Sales Uprising: How to Sell Without Feeling Pushy or Gross With Katie Nelson

Welcome back to Small Business Pivots, the podcast created for small business owners who want real conversations, real lessons, and real growth.

In this episode, host Michael Morrison sits down with Katie Nelson, CEO of Sales Uprising and a serial entrepreneur on her third business journey.

Katie is on a mission to help business owners stop hating sales — and start seeing it for what it really is: a human conversation that fuels business growth.

Together, Michael and Katie dive deep into:

• Why sales feels “icky” for so many business owners — and how to change that mindset
• The real difference between sales vs. marketing (and why confusing the two hurts growth)
• Why sales is the most human function in any business
• How to simplify funnels, pipelines, and CRMs without overcomplicating them
• Why your clients already have the answers to your best messaging
• How to build a simple sales process that actually works
• When to keep things simple — and when systems matter
• Why pivots aren’t failures, but necessary iterations for long-term success

Katie also shares powerful insights from her early days in sales, lessons learned from growing businesses to multi-million-dollar run rates, and practical advice for business owners who want to work on their business — not just in it.

If you’re a small business owner who struggles with sales, avoids it altogether, or wants a simpler, more authentic approach — this episode will change how you think about selling.

If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with another business owner who needs to hear it.

Timestamps (Short)

00:00 — Meet Katie Nelson & Sales Uprising
02:20 — Why sales feels “icky” for business owners
06:45 — Katie’s first sales job at 15 (and what it taught her)
12:10 — Why sales hasn’t really changed over time
16:40 — Sales vs. marketing: the real difference
23:05 — Why sales should come before branding
29:30 — Asking clients for messaging (the golden nugget)
35:20 — Simplifying funnels, pipelines & CRMs
43:10 — How many sales stages do you really need?
49:55 — Working on your business vs in it
56:30 — Pivots, iterations & long-term growth
01:02:15 — Sales playbooks, scripts & keeping it human
01:09:40 — Best beginner sales books
01:13:30 — Final mindset takeaway for entrepreneurs

Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Katie Nelson And Mission
• 1:44 Early Life And First Sales Lessons
• 7:57 Sales Hasn’t Changed, Tech Has
• 10:54 Why Sales First Beats Branding
• 14:29 Sales vs Marketing: Different Jobs
• 19:16 Let Clients Define Your Message
• 22:30 Start Loving Sales: Keep It Simple
• 24:43 Funnel And Pipeline Made Plain
• 27:04 CRMs, Pipelines, And Stages
• 31:12 Mindset And Working On The Business
• 35:34 Pivots, Iteration, And COVID Acceleration
• 38:10 Masterminds, Consulting, And Speaking
• 40:05 Scripts, Playbooks, And Qualification
• 43:08 Book Recs And Keeping Profit
• 45:01 Connect With Katie And Final Advice

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

All right. Welcome to another Small Business Pivots where we have incredible guests from around the world. And we have another one yet today. But if you've watched or listened to the show, you know that only the business owner can say their name and their business like the business owner. So I let you have the stage and tell us a little bit about you.

SPEAKER_01: 0:18

Hi, everybody. My name is Katie Nelson. I'm the CEO of a company called Sales Uprising. This is my third business. I am what they call a serial entrepreneur, which for those of you who are business owners puts me in a certain category of crazy. And Michael, I'm really looking forward to this conversation today. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00: 0:35

My pleasure. I'm excited. So what do you think we're going to help our listeners with today?

SPEAKER_01: 0:41

What I would love to be able to impart today is a little bit more mindset that's like closer to loving the words sale, selling, sales, yeah. Anything in that genre. Like let's let's get everybody closer to loving that.

SPEAKER_00: 0:57

Loving it and not feeling so icky about it, right?

