For experts who've stopped believing what they were taught about selling.
I used to do twenty sales calls a month. I don't do them anymore, and I sell more now than I did then.
Anneloes Zuiderveen — Sales Strategist
Anneloes Zuiderveen is a Dutch sales strategist based in Lanzarote, Spain. She works with experienced experts, consultants and coaches who already have clients and can sell, but whose sales still depend on them pushing every week.
In more than 20 years she has built six businesses from scratch and worked with over 1,000 entrepreneurs. She is the author of Je hebt geen zichtbaarheidsprobleem, which reached number two on the marketing bestseller list in the Netherlands.
Her approach, Sales Without Force, builds a sales system around how someone already likes to sell, so that most buying decisions are made before a conversation starts.
Somewhere above Siberia
At the end of the nineties I worked for Herbalife, looking after the relationships with their distributors. It doesn't sound like selling, but at that level it was nothing else. It also meant flying around Europe and Russia with Jim Rohn, one of the best-known business coaches in the world. Somewhere above Siberia, in a private jet, he said: “If you only do one thing, work on yourself.”
I nodded. I didn't understand a word of it, and it took me about twenty-five years to find out what he meant.
Harder always worked
Back then I believed one thing: if you work harder, you get further. I was a long-distance triathlete, training for Ironmans. That's 3.8 kilometres of swimming, 180 on the bike and then a marathon, all in one day. I trained twenty hours a week next to a sixty-hour working week. When people asked how, I said you don't have time, you make it.
I took that into business. In 2004 I stood on a packing line in a spice factory from five in the morning, so my afternoons were free for my first company. Clients weren't coming. Everyone told me to be more visible, but what I was really avoiding was selling. The version I'd been shown was all chase, and it made my skin crawl.
So I learned it properly anyway. Follow up until they crack, handle the objection, stay in control of the call. And it worked. After an injury ended the triathlons, I put the same intensity into my business and took it from €50,000 to €200,000 in one year.
What harder cost
I was good at it. Good enough that people said yes who had no business saying yes to me. They bought because I was convincing, and I'd find out halfway through the work that it was never right for them. A process built on convincing brings you people who need convincing.
And it was tiring. I was good at this and it still took something out of me every single time.
In September 2023 I got tinnitus, a constant beep in my ears that doesn't go away. You don't get that from a quiet life. It made me face something uncomfortable: if I wanted to grow, the only way I knew was to work even harder. And that was physically no longer possible.
That's when Jim's line finally landed. I had been the handbrake on my own business, and all I ever did about it was floor the accelerator.
Where the decision really happens
So I went looking for where people actually decide to buy. It isn't on the call. It happens in the car after a podcast, or on the couch, the second time someone reads your page. I was never there for that moment, and nothing I said on a call afterwards could change it.
I stopped selling on the call and started building for the moment before it. I went from around twenty sales calls a month to none. When someone wants to work with me now, it takes a few messages, because by the time they write, they've already decided.
How I sell now
I sell the way I like to: by writing. I post an article on Substack every Friday, which I also share on LinkedIn, and I write to my email list three times a week. I stopped posting on Instagram, because I got sick of chasing the algorithm.
That's the whole point of what I do with clients. My system is built on writing because that's what I'm good at. Yours should be built on whatever you're good at.
My calendar is mostly empty, my phone is on silent, and my day starts with the dogs, not the laptop. I'm from Groningen, where nobody talks about the universe, so I'll spare you the manifesting. This is just what happens when your selling stops depending on you pushing.
The book
I wrote Je hebt geen zichtbaarheidsprobleem (You don't have a visibility problem) in Dutch. It reached number two on the marketing bestseller list in the Netherlands. It isn't a sales book, and it's the reason a lot of people found me long before they knew what I actually do.
Who I work with
The people I work with are experienced. They have clients, credentials and a track record, and they can already sell. What they can't do is sell without being switched on. They have a week where three people say yes, then four weeks where nobody does, and nothing they can point at was different.
If pushing harder was going to fix that, it would have by now.
At a glance
- Name
- Anneloes Zuiderveen
- Work
- Sales strategist for experienced experts, consultants and coaches
- Approach
- Sales Without Force, from willpower to influence
- Experience
- 20+ years, six businesses built from scratch, 1,000+ entrepreneurs
- Book
- Je hebt geen zichtbaarheidsprobleem, #2 marketing bestseller in the Netherlands
- Based in
- Lanzarote, Spain. Works online, in English and Dutch
- Writes
- Make Shit Happen on Substack, every Friday
Frequently asked
Do you do sales training?
No, I don't call it that. Sales training teaches you to handle objections, run a script and stay in control of the call. That's where I started and it's what I stopped doing. I start with what happens before anyone speaks to you, because that's where the decision gets made.
What is Sales Without Force?
It's the system behind all my client work. First you find out how you sell best. Then you build your sales system around that, once. After that it brings clients in without you carrying every sale yourself.
Do I have to get on a call to work with you?
Not if you don't want to. You can take the Sales Behaviour Profile straight from the site. For The Reveal you fill in a short form, and I reply within one working day. If we do talk, it's because one of us wants to, and it takes twenty minutes at most.
Who is this for?
Experienced experts, consultants, coaches and service businesses who already have clients and a track record. If you're still working out what you sell or looking for your first paying client, I'm the wrong person and I'll tell you so.
What does working with you cost?
The Sales Behaviour Profile is free. The Permission Method is €144, if you want to turn the people already in your network into clients on your own. The Reveal is €999: I go through your business the way a client does, you get a written plan and a follow-up call four weeks later. If we build your system together after that, it runs into the thousands, and you see the price once you know exactly what it would fix.
I do turn people away, almost always for the same reason. The business isn't earning enough yet for this to be a sensible thing to spend money on. If that's you, I'll say so.
Do you work in English or Dutch?
Both.
Where are you based?
Lanzarote, Spain. All the work happens online, so it makes no difference where you are.
Ready to stop performing and start selling?
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