Transcript

Ani
Hi, and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. Hey there, Brian.

Brian
Hi, Ani.

Ani
Hi. How are you today?

Brian
I’m doing fantastic.

Ani
What are we talking about this week?

Brian
This is going to be a good one. You ready? How sales teams can use somatic coaching skills to increase revenue.

Ani
Juicy. But before we hop in, can we just address really quick that some people are like, “Eew, yuck, they’re going to talk about sales?” Can we just talk about that for a second? Yeah, absolutely. Let’s do it. Two weeks ago, we talked about the levels of consciousness. We want to encourage all of you as you’re listening to come from a higher level of consciousness for this conversation. Because, of course, as we talked about two weeks ago, somatic skills can help you to get to a higher place of consciousness. When we talk about selling services, we can have that conversation from a higher level of consciousness and have a really good conversation about it.

Brian
Yeah, I love that.

Ani
Don’t turn us off yet. Yeah. This is a really- Stick with us here. It’s a really important conversation because for so many reasons, there are a lot of great organizations that are doing really great business and offer awesome services and awesome products that can improve our world. That’s really important. Sales and the use of services and products can help us improve relationships, and that’s really important. It can improve the planet. There are so many ways that sales of products and services can really help us to be better, do better, and have better in the world. It’s a really important conversation.

Brian
Yeah, I agree 100%. The whole idea with… This is one of the things I think that …Let’s just talk about holistic practitioners for a second. Whether you’re a coach, let’s say, a yoga teacher, a Tai chi teacher, people who have… It’s very clear that what they offer in the world helps people feel better, helps people have more health, helps people have more vitality, better relationships, all the things that people seem to want more of, and yet are also the most reticent to charge for their services thing. But let’s just be very clear about something. If you live in the Western world or in any nation around the globe that is based in commerce and capitalism, that is how things get into the world. That’s how things get into the world. I think about meditation and yoga decades ago and how they were these cloister little things that people went into the basements of community centers and practiced together. Not many people knew about it, even though we know it could help people’s health greatly. And yoga and meditation didn’t really explode out of the scene until people started selling things. Selling yoga mats. Selling yoga mats, selling yoga clothes.

Brian
We might be like, I hate that, and that’s wrong. But the point is that that’s actually in a capitalist society, the way things proliferate are through commerce. That’s whether the product is really great for people or whether it’s not great for people. They both proliferate through commerce.

Ani
Absolutely. We love helping organizations and businesses that do good work in the world and have awesome products and services that we believe in. We love helping those people get their impact out there in the world in an even bigger way. Somatic coaching is such a great way to do that. Somatic skills is such an amazing way to do that. We absolutely love helping businesses and organizations do that.

Brian
Yeah. Whether you’re a for-profit company or a non-for-profit organization, everybody in business who’s looking to bring either services into the world or products into the world must be doing-they have to be doing sales. If they’re not doing sales, they’re not going to be around very long.

Ani
Well, that’s how money moves. Like you said, that’s the societies that we live in, that we exchange money for value, and so money moves things. Yes. Sales is how money moves. So just to get on the same page with a word that we’re going to use to explain a concept because people can get so triggered by talking about that word, that S word. But we’re just laying the land on the language that we’re using to describe a concept.

Brian
Yeah, exactly. So sales is not good or bad. Now, how we go about doing sales, that will determine whether or not it’s potentially helpful or harmful to somebody.

Ani
And how we feel about it and feel about ourselves and all of that stuff. It’s such a deep topic that has so many threads.

Brian
Yeah. So let’s start digging in there. How can somatic coaching skills help people who have have missions in the world to help the world improve, become healthier, more vital, more alive, growing, all those sorts of things? How can somatic coaching skills help people in sales increase their their revenue, and therefore grow their mission and bring more greatness into the world?

Ani
Let’s just bring up a foundational concept that I know sounds obvious, but it’s not how we think about things. That is that people do and are a part of sales through relationships. And people, wait for this mic drop moment. You ready? Have bodies.

Brian
That’s astounding.

Ani
I know. And nervous systems. We forget about those things. We really do. We forget. These are people with nervous systems who are taking part in these activities.