SPEAKER_01: 1:02

Yes, exactly that. Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 1:04

Well, let's introduce the show and we'll be right back. Welcome to Small Business Pivots, a podcast produced for small business owners. I'm your host, Michael Morrison, founder and CEO of Boss, where we make business ownership simplified for success. Our business is helping yours grow. Boss offers business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours at BusinessOwnership Simplified.com. All right, welcome back to Small Business Pivots. I know our listeners like to kind of be relatable to our guests. So any background you can catch us up on, where you're from, all that good stuff, any challenges you've gone through to get to adulthood?

SPEAKER_01: 1:56

Oh my gosh. Isn't teenagerhood enough of a challenge to get to to get to adulthood? Uh you know, I grew up in the 80s in a blended family, is what we tried to call them back then. And now, of course, I have so I have bonus parents. I have a bonus mom and a bonus dad. I grew up in a really tiny town that happens to be a college town. So lots of people have heard of it. Tempe, Arizona. I believe we even had a Super Bowl there at one point in time. I was around for that. But yeah, so I was a graduate of ASU. Both my parents were entrepreneurs. So I grew up around, you know, eating dinner around an oak table with my brothers and sisters, listening to them bemoan all of the challenges of being a business owner. I would not have thought I would have ever owned a business. Um, but in the ways of like getting to where I'm at, you know, I had uh the man that eventually became a partner. We've been together for 22 years. He and I were down for some adventure, so we moved back across the country. So now we live in northern Virginia, and we've been here for about 20 plus years. So other than all of that, life's been breathing.

SPEAKER_00: 3:08

No, I mean, you know, no life stories there. That's kind of boring. Unlike sales, you know, let's take the ickiness out of sales. I know that your company, obviously, sales uprising, you focus on smaller businesses, solopreneurs, things like that. So, how did you get into sales? Let's figure that out first because most people hate sales.

SPEAKER_01: 3:33

Ah, well, what they don't know is what I found out when I was 15. So, growing up in a family with lots of kids, there's four of us. I wanted to be able to have my own money. Have you who doesn't have this? And right, I wanted to be independent. I didn't want to constantly go to my parents and think that I could only go to the movies if I asked them for movie money. So at the ripe old age of 15 and a half, which is the legal age for working in Arizona, or it was back then, I sold my parents on the idea of if I kept my grades up and if I did all of my extracurriculars, I found this place halfway between school and home where I could go work for like part-time, and it happened to be a sales gig. I worked in a call center back when that was actually humans and not bots. And it, oh my gosh, the lessons that I learned in my call center years, I still carry with me to this day.

SPEAKER_00: 4:27

Is that right? Absolutely. Did they have a system for you to learn, or was it just kind of organic? You had to figure it out.

SPEAKER_01: 4:35

That's hilarious. So they trained me. They trained me exactly how to follow the scripts. So the first program that they wanted me to sell was a credit card insurance program, which I I still don't couldn't tell you what it is. I was 15 and a half. I didn't have a credit card. So I literally told them, like, I don't think this is what I should be selling. I can't answer these people's questions unless I read from this piece of paper. And I really don't know why these words go together this way. Like, I didn't understand the concept of insurance at 15. Like, what are you having me sell? So they found some old program that they sold, and it happened to be children's books. Like, so children's books that could be mailed to your house. So I ended up talking to like stay-at-home moms who had kids in the house. It was a great fit. Um, and the training that we got was read the script, and you can't get off the phone until they give you three objections. If they give you three objections, you're okay to get off the phone. But if they give you two, you better keep, you better keep at it. That was all I that's all I was taught.

unknown: 5:37

Wow.

SPEAKER_00: 5:38

Well, that's more than some business owners I know give their salespeople. They're like, just go figure it out.

SPEAKER_01: 5:45

But that's true. The other piece I would say, uh, but it wasn't really a part of the system, but is important to business owners today, was how to disposition a call. So this is back in the day of like only green screens.

