017: Selling Without the Ick: How to Share Your Offer Without Cringing

Selling shouldn’t make you feel awkward, sweaty, or like you’re suddenly doing a bad impression of a salesperson. 

You don’t need a sales persona — you just need language that feels honest, human, and aligned with who God actually made you to be. 

In this episode, we’re showing you how to share your offer without cringing, without pressure, and without pretending to be someone else. Think grounded confidence, gentle invitations, and real conversations that lead to real yeses.

Inside this episode:

• Real phrases that feel like YOU
• Human-centered ways to talk about your offer
• Why the soft, honest approach sells better than hype

Get Your Free Action Guide: The Gentle Sales Language Toolkit

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Transcript

Becky Brown  0:01 
If you're a Christian woman, building a business and want it to be purposeful and profitable, we've got you covered. I'm Becky.

Laurie Graham  0:08 
And I'm Laurie. We have both built successful businesses that we love without losing our faith, humor or our sanity. This is Smart Soulful Business.

Becky Brown  0:17 
Real conversations to help your business fit your life and not the other way around.

Laurie Graham  0:27 
Hey, hey, welcome back to Smart Soulful Business with Becky and Laurie.

Becky Brown  0:31 
And around here, we believe that business should be fun and should actually fit the life you are actually living.

Laurie Graham  0:37 
Amen to that. You know, the other thing I think is really fun. Somebody visited our website recently and reached out to me and said, What are you doing? Like, why are you doing this? And she has a business. And I said, Why are you asking? And she said, your website feels so fresh and easy and fun, like she was noticing the colors and the verbiage we had. And I'm like, yes, because that's why we want to be different, is we don't want, you know, business to be stressful and hard all the time, like you and I both do hard things, Becky, but like I also think that building a business should be enjoyable and like you said, I don't know fun and fit your life. I just love it. But yeah, okay, so today I'm super excited about our conversation, but I'm even laughing as I say that, because I think in the past, I wouldn't have been excited about this conversation because it felt so hard, because we're going to talk about how to talk about your offer, which is selling, right? But we're going to talk about it without cringing, sweating, rambling, which is one of my things, right? Like, I overexplain, or turning into a version of myself that I don't even recognize. Like, I'm like, Did I really say that? Like, is that really me? So by the end of this episode, we want you to have actual phrases you can use real ways to talk about what you do, how you help people your work. And let's just say it, a selling style that feels steady and true. So we're gonna just dive in. So oftentimes women will say, I hate selling, and I want to talk about that phrase for just a second, because I don't think we really hate selling. I think we hate being inauthentic about it, or when we feel a pressure to sell because we're supposed to, or when we're trying to make revenue, so we have to sell our stuff. That is when selling feels awkward, or when we just, like, push against it because it doesn't sound like ourselves. But here's the truth, I sell things all the time that aren't mine. Okay? Like, I fell in love with the Owala water bottle. Becky, I think I was actually visiting at your house, wasn't I?  My daughter, Maggie, was telling me, I need an Owala. So I've really pushed back at these heavy metal hydro water bottles because I think they're heavy. I don't like having to tip them. I don't like whatever. And Maggie's like, No, you got to get an Owala. Okay, so then I saw Becky and Adam had an Owala. And I'm like, maybe there. And I bought an Owala. You guys, I naturally tell everybody about it. Like, I'll be walking in a museum saying, oh my gosh, you have an Owala. Don't you love your Owala. Or I'll be like, Oh my gosh, you don't have an Owala. You need an Owala, because this interior straw, like, that's the best. I don't have to tip it. I don't have to flip like, I just I love it. And so I naturally sell my Owala water bottle like and I ran into a book the other day, and as soon as I saw this book, I took a picture of it, and I texted my friend Becky, who's here right now. I said, Grumpy Monkey book. I just, and she's like, I already have it, you guys, I would have sold her this Grumpy Monkey book because I was so in love with it. So I don't think we actually hate selling. I think we hate not feeling like ourselves or maybe selling things we don't believe in, which is why a couple weeks ago, you all we talked about having the offer you actually believe in, but today we're going to talk about that language, because I think we've learned things that we need to unlearn so that we can actually share things and sell them and still feel like us. So Becky. Do you remember the first time or an early time when you realized selling did not have to be big, pressured, awful, stressful, like, what shifted for you? Because I know this is an area that's really been interesting for you?

