Episodi

  • What you are REALLY selling on a consultation call

    What you are REALLY selling on a consultation call
    Aug 12 2021
    What are the things that you are making sure to do on your consultations? You’re getting the client’s exact words, getting more in depth on the problem they need help with, what they’ve tried before, why it hasn’t worked.  What is the connection? The first stage is rapport and pleasantries, the second stage is problem management and the third stage is exposing the bigger issues behind the presenting problem.  Your goal should be to get that third stage in your calls. That’s where the deeper connection and trust is earned. Selling without deeper connection is costing you sales because you didn’t earn the trust that allows you to ask the harder questions.Connecting is not just about understanding their point of view but it's about gaining trust as an authority, too.  It’s worth the investment of time it takes to focus on their presenting problem and finding out what related issues it might be causing. People won’t be able to treat your time like a free coaching session if what you are providing goes beyond helping them with an immediate superficial issue.If there’s a feeling that you have a big gap from connecting to “making the pitch”, then you will want to work more on the connection so that the offer feels like a natural next step rather than a hesitant offer.Unless you create a strong connection, you will not be able to ask the hard questions to understand the root problem. People are hooked by a singular presenting issue but buy to solve the root cause. You can’t get to the root cause without trust and connection.That’s why coaches tend to default to coaching on a symptom. They want to help the client feel better and then be liked and have them purchase based on likeability. This can cost you and the client because you are helping them on the presenting symptom rather than exposing the total issue. You want to value trust over like. It is much more of a service to help them see the entire issue and what it is costing them rather than try to help put out a little fire. This requires trust and connection, otherwise you sound like an opportunistWhen you are coaching them to solve a specific problem, you may not have enough context or time to get that resolve. No one feels better. But if you tell them that you can’t solve a problem on a single call and help them understand their problem better, that is something they can use better than an unsettled issue. It makes sense to want to coach on a call because that is what you do, but don’t coach to solve it, coach to expose it so that they can get the help they really need. How do you get to that third stage of connection? Everyone has a different way to describe their issues and even if they are very similar, make sure you listen for the nuances. It’s the details you want to pick up on. Be very clear on how your service takes care of the problem that your client believes is getting in their way. You can help them get better clarity on the depth and breadth of their issue. Expose the problem so that they see the whole thing, not just the tip of the iceberg. This is why you want to ask more questions than you want to spend time talking and coaching. You coach to help them understand the problem better rather than help them to solve the problem itself. It’s the difference of saying “What if you already know everything you need to know to lose weight, what would you do?” versus “what if you already knew that you could learn the process to lose weight?”. Ask them what problems the problem is causing. For example, if I have a problem with weight loss, then the problems that it’s causing is that I don’t have self-confidence that I can do it, I won’t be able to look and feel better because I am an emotional eater, and I will believe that there’s nothing I can do about changing my body and I am stuck for the rest of my life. If you can address the process that takes care of the problems that the problems create, then I believe that the weight loss will take care of itself. If you help me see how your process helps me create the self confidence that I can do it, that I can look and feel better by shifting my emotions, and that your program will help me change the way I address my body so that I am not stuck for the rest of my life, then I am more likely to believe that my happy ending is possible. Then I can understand the value of your program and how it helps solve the problems that block me from what I truly desire.Think about how to be more of yourself on a call. Think about the ways in which you create connection and trust. It’s because you are not just interested in a sale but in a person. How do you help people feel like they’ve been invited to an experience? You can be the coach that sets yourself apart by prioritizing connection and relationship. When you seek to understand your clients point of view, help them to feel heard and establish common ground, you gain their trust and earn the ...
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    35 min
  • Taking Action When You Don't Feel Ready