SPEAKER_00: 5:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 6:00

So back then. And so if you were on a phone call, you had to tell the computer what happened to that call before it would pull up your next potential. So, like interest, no interest, why no interest? Like you had to disposition the call. So it was way back in the beginning of systems of where you would um be able to collect data on your prospects, which we should all still be doing.

unknown: 6:25

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 6:26

So you're saying there wasn't a CRM as there is today?

SPEAKER_01: 6:30

Not on my end, right? So there was just one big huge database that would pull up name after name after name from who knows what, like from whence these people came, I have no idea. So my guess is back in the day of uh research companies and marketing companies that would research, like in the you know, 90210 area code, who are the moms that stay home and what are their phone numbers, and can I buy their information so they can go on this list? I think that's how all of these people were found. And then on the back end, the data that we entered, not interested, you know, doesn't exist anymore, uh, threatened with my life and got hung up on like whatever the things were that I could put into this system, went back there so they could clean their lists or do whatever they want with them. But in terms of my selling, nope, I didn't have to have a CRM. That was our CRM.

SPEAKER_00: 7:24

So you're saying back then you even got your nose bloodied and hung up on and calling names and everything.

SPEAKER_01: 7:30

I mean, it is humans, you know, as a person who's calling people unscheduled, you know, babies dealing with babies and kids, and you know, who wants to have their day interrupted? Absolutely, I got hung up on cursed at oh, all the things.

SPEAKER_00: 7:46

So that uh kind of brings me to this road of sales really hasn't changed as far as the buyer goes, is kind of what I'm hinting at. So, how has sales changed on your side?

SPEAKER_01: 8:03

Um, I love this question, Michael, because I would tell you that out of all of the business functions, sales is the place that um has changed the least because it's the most human. I know, I know. Some people will say, no, Katie, the human resources function of my business is the most human. And I would say, maybe. In my experience, human resources is actually risk mitigation for the C-suite. It's not necessarily about the amazing humans that are in the company. Um, although there have been some amazing updates in regards to like culture of our companies and things like that that are relatively new that we're trying to instill in our bigger businesses. The so sales hasn't really changed. Now, if you're talking about the technology of how we keep track of humans and our prospects, sure, tons of updates there. But the actual function of sales and how sales, especially for service-based businesses, gets done hasn't really changed a whole lot because it looks a lot like this a conversation.

SPEAKER_00: 9:09

Conversation. And you mentioned the human element, and that is we don't need HR if we don't have sales.

SPEAKER_01: 9:18

We don't need HR if we don't have sales. We don't, what did you tell me? We we don't need an admin. We don't need anything. Right. We don't really need a whole lot if we don't have a dollar coming in the door. Uh right. So, yeah, sales is kind of part and parcel to owning a business and the success of said business uh first. Like you you can't get to your staff unless you have revenue, right? What are you gonna pay them with?

SPEAKER_00: 9:44

Right. Well, let's talk about sales uprising first, because that'll kind of lead us down the road of how you help people and some insights that we can offer to our listeners to help them with sales. So, what is sales uprising? How do you help?

SPEAKER_01: 9:59

Well, as a business coach, I teach sales first and foremost, like literally as your first step forward in business. What we hear so often about being a business owner is about in the leadership space, right? Be a leader, be uh be an expert. And I agree with all of that. Uh what you will find when you finally have to embrace your sales self as a business owner is that all of that shifts with your first client and your second client and your third client, because what you offer as a business is kind of like a Venn diagram of everything that you are an expert in and how you want to deliver it with who your buyer is and how they hear it. So it's where that Venn diagram comes together that actually makes your company. So selling is part and parcel to like it, it has to be done first. I don't care if you don't even have a brand. Michael Morris and I would tell you that if you weren't a business owner, I don't need your website. Go throw something, go out, go throw up a landing page, put your pretty mug on it, you know, have have yourself be in whatever your favorite colors are, and then go out and sell whatever you think you're gonna sell. Because as soon as that happens, what you would have thought that landing page would look like has the ability to be better than what you could have come up with all on your own. Sales uprising teaches that sales is first and foremost, and it provides you with the growth that you need to be able to scale to your dreams. Uh, the reason why it's called sales uprising is because literally I would want every single person, what did you call it? You called it icky. Right? Some people call it pushy, some people call it gross, some people just get a face. The word sales is like art, and you're either really attracted to it or you're you like run away from it. And for all the people who would want to run away from it if they own businesses, I want them to have a sales uprising. I want them to grab their mental pitchforks and I want them to go after those sales demons in their own head that they've created specifically so that they can be successful in business.

