Over the last year, I’ve shared my top sales and mindset tips to help you build better business relationships and get better at your sales conversations without being sleazy or pushy.

I want to acknowledge each and every member of the Royal Family who has been here through every episode. Thank you!

To celebrate the past year, I want to share my BEST sales and mindset tips from the last 52 weeks. As I review, I encourage you to click any of the linked tips, to watch all of the FULL episodes and get more of the details for each tip.

My mission has always been and will continue to be to inspire each of you to think from a place of serving your clients and never having to sell a day in your life.

Now, on with the tips!

Tip 1: Building Rapport and Relationships In Business

Building rapport is the #1 sales and mindset tips to create a solid foundation for any business relationship. It’s also the key to your top revenue success.

It doesn’t matter if it’s online, in a retail store, or at 30,000 feet. Knowing your people is crucial. Genuinely care about them. And let them get to know, like, and trust you, too.

But as basic as it sounds, it seems that these days that good ol’ fashioned rapport and relationship thing is becoming more and more of a lost art.

Believe me, it’s going to change how you show up in the world. It doesn’t matter if it’s on Facebook Live, at your Toastmasters meeting, or in line at Starbucks.

This is for anyone looking to build a real foundation in their business by creating genuine relationships with REAL people.

At the end of the day, people buy because of their relationships with people. I have a great example of this!

I am working on bringing a special guest onto Success Unfiltered. He’s currently traveling the world for the next 6 to 9 months, but I don’t want him to fall of my radar and I don’t want to fall off of his.

He has done some incredible things with his last company but ended up having to close it, losing 40 to 50 million dollars. I want him to share this experience with my audience so that each of you can learn from it.

He agreed that he’d talk about his journey with me in six months or so, and I have it on my my calendar to follow-up with him. However, to build a more personal relationship with him, I asked him about his favorite places to travel from his point of view.

I made it personal by asking him what was important TO HIM. He responded, letting me know that Columbia and Asia were his favorite destinations, but more than that I made a connection on more of a personal level.

He’ll remember me because I was curious about his travels and asked him about it.

I can’t stress this enough. The literal foundation for you business will come from the genuine relationships you build!

Tip 2: Build Self-Confidence and Know Your Worth

Self-confidence in sales is imperative. It may not be the foundation, but it is pretty darn important.

People will buy certainty and confidence over anything else, all day long. Not to mention that along with self-confidence comes valuing yourself and knowing your worth.

I’m sure you’ve heard this all before, but stick with me.

It doesn’t matter how great your marketing is. If you don’t stand 100% behind your services, things just won’t take off.

It comes down to ONE thing: If you don’t believe in yourself, how can anyone else believe in you?

There is NO better time to start taking the practical steps to building your self-confidence! Check-out this video for all of the good stuff!

Back when FITzee Foods was still open, I worked really hard to get my fresh prepared meals into The Vitamin Shoppe, but I couldn’t have done it on my own.

I was at a trade show just walking the aisles when I ran into Michael, who over time became my champion at The Vitamin Shoppe. We hit it off and he also believed in my products and saw how this could give The Vitamin Shoppe an innovative appeal.

You know what else helped?

I built a solid business relationship with him and I believed in my products. I knew that I could deliver on whatever I promised him, which helped me work alongside Michael to get my products successfully onto the shelves inside The Vitamin Shoppe in a ten store test.

Tip 3: Overcoming Rejection

Number 3 in our sales and mindset tips list is overcoming rejection. I think we all want to avoid rejection, but let’s be honest with ourselves. When it comes to being entrepreneurs there’s no way to completely avoid a NO. We all signed up for a 24/7 sales career, so we may as well get used to it and find out how to overcome the NOs with confidence.

Rejection happens when a buyer’s defenses pop up. We’ve all had those bad experiences when it came to making a purchase. When those bad situations occur over and over again, we build up a resistance to buying.

We can move past this, though!

Everyone wants to buy. It’s simply a matter of finding out our prospect’s pain points and then presenting to them (without being sleazy) how you can help them solve their problems with your solution.

Just remember rejection happens. You have to get used to it. Plus, every NO that you receive gets you one step closer to that YES that you desire.

There’s one other point I’d like to mention when it comes to overcoming rejection, and that is that NOT ALL clients will be YOUR ideal client. And, that is A-OK!

Pay attention if red flags start to pop up. That’s your intuition telling you not to work with someone and it’s time to turn them away and move on.

Tip 4: Finding Your Ideal Clients

I think one of the most frequent question I get asked is, “How do I find my ideal clients?”

Honestly, you can start by just looking around you. Your ideal client could be anyone. It’s just a matter of having conversations and getting to know people (building those solid business relationships).

I’m not kidding here. They could be anywhere! When was the last time you were standing in line at Starbucks and you actually looked around and spoke to the person next to you? Most people have their noses buried in their phones.