Becky Brown  4:21 
Oh yeah. Oh gosh, yes. You could have said the word selling to me, and I would have hidden in a corner and, like, crawled under a blanket. Oh, my goodness. The idea of selling, you are, and I've told you this from the beginning, you are a natural saleswoman, because you can, you can sell people on a volunteer opportunity. You like you talk things up, and it's from a genuine place. You mean it. You talk them up out of a place of meaning it not. I'm going to throw the word forced into the conversation here, because there is a difference between doing hard things and forcing yourself to be somebody else.

Laurie Graham  4:54 
So and as you're saying this, I'm going to just go back and say and even though you're saying, I'm a natural salesperson, which many people listening right now are, I still had a hard time selling my stuff, and I still do.  So that's an interesting flip, but okay, keep going with your story.

Becky Brown  5:10 
Yeah. So I'm gonna go back to your question. The first time I realized selling didn't have to be this big, pressured performance. Okay, so first time, I don't know, but there was a shift for me when I started realizing the value of my product. So one of the things in my journey is the self-confidence, self-esteem side of things. So when I was creating things, I'm like, I don't know. I think it's good. It kind of helps me. It felt kind of good writing, but I was so nervous that it wasn't going to help anybody else, that they weren't going to like it. So why would it be worth it to them? Like, why would they pay $10 for this devotional or $15 for this devotional if they didn't see the value? And that comes back more to my own self-worth than theirs. But when I started now, and I have to tell you guys, I remember selling sends me like crawling under a blanket in a corner. So when I started selling, it wasn't like, Oh, my goodness, guys, you need this. This is going to solve your problem. I did not have good words. What I said is, I kind of sort of wrote this thing. And do you want to maybe see it like? That's kind of how my first selling experiences went. And when people were like, What? You wrote this? and they started saying, Did you know that this changed my life? Did you know that going through this like and starting to hear their experience of the product that I created, that's what built my confidence in not selling, like, sleazy selling, selling as in, like, I wanted to tell more people about it, because it changed this lady's life. Could it change yours, too?

Laurie Graham  6:41 
Yeah. Those testimonies, wow.

Becky Brown  6:45 
I hate the word testimonies. I don't like because, no, no, that. I don't hate it because of what they are. I hate it because of how the business world has used testimonies. It's a checklist item of you have to gather your testimonies. They fit here on your sales page. It's not this heart-driven. Oh my goodness, did you hear that this lady did this thing, and you can do it too. It's not hope-filled. It's not. It's so different.

Laurie Graham  7:07 
So well, that's another podcast episode. Apparently, I just found a new hot button of yours I didn't know about. So that's gonna be so much fun. Okay, so back to selling, like when we realized selling doesn't have to be big or pressured or stressful, and for you, one of those shifts was realizing that your offer actually helps people.

Becky Brown  7:24 
Absolutely. Yeah, so let's take this now from just a theory to actual practice. So once we remove the shame from this process. Like, the shame of selling, like, how dare I? How dare I sell something to Kristin.

Laurie Graham  7:41 
Can I just say this, nobody gets mad at grocery stores for having sales. Like, have you ever thought about, like, there's a sale? We're like, there's a sale, and there's even a deadline to the sale. Like, you have to get it on Wednesday if you want meat. And we don't, like, get mad at the grocery stores.

Becky Brown  7:56 
Like, sorry, it's so true. Yeah, okay, true. So, we've, I've kind of mentioned, like, the forced way of selling, right? Like, shout it from the rooftops. You need this product. This is going to change your life when I don't actually believe it myself. That's where, where sales felt sleazy to me. So if there, if those are some things you shouldn't be saying. The next question is, what do you actually say to sell your product authentically. So this is where I used to freeze when somebody asked, Hey, what do you do? And I thought I was, I was trying to come up with this perfect elevator pitch. What I do is complicated. Guys, I have like a million different pieces of what I do and wrapping it up into something that was actually meaningful to them, that they could understand, that was a really difficult thing to do. And it's not about having a perfect sale elevator pitch. It's you just need to allow yourself to be you. Allow it to be simple. Allow it to be human. Allow it to reflect, authentically you. This just a sentence that reflects the heart, not all the things, not, oh, I'm on Pinterest and I'm teaching a bowl and I Not, not all the things that you do. Reflects the heart of what you do, something that you can say without, like clenching your jaw, you know those inauthentic words that you can spit out. So I want to know Laurie from you, what is a version of your 'this is what I do' sentence that finally felt like you, because we've gone back and forth about this for years.

Laurie Graham  9:31 
Okay, so, you know, Becky, that I still struggle with the elevator pitch like you and I even worked on like, how do we want to tell people what we do is Smart Soulful Business, you know? And so with the things that I do, because I have a couple different things too. One of the things that's one of my favorite phrases, especially when people ask me about Small Church Ministry Business, and they're not pro the church, or maybe they're not really experienced in the church, because it's a hard thing to say what I do. I will simply say, you know, I help volunteers and leaders in small churches, just be better humans. Yeah, I do a lot of leadership stuff. That's what I say. I actually use the word stuff sometimes, but I'll just say I just help people be better humans.