SPEAKER_00: 12:09

So, where's a good starting point for an entrepreneur that says, I don't want to be too salesy.

SPEAKER_01: 12:17

I what does that even mean?

SPEAKER_00: 12:21

And I think it just means following the process of like a used car salesperson or something like that.

SPEAKER_01: 12:27

All right, people. Let's talk about, let's put the emphasis on the right syllable. Uh, how much money you want to make? The used car salesman wants to make X amount of money a year, so they act that way because they know that if they act that way, their conversion rates get them to that much money per year. And they have a buyer that, unlike you, doesn't mind the way that they are. The the stereotypical used car salesman has buyers. So instead of worrying about being them, just worry about being you. You can't be unless you have ever been the used car salesman, how are you gonna be one? I'm certainly not I know of no sales trainer on earth that's going to teach you how to be one because that's just not good quality sales. And again, there is a difference between product and service sales, right? Regardless of the fact that bots don't buy, so it is all a human element. Buyers are all human. Um product sales is much more transactional, services-based sales, not so much. It really does require a relationship. And there's a seller for every kind of buyer, and vice versa. So just be you. If you've never been a used car salesman, don't worry about trying to be one now. If you've never been pushy in your life, don't worry about being pushy now. Have you never, have you really never asked for anything in your whole life? I would find that hard to believe.

SPEAKER_00: 13:57

You and I were talking earlier, and you said this would be boring if we agreed on everything. So I'm gonna bring up the point that we didn't quite agree, but I do I do agree, but let's just use it for that conversation. The difference between sales and marketing. Oh, yeah. So I had mentioned that I spend about 40 to 50 percent of time on sales and marketing, and and I kind of put it in one lump sum, and you said that's actually two. So let's start there so everybody understands the difference.

SPEAKER_01: 14:29

I thank you. Yeah, the closest we've come to a disagreement is the difference between sales and marketing. Um, so marketing is um they're two separate functions in your business. They may equal the same coin, but one can be considered heads and one can be considered tails. So they never they never get to see each other in a certain way and they have to work in conjunction. But they're two different things. For example, as a business owner, if we go to our marketing firm and say, What's my ROI? In sales, your ROI is dollars in the bank. The return on your investment for a salesperson's effort is dollars in the bank, right?

unknown: 15:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 15:13

In marketing, it's not so quite like that. Right? I can't, unless I can actually prove that one singular piece of marketing got me that exact client, creating ROI and dollars for your marketing isn't even really the right question we should be asking. Has it given me enough? Um, what does it look like in terms of leads, which is just potential, not actual dollars, just potential. How how has it grown my market share? How many more eyeballs see me now than they used to? That's potentially a good ROI, but it's not necessarily in terms of dollars. Marketing supports your sales effort if we do it right. You know, we've all been in companies where there's, you know, sales and marketing love to point the finger at each other and say it's somebody else's fault and um all that is is bad management. Oh, I'm gonna get in trouble.

SPEAKER_00: 16:08

Uh not with me.

SPEAKER_01: 16:12

So, you know, the truth of the matter is that they are a handshake, like they live together synergistically. That's how they'll be done the best on all sides. You want more potential people looking at you. So I consider there in sales, we talk about the sales funnel, right? So, and it looks like a traditional funnel, but before a sales funnel for a larger firm, on top of that sales funnel, this is the best depiction of it I've ever seen. Um, is another funnel. And that's the marketing funnel. And it starts out as tiny, like a question, and that gets your one person, and then ultimately it goes through and dumps a pile of prospects in the top of your sales funnel. But sales doesn't do that, and marketing doesn't sell. They really are two separate functions in your business.

