EPISODE 187 WITH NIKKI RAUSCH: HOW TO HAVE MORE STRATEGIC SALES CONVERSATIONS

Transcribed by Otter.ai

Erin Marcus  

Hello, and welcome to this episode of The ready yet podcast where I’m excited today because we’re going to be talking about sales with the sales Maven, my guest today, Nikki Ross, who approached me to do that, right? I always asked, and then I screwed up. I’m, I’m excited about this conversation, because I think sales is one of those things that so many entrepreneurs and small business owners go into business to do the thing the business does, right. That’s why they go into business because they want to do the thing the business does. And then somewhere along the line, they realize it doesn’t quite happen the way they think it’s going to happen, where they just in, you know, my age terms, put out their shingle, and people show up and say, Here, take my money, like, there’s a few things that happen have to happen between the time before you get to actually serve a client. So I can’t wait to get into this discussion with you. But before we get into all the details, why don’t you give a little bit more formal introduction, who you are, and what you do, and all

Nikki Rausch  

all things. Well, thanks for having me here. I’m excited to have this conversation with you, Erin. I am Nikki Roush. My company is Sales Maven. I come from a corporate sales background. I have over 25 years of sales experience. I’m also a master certified practitioner of neuro linguistic programming. And if that’s a new term for anybody listening, it’s essentially the study of communication. And I apply a lot of my techniques that I learned in my NLP studies, to the sales conversation, and I really specialize in teaching people how to have more strategic conversations. So they move through the process and get to the place where we actually exchange dollars for services, not just hang out and have cool conversations with cool people. And yeah, let me know by Yeah, yeah. And so I work with clients in a couple different ways. I do private one-on -one coaching, I do team team training. And I also have a group coaching program. For people. It’s called the salesman society. And that’s me. I’ve been in business for 10 years and been teaching people how to sell successfully. And, yeah, it’s, it’s a great gig, and I love it. And I love talking about sales, because I think like you alluded to, it’s that thing that oftentimes people feel uncomfortable with, or it scares them away from their business. And yet, it doesn’t have to be icky. And it doesn’t have to be weird. It can be very conversational.

Erin Marcus  

It can be very interesting. I love that you said that. I mean, when I teach sales, that’s exactly what I call it, put the conversation in your sales conversation. And I don’t even know where to start. There’s so much we could talk about because I love the neuro linguistic approach. I have a degree in journalism, I have a lot of my framework in my marketing. And what I talked about is communicating with intent. So I think that it very much aligns. And what are you seeing, you know, let’s do this for the listeners, for the people who are at least willing to have cell conversations, you know that? Because that’s a whole different can of worms, like, just avoid them like the plague that’s a can of worms. But like, let’s start a few steps beyond that. For people who know that they’re willing to have sales conversations, and yet they’re not getting the results that they feel they should be getting, like, what are you watching as some of the big pitfalls that people fall into? And what can they do about it?

Nikki Rausch  

I love that question. Nobody has ever asked me that question. So I love it. Thank you for

Erin Marcus  

Nikki my whole thing. And coaching is just telling me what to do.

Nikki Rausch  

Yeah, yeah. Same. I love that approach. Yeah. Yeah. So I think some of the pitfalls revolve around one, that people have a misconception about what selling is. And I think we’ll see if this resonates with you. People think their job is to convince people to buy from them. And when you are in convenience mode, you tend to talk at people and people don’t want to be talked to. They want to be talked with. Sales is something that you do to somebody, it’s something you do with somebody. And so when you can make that distinction right there, that’s where it starts to become conversation because the thing about conversation is it’s two ways it’s I say something you say something, I say something you say it has this nice flow back and forth. That’s what a real conversation is. So this idea of like, it’s my job to convince people to buy from me. No, it’s not. What your job is, is to first check to see if the person that you want to have a conversation with has an interest or a need or a problem. Then in the sales actual conversation. There are some other pitfalls that can happen. One is, you let the client control the call, because you’re nervous about the call, or you’re like, Oh, I’m gonna, you know, I’m going to just hear them out and let them share their story. But you know, the thing about story, I love story, but it’s a time suck. And people are very buried in their story. Yes, because they say like, tell me a little bit about your business. And the person says, yes.