Brian
Yeah, absolutely. Our nervous systems, by the way, develop over our whole life. Our nervous system start developing very rapidly, by the way, when we are young, specifically between the ages of zero and teenage years, is when our bodies are growing fastest and developing and changing, when our first skills to walk and manipulate things, items. A lot of neuromotor skills are happening at those times. But other things that are happening in those times are we’re learning all about the world between us. We’re literally absorbing everything around us. We’re absorbing lessons and learnings from our parents and from our peers and from our playmates and from our siblings and from our grandparents and from our teachers and all those kinds of things. We’re growing and developing, developmentally and neuromotorly on many different levels. And a lot of the development that happens in those early time is actually our self-concept.

Ani
Yeah. And it’s interesting in organizations, we think we can give somebody a manual or send them to a training, and they should be off you go. And we’re just at the point where we recognize that probably if we give somebody a manual or send them to a training, they might need a little bit of coaching afterwards, too. But that’s revolutionary right now. And what we’re saying is part of the reason why there needs to be follow up and there needs to be this integration of knowledge is because you’re giving new knowledge to a nervous system that is literally inlaying that new knowledge on a nervous system that has been developing for X amount of years with X amount of stuff going on.

Brian
Yeah. And a lot of the way that the nervous system has been developed is our unwritten rules about relationships. Because back when we were little kids growing up, it’s all about relationships. We’re going up, how do we relate to our mother? How do we relate to our father? How do we relate to our siblings? How do we relate to our grandparents? We’re learning all these lessons about the exchange of relationship information. Sales is highly relational. It is, yeah. Assuming we’re not clicking a button on a website and those sorts of things, but still relational.

Ani
To a degree, but yeah, I see what you’re saying.

Brian
But the most transformational, the sales that really can change someone’s life in a really powerful and profound way are sales that happen in person in a very relational way. If we’ve had development in the past about unwritten rules of relationships, we carry that into sales conversations with us.

Ani
Yeah, we sure do. It’s like a microcosm in a macrocosm thing.

Brian
Yeah. So maybe let’s just pepper a little bit here, Ani. What are the qualities of a really effective and well-intended salesperson?

Ani
Yeah, sure. We were just doing a training on this, actually, recently with a group of entrepreneurs and small business CEOs. And it was fun to hear people popcorning around about the things that they thought. Confident, I think, was probably the first thing that was mentioned.

Brian
Yeah, confident. Good listener was another one, right? Yeah.

Ani
Empathetic was another word that came up.

Brian
Yeah. And it took a little while for people to actually start thinking about their bodies with some of those answers. What I know and have experienced is the most powerful people that I’ve interacted with in the sales, they just feel really good in their bodies.

Ani
Sounding they feel comfortable in their own bodies and their own skin.

Brian
It makes you feel more comfortable in your own skin, too. It’s not really like you can put a tag on that with somebody and say, Oh, they feel comfortable in their own skin, but it’s more of something that they radiate from them. Just a sense of, really, they’re just comfortable with who they are in their own bodies.

Ani
I just had a sales conversation, actually, with someone in an organization who we’re thinking about partnering with They had that exact… They were so comfortable in their own skin. We had a wonderful conversation, and they were at ease, I think. At ease, yeah. That I would use at ease. It was just like talking to an old friend. Yeah.

Brian
I love that at ease, and even at ease when potentially there’s a challenging or confronting things as a part of the sales conversation, which everybody knows. It’s like, I’m bracing for the price. I’m bracing for how much it’s going to cost me. That’s almost always feels like a point of confrontation in the thing. But if you have a sales conversation, or if you’re a person who is able to have a sales conversation, where you’re totally at ease in your own body, there’s actually nothing at all confrontational about the revealing of what the financial exchange is.

Ani
I think money is a place of a lot of conflict for a lot of people, and it’s so close to everything that’s going to that we touch in life. It is because most of us don’t grow our own food and cobble our own shoes and then make our own houses. We need money to exchange for those things. And so money touches every part of us. And when we have yuckies about money, then the yuckies come out in the sales conversation, no matter what side of the table you’re on.

Brian
Exactly. Yes. And so sometimes when people show up for those sales conversations and they’re feeling really needy or insecure, or there’s not a lot of confidence, then those sales… That’s when we get the yuck from the sales conversations, and then it starts more manipulative, and there’s not an equitable exchange. Not everybody actually grows from the exchange. It’s more like, I’m losing your take.

Ani
When the salesperson feels like that. Then from the salesperson’s perspective, what about when the person who’s buying comes and they have some stuff going on? Being able to be clear and at ease within ourselves and okay if somebody else is uncomfortable. That’s so powerful. It’s such a gift.

Brian
Say that one again. So that’s a really important quality of a salesperson.

