a whole audience of people who row. If I’m also excited about rowing, I’d go and find rowing groups on Facebook, on Instagram, through hashtags, and maybe even on LinkedIn, professional rowers. I would get in there and start having chats about rowing, not about my pain products. And then, as I’m getting to know people in the group and we’re wanting to have conversations outside of the group, at some point, Sarah’s probably going to tell me, “Oh, my God, I rowed more than I have ever rowed before. My arms are really killing me.” She might not ask me if I know of anything, but I might say, if Sarah and I know each other well enough, I might say, “You know what? I was having the same experience. You know, Sarah, I’m just going with rowing with a kayak, so it happens to me all the time. I found this thing that’s really working for me. Do you want me to show you where I buy it?”
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 18:00
There you go! Suggestion.
Stacey Hall 18:02
So, suggestion, where I buy it? Even if I’m representing it, where do I buy it?
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 18:09
Yes, I get it. I got it! Just a suggestion. Anybody can do it, you know! And when you explain it that way, I understand why it’s so bold in your book. you can ditch the script because that’s the process that you’re really going through.
Stacey Hall 18:28
I am not prepared to sell to you through your objections. I’m prepared to be friends with you, Sarah. And when you are a good friend of mine, and I am a good friend of yours, you’re going to let down your guard. You can tell me the things that are going on in your life. And if I have something that can help you, I’m going to suggest it.
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 18:49
And there is when selling becomes a service to others. Perfect! That makes it all very easy. Very easy. Stacey, you told me before we started this, that you had something that you would share with our readers for free. And you entitled it, 8 Steps to Close the Sale. You want to tell our listeners where they might find that.
Stacey Hall 19:15
Yes! So, remember what I just said about build, engage, sell. You can take those three stages, we’ll call them “stages”, and break them down into actually eight steps. And that is on my website. You can get it for free. Download the video where I teach you what the eight steps are and then I ask you questions so that you can fulfill the eight steps. And it’s on my website, staceyannhall.com/courses, C-O-U-R-S-E-S. It’s the first one and it says it’s a free download.
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 19:53
And again, it’s called 8 Steps to Close a Sale. And I want to commend Stacy’s new book to you, Selling from Your Comfort Zone: The Power of Alignment Marketing. So, Stacy, for all of those entrepreneurs out there who are like me and think that they can’t do sales, is there any question that I should have asked you that they should hear the answer to?
Stacey Hall 20:17
Well, I appreciate that. And what I’m going to say, Sarah, let’s pretend you are one of those people. I would say, have you ever made a friend in your life?
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 20:25
Yes, I have.
Stacey Hall 20:26
Okay, so see, I’m actually going to ask you the question. So, when you made the friend, where did you meet- just think of any friends you made, where did you meet them?
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 20:36
I’ve met a lot at the boathouse.
Stacey Hall 20:38
Exactly! And when you first met them, you didn’t know them. You might have been introduced by somebody, but you still had to start a conversation.
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 20:46
Correct.
Stacey Hall 20:46
What are the kinds of things you like to talk about at first? Like when you first meet somebody, what would be the first thing you would ask them?
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 20:52
How was your row this morning? Did you see the eagle?
Stacey Hall 20:56
Yeah! Okay. That’s how- were you being the salesperson at that moment?
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 21:03
No.
Stacey Hall 21:04
You were being a friend?
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 21:05
Mhmm.
Stacey Hall 21:07
There’s nothing else to say. We just built a friendship. All of us have built friendships. Let’s use social media to forget that we know how to make friends. Make friends, you will make sales.
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 21:21
Stacey, you’ve been a joy to talk to. I feel so encouraged just by this little conversation! So, thanks so much for being with us today.
Stacey Hall 21:29
Sarah, it has been a joy. I loved every question you asked me. Thank you!
Dr. Sarah E. Brown 21:34
Thanks for listening to the KTS Success Factor Podcast for Women. If you like what you’re hearing, please go to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave a review. And if you would like more information on how we can help women in your organization to thrive, then go to www.sarahebrown.com. You can sign up for our newsletter, read show notes and learn more about our podcast guests, read my blog, browse through the books or contact us for a chat. Goodbye for now!
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