Erin Marcus  

I used to have a lemonade stand. So I know.

Nikki Rausch  

We can’t do that. So one of the things that you have to do at the start of a sales conversation is to pre frame what’s going to happen. The pre frame is something that I teach, and there’s some real structure to the language around it. But the idea behind the pre frame is to do a few things. One is to create safety for the other person in the conversation. Because if people don’t feel safe in a conversation, they will shut down, they’ll go into fight flight or freeze. Right. So

Erin Marcus  

The other thing that you said, I just want to stop one thing you said that was different from what I hear from a lot of people is that sales is something you do with somebody, not to somebody now guess what I have heard a lot from, from all sorts of coaches is sales. And I do believe this as well. Sales is something you do for somebody, not to somebody and I do agree with that, right? It’s of service to make an offer to solve a problem. And I don’t have a problem with that word. But I have watched too many coaches, consultants, business owners use sales of service almost as an excuse for what becomes manipulative sales practices, and then tell themselves well, I’m being of service because I’m trying to help them. So I love your approach being in the middle, because I have the same idea that this is a mutual conversation. One of the things that I tell people is, you are not in a sales conversation unless both parties have agreed you’re in a sales conversation.

Nikki Rausch  

Amen. So start Yes. Right.

Erin Marcus  

Getting somebody is not a sales conversation. Right? didn’t agree to be there.

Nikki Rausch  

Yeah, if you don’t have their permission, you should not be pitching. Yeah, you know, and I love what you just said too, about this, like, it’s this manipulative side. But I would almost say that you could actually even look at the other side of the spectrum about the service piece. One of the things I often find is that people want to again, another pitfall is, they think that they have to prove themselves. So they coach for free on that call, or they offer their advice or their expertise, because they’re like, I’m gonna give this person something and because it will help them, it’s me being of service. And why I think that’s a mistake is because I often say it’s kind of like, you know, imagine all of your resources that you have all your expertise all your years that you have spent crafting your or honing your craft. And you know that like, imagine every one of your expertise is like a big beautiful beach that kind of sits behind you. And every grain of sand is like a resource or some piece of knowledge that you can share. And you get into a conversation with somebody and you give them just one little grain of sand, because you know, it’d be helpful to them. And you can be of service that way. But the thing about that grain of sand is they don’t know what you know. So they think that that grain of sand is the beach, why did they need to hire you now? Because they don’t understand what’s behind you, what comes after they pay you the money? What you can really show up and do in their business. So this idea of like, coach somebody for free? No, because you actually are talking them out of hiring you a lot of times because they go like, wow, that was so good, that free thing. So I’m just gonna run with that now. Right and not not everybody,

Erin Marcus  

right, not understanding everything that’s involved to make that work. And the other piece I watch people is giving away too much for free, really just out of

Nikki Rausch  

insecurity. Yeah. Because I don’t want to ask for money.

Erin Marcus  

I don’t want to ask for money to prove to them how smart I am not. They don’t think I’m smart. By the way, We’re doing this to ourselves.

Nikki Rausch  

Oh, totally. Yeah, yeah. And so when you’re in the sales conversation, your job is to understand, do they have a need? And the way that you can really get to the heart of that is by asking really smart questions. It’s not about talking, it’s about asking the right questions that plant seeds that lets the other person go like, Oh my gosh, nobody’s ever asked me that question before Erin must know something. Or Erin can probably help me uncover things that I’ve got blind spots to. I need to work with Erin right because you Ask smart questions, you can plant really smart seeds that lets that other person go, Ooh, I need more air. And in my life, that’s the experience he had

