143 - If You Hate Sales, This Episode Is For You

143 - If You Hate Sales, This Episode Is for You
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[00:00:00] Welcome back to the MaYapinion Podcast, where I share my opinions on entrepreneurship and leadership for women. I'm your host, Maya Roffler, and welcome to a bonus episode. So I bet you thought I was done for 2025. But I'm not. I have a special holiday bonus episode for you guys, A gift from me to you.

I'm going to talk about the number one thing that you guys have been sending me messages on you've been asking help for. In our next series sales, we're gonna be talking about sales for the next. Episode for the next however many minutes I end up deciding to talk about this. I'm gonna try to keep it as short and impactful as possible, like I like to keep these episodes, but I am completely just overwhelmed by the response for the relaunch guys.

I love all the feedback that I've gotten. In [00:01:00] our Facebook group and just you guys reaching out to me and us talking about next season and guest chatting with me. The number one thing that you guys are asking me about is sales. The number one thing you guys are having issues with is sales, right? Her issues with and leads.

How do I get leads? My sales aren't where I want them to be. I think even if your sales are doing great and you're happy with where your business is, anybody can learn from this episode and enjoy this episode and or recognize when their sales weren't so great. So I want you to come on this journey with me as I talk about sales, because I love sales, but in my opinion.

I think sales is the most important thing in your business because if you aren't out there selling and you don't believe in your product, you don't believe in your service and you're not out there talking about it, how is anybody ever going to work with you? You do not have a business. [00:02:00] You won't have a business, and I think that can be challenging for some founders, and I understand that.

Sales is kind of a scary thing for a lot of people, especially if you're a technical founder, right? Let's say you have a tech background, or let's say you're just someone who created a product and you love the product, but you've never really sold before. You've really come up with a solution, but you're just not comfortable with sales.

If you've never lived in the sales space before, it can feel icky. It can feel intimidating. And when you are someone who feels icky about sales and feels like, oh, I don't wanna be a salesman, you're thinking of like the old school car y yucky used car salesman vibes. Or you're thinking about maybe when peop no offense to those who do m lms, but like the old school MLM style where it's like you pop into people's dms and it's like, Hey girl, [00:03:00] how have you been since high school?

And it's been a decade. 20 years, and you're asking someone that you may be kind of new in high school if they wanna buy whatever product you're selling. It's icky. That's why you feel that way about it. Sales doesn't have to be icky. It doesn't have to be so forced. In fact, it shouldn't be, in my opinion, it should be really organic and smooth.

But I think a lot of you guys get stuck on how to do that. How do you achieve that without pumping out a million dms or pumping out a million emails? And I think there's a balance. There's a definite balance that needs to happen. Look, I'm not gonna lie to you. There is a numbers game when you're selling, especially high ticket sales, right?

Like that's a whole other thing. You can't expect to just talk to one or two people and then make a sale. Like that's not [00:04:00] gonna happen. You have to have, there's a volume play there, and even in low ticket items, you've gotta reach a large audience. So how do you do this? How do you sell without the ick?

One, I want you to fall in love with talking about your product and or service. Fall in love with it. If you're not already in love with talking about your product or service and how you can help people and how you are helping people and what problem you're solving for them. I don't know. You might wanna rethink the whole founder entrepreneur lifestyle, and this is with selling anything.

You should really be in love with what you're selling if you're not. Sell something else. Trust me, it makes life a lot easier when you like what you're selling, when you believe in what you're selling. I think it's nearly impossible to be successful if you don't believe in what you're selling. You have to believe in it.

You have to love it. So fall in love with talking about it because the more you fall in love with that, which should be organic, especially if it's a [00:05:00] product or service that you've created. Maybe you're, working for a great company. Again, we're mostly talking about entrepreneurship here, but maybe you're working for a great company and you fall in love with the product.

It should be easy for you to talk about it because you love it. So fall in love with talking about it, and you talk about it all the time. You talk about it on your social media channels. You talk about it to your friends, your family, and look, your friends and your family have talked about this in earlier episodes.

Friends and your family are probably not going to be your customers. Okay. And I don't want you to get discouraged about that. Remember, my favorite things to remind you about friends and family are probably not going to be your customer. A stranger will become your friend, right? Because they're a client.