Becky Brown  10:09 
Which I want to point out, goes to the heart so well, you are helping people do that, but you're not talking about the Five Day Challenges. You're not telling an email list and a website and you're on Pinterest and you have a VA, like, You're not telling them all the tasks you do, yeah, you're telling them the heart of what you do, which I think you do so beautifully.

Laurie Graham  10:27 
And even people in my audience, like, when, when it gets to the membership, like, oh, I want to be a better human too. Like, I mean, I would join something like that. Like, I think of what I would resonate like, I want to, I personally, Laurie Graham right here, I want to be a better human. So if somebody says they're going to help me be a better human, I'm all in. And I think also with like, Smart Soulful Business, when people ask I actually often say, I help women build businesses that they actually enjoy. And they also make revenue with like, because to me, that's a big part, you know, of removing the pressure and but actually also making revenue. So it's kind of my lingo. It's an easy way of saying things, but those are a few of the things that I say. Like, I feel like, if I can say it without cringing, it's good enough. Yeah. Like, yeah. I don't need to memorize an elevator pitch, because that's not me anyway.

Becky Brown  11:15 
That's what I was gonna say is, when you're answering that question just now, you actually sound like the Laurie I talked to on the phone every morning, not like I'm reading a LinkedIn profile. Right? And then that's a huge difference.

Laurie Graham  11:29 
So yeah. And this goes, this goes for offers too. This isn't just your elevator pitch, like, you know, what is that thing you're selling? Oh, I help people put together Blue Christmas services so they can just do something creative and different, like, just our own languages, right, even when we're selling something specific. And I think for me, I know when it's right because my body isn't tense. Like, do you ever notice that Becky, like, when we're saying things that are wrong, our body is real tensed up. One of the things that I do is for my free conferences. I do these amazing free conferences that are fabulous in so many ways, but we also sell the replays, and I make videos for those. And just over the past year or two, and I've been doing this for five years, we've done like, 19, 20 conferences, my sister, who does a lot of proofreading for me, she said, Laurie, this is like, your best video ever, and I'm like, it's the exact same words like or it's slightly different, or it's the same thing. I just said it differently. But when I look at those videos now, my body is relaxed. I believe in what I'm selling. I'm saying in a way that's authentic to me. I'm not using someone else's words or phrases because they're supposed to be more effective. I just say, hey, this where we're at. And so I think that everyday language right, for what we do is so important. So Becky, like, let's start talking about, like, how do we share offers? Like, we're talking about everyday language for what we do. And I, I'm kind of trying to bridge this into offers, but we do need to sell things. Like, yeah, it is the thing. It's not just what we do, it's also what we sell. I know a lot of people think that, like their offer means, like, we've got to shout it, we've got to be loud, we've got to be smooth, or that word that's like, schmaltzy, like, I got to be slick with this, right? Like, buy from me. But I think a lot of times, invitation is not pressure. Is not pressure. What are some of the soft selling phrases or invitations have you used that that feel natural and work like, let's we do want to help people build a revenue like we're not just talking for the sake of talking. We want to be effective. We want to be smart. Do you wanna talk about that?

Becky Brown  13:46 
Yes. Well, I want to say again, this has been a journey for me. And so when I started out creating, like creating products, I really wanted people to just stumble on them, upon them. Like I wanted them to just be searching for the exact title of my product and stumble upon it and just buy it because they knew they needed it. That's how I wanted to sell. I didn't even want to mention, like, even linking to a product in a blog post felt like too much to me in the beginning. I know it sounds ridiculous when I say it, but it's how I truly felt in the beginning back then it is. So one of my favorite phrases now is, if you're interested in learning more, dot, dot, dot. Fill in the blank, like, if you're interested in learning more about this topic, click here. If you're interested in diving deeper into this. I use that one a lot too. Click here and it's an invitation. It is not a 'this is what is going to change your life'. This is going to be like, this is the key to your transformation. I hate when people promise magic solutions and they don't deliver. I am not your magic solution.  My product will never be a magic solution, but it is going to be a really cool thing that can support you well. If. It meets you, like, if my other stuff resonates with you, you're gonna resonate with my product because I wrote it. And so, yeah, again, a lot of this comes back to relationship with people, knowing your audience, them knowing you. Because the reason people stick around is because they know and like and trust you. So that's important.

