Selling Your Services – Overcoming Your Fears

“Approach each customer with the idea of helping him or her solve a problem or achieve a goal, not of selling a product or service.”

– Brian Tracy

Life coaching as an example

Life coaching is becoming an increasingly popular career option for those who have a passion for working with others and helping them to shine.

Most who join our life coach training programme derive energy, excitement and inspiration from getting to understand how people tick and learning about simple yet powerful tools and techniques with which to empower others.

But it is also true that people with a propensity for doing ‘people work’ or ‘mastering the soft skills’ as it is often condescendingly referred to in corporate life, are more likely than others to have a negative reaction to the idea of having to sell their services! 

A common refrain

As life coach trainers, here’s the gist of what we hear frequently from would-be trainees:

“I’d love nothing more than to train to become a great life coach but I feel really fearful about having to go out and find enough clients to sustain a living.”

That’s why we go beyond coach skills training and devote a significant part of the Programme to exposing trainee coaches to the fine art of selling their services with pride and passion. 

Steps to a more empowering mindset

The first step in engendering a more empowering mindset about selling is to come fully to terms with Stevenson’s point.

If you think about it, no matter whether you are a yoga teacher, a chef, an accountant, a hairdresser, an artist or a doctor, you ultimately earn a living by selling some or other product or service.

Just the recognition that everybody lives by selling something should be enough to draw the sting from the fear you may experience when your thoughts turn to the idea of selling your services. 

Identifying and dismantling limiting beliefs about selling

But we like to take things a number of steps further and help our trainees to bring about a paradigm shift in the way they think about selling, by identifying and dismantling their associated limiting beliefs.

A limiting belief is a belief you hold about yourself that limits or obstructs your ability to grow and develop in the way you would ideally like.

For example, in this context a relevant limiting belief might be:

“I have always been hopeless at selling anything to anyone as I just care too much for people.” 

A self questioning and answering process

If you are contemplating a career that you are passionate about but are being held back by one or more beliefs about your lack of ability to promote yourself or your services, we offer you an effective process that involves self questioning and answering.

This process is designed to stimulate self reflection, to bring limiting beliefs and associated fears to the fore, clarify their true cost to you and thereby blunt their stranglehold on your progress. 

Twelve questions requiring answers

With respect to the limiting belief you may hold, ask yourself – and answer – the following twelve questions, in turn:

1. What is it, actually, that I fear?

2. From whom, or from where, have I inherited or developed this fear?

3. What has succumbing to this fear already cost me in my life?

4. What will it cost me now if I continue to give in to this fear?

5. What will it cost me in five years time if I choose not to change?

6. What will it cost me in ten years time if I choose not to change?

7. What will the cost to my partner/parents be if I do not change?

8. What will be the cost to my children (if and when I have them) if I do not change?

9. What will be the cost to the world at large if I do not change?

10. How will I feel about myself if I continue to give in to this fear?

11. How will I feel about myself if I pass this fear on to my children or loved ones?

12. Why is it essential that I get rid of this fear? 

Embracing new, empowering belief(s)

The next step would be to identify a new, empowering belief or beliefs that can replace the old limiting belief(s).

Here are a few examples structured with empowering language:

“I am a wants and needs detective – I discover what people want and need and then show them how to get it.”

“The better I am at selling, the greater my ability to help others.”

“It is my ability to sell that helps me live my purpose.”

“I do not need to sell, people naturally buy from me.”

“I am inspired by what I do and love to share it with others.”

“By selling my wonderful services to others, I help make the world a better place.”