SPEAKER_00: 17:02

So, in order to sell, do we have to understand our marketing first, or do you just start with the sales? Is that your focus, or do you also do the marketing side?

SPEAKER_01: 17:16

So I do teach my people about marketing so that they know where to put it appropriately. When you're starting off in business, the sales is gonna um any good marketing firm will ask you who's your target market? Right? So if we're talking about what came first, the chicken or the egg, who's your target market is a byproduct of who you sell to. If you don't know that, then your marketing already is less than it could be. So when we're talking to very beginning businesses, you can craft all the stories that you want. Like I said, you can create a huge, beautiful website that speaks to absolutely no one. Um, if the this is not an if you bill that they will come. You actually want to go get them, do work with them, and then your marketing has the ability to be the strongest it can possibly be. Marketing is its best when it gets answers from sales.

SPEAKER_00: 18:16

So on the marketing funnel, and you you said it kind of takes a different shape on top of the sales funnel. Is there a framework that you like to follow, or is that specific to each industry? Is it different?

SPEAKER_01: 18:30

It it's specific to your target market. Okay, right. So if you're um say coaches are your target market, well, that's not a small amount of people. What kind of coach? Where are they demographically? Like there's 50 questions that you want to be able to put into your marketing funnel so that you're getting the right potential in the top of your sales funnel. Only you as a business owner will know those things. And if you've been selling, you can get a little help from your friends. They're called clients, right? So your clients can also inform some super sexy marketing. There's nothing wrong with calling them up and saying, Hey, Michael, I've loved doing business with you in the last six months. How, how should I describe what I do so that I can work with more of you? You know who's gonna love to answer that question? Michael Morrison. He's gonna be like, oh, kitty, I'm so glad you asked me.

SPEAKER_00: 19:29

Well, that is a golden nugget for the entire year. I want business owners to listen to that. Can you repeat it again? And that is you ask your clients. Right? I see so many business owners trying to figure it out themselves, and I'm like, why? Or they try to copy somebody else's website that's taken off, or but your clients are your number one asset in more ways than one.

SPEAKER_01: 19:58

And why wouldn't they? Yes. Why wouldn't they want to help you? They've had a great time with you. You've done amazing things for them. So if you go to them and say, So this is how I see our relationship, is that right? Can we have a conversation about it? Or are you willing to put a testimonial in your own words? That is like pure, you know, pure Bitcoin or cryptocurrency or whatever the most expensive thing on earth is these days. You know, that's the good stuff. You know, you can't because they speak your target client's language. Right? Unless you're whoever you are, like I'm I'm a business coach and I work with solopreneurs and microbusinesses, right? So I work right under probably who you work with. Unless I am my target market, I'm not gonna know the words that they use. I'll know industry jargon. Yeah, I'll know, but what I need to know is them. I need to know everything about them. How do they talk about themselves? What do they call themselves? Do they call themselves solopreneurs? Do they call themselves microbusinesses? Do they just use the word small businesses, which I find vastly complicated since you can own a small business that has 999 employees? So what are how do they see themselves? What is that language? My clients can tell me that. My clients have all the answers literally for the success of my business.

SPEAKER_00: 21:26

Absolutely. Moving into the sales, and I know working with business owners, they all have a different reason why they don't like it. And it could be they don't like being hung up on, maybe they don't have a script. So, where do we start so that they feel so that they love sales? You're listening to Small Business Pivots. This podcast is produced by my company, Boss. Our business is helping yours grow. Boss offers business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours at business ownership simplified.com. If you're enjoying this podcast, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and share it as well. Now let's get back to our special guest. Moving into the sales, and I know working with business owners, they all have a different reason why they don't like it. And it could be they don't like being hung up on, maybe they don't have a script. So where do we start so that they feel so that they love sales like you do?