Laurie Graham  15:14 
You know. And I think speaking to transformation is also okay. Like.

Becky Brown  15:19 
I agree. Like, the way people talk about transformation, like this is the only way you can change your part of your life.

Laurie Graham  15:26 
Yeah, exactly, exactly, because we're going to talk more about sales in future podcasts and and part of selling well is understanding people's needs and reminding them of them. That doesn't mean because we have an episode coming up, I think next week on scarcity, if we're going to talk about deadline timers and so as we're talking, I just want to let you know that, like there, there are smart ways of selling where we can talk about people's needs without being manipulative. But I love that phrase, going back to the easy phrases without pressure that you mentioned, if you're interested in learning more, you know, one of the phrases that I love in my business, especially with my membership, is I say, Hey, here's all our free stuff. If you want more individual attention from me, here's where you'll find me. You know, if you want extra help, this is where you can find help. And those phrases to me, or sometimes like, this is what I created this month. This is my newest product. Do you want the details? Like, as you said, more of an invitation and not a 'hey, you need me. I am your answer.'

Becky Brown  16:23 
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, and this is where you use your word testimonials. You know this is where weaving testimonials in, but in real life, language can be helpful, like not and not forceful, not the necessarily before and after photos slapped in your face, saying you're not this yet, like shaming people into wanting this because they're not there yet, kind of thing, but an encouragement, a hope, like of saying, hey, this person did this when they read through this. You know, one of the things that's very authentic for me to sell is my Christian Weight Loss Devotional, because one of the biggest battles in Christian weight loss is not against the scale. It's against discouragement, and I can speak hope into that area. I can say that makes no sense, that I was able to do this, and you can too. And here's some encouragement, like, let me speak God's Word into you. Let me encourage you that you can do this and give you hope every single morning, because I know how much you need it, because I needed it too. So that that feels like much more natural selling to me. Yeah. So this is the place where, like, this process that we're talking about here. This is where competence starts to grow, right? Because your language starts to match your heart. And selling isn't the hard part anymore. It's overthinking.

Laurie Graham  17:39 
Makes it worse.

Becky Brown  17:41 
So sometimes we carry this story that selling makes you selfish or makes you pushy, but really what we are boiling it down to, is that selling is simply naming your gift, like showing them this. This is available, right? I love that, and it's like Laurie in her Owala bottle that she's talking about it's, yeah, it's about integrity. She means what she's saying. She loves her water bottle. She wants you to love your water bottle.

Laurie Graham  18:07 
Now I'm feeling like we should have had an affiliate link for the water bottle, because now everybody's gonna be like, an Owala bottle. What is that?

Becky Brown  18:13 
And I've got mine sitting right next to me here. You can't see it. But this comes back to selling becomes it goes back to stewardship too. You know, if God has given you this gift to help people in this very unique and special way, naming it is not about drawing attention to yourself or about pride. It's about partnership and helping people move towards the change, the growth that they want to experience in their lives. So, Laurie, do you, was there a time that you realized that your selling wasn't being pushy, it was actually just being responsible with what you've been given?

Laurie Graham  18:52 
You know, I think there wasn't one time. I think I still experience that, because I, for me, this isn't something I've overcome or arrived at like, I think there's always going to be a tension between selling and offering and stewardship and you know, do people really have a need? Like, I think for me, my Christian walk, let's get a little Christiany for a minute. I think everything's attention. I think being strong and kind is attention. I think speaking out against injustice and and conserving, like, being a steward of my own heart is important, right? Like, we can't, we can't, like, go everywhere and help everything and everyone. So I think, like, there's always a tension. And I think for me, maybe not for everyone, I think selling will always be a tension, because sometimes I still feel like I'm being pushy. I'm like, oh, shoot, I did a video and I have a timer like that is still difficult for me, and I believe it will. It is a huge benefit to somebody. But I love that you talked about selling, being stewardship, because I've mentioned before Krista Miller, Krista, I hope you hear this someday, and I've told her many times. I've written her personal letters. I've written her emails. She changed my life and my business because of her Summit in a Box. What if she had never said that? And she sells, she sells effectively. And she also sells without she talks up, without being gross, without being gross, she sells things in a really ethical way that is in line with her. It even uses her lingo. So like we talk about, like, having testimonies for what we sell. Like, I'm a walking testimony for her. And had she not sold, and I needed to be sell, sold to by the way, I wasn't looking to just give a bunch of money away. I didn't even know I needed what she had, she sold to me, and it changed my life. And so if she hadn't sold to me, my business would be so different. And I think, I think there's a part of that that is like, how do we take the gift I love that you said it was a gift, like, you said we're giving a gift. Like, how do we take a gift and and and put it in front of people to say, this is the offer. Do you want it? And, yeah, there's an exchange of this, because it costs a lot of money to put it out there. And we know we're making money, and you know we live in a capitalistic society, but that's the tension, right? You know your offer. You know wherever you're at right now, wherever you're coming in, whatever is on your heart, your offer, if it's a real offer, it's an answer to somebody's overwhelm or somebody's pain or somebody's desire, and I think this is where stewardship, gosh, stewardship and selling, that's a whole another thing we could talk about. I didn't know we're gonna go this direction today, Becky. Like I'm overwhelmed, right? I'm almost teary right now. I'm almost teary thinking about selling, ethical, selling, being stewardship.

