I used to do twenty sales calls a month. I don't do them anymore, and I sell more now than I did then.
My first business ran on afternoons. Mornings I stood on a herb-packing line in a factory from five o'clock, because the business didn't pay yet.
The advice I got back then was to push. Follow up until they crack, handle the objection, stay in control of the call. I learned it properly and I got good at it. Good enough that people said yes who had no business saying yes to me. They bought because I was convincing. I'd find that out later, usually halfway through delivery, when it turned out the thing was never right for them.
A process built on convincing attracts people who need convincing. That took me years to see, and nobody in twenty years of sales training ever mentioned it.
What I noticed first was the tiredness. I was good at this and it still took something out of me every time, which made no sense to me at all.
So I went looking for where the decision actually gets made. It isn't in 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 the call afterwards could change what happened in it.
I stopped selling in the call and started building for the moment before it.
I don't do sales calls now. When someone wants to work with me it takes a few messages, because by the time they write, they've already decided.
Twenty years, six businesses built from nothing, more than a thousand entrepreneurs. What that gave me is an outsider's eye. I can see someone's whole business the way a buyer meets it, from the first thing they read to the message that never gets sent after the work is done. The owner can't, because they're inside it.
I also wrote a book in Dutch, Je hebt geen zichtbaarheidsprobleem (You don't have a visibility problem). 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.
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. You have a week where three people say yes, then four weeks where nobody does, and nothing you can point at was different.
If pushing harder was going to work, it would have worked by now.
Frequently asked
Do you do sales training?
No. 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 look at what happens before anyone speaks to you, because that's where decisions are made.
Do I have to get on a call to work with you?
No. The lower-priced products you buy straight from the site. For the one-to-one work you write to me, and I'll want to check I can actually help before we go further.
Who is this for?
Experienced experts, consultants, coaches and service-based 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.
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.
What does working with you cost?
The Revenue Leak Assessment is €44 and The Permission Method is €149. Both are on the site. Buy them and start.
The one-to-one work runs into the thousands. I don't put a number here, because a price with no context around it just reads as expensive. So we do it the other way round. You tell me what's going on, I tell you whether I can help and what that would look like, and the price arrives with the plan.
I do turn people away, and it's almost always 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.