How to Sell without Selling

Lindsay Johnson: Hello. Oh my goodness, I am so excited you’re here. Welcome to How to Sell Without Selling. I will be your guide today, Lindsay Johnson, aka The Radical Connector, and I cannot wait to dive into today’s content with you. Are you ready? Let’s do it. All right, let’s get into it. How to Sell Without Selling, featuring me, Lindsay Johnson. My pronouns are they/them, a cowboy. Why cowboy, you ask? Because I have friends who like to say, “Girl.” When they talk to me and they get excited and they might say, “Girl.” They freak out. They panic. The look of terror that falls across their faces. We’ve all established to call me cowboy. Instead of girl, call me cowboy.

It has become a hilarious, at first, inside joke, and now public joke. Everybody around the world calls me cowboy. There you have it. My pronouns are they/them, cowboy, and I am radicallinds all over the interwebs. Today, friends, we’re going to be talking about How to Sell Without Selling, and I’m really excited for you to get to know me. I hope at some point soon for me to get to know you as well. Howdy. I’m Lindsay, aka The Radical Connector. I teach marketing and sales skills to entrepreneurs who secretly don’t know how to get customers. I have spent over 20 years teaching business skills, and I am still nerding out to it.

I got my start at a very early age, thanks to being raised in a family full of entrepreneurs and business owners. I’m talking early. I was a teenager and already get nerdy about this concept of business development, how we take our ideas, our thoughts, our passions, our purposes, turn this into some sort of business, and then create business, get customers and get sales through our actions. I thought we thought it was very cool. I began studying under different marketing and sales experts and watching tapes and videos and CDs and going to conferences and doing some one-on-one training with people and really absorbing as much as I could about how we market and sell our goods and services.

One of the things that I really appreciate about marketing and sales is how it is always evolving. For a lot of our generation, we really saw that happen during the pandemic. We saw how a lot of businesses were forced to get online and get creative with how they connected with their customers and clientele and sold. I will tell you, there’s one thing that never changes about marketing and sales. It is always about relationships and always about serving the need of your customers and clients.

Now, I developed my own ick-free sales system way back in my early 20s. I did this because, as I said, I had been studying and learning and training about marketing and sales. I was a very good student, and I was doing everything that I had been taught. It worked. I was getting sales, no doubt about it. Also, a lot of it felt really icky. I was really uncomfortable with this sell-at-any-cost mentality that was passed down from sales mentor to mentee, from Jedi to Padawan. It really made me uncomfortable. I always come back to that quote from Spider-Man, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

Just because you are great at selling and can sell anything to anyone doesn’t mean you should. I was pretty grossed out by the whole sell-at-any-cost tactics. I no longer wanted to participate in that. I created my own system, a system based on consent and centering our customers’ needs, not our sales goals. Now, I will tell you that my superpower is absorbing and embodying all of these marketing and sales strategies, and then breaking them down and teaching simple, actionable, step-by-step strategies back to you. You might even call me The Absorber.

Let’s talk about selling with a spicy brain. Please do not panic. I’ve got you. There are definitely some unique spicy brain challenges that neurodivergent people face as an entrepreneur. Oh, and I should tell you, my flavor of spicy brain is bipolar disorder. If we want to call it a disorder, it’s related to mood and to sleep. What it means is I have to be really regulated in my moods and in making sure I eat well, I get lots of exercise, and I sleep really well, and I keep my stress down. Otherwise, I can go down into depression or way too high into mania.

I’ve really learned over the past 20-plus years how to regulate my nervous system and how to set up a lifestyle that really supports me so I don’t drop down too low or peak up too high, and I just walk that nice fine line in the middle. Along with bipolar disorder comes a lot of the same experiences in my brain as somebody with ADHD. I deal with executive dysfunction, with overwhelm, with auditory issues, sensitivity to light, to touch, to sound, to smell, to taste. Like a lot of neurodivergent people, if I don’t sleep well, I’m effed. Can I say that on here? It happened. I said it.

Okay, moving on. Some of the challenges that you and I might face when we are looking at sales as a spicy brain is that connection to our strong sense of justice and right and wrong. You can see why, after a very short time in the marketing and sales world, I picked up on how icky it felt and that it didn’t feel right. I changed the way it was done. Having this strong sense of justice and right and wrong really can lead to us avoiding the sales process because there’s just something that feels icky about it if we’re doing it in a manipulative way, which is what’s taught.