Becky Brown  21:40 
You know, when you're talking about the word stewardship, I have this really dear friend in my life, Katie. And she.

Laurie Graham  21:47 
Hi, Katie, Tell her to listen to this episode.

Becky Brown  21:51 
She often tells me, man, you are stewarding your trauma so well. And when I'm talking about things that I have created, they're usually from things that have been very difficult in my life, like my Christian Weight Loss Devotional, losing 100 pounds, being 100 pounds overweight, that was hard. And when you're talking about stewardship, when you're creating something from your heart that can help somebody else overcome their heart and encourage them through their heart, walk with them through their journey, like you're talking about pain. This is so much deeper than, gosh, will they give me 10 bucks? This is about man, can can, like, Can I invite them to walk with me in this too? Can I invite them to use these tools that help me too? And that's really powerful. Like, that's that's connection, that's relationship. That's not just like trading money, that's not just transactional.

Laurie Graham  22:45 
I'm gonna go on another tangent, just really quick. I can't wait to have some of these people as guests on the podcast. Like, we've talked about having guests on entrepreneurs, but what about even having Katie on? Like, how has this woman changed my life? How has she impacted my business, even if she's not in business herself. Like, oh, I can't wait. We're gonna have to just do tons of interviews, because every single person on the planet is walking around as an image bearer, and they affect us. We affect them. And can't wait to be highlighting some other voices. Okay, now, if you're thinking about the selling stuff, like, oh my gosh, this sounds so great. I'd love to sell from my heart. I'd love to be a steward of a gift. How do we do this? Because most of us need help with words I've already shared. This is still a constant tension with me. Becky and I care very much about our words. We're always looking at, how could we say this differently? So the Action Guide we created for this week, helps you with that like I love it so much. It's called the Gentle Sales Language Toolkit. But let me, before Becky tells you a little bit about that, here's what. Let's just recap a little bit what we talked about today. Selling often feels icky when we are not being ourselves, when we are trying to use words that don't resonate with us when we are selling products that we don't really love or stand behind. But those words are important. We don't need to be a different persona. We literally can share from our heart as our own simple human people. Like, it can be a sentence. It can be, I help people become better people like, I just help people become better humans. You know, it can be that simple. It can have the word stuff in it right? Like soft invitations often work better than pressure, because most of us push back at selling anyway. So we can be softer or not. Like, what matches your personality, who you are selling, becomes a lot more peaceful when it grows from a really honest place of integrity. And I'll also just say it alignment with who we are, who God created us to be. And I will also say we are humans who grow. What resonated with me a year ago, the year before that, it is different now, and I think we also have to have room for that. That's where integrity, honesty and alignment comes in. Because we're not the same people we were even six months ago. And so let's keep this in mind.

Becky Brown  25:04 
Yep. And so we created an Action Guide for you this week, as we do every week on our podcast. So we want you to learn from this episode, and we want you to go print this out and go do it. So this week's Action Guide is called the Gentle Sales Language Toolkit. I love the word gentle. I love the word gentle, gentle sales. Love that. So we want you to choose just one phrase from the sheet and use it this week in a conversation, in a message, in a post to a friend, practice saying the words out loud, without the pressure, without the forcefulness, without the stress and frantic and clenching your jaw, just say it out loud.

Laurie Graham  25:45 
Yeah, I love it. Thanks you all for being with us today. We know you have a bunch of other things you could do with this 25 minutes. We value you. We love you. We are here for you. Selling does not have to feel like performance. It doesn't have to feel fake, it doesn't have to feel pushy. It can feel like honesty, like stewardship and genuine connection.

Becky Brown  26:10 
And so if this episode resonated with you, we would love for you to share it with a friend who also needs a gentle way to talk about her offer, and we would love for you to come join us in our Soulful Strategy Membership community. We practice this together every single week, and we would love to have you join us All right, see you next time. Go, team.