Erin Marcus  

differently. One of the best pieces of advice that I got from somebody along my journey was that people don’t, people will not judge you by your solution, but they will judge how smart you are, by your understanding of a different understanding of the problem. Hmm, oh, I love that. That’s, that was a really I wish it was mine was not my original idea. So somebody said that, to me, I’m like, That is a really a really good point. Um, one of the things that I talk about a lot is having empathy in a sales conversation. So I would love to get your approach on this. One of the things I have experienced that I see in other people’s sales conversations is one of the things and I know, you know, this, like sales is not about you. Because you’ve already said, You got to ask questions. It’s how you are, sales is not about you. And yet, at the first sign, even if someone kind of gets up through their head, and they ask all the really good questions. One of the places I see as a pitfall and I watch it fall apart is as soon as that prospect comes, I don’t even like to call it overcoming objections, because it kind of makes a win-lose mentality. But as soon as the prospect does have some resistance, now all of a sudden, the salesperson does make the conversation all about them. And try right, I always got to convince them. I’m right, going back to your idea. gotta convince them. I’m right. And suddenly, we’ve gone from asking really good questions to making the conversation all about me, my insecurities, my concern, what I want to have happen, and stepping up prospects. Yeah,

Nikki Rausch  

yeah. And, you know, again, I think that comes with some confidence, and also with some skill set, about how to handle those situations, how to, you know, the one of the pieces that I bring to the sales kind of approach, and what I teach is this language piece, and how it’s the way that you frame things, whether it sounds like it’s about you, or it sounds like it’s about the other person. And so, you know, and I’ll go back to this, I always say like, when in doubt, when you’re not sure what to do, in a sales conversation, ask a question, as most people think, when in doubt, I’ll just talk more just like, I’ll just word vomit all over this person and over, like, overwhelm them or Fire Hose them with information. Or I’ll, I’ll get pushy with them about making decisions or whatever. But when you can stand in your place of authority and credibility, and understand what the problem is, ask permission to offer them a solution, and then offer them a solution from the place that is about what is the right solution for their needs, not based on how much money you think they’ll spend, or how much you know what you want to sell that day, it’s like, offer the right solution for them. And because you ask smart questions, you’ll have gathered information that you really do need in order to deliver that solution to them in a way that resonates with them. Because you’re speaking their language based on the information they shared. Then you issue the invitation to close the sale. And you let them decide, you stop talking. You know, one of the big mistakes that salespeople make is they sell past the close. Once you get to the closed session, you know, you have to stop talking, you have to let the other person respond. Remember, the idea here and we’ll see. Again, I think maybe speaking your language means that it’s a conversation. Yeah. So you don’t get to just talk out of nervousness or you don’t get to just, you know, keep talking after you have issued the invitation. You need to zip it. You need to let them respond.

Erin Marcus  

Right. One of the ways when I was first learning sales that was taught to me was you have to play the game called the person you know, you make your offer. And then the person who talks first loses, except they don’t know they’re playing that game. It is a way to get yourself to stop talking.

Nikki Rausch  

I actually always say it the person who speaks second wins because I you know Yeah, but I guess Yeah, totally. Totally. You got to stop talking. Let them respond. As I’m

Erin Marcus  

listening to you. Describe things I realized most people probably don’t know this and because why would they and you’ll get a kick out of this. The reason my podcast is called ready yet is that’s how I found myself closing sales. Well, are you ready? That’s all like that was my invitation. Are you ready to be done feeling that way? Are you ready yet? Can we stop feeling that good? Yeah. And that’s where the name of this podcast came from. I was finding myself saying that to be But over and over and over again, I’m ready to do what it takes to not have that problem anymore.

Nikki Rausch  

And that is a brilliant invitation. But the place that people often get kind of, you know, hooked or that where they dropped the ball, frankly, in the sales conversation, is they never asked that question.

Erin Marcus  

I call it there’s a couple of places where good sales conversations go to die. And making the offer is one of those. So you have this great conversation, you ask questions, there’s a lot of people, if you’re in the coaching or consulting arena at all, it’s probably at least somewhat of an emotional conversation. Yeah, and you have this connection, and then you just stop, because you’re nervous to make the offer. And so good conversations kind of just die there. If you don’t extend the invitation.