We also have rejection sensitivity. We are used to being rejected, left out, excluded, judged for all the ways that we engage, interact in non-neurotypical ways. We have an extreme sensitivity to rejection, and that can absolutely keep us from selling, or if we do attempt to sell and we hear a no, we can internalize that as there’s something wrong with us rather than we just weren’t talking to the right person. Oof, masking and people-pleasing. We’re going to talk about this a lot today, but remember, if you haven’t heard it yet, I’ll be the first to tell you.

People buy from you because they know you, they like you, and they trust you. That’s a little bit complex when you’re talking to a neurodivergent baddie who’s used to masking and people-pleasing. That can really get in the way of how we show up in the world, how we market and sell ourselves and our products and our services, and can make for a very stressful selling situation.

Then finally, structure. Some of us need a nice, firm, clear structure to follow. Some of us rebel against structure, and we need to be more fluid and fly by the seat of our pants. Not knowing whether you’re a give me structure or get rid of structure person and how to incorporate some sort of strategic structure into your marketing and sales strategies is going to really mess with you. Let’s change the game. Let’s flip the script. What if we could sell without selling? Spoiler alert, we totally can. That’s what this entire presentation is going to be about.

Let’s get a little deeper, shall we? Let’s talk about ick-free selling. Today we’re going to be talking about why selling is your number one priority as an entrepreneur. We’re going to talk about reframing selling from icky to let’s go. Number three, we’re going to talk about how to take the “Huh?” out of selling. Number four, we’re going to explore what know-like-trust really means. Then number five, I’m going to teach you my ick-free sales formula, including a seven-day action plan, so you can put it into action today.

How do we sell without selling? We stop convincing the world that they need what we’ve got and we start connecting with the people who want what we’ve got. Subtle, right? but makes all the difference. How do we do that? We co-create the sales journey with the right people. We get consent every step of the way with yes/no questions. Questions like, would you like to explore working together? Consent-based selling. Do you want to hear about my group program? Consent-based selling. Does this software make sense for your company? Consent-based selling. Is your organization looking for DEI trainers? Consent-based selling.

Would you like me to send you my free XYZ? Consent-based selling. Yes, even if you’re sending something for free. Want to join my free online community? Consent-based. Are you open to introducing me to a person? Consent-based. You see, the magic is in those yes/no questions. Selling stops and co-creation begins when we start asking the right questions. It is the simplest way to stop feeling like you’re selling and to start having conversations with people to see if they want what you’ve got. If now’s the right time, then let’s go.

While we’re here, let’s hit pause for a second, grab your phone, open up your camera, and scan this QR code. Then put your name and email in to get my ick-free sales scripts. I give you 44 different consent-based sales questions for feel-good selling that takes you through the gamut of not only exploring if somebody wants to buy from you, but also how do you ask that introduction? How do you invite someone to your community? How do you make a suggestion without feeling icky? All right, done? Great. Let’s keep going.

Let’s talk about why selling is your number one priority as an entrepreneur. Now, I know that your purpose is to change lives. That’s most likely why you started your business. Am I right? Your business’s purpose is to make money. That’s a really important distinction we need to make because if you just wanted to change lives and you weren’t here to be an entrepreneur or a business owner, you could volunteer, you could join other organizations, you can apply to work for a company who does similar work. That’s not why you started your business, right? You started your business because you wanted to create something for yourself.

You wanted to create a lifestyle beyond your wildest imagination. You wanted to reclaim your time and get some freedom back. You wanted to increase your earning potential. You wanted to make really great connections and open doors to some really cool opportunities. You might even be using your business right now as a stepping stone into something even bigger down the road. Remember that your business cannot stay in business if it’s not making money. Your business making money does not take away from the impact you are having on your customers’ lives, your clients’ lives, and the world around you.

I understand that most entrepreneurs, when they start their business, they don’t consider the sales part, especially if you don’t have a background in sales. You think, “All right, I have this really cool thing that I want to do to change the world, to impact people’s lives. Let’s make a website. Let’s set up social media. Let’s write a blog post.” Then, crickets. Registering a business, building a website, picking a name, even mapping out your revenue streams, or creating your products and services. Listen, that is the easy part. The marketing and the selling, that’s where the real work comes in. If your business is going to stay in business, and you’re going to change the world, we need you making money. You got to go sell.