    Taking Action When You Don't Feel Ready
    Aug 4 2021
    Link to schedule a coaching call: https://calendly.com/catherine-vanwert-coaching/freesessionWebsite: www.catherinevanwert.comHello friend! Let’s talk about taking action when you don’t feel ready. When it comes to your business, if you find yourself not taking action on something you said you’d do because you don’t feel ready, you are probably feeling frustrated and stuck. Not feeling ready to take action is one of the biggest hold-ups to your success if you let it stop you. Let’s talk about this today and get you moving forward because waiting until you feel ready before you take action is not an option if you want to experience desired results. Taking action, even when you don’t feel ready, is one of the most important skills that will help make your success inevitable. Without action, you are stuck in the intention stage.Good intentions are all around us. My husband and I take a walk every day and this past spring, we saw the usual neighborhood activity. People were prepping their beautifully landscaped yards and bringing them back to life with planting new shrubs and flowers, pruning and mulching. The Boy Scouts were in the middle of their mulch campaign and you could see either mulch dumped into people's driveways or stacks of bags in the yard. For sale signs up popping up around us. This past spring, there was one house on our walking route that we noticed that had mulch bags out for days. But then the days became weeks and the weeks became months. By the middle of summer, the plastic on the bags had become tattered and we started calling the bags “intention mulch”. They bought it and intended to use it, but since they didn’t take action, it was all intention. We would pass by it everyday and wonder together why it was taking them so long to take action on opening the bag and spreading it out. We joked that we would surprise them by secretly mulching their flower beds for them. We imagined they would be really happy and freaked out to see their intention mulch spread out. I don’t know why my neighbor didn’t do their mulch when they got it, but I do know that they didn’t get the results they wanted for a long time. My thought on it was that the work it actually took was probably only 2 hours. If I was to coach them, I would have asked what if they just opened one bag and spread a quarter of it? You know what would have happened, more than likely? Belief that it wasn’t that big of a deal after all. Momentum. They would think why stop now and continue until they got the results they wanted. The thoughts they would generate would go from “I don’t feel like it”  to “this isn’t so bad” to “I am already halfway done, I may as well finish”, and finally “I am so glad I finally did it!”.  Taking action when you don’t feel like it allows your brain to create different thoughts that get you unstuck and away from frustration. You may have set an intention for something you want to do in your business and for whatever reason, you are experiencing a hard time with the follow through. Here’s what you need to know: taking action when you don’t feel ready isn’t just the problem. Taking action when you don't feel ready is also the solution. That’s because it’s a skill in and of itself to take action when you aren’t ready. Imagine what you could accomplish if you took action on the great idea you have right now, even if you don’t feel ready.  You would get results based on your actions and those results could lead to more actions and opportunities that you haven’t even imagined are possible. You may be having thoughts like “it’s not going to work” or “people aren’t going to be interested”. Those are deterrents for sure, but if you believe that developing the skill of taking action no matter what is more important and make that mean that you are winning, then the outcome of your action isn’t the most important thing. This is a good thing because we can’t always control the outcome. We control what we are willing to do and being willing to take action when you don’t feel ready gives you the best return on your investment in yourself. You create belief in your ability to show up. You give yourself permission to do things imperfectly because you know that it is more valuable to create action than to be stuck in fear caused by perfectionism or imposter syndrome, to name a few. The belief that taking action while not feeling ready is a necessary skill is how you change the narrative that enables you to go for it. Think about the natural consequences when you aren’t taking action: every day that you let pass by is another day that you aren’t creating as many opportunities for growth and expansion as you could have. You will miss out on attracting your ideal clients and those clients still need help. So what ends up happening is that they end up with other coaches or in other programs when you might have been the best fit for them....
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    31 min
  • What You Need to Know When Potential Clients Say “No”