Ani
We’re okay even if somebody else is uncomfortable.

Brian
We still know who we are even in uncertainty. Then we’re still able to be unattached to the outcome. We’re still able to hold space for the person to help them make a decision, which is really the highest and most important part of a sales conversation. It’s really just to help people make a decision.

Ani
Absolutely. We were on a plane one time, and there were some guys behind us who were sales people talking.

Brian
I remember that

Ani
They said something about how the point of the sales to make the sale or something like that. We were looking for our vomit bags on the plane. I do remember that. The way that we conceptualize it, again, from probably a different level of consciousness than other people will do is that sales is really about helping somebody to make a decision to grow.

Brian
Whether the decision is to enroll with what you’re offering or not.

Ani
Use the product or service or not. If you can have a conversation where you can help somebody get clarity on the decision that they’re making, boy, that feels so good. That’s gold.

Brian
Yes. And what I’ve noticed from our approach is some people might say, well, then you’re not going to close as many, quote, unquote, close as many people, and blah, blah, blah. But what I’ve seen again and again is how many times have people, after that conversation, where we’ve helped them make a decision, and the decision was either not now, and those people actually more often come back and say, Can we have that conversation again? Because you have that conversation different than a lot of people do. Can we talk more about it? They end up making a decision that feels really great. Even if it’s next week, next month, next year, they do not forget those conversations.

Ani
Or they refer somebody like their partner or their best friend. We literally have people tell our enrollment team that they’ve heard that we’re really easy to approach. And that’s so cool that people are saying, You should talk to them because they’re really easy to approach, and they’re not going to try to push you into anything. People will tell more people about you. Yeah, exactly. It’s all good. And by the way, I’m going to use the word karmic just for a second because it’s easy to talk about. Like karmically, you do good by somebody and good things are going to happen. There’s going to be more people to talk to, and there’s going to be more opportunities that come your way.

Brian
Yeah. That’s just in flow with the natural laws, which is like everything we do is informed by the natural laws. So these qualities of a really effective salesperson, that somatic coaching skills can help someone cultivate for themselves. Because I think one of the things that somatic coaching is amazing for is helping someone to really know who they are on a deeper… Let’s put it this way, remember who they are. Because a lot of the work we do with somatic coaching is saying everyone was born with a purpose. Everyone’s born with this acorn of how they are meant to be in the world. Then through those early years of conditioning, the acorn gets buried under tarps and dead leaves and all this stuff of the conditioning and the beliefs that we take on from the people around us. We forget who we really are. We might remember just a little tiny bit, but then we’re too afraid to be that person or let that person shine. But when we do the work to allow that acorn to grow, that’s when we naturally are comfortable in our bodies, we’re secure about who we are, we’re naturally confident, we’re not faking it anymore because now we’re just naturally stepping into who we are always meant to be.

Brian
So somatic coaching is so amazing to help someone remember that, remember who they really are, remember what their purpose is in the world, their being state.

Ani
It’s really hard to have difficult conversations when you don’t remember who you are. And with a sales conversation, it can feel like a difficult conversation. So another thing that somatic coaching is so good for is to basically be a person who can be with yourself when you’re uncomfortable. And until you get to that place, you’re not going to be able to be okay, being okay with other people being uncomfortable. So I don’t know really how you do that, but the somatic approach does it. The sensation-based approach does that so well for people to be able to be comfortable in their own skin so that even if something is challenging and somebody else feels uncomfortable, we can help hold that space for both of us.

Brian
Yeah. I think the first… We talk about these developmental levels for a second. That first level is just being really secure with who you are. You’re really secure with who you are. I think the next level, and these are just basic description of these levels, is I think a really great salesperson has to be very clear and know what they want in order to understand and listen to what the person they’re talking to wants.

Ani
What do you mean what they want?

Brian
What they want. Well, so what do I want in terms of this conversation? And if you come at it from the approach of, “My goal is to really… What I really want is to help you make a decision.” Now, if what I really want is to make sure that you buy what I’m offering, then that’s going to inform the whole conversation. But if you don’t know that, if you’re not clear about that for yourself, then the conversation will likely spin in a direction that you didn’t expect.

Ani
Well, if you’re not clear and you don’t know what you really want, then you can be mucking up a conversation because you don’t really know what that is, and it’s coming out anyway. Exactly. So better know it because otherwise, it’s going to influence what’s happening.

Brian
Yeah. It’s really to know what you want, and the other part of it is to not feel guilty about it.