Let’s reframe selling from icky to let’s go. One of the first reframes I want you to make is that sales is a service. When we stop trying to convince the whole world that they need us and we start looking directly for the people who want us, they are literally looking for you right now with money in hand, hoping that you’re the person that’s going to change their life. We start to understand that selling is really a service. We are doing it in service of the people who are going to purchase from us. As I said, people are looking for you. They want what you’ve got.

It’s not about getting the sale at any cost or convincing people. I’ve heard so many people say that to me, “Lindsay, how do I convince people to buy from me?” You don’t. You go find the people who are already looking for you. Remember that people buy if and when it’s right for them. When we remove manipulation, coercion, pressure, FOMO, guilt, shame, when we remove all that manipulative gross sell at any cost type of sales tactic and people are left to decide for themselves, they’re going to buy if and when it’s right for them. It’s your job to make sure that you’re getting yourself out there and letting them know that you exist so that they can buy from you.

Finally, ick-free selling is really about co-creating the sales journey with your customers. You are on a sales journey together. It is a back-and-forth conversation where you are both involved in this process. You are not selling to anybody or at anybody. You are co-creating the journey together. Your job as an entrepreneur is to get in front of the people who are already looking for you, with money in hand, and make it clear and easy to buy from you. Now, do you secretly feel like you don’t know what the heck you’re doing when it comes to selling? It’s okay if the answer is, oh, yes, maybe. That’s okay. Or, you might be like, “Hey, I’m getting there. I’m learning. It’s happening.”

Unless you have sales experience, when you start a business, oh, it is a steep learning curve, and quite frankly, an emotional rollercoaster. How do we take the “Huh?” out of selling? The first question you need to ask yourself is are you blocking your own sales? You would be surprised at the sneaky ways we block our own sales. You might be burning the lead or being unclear about what you sell and how people can get it. You might be unknowingly creating barriers or making it confusing for people to purchase from you.

Some examples of that looks like a website with too many words that don’t call out the who, what, let’s go, social bios that make it impossible to buy from you or book with you. When I click on the link in the bio, it should be easy to get on your email list, know exactly what it is that you sell, and click to either book a call, put in an application, or go right to the sales page. Then email marketing that’s either boring and only salesy or cool but never salesy. A question I’d love for you to sit with for just a moment is what stops you from being clear and making it easy for people to buy from you?

Next, we’re going to dive into what no like trust really means. If you’ve been an entrepreneur for any time over a year or two, you’ve most likely heard this phrase, people buy from people they know, like, and trust. What does that mean? It means that marketing and sales are a power couple. No like trust, building that is like dating. You need to be yourself, you need to say what you want to say, and you need to let people fall in love with you. It is too hard to mask, and life’s too short to work with people you don’t like or do work you don’t love.

When we say yes to the wrong thing, we’re not leaving space for the right thing. When we think about building know, like, and trust, that is the marketing and sales element of what we do. If people don’t know us, we are not marketing effectively. If people don’t like us, well, okay, there could be two reasons. It could be because they genuinely don’t like us, that’s fine. That is fine because we’re still going to be ourselves. We’re still not going to mask. We’re still going to put ourselves out there exactly as we are because the people who are looking for you will like you and like what you have to say and like what you bring to the table.

Just like in dating, if we pretend to be somebody else through the whole dating process, gosh, who hasn’t been there? It’s exhausting, it’s stressful, it causes severe anxiety. In the end, are we going to keep that act up for the whole relationship? No. At a certain point, we have to say, “Listen, this is who I am.” Because of that rejection sensitivity, I know, I know that can be really challenging. That is a confidence muscle that we have to develop, a self-trust muscle, and a self-worth muscle that we need to build up.

Hey, side note, you know my company name, The Radical Connector? The word radical in my name stands for radical self-acceptance because entrepreneurship is really going to push you to accept all the parts of you in order to let yourself be visible and then build a business you love with people that you enjoy spending time with, doing work that you’re obsessed with. Then trust, well, that’s how we show up. That is in following through on the things we say we’re going to do. That is in delivering exceptional products, programs, services. That is being true to our word and living and working within our values.