Nikki Rausch  

And you have to do it in the moment, I think a lot of times when people are nervous about selling is they’re just trying to end the call. So they’re like, I’ll just send you a proposal. And then you can let me know, like, let me know, is a phrase that I almost want to remove completely from all of my clients language. Because let me know is basically saying to the other person, and I mean this with love when I say this, but it’s, it’s actually saying to the other person, I’m so important, and I’m so busy that you do all the work. And you get back to me if you want to pay me money. No, that’s all. And by not actually putting that offer in front of them by not asking for the clothes by not issuing the invitation. You’re essentially doing this thing, where you’re getting on somebody’s To Do List of something they got to then do later. And they say most of us die with our to do, right, like, yeah, and there’s also I don’t know if you’ve heard this where they say the average adult makes a certain number of decisions every day. Have you? Have you heard

Erin Marcus  

Oh, yeah, like 35. But it’s ridiculous. Yeah, it’s like, how are we even awake past noon? If

Nikki Rausch  

this is what? Yeah, so it’s like 30 to 60,000. There’s a couple of different studies out there. But that’s a lot of decisions, right? So when you don’t offer them the opportunity to decide in the moment, and it doesn’t mean they will decide, but you have to at least ask them to decide. And if you don’t, you’re essentially saying put me at the bottom of your to do list. And I know you’ll have 30,000 decisions to make tomorrow, and the day after you’ll probably have another 30,000. So at some point, you know, I hope I get bumped up after 60,000 other decisions you have to make as to whether or not you’re ready yet. They’re ready right now or they wouldn’t be having this conversation with you. Nine out of 10 times your job is to ask them, Are you ready yet?

Erin Marcus  

You’re ready yet. That’s the other thing that I learned. And I learned this back in corporate one of the one of those situations where I thought I was doing a good job and then came to the horrible reality that I wasn’t doing my job, as we learned, as we, you know, got older and learn more about sales, was I would go back to my mentors and said, Oh, it was a great conversation. They told me to send them information. Yeah, that’s just polite. That was a rude awakening in my early sales days that when somebody asks you to send them, you know, that sounds interesting. Why don’t you send me information? That’s just them being polite and wanting as

Nikki Rausch  

well. Okay, so I agree for the most part, although, if somebody says that to me, I’ll say, sure. I’ll send that information. Let’s schedule a circle to review it.

Erin Marcus  

Well, in one of the things that I now say before I do that, because I agree there’s a lot of times where they actually have things that they’re thinking about. Yeah, if I say to them, tell me where you’re stuck. Maybe I can help. Because one of the mistakes I watched people make is at the first objection at the first push back, the salesperson stops. Yeah, when you’ve done the first three quarters of this conversation the right way, you’re still just on as far as I’m concerned, we are still in a mutually agreed upon beneficial conversation. So if you’re telling me, I’m not sure yet, do you have something you can send me? I’m going to ask you, absolutely. But where are you stuck? Maybe I can help and I will tell you, I have gotten the best questions from asking that stuff that I wouldn’t have thought that they were worried about. In minor minor minor things, that it was a date they had to move some money. Do I have a payment plan with really minor objectives to overcome that, just like you said, If I would have said Sure, let me know. I’ll send you a link now and put myself on the bottom of their to-do list.

Nikki Rausch  

Yep, you’re right. And the other thing about that is, I had a coach, he used to always say this to me, and I think about it a lot is that his comment was always most people are one question away from hiring you, you have to give them the opportunity to ask the question, but I take that a little bit further. And just expanding on what you just said is that sometimes you have to pose a question to somebody, in order for them to understand where am I stuck? Like, they might not even know how to articulate that. Like, what is that sticking point? But because you asked the question, our brains are like Google, you know, if you go to Google right now, it doesn’t matter what you type in, Google is going to try to give you an answer. And our brains are the same way. But the thing is, if you have to type something in, you have to pose a question for their brain to let go, oh, it might be this. And if you don’t ever give them the opportunity to go like, Well, what about this errand? Or what about a payment plan? Or what about you know, like, I need to figure out how to move money, and just give them the opportunity to talk it out loud. Oftentimes, you don’t even have to solve it. They’ll solve it themselves, but they have to be able to articulate or have some understanding of what is the sticking point. So yeah, never be afraid to ask a question.