    What You Need to Know When Potential Clients Say “No”
    Jul 28 2021
    We go into sales calls with the high hopes that the person we are going to have a conversation with will say yes to our offer at the end. Of course we have high hopes- that’s the way it should be. We want all the positive energy going into the conversation. In fact, in the best circumstance, we hope that they come to the call already sold so that we don’t have to feel apprehension about getting them to a yes and instead, we can just experience the bliss of connection and excitement of moving forward.If they come to the call already sold or if we are able to bring them to a yes, then that also means we don’t have to experience the negative feelings associated with getting no for an answer.But, let’s take a pause before we get all caught up in the importance of having positive emotions because getting the answer no is very much a reality. It is part of the sales process when you ask a yes or no question. It’s a valid answer. So when you ask your potential client “Would you like to start coaching? Or Would you like to work with me? Sometimes people have the audacity to say the wrong answer! Come on, people, get with it, right?But seriously, it will pay off big time to take a closer look to see where you can find your empowerment even when you get the answer no. That is an option, my friend. Being empowered no matter what.The first step to being empowered no matter what is to normalize getting no as an answer. That’s my goal for our time together today. Here’s why: There are so many sales experts out there that talk about how to increase your conversions and how to get more sales. They talk about how to overcome objections. I’ve talked about it. And maybe all the focus on getting sales is why you think it’s a failure when you don't get a yes. You make it mean that you aren’t good at sales or overcoming objections.Real quick, I do want to say that yes, of course, there are specific skills you can learn that will increase the rate at which you get more sales and get better at turning a no into a yes. In fact, that is exactly what I offer on my free sales training calls. It’s a 1:1 Zoom call, that I do a few times every month for coaches like you that are ready to answer the question “I wonder if there’s anything I can do to make my sales calls better?” If you’ve thought that, take action. Find out. If you are ready to figure out what you can do differently than what you are doing now to close more clients, you need to book a call. Did I mention it’s free? Yeah, call me crazy, but it is. I love meeting coaches like you and some non-coaches. I’ve helped people in different industries up their sales game. Real estate agents, mergers and acquisitions investors, and of course, coaches in all kinds of specialties. It’s first come, first serve so sign up today. After you click on the link in my shownotes and sign up, I will send you the meeting information. In the sales training, I am going to thoroughly evaluate your current sales process and show you at least three areas that you can improve immediately. We are talking about improvement that gets you clients on your very next sales call. I have seen that happen over and over and it’s pretty cool. If you are ready to get on a call with a stranger (hi, it’s me. I’m stranger) and learn some amazing tips then grab your spot today. Show up for your business. Grab a spot. The link is in my shownotes and you can also go to my website www.catherinevanwert.com.So, as I was saying, you can get better on your sales calls outcomes but still feel bad when you get the no or not now answers. You won’t feel better until you can fully embrace feeling rejection first. If you don’t process this you will always carry a sense of impending panic and fear into your calls, even when you convert at a higher rate. You will still feel disempowered when you get the answer no. So if you want to process this so that you aren’t being held captive to the actions of another person, you will want to pay special attention to what I am telling you today. You can’t skip steps and the first step is to get good with no. You can get “no’s” all the time and not be good at getting no. So get good at it because when you are, you can create expansion and not contraction. You can step out more fully rather than shrink back with your offer. I am going to talk more about what this means, but first...You need to know that getting no is a normal answer even for the best of salespeople. What makes them go from good to great is being willing and able to allow the no’s to be no’s and not make it mean anything about their own skills or value and then, from that place, moving things along. Keep in mind, skills and value are subjective because they are tied with your personal style. You aren’t for everyone so the skills and value that you possess are not ideally used to convince clients who are not the best fit for you, but to skillfully articulate and ...
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    34 min
  • When Nothing Seems Like It's Working