When we say people do business with people they know, like, trust, that’s not just word service. That’s not just a catchy little rhyme. It doesn’t really rhyme, but you get my point. What we’re saying is if you want to be successful, you need to get real comfortable with putting yourself out there to a point that you still feel safe and letting people see you, get to know you, and fall in love with you. Remember, people do business with people they know, like, and trust. Where can you let people get to know, like, and trust you? Where can you unmask maybe just a wee little bit?

All right, let’s get into my ick-free sales formula. Let’s get into that part, the meat and potatoes of this training. It’s simple. Step one, simplify. Step two, connect. Step three, co-create. In step one, simplify, stop working so much. Seriously, I often recommend that folks who are in my world ditch 80% of their to-do list because when we go through it, we realize it is mostly busy work that’s getting you nowhere fast. Instead, get focused on what you’re selling, who you’re selling it to, and how you’re selling it.

Step two, get your business in front of the people who are already looking for you with money in hand, with my signature four, fast, and free, revenue-generating activities. We’re going to break those down right now. Number one is networking. Number two is public speaking. Number three is community building. Number four is content marketing. I want to talk for a moment about these underrated marketing strategies because people often think marketing is just placing ads on Facebook and Google and posting on social media. There’s so many ways to market yourself and get yourself out there that are way faster and way freer than doing ads or posting on social media.

Remember that you’re not just marketing your goods and services, you’re also marketing your ideas and you. Let’s dig a little bit deeper into number one, networking. This is my number one revenue-generating activity that I recommend every single entrepreneur focus on in the first five years of their business. This is your chance to market yourself, open up doors to new opportunities, obviously get customers, and this is for you. This is an investment in yourself, your relationships, and your business’s future. Networking is how you get referrals, open up doors to cool opportunities for collaborations, get introductions, invited to be on stages around the world, and lay the foundation for a sustainable business that has longevity.

Number two is public speaking. When I talk about public speaking here, I’m talking about accessing new audiences. Going live on your own Instagram wouldn’t count, but if you do a YouTube live on somebody else’s channel for an interview, that does. It’s all about accessing new audiences. It goes so far for building your brand awareness and also for building your email list. Networking and public speaking are the dynamic duo for brand awareness, email list-building, and getting new customers. No, it’s not all about social media. Networking and public speaking, when done strategically and consistently with the right types of people, will get you very quickly to 5,000 and 10,000 months.

Now you’ve got some money to really start playing with what you could do inside your business, who you can hire, what you can purchase, where you can grow and scale and evolve. It’s okay if you don’t believe me yet, and you still think it’s all about blogs and social media posts, because at the end of this, I am going to get you to do my seven-day action plan. I do want you to focus on networking and public speaking and see how that changes things for you, see what doors get opened up for you.

Number three, community building. Let’s talk about it. Community building is another one of my favorite fast and free revenue-generating activities because it’s where you create a container for all the people who are buying from you or working with you, will one day buy from you or work with you, people who want to stay connected to what you’re doing even if they never buy from you. It is an easy way to take the whole world online and in real life and bring them into your own little micro container, micro market of just the people that you want to be connecting with.

It allows you to do some really in-depth market research because you’re getting right up close and personal with the people who want to hear from you, who want to know you, who want what you’ve got. It also allows you to begin to establish yourself as a thought leader, something that’s most likely going to come in really handy in the future years when you’re ready to scale outside of the day-to-day in your business. Your challenge for this month is to use networking to get really cool public speaking gigs and also to build your community.

By the way, the public speaking here I’m talking about is for lead generation. It is for developing new business. You’re not necessarily going to get paid to public speak. That’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about you getting out there to new audiences and letting the world know that you exist.

Number four, content marketing. This includes email marketing, SEO content, like YouTubes and blogs, social media content, and paid ads. I’m going to tell you, content marketing is a slow, time-consuming, passive way to grow. It takes so much time and effort to create content, upload that content, properly caption, hashtag, and SEO optimize the content, hope, pray, wish, rub the magic lamp so the genie comes out, that the algorithm will show your content to people and that those people will like your content enough to take an action, to go to your bio, to click on the link, and to either sign up for an email list or do the other call to action you want them to take.