Erin Marcus  

Absolutely. So question for you. Let’s move on. I’m curious about this. How, in a world where really, let’s face it, sales was not, it’s so interesting to me, because a million and a half sales jobs and yes, most people and yet most people see it as not a great thing to be doing. How did you get started back in your corporate days in sales and all that? I mean, mine kind of happened by accident I was doing Oh, no, I guess it was a little more direct. I’ll tell you a quick story about that. Because this is the best thing about sales is when you don’t know what’s when you don’t know what should and shouldn’t work yet. Amazing things happen. And I was like 26 years old, 27 years old. And I got through to the proposal stage of doing the entire commercial real estate for American Family Insurance. Because I didn’t know at that young age that you really can’t cold call massive corporations out there. So yeah, yeah, we did.

Nikki Rausch  

Yeah, I love that. I really got my start with those kinds of two answers. One is, I moved from Idaho to Washington State and I needed a job. I was a college student, and I just needed a job. And I got a job. It was like a holiday job, right. Like working at the mall, it was a kiosk. And they had a commission structure that you like, I got paid hourly, this was back in the night, way back in the late 90s, early 90s. I think the minimum wage was like, I don’t know, 4425 an hour.

Erin Marcus  

To me, my first job was $3.15 an hour.

Nikki Rausch  

Oh, I think mine was under four. But you know, I am a little older now. Because I was like 1920. And so I realized that, you know, minimum wage, like, okay, but if I sold a certain amount when I was working, then I started getting commission. So getting commission, and making three times minimum wage, like every time I would work, I was like, Dang, this commission is good. And then I had a college project where we had to go out to this company, we couldn’t know anybody. We had to interview people from every department and come back and give this, this presentation about how a company functioned. And that is like a particular company in our community. And the company that my partner, and I did a presentation on and when it did all this research on was a technology company, and they actually sold the third LCD panel ever made. And if you have no idea what an LCD panel is, it was that thing that used to sit on top of an overhead projector that would hook up to your computer, and the teacher would be able to project the image up onto the screen like this is so old. And anyway, that was the company we did this, you know, project on and I had talked about their hiring practices, and somebody in my class came up afterwards and asked me for the newspaper. This is how old they asked me for the newspaper ad that they were hiring for salespeople they got. They hired him. Then they ended up with another guy in my class who used to cheat off my papers. He got a job and I thought Well Phil, hire these two knuckleheads, they’ll probably hire me. And that was really how I got into my first corporate sales position and worked my way up, becoming their national sales manager. Then moved to the you know, to the manufacturing side. And

Erin Marcus  

so we got to ask, Did you jump off the cliff? Or were you pushed into running your own business? Because it is kind of like falling up. You can pick whether or not you’re jumping off of it. But yeah, you know, that didn’t happen.

Nikki Rausch  

Well, okay, so I had started studying NLP while I was working my corporate job. And it wasn’t something my company supported. As a matter of fact, people used to, like there was a rumor going around that I joined a cult because people didn’t understand what neuro linguistic programming was. So they were like, Why is she, you know, flying every other weekend, you know, or one weekend a month and studying this, like, what is this? So I started studying NLP. And I was finding that it was really helping me in sales, but it was also improving my communication skills overall. And I got to a place where I was starting to feel kind of burnt out, it was working for a company, I’d only been working for them for a few months. And I just realized, like, dang, you’re saving more? Yeah, like I was just about to turn 40. And oh, my

Erin Marcus  

God was gonna ask her how old you are. How old you were. When that happened. I had a great job. Yeah, I evolved. I was about 3839 years old. And everything in my head went bonkers. And I went, there’s got to be a different way to live. There’s got to be, I made great money. I worked with great teams. And I got it, I blew it all up. And by the time I was 40, I left and started my own business. And you don’t want to have that conversation. Well, you did have that conversation with your mother, first kid out of you know, graduated college, six figures expense account, they paid for the MBA, and now I’m gonna leave to go like, try this thing over here.