    When Nothing Seems Like It's Working
    May 13 2021
    When you own an online business, it’s very important to see the facts versus the story you believe about what’s working and what is not working. Having this objective point of view will get you through the times when you feel like nothing is working and you are even entertaining and playing with thoughts about how much easier it would be to quit. There are a lot of reasons that you feel like nothing is working but it usually comes down to not hitting a specific number of clients and dollars and not knowing HOW you will expand.  You may intellectually know that the journey is bumpy and it is supposed to have the ups and downs that you are experiencing but it just didn’t seem like it would be to the extent that you are experiencing it.  The place where we feel down is the very same place that we have the opportunity to experience a breakthrough. The moments when you don’t know what else you could be doing to get your client or income goals are when you make decisions that are just as impactful as the times when you are planning your next big win and you’re riding high on momentum. How you decide is always critical to your success. No matter what current results you have in your business, you want to know how to find your motivation and belief again to achieve your desired goals. Let’s dig in.  Gal Gadot of Wonder Woman fame, had reached a point where felt like giving up on acting. She told her husband she did not no how much longer she could take it.  She auditioned for a secret role on a whim, and that role turned out to be for Wonder Woman. She also filmed while pregnant, overcoming what could have been a potential barrier. Think about what she would have missed out on if she hadn’t decided to take a chance when when she felt like giving up.  Feeling down about your business is a natural and expected part of the process. You have a relationship with your business. It’s like any relationship, it will go through trials and be tested. Expectations won’t be met. Disappointment that things did not turn out like you thought they would is bound to happen. That doesn’t mean that it wasn’t meant to be, it means that it is something different than what you thought it would be when you envisioned starting a business. Think about your business as a relationship. If you are in a relationship with your business, it’s your job to see how you want to think about it, value it and nurture it. Think about how you want to problem solve. You have to decide what YOU will do about the circumstance that you are in.  You can decide on how you want to feel about running your online business, which you can do whether or not your business feels easy or hard or is producing the results you want or not. It is an independent exercise.  How you feel about your business doesn’t depend on evidence, it depends on your belief about the evidence. Your beliefs come from your values, not from outside influences. Think about what you believe about yourself? Your business? Your potential? Those are far more important than whatever you have or have not created.  Example: you can have great results but not believe it’s enough or that it’s sustainable. You can have undesired results and decide that it’s because people won’t pay or that you don’t know what you are doing. These thoughts will generate from your core values and beliefs. That’s why so many companies establish mission statements and core values.  You will want to decide your core values. Make a list of what you value.  Here are some core values:  commitmentempathyconsistencydependability Decide if your core values are being reflected by how you are thinking now. You will want to identify the incongruent thoughts that are creating your negative outlook. Do you actually have negative default core values? Do you believe yourself to be inconsistent, uninspired, mediocre, afraid, half-committed? We often think of core values as positive but if you are not solely identifying with these core beliefs, there is a core belief that you are believing that is actually a negative core value. This is nothing to shame yourself over but rather use as a way to understand and analyze what you would need to shift in order to create what you REALLY want to create instead. What you believe the most is what you will see the evidence of in your business. Consistency means taking action, and what you are consistent at doing is the biggest predictor of your results. What you believe about your results is the biggest predictor of how you will feel about your business.  The results you have created helps you to see the results of your overall actions and where you have the most consistency is going to be apparent. So if you have been largely consistent and have faltered at times in your belief, you will see the evidence leaning toward your desired result. If you have been largely inconsistent but at times, you did believe and took some actions, ...
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    29 min
  • Crafting a Powerful Offer

