I often hear my own coaches’ voices in my head so I thought of how this voice-in-head phenomenon is related to our success and failure in business (as well as life). So here’s a client who has a wine event business. We repositioned her from an event planner to a ‘client retention expert through wine’. She’s had amazing success with our repositioning and marketing plan so here’s a voicemail that she left last month, where she talks about how she hears my voice in her head. You can click on the picture to hear the recording or read the transcript below.

“Chala, it’s Marte and you don’t have to get back to me. But I’m just calling to say you know every time(and I just hung up with a potential client) and every time I go in there you know I push my shoulders back and I go “Chala tells me to stick to my price, I’m going to stick to my price and if it’s not the right client, I’ll move on” but you know I just I had this great call finished now and I just spew out my price, and I just shut up and I wait. (laughter) So I wanted to let you know that. And when people only want me to come out and talk, I charge $1500 bucks.That’s just for me to come out and talk for about half an hour.  So anyway, just thought I would let you know things are going well. I’m really quite pleased and I can’t thank you enough for your help. It’s been great. I’ve really learned a lot from you. I’m going to resend you that testimonial that I wrote. Ok? Talk to you later. Bye bye.”

Whose Voice Do You Hear?

Sales is such a sticky point for a lot of people because money is a very emotional topic. Like sex and politics, it’s the one topic that can create tension and strife for all concerned. So when you’re having a sales conversation with a prospect for your business and your internal dialogue is coming from the recording that your parents, religious leaders, repetitive events with emotional trauma put into your subconscious, the voice usually says stuff like “he’ll never buy, she’s barely paying her staff, how will she pay me? You’re not worth that much” and on and on.

Getting A Better Voice In Your Head

When I discovered that my own recording of the voices in my head were keeping me from selling and marketing my business, I understood that I had to get access to someone with a different voice in their head. The only way you can tell what kind of voice people have in their heads is by their actions. Therefore, I figured if I hired people who were more successful at selling and marketing their business than I was, that I could, by osmosis (being in contact with them) take on their thoughts.

Close Quarters

As a business owner who was looking for successful business models, I was out of luck. My own family and friend circle was strictly middle-class workers. Seeing as how only 15% of the Canadian (and 10% of the US) population is made up of entrepreneurs and the great majority of the rest work for someone, it was really hard for me to find successful business owners unless I PAID for them to hang out with me. So that’s what I did. I paid expensive, renowned coaches to help develop my business. Each time they noticed a voice in my head (a thought) that was keeping me from growing, they suppressed it and replaced it with their voice. So “nobody can pay that” in my head became “when I uncover enough urgency for my prospect, everybody will pay for that”.

Not Overnight

Beware readers, this flipping of the switch doesn’t happen overnight. Case in point, I continually have to beat back the voices of my earlier conditioning but the new voices are stronger because they are getting my business amazing results. So get out there and find yourself some voices to replace those in your head that got you where you are and move beyond them!
Want to reposition your messaging to grow your leads? Follow me on Twitter, friend me on Facebook, watch me on YouTube or connect with me on LinkedIn –and let’s talk