Ani
Yeah.

Brian
Those are secure, know what you want. Then that next level is, we’ve talked a little bit about this, is confidence. It’s really again, knowing who you are and knowing who you are regardless of the chaos or the disorganization or what the person is saying or the other person’s state of mind or how they’re operating or functioning. I think that’s really important level to think about. And then if we go up, the next level is how we harmonize in that relationship, seeing that the relationship is always a co-creation of what we’re looking for together. It’s never a, I take more, you give more, you give more, I take more. Now the person is giving up more than they receive back. And so there’s always a mutual harmonizing back and forth so that you can create something together. I think those are the basic levels I like to think about.

Ani
Yeah, I don’t think that people often think about sales as something that you can create together, but that is a way that you can think about it that’s really healthy.

Brian
Yeah, for sure. What do you think, Ani? What are ways that somatic coaching can really help someone begin to, just a couple of little bullet points, if we thought about it, can help someone to become more effective in those sales conversations?

Ani
Well, I think from the sensation-based approach, again, noticing when we feel uncomfortable, either being the salesperson or being sold to, and from a sensation-based approach, again, decoding what’s going on there and then being able to modify those sensations and change and reframe your life. It’s funny because when I say that, it both sounds really simple and it sounds like it might take forever. But that’s not true. These things, they don’t have to take forever to accomplish. Yeah.

Brian
What I loved what you said there, it’s really about you feel that in your body, don’t you? That’s something you feel in your body if you’re uncertain or if you have a challenge around that. It’s something that is in your nervous system.

Ani
Can we just call this spade also? I know there’s problems in sales teams because sales teams are people who are being paid to do a job, and we don’t all, as humans, always want to be at our job every day, all the time. How do you help somebody to generate enthusiasm. Because enthusiastic sales teams are just like, right? And so generating… I’m using the word enthusiasm because it’s one that people recognize, but really what I’m talking about is energy. So how do we help people to generate energy in their system, in their nervous system, in their bodies, so they can be a more enthusiastic person, energized person. Yeah. And I think that’s something that somatic coaching really, really shines with because we really can help people to affect their energy.

Brian
Yeah. So what I’m thinking about now as you’re talking about that, Honey, was a few weeks ago when we were working with this group of entrepreneurs, a small business CEOs, and we took them through a process. First, education around levels of development to help people understand where they maybe getting hung up in terms of having really powerful and clean and clear sales conversations. And then, so that’s the first part of things that education helping people understand. And then, of course, we walk them through a practice that we do with people that helps to embody just what you’re saying, right? To be able to help create more natural enthusiasm in their nervous system, in their bodies, to help them to be able to feel more grounded, more stable, more secure with what they want, more connected, more alive, more alert, more creation-focused with what they’re going through. We worked it on all levels. At that body level, we have to work that on. We have to work that on the mental-emotional level to help release frustration and guilt or attachment, all those kinds of things. Then, of course, there’s also working on that spiritual level where we understand that if we’re in the way of bringing a mission into the world, we have to be able to embody and channel that mission as well.

Ani
Yeah, it’s really exciting to see people do that. Really light up.

Brian
Yeah. And already, since we did that a couple of weeks ago, we have people pinging us with information that they- With celebrations. The celebrations that they actually closed another deal and they’re going to be working with other organizations. It was like, yes. It feels so amazing. Yeah.

Ani
And they can really make the impact that they want in their lives and in the lives of others.

Brian
Yeah, it’s fantastic. You have any final words of wisdom for us?

Ani
Well, how about you? What’s the way that you feel like somatic coaching is really impactful with sales teams? I shared some for me. Yeah.

Brian
Well, I think for me, it’s just what we talked about. If we can really help someone change and stabilize their nervous system state so that they’re more present and less attached to the conversation. Then they can help someone make a decision. Whatever that decision is, that’s always a win. It’s always a win to help someone make a powerful decision to help themselves grow. I think inherently, that’s the win for me.

Ani
I agree with you because the more that we can do that, I think those of us who really do want to make an impact in the world and have a positive impact in a more loving world and environment, the more of it we can understand that sales is something that happens here. And we can have that conversation. We can be humans who have nervous systems, who have powerful conversations with each other, empowering conversations with each other so we really can make the difference in the world that we want to see one by one, moment by moment, conversation by conversation. So thanks for bringing this topic today. It’s a really good one, Brian. Love it. And we’ll see you next time. Bye-bye.

Brian
Bye-bye.