So a client will become a friend faster than a friend will become a client. My favorite saying, one of my favorite sayings, okay, I remember that. So a stranger who becomes a client. [00:06:00] We'll become your friend down the road. That's more likely to happen than your friend. Becoming a client doesn't mean your friend never becomes a client, but just remember that so constantly trying to pitch and sell.

It's very MLME and. It's not my style to like friends of family 'cause people get sick of it. But talking about not pitching, talking about your product and or service around your family and friends can be great because lots of people are like, well, oh my gosh, Maya, like for using me as an example. Oh my God, Maya, I didn't know that you were specializing in nonprofit events.

My friend Carrie actually has a new nonprofit and has been really struggling in the logistics for her event. Scaling and also sponsorship. Is that something that you do? Yes, I do. But they never would've known that I was passionate about nonprofit events unless I was talking about it. So there's a difference between pitching product and pitching service to people that aren't your audience versus talking [00:07:00] about it so people know what you're doing.

People in your environment know what you're doing. So fall in love with talking about it and having it be a part of your daily conversations. If you're listening to this, when the episode first comes out, we're in the holiday time right now. So being proud and talking about your product, inner service and what you're passionate about, what you're doing is not gonna fall on deaf ears.

People will think about how to connect you and who are the right connections in their community instead of you trying to pitch them. I mean, if they have nothing to do with what you're doing or no use for your service or product, why would you pitch them? Talk about it. Fall in love with talking about it.

That's the first thing I want you to do, because it's not gonna feel like you're selling, but you are because you're building connection and connectivity, and you're networking even with the people that are closest to you, and you're building this web, and you're planting this seed for everybody to understand and know what you're doing.

Gotta get really comfortable on social media. You've gotta get comfortable putting yourself out there and talking about what you're doing. Being raw and open talking. Talk about the [00:08:00] problem you're solving. Ask people, do you have this problem? What is a problem you have? Right? Do you have this problem? Be very pointed with them.

Like for me, let's say I would use my event company as an example. I would say. If you're a nonprofit owner, do you have trouble coming up with a budget to produce your events every year? Of course, nonprofits are always gonna say yes to that. So how can we solve that problem? We do sponsorship. We come in, we help sell sponsorship to help supplement our logistics.

Our costs for that and our staffing. That's a solution to a problem that almost every nonprofit has. So get out there and ask these questions that you already know the answer to. You know that your ideal customer has those problems, but get out there and ask them. And you might ask, well, Maya, where? Where am I going to do that?

TikTok is fabulous. I love it. If you guys are new here, [00:09:00] you might not know. I'm a TikTok junkie. I'm on my second account creating a second account, building followers. So follow me at Maya Roffler. And I created a very successful page for my other podcast. I love it. I think it's a great way to tap into your audience.

TikTok is a great feedback loop. I love Facebook groups. Get into Facebook groups and that where your ideal customer is sitting. So a mistake that a lot of women make when I work with them is they say, well, I'm in a ton of Facebook groups. I'm like, fabulous. Let's look at those groups that you're in. When we look at the groups together, it's typically.

Groups that are like women supporting women, women entrepreneurs, and I don't want you to leave those groups. I think those groups are great, but nine times outta 10, that is not where your customer is. I might have some customers in there that are running nonprofits that need my services, but where would a customer using me as an example [00:10:00] again, where would a customer like my mine, a nonprofit that needs help scaling with sponsorship event logistics?

Where would they live? Maybe some of them might be in those groups, but they're so large they're gonna get lost. They're gonna be living in Facebook groups where executive directors for nonprofits are collaborating and networking nonprofit groups. So I'm gonna go to those groups and I'm gonna hang out in those groups and I'm gonna build trust in those groups.

So you need to go where your ideal client is throwing a link in these Facebook groups where there's. 500,000, a hundred thousand, a million women in there, all trying to compete and sell is not really understanding. And then you're just hoping that maybe 1% of them are your client. You need to get into groups and build deep relationships so people start to understand, oh, Maya's the person that actually helps nonprofits.

Generate more revenue through sponsorship to help more people with their [00:11:00] initiative and actually can hire someone like Maya's team to come on board and do their events. You have to build that trust and credibility within those spaces. Just throwing links out there, it's such a pet peeve of mind throwing links out there hoping that it will stick.

It's it there. There's no traction there. There's no trust. There's no build, there's no connectivity. I don't know who you are. If you're destroying a link out there, why would I buy from you? It's the worst sales strategy ever. So if you are doing that right now, it's okay, but I'm slapping you on the wrist and stop doing that.