    Crafting a Powerful Offer
    May 5 2021
    Is it cliche to use the phrase “powerful offer”? I think it can be. When we hear the phrase, it feels a bit mysterious and aspirational. In order to demystify what makes an offer powerful, let’s break it down.  An offer is presenting people with the option to say yes or no your solution for solving a specific problem. Many people believe that a powerful offer is one that gets a yes at the end, and while I don’t disagree, let’s take a pause. That standard can create a lot of pressure. How does it make you feel when you think a powerful offer requires a yes? Getting on a call with that outcome in mind can drive behaviors that goes one of two ways: it can make you feel like you need to be somewhat pushy on the call or since most of us avoid that feeling at all costs, it can make you feel apprehensive and your offer will feel very bland and almost forgettable as a result. In order to remedy this, we have to think of a powerful offer differently in order to create one that doesn’t make you feel nervous and freaked out when you are talking to potential clients and allows you to bring the energy you want to the call.  The best way to approach how you think about a powerful offer is to remove the pressure and allow some space in between the offer and the sale. Today I am going to focus on three components involved when you are talking to a potential client: there’s the offer itself, there’s you, and the potential buyer.  When you are an effective communicator and the buyer is a qualified lead and the benefits of the offer are clear, chances of having the desired results are exponentially higher.  Breaking down the roles of each component helps to put the pieces in its proper place, which means that you can remove the uncertainty of not knowing where to focus or what to change when you want to uplevel your offer.  Today we are going to unpack three components of the powerful offer by focusing on how effectively you communicate, how clear the promise and delivery is of the solution, and how to create and talk to qualified leads. When you improve each of these, the sum total will create a more powerful offer.  Your ability to connect with the client is foundational to the ease of the conversation. This is why we worry about being pushy, but remember, you are operating from self-interest if you are advocating for the client’s results. I want to take a minute to talk about the balance between your likeability and your willingness to advocate for their desired result.  Let’s start with your likeability. This is an easy one. You are very likeable. You want to help people because you care about the quality of their lives. Of all the sales calls I’ve reviewed, not a single one involved a coach that wasn’t likeable and lovely. Coaches, by nature, want to connect and help others. You want people to trust you and know that you have their back and they should.  However, if you’ve ever felt that being likeable and trustworthy are the main things you need to win people over, you are putting yourself in a vulnerable and precarious position.  A powerful offer is more than you being your amazing self that people like, trust, and connect with. It is important to connect with this deeply because otherwise, you will make offers mean a deeper level of personalization, which is what can make sales feel so uncomfortable and scary. If getting a “no” feels like a rejection of not just your services, but of you and who you are, you will want to be aware of this so that you can de-personalize it.  The other downside is that the overdesire of being likeable means not asking the tougher, more challenging questions.  Taking the focus away from making this a personal interaction and understanding it’s a combination of being your likeable self PLUS a clear offer, a qualified buyer, and effective communication, will ultimately lead to your desired results.  Now that we’ve set the stage, let’s break down the three components for crafting your powerful offer.   A clear promise and delivery  You want to be very clear on the promise and delivery of your solution. It starts with your own clarity on what you do, why you do it and how it’s a benefit to your client. The most important thing when talking to a potential client is that you want to be sold on your own service. Know exactly what makes you and your service different and why it’s the best option for your ideal client. I want to assure you that you DO have unique value to offer. If you think there’s nothing that special about you or that “All I have is coaching tools”, you are selling yourself short on a personal level. It’s not about your experience, it’s about what you want to create for the client.  Think about what it is that makes you unique and different from other coaches and packages. Some of the differentiators can include your approach, your beliefs, how you use coaching tools, your values, the way you...
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    28 min
  • The Roadmap to Your Impossible Goal