Nikki Rausch  

Yeah. And I didn’t, I actually didn’t leave thinking that I was gonna start my own company, what I left feeling like there’s got to be something more. I didn’t understand what was missing. But I knew something was really missing in my life. And I had again, come, you know, I, at one point, had a company car, I was making really good money. You know, I was taking clients on trips, I was buying clients boats, I took clients to the Super Bowl, like I had the life that from the outside, everybody’s like, wow, like, look at all these things she gets to do. And I was like, something’s missing. And my NLP teacher had just moved to the state where I was living, and I was helping her on the weekends, grow her business. And I thought, well, maybe I could take a little break for a little while and see, I could help her grow her business. And I could, you know, still continue to study NLP and help other people learn it and apply it to their lives and business. And I, that was when I started networking. And I started meeting all these amazing entrepreneurs. And coming from a corporate world and going into a world of entrepreneurship. It’s very different.

Erin Marcus  

I just said, I recorded a podcast yesterday. I said, the collaborative, amazing nature of entrepreneurs and small business owners was the surprise bonus I never anticipated when I started, I did not know that existed either. Absolutely amazing.

Nikki Rausch  

Yeah, same. And so I just was networking, and I was talking about NLP. And then at these networking events, I realized that a lot of these people were meeting and they were really struggling to make money in their business. And the piece that was such a missing piece in their business, they didn’t understand how to have sales conversations. And I really just started helping some of these people. I was meaning that I really believed in their mission and what they were doing in the world. And so I just like when they would be open to it, I would give them little sales techniques like, hey, you know, if you say this, instead of that, here’s what will happen. And one of them she likes would take every little thing, every little nugget that I would give her. I used to say, I’d be like, I’d give her a little grain of rice, and she would plant a rice field with it. And her sales exploded. She was working for a company and they were like, what’s changed? Something has changed with you. And she goes, Oh, I’m working with a sales coach. But I wasn’t a sales coach. I didn’t have any business. And they were like, well, let’s, let’s bring her to speak at our national sales conference. And they hired me to go speak at their national sales conference. And really, my business was born out of that.

Erin Marcus  

And what I love about it, and I say this, I have a somewhat similar story where I had a different business. And it was a good business. I had 15 employees. I was in the top 10 offices out of 200 nationwide. It was a franchise but it was working with families with aging parents. And meanwhile when it was my turn to speak at the networking event or whatever, everyone’s like, yeah, yeah, we have that. We know you have that. But why are you making money? Like what are you? Right? Why is it working for you? Yeah. And finally, after enough times of getting hit over the head by the universe, well, I know business strategy. I know messaging and I know sales and I know marketing. Maybe that’s what I should be doing and what you’re talking about is what I call working at the intersection where, what is your client’s biggest problem? And the thing that you do best? Yeah. Like when you can find that intersection? It’s amazing.

Nikki Rausch  

Yeah, it’s the sweet spot for sure. I totally agree. And sales was that piece for me. The language, the stuff I teach is really simple. Oftentimes, people are like, Oh my gosh, that’s so easy. I can do that. Like, okay, yeah. And when you do it, you’ll make money.

Erin Marcus  

Awesome. So here’s the thing I know, you have ways for people to get started on that journey with that information. So if you want more information from Nikki, if you want to connect with her highly, highly, highly recommend that they reach out to you. Tell us more about what you have available and how people can find you.

Nikki Rausch  

Well, I’m gonna wrap it around the gift, so it’ll make it easy. I’m gonna give you my five step approach to a sales conversation. It’s called the selling staircase. And it’s a little training, mastering the sales conversation, you can get it by going to your sales maven.com forward slash ready yet. So this is for your audience, your sales maven.com forward slash ready yet, you’ll get the access to the training. It’s a short little training, but it will, it will probably change the way you’re having sales conversations. So I encourage you to go grab it for free and then we’ll be connected.

Erin Marcus  

Awesome. Absolutely. And one thing I know about sales conversations is every time I go through training you pick up another nugget another another nugget so highly we’ll make sure that the link to that is in the show notes. Thank you for joining me didn’t indicate this great to get to know you. I have a feeling we have to have a little bit more of a private conversation about all these things. coincidences, I was gonna ask you how old you are. Oh, wait until after. But this has been amazing. I love your insights, your energy, your whole approach to this absolutely love it. So thank you for spending time with me today. Thanks for having me, Erin. I really appreciate you. Awesome. Thank you.