You are going to continue to get frustrated when people tell me, oh, sales, sales, sales. I don't know how to get sales. 'cause you're just throwing your product link in places and just hoping. Posting and praying, you're posting and praying, hoping someone will buy. That's not how people buy. Another great thing to do, in addition to doing posting on these social [00:12:00] media platforms, Instagram is great too, but remember, Instagram is more aesthetic, so you don't have to post as much.

But , you wanna be aesthetically pleasing, especially if you have like a beauty product or something that's aesthetically pleasing. So just remember that. You need to be consistent on these platforms too. I would rather you be consistent and then just post 10 times one day and then disappear for a week.

So just remember that another extremely powerful tool is going live. And I know this scares the hell out of people too, going live, but I have met some of the best customers by going live on these platforms. And you don't have to do every platform, like if you're a very business centric. Service or product, and you really wanna utilize LinkedIn.

Do LinkedIn, you have to go where your clients are. So that's really important to my earlier point. So choose one platform and get really strong there. I'm cool with that, but you need to do it. [00:13:00] You need to build the trust. You need to build the credibility. People have to see you and be able to interact with you, and that's why going live is so powerful.

It's so powerful. I also want you, in addition to. Talking about it and falling in love with talking about it and doing all these things on social media. Build your audience, not just on social, but you need to build a mailing list. You need to build. Build a mail mailing list, and the best way to build a mailing list is to create like a Facebook group and ask for people's at email addresses to come into the Facebook group.

That's a fabulous way to do that. Another thing is to create a free offer. Give people a discount off your product. Give people a free taste of your service or a free video, and you, you have to capture their email, right? We talked about this on earlier episodes about how to create lead gen and how to create a free offer.

So if you haven't listened to steps one through six about how to, to ditch your nine to five, I talk about this. [00:14:00] So go back and listen to those episodes about how to create that offer and craft that offer. But that offer is how you're going to build your mailing list. Your mailing list is a captive list of people that really want to hear from you and need your product or service and tapped into something that you already offered so you know you're solving some kind of solution for them.

How, what, whatever you're offering or one of your solutions or what, your products obviously interested them, so now you have them captive. So that's another thing that you wanna be doing to cultivate that relationship on that newsletter. And that's okay too. As you build that, you can do it once a month.

I publish for different things. My opinion, surviving siblings is different cadences based on the audience and what their needs are and letting them know what products and or services we're offering at the time. So it's keeping them abreast of that, but also not overdoing it. So building your own audience, because you also wanna remember when people are really happy on social media, that scares me [00:15:00] because what if TikTok just went away?

What if Facebook just blew up? I don't think that's going to happen, but we've had those scares. So you want to own your audience in sales. That's really important. And the more you're building that you're gonna get even more comfortable with selling to them, because you're gonna be talking about how you can help them and they're gonna be abreast of and up to date about what you are doing, new products and services that are coming out, things that you're offering, how you can continue to solve their problems.

They initially signed up with you to help some kind of problem that they're having, that you are specializing in. I also don't want you to shy away from old school ways of selling, networking. Talked about this on the last episode about stepping into your CEO mode. And really fall in love with talking about your product or service.

But getting out there, you should be going to at least one networking event a week minimum when you're new, because you're not gonna be [00:16:00] so bogged down like we talked about in in the pa in step six and step into CEO mode. You are not gonna be bogged down with a ton of clients and a ton of emails. So putting yourself out there is huge.

If you're an introvert and this scares you, bring a buddy with you, bring someone with you. Get out there, have them talk up your product, have a conversation, have them get comfortable with you doing this. And look, you're not going to have to do this forever because as you build your business, the key with sales is as you build your business, people will start referring you.

I don't get out there and sell like I used to, and I still enjoy it, but you have to do it in the beginning. A lot of founders will tell me, well, I'm just gonna hire a salesperson. Okay, if you've got the budget for that, fabulous. But here's the issue with that, it's still your product, it's still your service, whatever it is that you are doing for your company.

So how are you gonna teach a salesperson [00:17:00] that works for you to sell it if you don't know how to sell it? You have to pave the way. You have to have sales under your belt. You have to pave the way. You also have to remember that person is working for you. It's not their product or service. So you're always gonna love it more than them.