    The Roadmap to Your Impossible Goal
    Apr 21 2021
    We set goals as a means to achieve the things that we want. But setting goals goes deeper than that. The psychology behind setting goals is that it is a way of creating and affirming our identity.According to an article in https://positivepsychology.com/goal-setting-psychology studies have shown that when we train our mind to think about what we want in life and work towards reaching it, the brain automatically rewires itself to acquire the ideal self-image and makes it an essential part of our identity. If we achieve the goal, we achieve fulfillment, and if we don’t, our brain keeps nudging us until we achieve it.In order for that to become true, it means that you need to protect your mindset as you work on your roadmap to achieve your impossible goal. It makes the difference between wanting to feel nudged to go toward it rather than being discouraged from it.If you think of setting and achieving goals as not only a way to achieve or acquire things, but a process that helps us decide how we see ourselves and the beliefs we create in the process, you will absorb the real meaning of goal setting, which is so that we create fulfillment and a positive self image.The one thing that we live with and always return to is how we feel about ourselves and this impacts our contribution, participation, and sense of belonging. We want to feel like we make a difference and that what we have to say is important and that’s not coming from a place of ego but from a place of contribution. That means how we think about ourselves is crucial. How we set and achieving goals creates our personal narrative and that narrative determines the quality of our lives.How do you feel about the term “impossible goals”? Does it excite you? Does it wear you out before you even get started? Does it make you feel empowered or unsure?Think about your impossible goal. Here’s my guideline on how you know if you have a workabout  impossible goal: think about what you would want if you believed that you could have whatever it is your mind dreams up and if you were willing to do the work you think it will take to achieve this goal. That doesn’t mean that you have the necessary skills right now, but it means you are willing to do the work to have developed them. That’s more important than anything. That’s how you believe in yourself and believe that you can get the results you want. Why not? Why not you?Finding that sweet spot between what you want and what you are willing to do to get it, these two things will help you get energetically aligned. Only you can determine how much work you are willing to put into it. It’s not as if you know the work that it will take right now, but perspective is everything.Now that you’ve established the goal that you feel challenged and excited about, let’s think about the purpose of a goal. Here’s what the goal is: it’s the way to establish the direction that you want to go and a reference point for the distance between where you are now and where you want to be. It gives you a destination that will be the way that you know you have succeeded in what you set out to do. Once you’ve set the direction of your goal, it has more teeth when you use the goal to create urgency and focus. It should not create desperation, which comes from scarcity thinking. You can’t reach impossible goals effectively with desperation, either. You want to create the kind of urgency that helps you dial in your efforts and focus.Write the steps to your goal: this is the initial roadmap. You will convert your thinking from thinking about the end result to thinking about being process oriented. Understand that since all you are planning is from your thoughts in your current state of pre-experience, you are planning from the perspective of someone who hasn’t stepped into the obstacles with an unproven plan. You are coming at this with a pure mind and even if you intellectualize that it’s going to be hard and you may feel nervous or sick, you are also creating this from how you are thinking about it as the person on the pre-goal side, not the post-experience side. It might not be as hard as you think, it might not be as terrifying while the plans are in motion, and it might not be as quick as you hope that it will be. There may be bridge steps that need to happen to reach the goal. Plan loosely but hold the goal tightly.Start testing. You are building the roadmap and the way you get one that works isn’t because you knew it would work before you started it, but because you built it because you keep what works and you learn from what doesn’t so that you can create a different next step. This requires trust, but it’s not trusting in a way that suggests blind faith in something “out there”. It requires faith in your resiliency and ability to get the support you need. Trust the process. Trust that you are good enough. Trust that you will future it out. If you don’t believe these things, you will ...
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    36 min
  • Hitting the Next Level of Growth

    Hitting the Next Level of Growth
    Apr 7 2021

    You have goals that you want to accomplish in your business. We often think that it means we need to learn new skills or observe how others have achieved similar goals. 

    This can be part of the process but it’s not all. In order to hit the next level of growth, you must grow your identity as well as your skill set. Becoming a person who believes that they are capable of solving problems, getting clients and achieving impossible goals is foundational.

    Listen to today’s episode and uplevel your identity as a coach and business owner. 

    Get full show notes at https://catherinevanwert.com/hitting-the-next-level-of-growth/

    Got value from this episode? Please share a rate and a review! I appreciate your help so much. 

    Questions and comments? Email me at catherine@catherinevanwert.com

    Apply for your free 1:1 Sales Training?
    https://calendly.com/catherine-vanwert-coaching/sales-training
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    21 min
  • Prime Your Sales with a Freebie/ Lead Magnet Strategy

    Prime Your Sales with a Freebie/ Lead Magnet Strategy
    Mar 31 2021

    Freebies are designed to create interest and intrigue in what you have to offer. It should funnel into your main offer. The purpose of the freebie is to give value and show an aspect of what you have to give to your clients. 

     

    Learn how to think about freebies as a system that captures the attention and builds the interest of your ideal clients. 

     

    Get full show notes at https://catherinevanwert.com/prime-your-sales-with-a-freebie-lead-magnet-strategy/

    Got value from this episode and want to share some love? Please leave a review! 

    Questions? Comments? Email me at catherine@catherinevanwert.com​

    Apply your free 1:1 Sales Training? 

    https://calendly.com/catherine-vanwert-coaching/sales-training
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    31 min