So said my new coach in an intensely emotional stand-off with a participant at this weekend’s event. The unfortunate woman was emotionally and financially bankrupt. She had lost a lawsuit, owing over 6 figures in damages. She had to shatter her daughter’s dreams to enter an Ivy League college in the fall. All her many advisors and lawyers were telling her to sell off her beautiful home in the Hamptons. Although a successful coach, she couldn’t see where she could get that enormous amount of money in such a short time.
When I pick coaches, I pick people who will tell you the truth no matter what. So here’s what my new coach told this woman and it was SO exactly the same truth for myself, my clients or for any business owner out there who wants to earn more money that I had to share it with you.
He said “You don’t have a money problem. You have an asking problem. If you had called every single person on your list and told them that you could change their lives if they paid you $100K, consistently and through time, you wouldn’t be in this situation. In fact, you could go home right now and do what I said and pay off this debt and send your daughter to an Ivy League school. It’s because you have an ASKING problem that you’re not doing this“.
Wow, I was really stopped in my tracks. How true is this for all of us? Naturally, this led me to ask (no pun intended) the question: Why do we have an ASK problem?
Here are a few hints:
1. You’re conditioned to think it’s rude/wrong/pushy/looks bad to ask for anything. Yup, it happened when you were a kid while your parents and society and your environment (unless you grew up with Donald Trump) taught you this. In fact, you were called greedy and possibly punished for asking too much. Well, you’re an adult now and you’re reading this so isn’t it time to push yourself out of this state of being?
2. You don’t know how. How exactly are you supposed to ask people for a sale? Do you pick up the phone, do you email, do you write a love letter for God’s sake? And what do you say if you do any of these things? You can’t just walk up to someone and ask them to work with you, right? Even as forthright as I am, I would first recommend an invitation to find out more about each others’ businesses and see if anything you hear can indicate a need for your services. If they’re open to hearing about it and if they’re in enough pain, then you can ask how you can help.
3. You don’t know who to ask. Even if you could get over the beast of the first obstacle of your conditioning and you knew what to say, who do you target for this new asking thing? Well, how about people in your target group you’ve met in the past? How about people you’ve already worked with in the past? How about people in your target who are networking at some function right now? All you need is a focused target group and off you go.
So if you’re like the rest of us who have a money problem in that you want more than what you have, then now you have the awareness that it’s actually an asking problem. Now, go get over it and make your money problems disappear.
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