It's always going to be your baby. So you have to bring, and if you aren't showing them the passion and how to do it, they're gonna be like, oh wow. The founder can't even. Sell this. How am I gonna, how am I gonna sell it? They'll use it as an excuse. It happens. So you have to pave the way. Not everything is easy.

If it was, everyone would do it, but you can do this. Fall in love with talking about it, and it won't feel salesy. Fall in love with solving people's problems, and it will not feel icky because you know you're doing something to solve a problem. If you just came out with the best skincare overnight cream, and [00:18:00] you are watching women look 10 years younger by using your product, why wouldn't you be excited about talking about that to people?

I wouldn't feel icky at all because I know my product works and I believe in it. Because I use it, it works, and I know it's gonna work for you. That's exciting. So change your mindset around that. Believe that. And, and think of it that way instead of like, oh, I'm trying to push products on, you know, or a service and they don't really need it.

No, they do need it because if it's that good and it is really solving a problem, they need it. That's why I love selling, because I know what I'm doing truly is helping the person. I'm selling whatever it is I'm selling to them. Whatever business, insert my business. I know it's helping them. Surviving siblings is a great one.

It operates more like a nonprofit for me, but I offer support for siblings and it is so easy for me to talk about it. I [00:19:00] never feel like I'm selling because I'm offering them something. I'm offering them a place of comfort. I'm offering them something I wish I had. And I want you to fall in love with doing that as well because it's going to really help you feel less of the ick.

You are not gonna feel like you're pushing something on people. You're going to believe truly that you're helping solve a problem that these people have. Your ideal client has. So taking all of those things into consideration, that's how you'll move forward with sales. But a lot of it is mindset. A lot of it is mindset and how you frame this and how you think about this, and how you think about how you're solving a problem for people and how you love what you do.

You believe in your service, you believe in your product, and you know it's going to change people's lives. Whether it's something small, like you look 10 years younger and you look beautiful and you're glowing, or whether it's something big, like, I'm going to help you repair your [00:20:00] credit score or some, whatever it is.

There's so many different things and there's so many women that have written into me and want to come on our show and share. That's our next segment that we're doing. Just a little preview. I'm going to be having women on just like you that are founders and that are going to come on and talk about an issue or a problem or something that's kind of blocking them in their business right now, and I am going to give my opinion on the episode, live with them and do a little mentor session.

On our episodes in 2026, this was the number one thing that came up. So we're probably gonna hear quite a few women come on and share about their sales, and what's holding them back. And I think that will be interesting. But we've got lots of logistical questions, lots of different women have written in.

I'm really excited to go into that series, but I wanted to do just a little infusion and brief overview of sales because it doesn't have to feel icky. You're helping solve a problem, and if you [00:21:00] love what you're doing, you know you're doing this to motivate. So remember, I want you building an email list with your offers.

We talked about that in earlier episodes, but just to recap, social media, get out there, get in front of those groups. That makes sense on Facebook. Post on social media, push yourself out there. Do lives if you can. That gives direct immediate feedback from consumers. That's absolutely incredible.

Don't underestimate old school networking. Get out there. Get out there in your communities. Virtual networking is also amazing. Talked about that and step into CEO mode, getting out there also virtually, especially if your product or service is available virtually, I mean, that's a no brainer. And just building that credibility.

You do not need to call DM people. You are not gonna close sales that way. I mean, you might get lucky once in a while, but that's not building rapport. No. Don't throw your link up every time there's a women's group [00:22:00] on Facebook saying, Hey, let's all share, let's promote. Maybe someone will buy once in a while, but you are not gonna have a returning customer.

You might get lucky once. They're not gonna buy a high ticket item from you. I wouldn't, I'm not gonna buy a high ticket item from someone that just posts a link in a Facebook group. Not happening. So build that connectivity. Fall in love with talking about your product or service because you know that you have something amazing to offer.

There's nothing icky about that. There's something incredible about that. So change the way that you think about it and it will change the way that you talk about it. Thank you guys so much for listening to another episode of the MaYapinion Podcast, and I'll see you back for our next season and having incredible women come on the show and share the challenges that they're going through right now.

Don't forget to follow us at MaYapinion Podcast and at maya Roffler on all major social media platforms, and again, check out our [00:23:00] free guide and additional resources@mayapinion.com down in the show notes. We'll see you next time.