“You are one ask away from greatness.” Annie P Ruggles

When done right, selling can propel your business to register exponential productivity and growth. It all starts with the honest desire to solve your clients’ problems and as our guest today, Annie Ruggles says, you have to be present and listen to the customer before prescribing a solution, and learning to ask customers to take action.

For over a decade, Annie P. Ruggles has harnessed her Hulk-like disdain for hard-sales, tacky self-promotion, and overly competitive sleaze balls as inspiration to help people find better ways to grow their small business. As the founder of The Non-Sleazy Sales Academy, she’s guided hundreds of people toward making deeper connections, lasting impressions, and friendlier, more lucrative transactions and conversations. Her pride and joy is her podcast, Too Legitimate to Quit: Instantly Actionable Small Business Strategies with a Pop Culture Spin.

In today’s episode, Annie joins us to talk about her long journey to finally including herself in her success. She also provides insights on how to make sales easy and enjoyable.

Listen in!

Social Media:

instagram.com/anniepreneur ,

linkedin.com/in/anniepassanisi

For years, I knew I am a problem solver and a people lover. [3:18]
I always worked to make sure that the people that need to be successful are getting ahead in this world, especially if they’re the kind of people that are driving forward with ethics and integrity. [3:24]
I had all of these skills, but I didn’t really actually do anything with that, because I was unwilling to sell. [3:44]
I was one of those people who said selling was an assortment of activities that make me feel out of integrity. [4:26]
I got stuck taking white label consulting job after white label consulting job until I realized that something’s got to give. [5:06]
I watched my clients suffer, which was really embarrassing, because I realized that they were modeling me. [5:24]
I stopped everything I was doing, and I dedicated my life to figuring it out. [5:51]
Everything I learned about how to sell and sell beautifully, is so in alignment with me, and everything that was out of alignment with me was so easy to change or fix. [6:09]
How I help people shock their potential now is by showing them the beautiful, benevolent, charitable, generous, incredible, profitable badass salesperson inside these do-good entrepreneurs. [6:19]
We put so much pressure on ourselves to be authentic, transparent and consistent with how we show up and then we basically fall down in the last quarter mile of the marathon. [9:52]
Sales scripts robs sales people of originality and the most critical part of sales, which is the ability to listen to your prospect. [11:52]
By using talking points instead of a sales script, the sales calls will far and away be better, because you’ll be present. [13:03]
The phrase that has made me more money than any other phrase in my life is “based on what you just told me..” [15:22]
If we have corporate sales trauma, or pit mentality, it’s really easy to get onto those calls and assume that you’re going to get a no. [21:27]
If you have had to sell other people’s stuff in the past by their standards, don’t carry that forward into selling your own stuff. [22:16]
It is important to not forget about deciders and other people in the house that may need to be consulted before making the decision. [24:27]
So often, we assign value based on our own metrics but in sales you need to get your wallet out of their brain because you don’t know their financial situation. [25:47]
Commercial break. [27:07]
In my entrepreneurial journey, I have learnt that my capacity for love and care for my clients is unmatched. [30:22]
I have also learnt that my love for my clients is not going to be worth if I am unwilling to include myself in my own success. [30:30]
I started to resent the people I was helping and it wasn’t their fault but mine for not asking. [31:04]
In my mind, what I could give had to come before any idea of receiving forgetting the cliché that I could only serve my clients better when I have food on my table. [32:04]
I only changed when I started to be willing to be ambitious, successful, driven and profitable. [32:49]
Now, everything in my business has to be a ‘win-win.’ [33:55]
You are not allergic to sales, but find a way to ask that feels good because you are one ask away to greatness. [40:10]

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