The first thing to do is start talking to people and the second is to ensure you have a really good brandshake (my term for elevator pitch).

When someone asks what you do, you can quickly share with them what it is you do and why you do it.

Let’s go back to when I first met Michael from The Vitamin Shoppe. I was at a huge healthy food show in Anaheim, CA, and had been given a free ticket from Sysco, who provided FITzee Foods with much of our chicken, dry goods, and veggies.

When I went into the food show I went on a mission to find my ideal client. I wanted to work with someone who not only was perfect for me and my company, but who believed in us as much as I did. Michael ended up being this person! He’s actually still one of my best business acquaintances.

Another option is to put yourself out there and start “Guesting.” Guesting, in the dictionary of The Pitch Queen, is defined as bringing guest experts onto your podcast, Facebook Live, or YouTube show.

Guests bring value to your audience and credibility to your message. It’s also sharing your expertise as a guest on someone else’s show and getting in front of a new audience as well as supporting someone else’s efforts.

How does it benefit you in the end? You build stronger relationships with your connections, clients, and colleagues. You bring validity to your message. You grow your audience organically, and you help someone else do the same. And it doesn’t cost you a penny, just a bit of your time.

Finding your ideal clients is easy. You just have to be willing to do the work.

Tip 5: Qualifying Leads

Let’s make this plain and simple…

Not all leads make good prospects.

Remember this: You only want to work with clients that YOU really want to work with.

The next part of my sales and mindset tips is ALL about creating boundaries and deciding who you want to work with and who you DON’T want to work with.

Let me ask you a question… How many times have you taken on a client that doesn’t pay you much, yet is the BIGGEST pain in the butt?

Have you ever thought that maybe it was because YOU didn’t qualify them properly?

I know we all want more leads and more sales, but just because someone shows a little interest in working with you does not mean they’re the client from heaven.

Personally, I could have avoided a lot of client-from-hell problems had I known when to say NO and if I had a solid qualification system in place.

It’s a tough lesson to learn, but now that I’ve learned it I can share with you and you’ll never have to make the mistakes that I did.

It’s time to usher in your dream clients, and my friend Shameca Tankerson can help with her knowledge expertise in this video.

Tip 6: Persuasion and Manipulation

The easiest form of persuasion is having your clients persuade themselves!

Ross Jeffries, author of Subtle Words That Sell joined us to share how we can actually get our clients to enroll themselves into our services or programs.

Do you ever wonder how big brands like The Vitamin Shoppe or Costco actually make the decision to buy your products all on their own? There’s a KEY ingredient Ross and I talk all about in this episode. Trust me, this is a MUST WATCH.

I know there are a lot of people out there who say they hate sales, but honestly, I just believe it gets a bum rap!

Everywhere you look there are sleazy sales techniques being used on Facebook ads and even in email messages. You’ll see things like, “only 10 spots remaining” or “act now.”

Sure, these scarcity techniques can work, BUT they’re manipulative and inauthentic. And around here, you know we firmly believe in authenticity.

One authentic and effective technique that Shameca Tankerson uses with her prospects is to share how working with her can change their lives. She allows the potential client to make their own decisions.

And, you know what!? It works! Shameca is hugely successful.

Stop using sleazy techniques and start allowing your prospects to enroll themselves in your offers.

Tip 7: Entrepreneurial Mindset

Have you ever asked yourself how you can get back on the horse after a massive failure?

This is a HUGE topic on my podcast Success Unfiltered, and there’s one really amazing episode that stands out. Mel Robbins, the best-selling author of The 5 Second Rule, shared that her book came out on the exact same day as Tony Robbins’ book. Mel was able to overcome the struggle and failure of her hard copy book coming out on the same day that Tony Robbins did and found success on the other side!

Obviously she was devastated and started thinking this was a massive failure, but what ended up happening was that Amazon ran out of print copies of her book. This pushed people to listen to the Audible version and had an unexpected result.

I won’t tell you the whole story because I want you to listen for yourself. But what Mel had originally thought was going to be another HUGE failure in her life, ended up being the catalyst for the life she’s currently living.

For me, I never thought I’d have to close the doors of FITzee Foods after it was such a big a part of my life for eight years. But I saw what was happening in the fresh prepared meal space and knew that it was time to go out on a high note, rather than crash and burn.

I didn’t dwell, though. I got right back out there and started The Pitch Queen and my podcast, Success Unfiltered.

My advice? Learn from Mel’s lessons (or mine) and don’t let your mental state keep you down forever.

In Conclusion

Those are my top sales and mindset tips from the last 52 weeks of Coffee Is For Closers.

I truly believe that if you focus in on these things, you won’t only increase your top line revenue in your business but your life will be filled with more abundance as well. I also bet that things will start to shift for you in other ways, too.

Did you have any favorite sales and mindset tips from the past year? I would love for you to share in the comments!