It takes so many posts to build that level of know-like-trust. Oh my gosh, before you know it, you have spent hours and hours and hours in your week creating content, and you’re so frustrated because, where’s all the business? That same amount of time could be spent networking online or in real life, getting some public speaking opportunities, building a community and getting in there and getting to know people, and co-creating the sales journey so much faster, as well as opening doors to some really incredible opportunities. Now, I will say, if your content marketing is bringing in business, go for it. If it’s not, do less. Whatever you do, I want you to make sure you’re doing it strategically and with a clear sales system.

Step three is co-create. This is where we make it clear and easier for people to buy from you with my consent-based sales system, my stranger-to-happy paying customer journey. Here’s how we think strategically about our stranger-to-happy paying customer journey. It starts with thinking about who, where, why, what, and how. The basics of strategy. Who are you looking for, or who’s looking for you? Where will you find them, or where will they find you? Why do you want to connect with them, or why do they want to connect with you? What do you do? When you talk about what you do, it should be clear, simple, and relatable.

Remember that your what do you do is not an answer to an essay question. It is a conversation starter. It is a door being opened to invite somebody into a conversation or to consume some content or to listen to on a podcast, whatever. When you say your what do you do, it should always be clear, simple, relatable.

Then finally, how will you co-create something cool? What is your call to action? Your calls to action can look like booking a Zoom or a call or a meeting, joining your community, getting your freebie, following you on social, subscribing on YouTube or podcast or blog, sending a resource or an intro. Do you remember how I said that posting on social media is passive? You spend all this time creating content, hoping the algorithm gives you love, and then hoping people watch it and take action.

When we get into networking, public speaking, community building, and we start thinking strategically, who am I looking for? Where will I find them? Why do I want to connect with them? What do I do? How will I co-create this sales journey together? Remember, if you’re having a networking call to get on somebody’s podcast, you might not be selling them your goods and services, but you are selling yourself because why? We are selling our goods and services, our ideas, and ourselves. It’s so important that we stop and think strategically before we get into action to make sure we’re talking to the right people about the right things and moving ourselves in the right direction.

I’ve got a bit of homework for you to do now because, oh boy, I wish I could include absolutely everything. Hey, as I said, I’ve been teaching these skills for 20 years and it takes more than a 30-minute presentation to be able to give you all the ins and outs. I’m going to give some homework to follow up on. The first one is my how to sell without selling sales video. Then the second one is my perfect sales-free sales call template because I’m going to take you even deeper into my consent-based sales process.

I’m going to teach you how to have a sales call that doesn’t even feel like a sales call. It’s just a conversation. Then I want you to go and make your seven-day action plan. I’ve kept it very simple. Step one, simplify and get strategic. Step two, connect with people who are looking for you. Then step three, co-create the sales journey with that perfect sales-free sales call. Super simple.

Some final thoughts before we go. I want to remind you that selling stops feeling like selling when you start asking the right questions. It’s not your job to convince the world. It’s your job to get in front of the people who are already looking for someone like you and make it clear and easy to buy from you. You matter, your work is important, and we are looking for you. I want you to get loud and show us where you are so we can find you and pay you to change our lives. I’ll be watching, muah-ha-ha. All right, go and be amazing.

Oh, how are you feeling? We covered a lot of ground today. Thank you so much for hanging out with me, for taking all the notes, for really thinking through all these strategies I taught you today. I’m really excited to hear how you implement all of the lessons that I shared with you, as well as the shifts in perspectives around selling. Your next steps is to create your seven-day action plan and then watch those two sales videos that I recommended. Then I want you to go ahead and dive into those 20 ick-free sales scripts that I’ve given you and get out there and start selling without selling.

If you want to connect for more cheeky, sassy, ick-free marketing and sales advice, please be sure to connect with me on YouTube, where I go live on the third Friday of every month for live office hours. We get to hang out, sometimes just me and you, sometimes me, you, and a special guest, ask all your burning business questions and get nerdy together. You can, of course, join my free Facebook group, How To Entrepreneur. Follow me on all the socials as radicallinds. Heck, just reply to any of the emails I send you because they come right to me. I would love to hear more about your business, what you do, and what you thought of today’s training.

All the links for all the things are, of course, in the worksheets. Just go click on the worksheet, come and find me, and let’s connect. Remember, selling is easy when you start asking the right questions. Your job is to get your business in front of the people who are already looking for you with money in hand and make it clear and easy to buy from you. You’ve got this. We’ll see you online.