Selling is an integral part of your business, without it, you may as well close your doors and pull down your website. Business in general cannot exist without sales but so many of us have these negative preconceptions about selling or even worse, being a “salesperson.”
Today we’re overcoming these notions, not by creating some large and existential cloud nice-ness to dress it up but by getting honest. What is selling when you boil it down to its simplest definition? I think you’ll find it’s not a scary of negative thing at all.
My guest today is Annie P. Ruggles.
Despite being the granddaughter of a literal used-car salesman, Annie has spent the last decade harnessing her Hulk-like disdain for hard-sales tacky self-promotion, and overly competitive as she likes to call it, sleazeballs as inspiration to help people find better ways to grow their small businesses.
As Founder and Dean of The Non-Sleazy Sales Academy, she’s guided hundreds of people toward making deeper connections, lasting impressions, and friendlier, more lucrative transactions and conversations.
Annie got her start in that crucible of all successful salespeople, musical theater. After moving up – being pushed up, more accurately – through the ranks at the theater house, she found herself in the role of marketing manager without any training or experience and discovered a knack for promotion.
With the goal of overturning the common wisdom that the art of selling is indistinguishable from the art of manipulation in mind, Annie founded the Non-Sleazy Sales Academy.
Her own weekly podcast Too Legitimate to Quit provides instantly actionable small business strategies with a pop culture spin.
Today we discuss:
- Non-Sleazy Selling: Annie shares a familiar story of sales avoidance and feeling slimy about selling. She shares her tips for overcoming these feelings and gets straight to the point about redefining sales.
- Love Your Offer: Are your negative feelings about sales causing you to devalue your offer? We discuss the third tenet of SFL and the difference between affordability and accessibility.
- The Downside of Empathy: Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries and why breaking them can hurt both you and your client. Annie and Finka talk healthy client relationships and the role a coach can and cannot play in a client’s life.
I can’t wait for you to listen in and to learn how to passionately love selling as Annie P. Ruggles shows us her way.
PS: If you loved this episode, please head on over to your podcast app to rate and give us a review. We need your help in sharing the Sell From Love message with others. Finka and the SFL podcast team appreciate you for listening and spreading the word.