SPEAKER_01: 22:30

Let's start with the wins. Like, why are we focused on the negative of what we don't like about a thing? If I had to ask you, so what do you like about your sales life cycle? If they said collecting the checks, let's start there. Because like I bet all y'all like collecting the checks, right?

SPEAKER_00: 22:50

And if you don't collect them, we have another problem.

SPEAKER_01: 22:53

But that's a different challenge entirely, right? That goes into your operational function. Um, but yeah, so it focus on what you do like. Every business owner I know likes what they deliver, likes the answers that they have. So, how can we take a look at the things that we like in our business and apply that to a potential customer that we could work with?

SPEAKER_00: 23:19

So we have a lot of industry jargon here. And that is, we hear of funnels, we hear of pipelines, we hear of CRMs. Can you kind of explain a simplified sales funnel process, pipeline, all that stuff so that people understand? Because a lot of our listeners probably don't have a CRM even. And so they hear all this stuff and they don't really understand it because it sounds complicating and they've got other things to do that are they can do faster.

SPEAKER_01: 23:48

Preach. Don't we all?

SPEAKER_00: 23:50

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 23:51

As a business owner, I get that. So sure. So if you Google sales funnel, you will uh see pictures of funnels that can be like hacked into like 20 different that this there's no, I ain't got no time for that. I'm not, you know, Forbes. I don't have this huge org chart that requires one person for everything that happens in my company. So literally, there's if you think about a funnel that you would put like antifreeze in your car, or if you're a baker, like you know, you're olive oil into your recipe. Uh the top of it is where all the humans hang out. That's where the prospects are. The very top of your funnel is where your marketing touches, right? Your next step, sales funnel in four steps or less, process or prospects, which just means potential clients, qualification, presenting and asking. Super simple. People question them to see if they're the right people, present the answers as to you why you are the right people for them, and then ask them for the business. It's as simple as that. It's not the need to be any more complicated.

SPEAKER_00: 25:00

Wait. So, in other words, quit looking at the internet. Very complicated.

SPEAKER_01: 25:07

Yeah, there's no need for all of that. I mean, unless you're your sales funnel can get more complicated as your business systems grow. But I would say max out the keep it simple, silly process as long as you possibly can. Because as soon as you complicate it, that's more people you have to hire, more things you have to manage, and more money you don't actually get to see as a business owner. So ultimately, it depends on what your goals are as a business owner. But I've never found that keeping it simple hurts.

SPEAKER_00: 25:43

Yeah, it's definitely easier. So let's talk about a CRM for those that don't have them, because we run across, so we work with businesses up to about 100 employees and probably not at the 100 employee, but there are some businesses that have 20 to 40 employees and they still don't have a CRM. They don't understand it. So can you kind of explain that and what a pipeline is and how they can track that stuff?

SPEAKER_01: 26:08

Sure, I'd be happy to if you want to tell them what a CRM is.

SPEAKER_00: 26:12

Well, it's how you keep track of your customers and what's it stand for? Uh customer relationship manager. I get so used to using acronyms.

SPEAKER_01: 26:25

I sometimes forget. There's a couple ways that this is called. It can be called customer retention management system, it can be called client retention management system. Uh ultimately, like Michael said, it's how you where do I house all the deets about all my peeps? Is how it can be looked at. And the best, see it again, it doesn't have to be complicated, depending on how many employees you have. If it's just you, a nice Excel spreadsheet will do. It's sortable, you can easily find stuff, it's great. Once you get a bulk of clients, and then maybe have another employee or two or three, the client retention management system is absolutely a second brain of the operation. Uh, depending on which one you use, even your vendors can live there, right? So, not the people who pay you, but the people you pay. Gets a little iffy. You're gonna want to definitely dive into those systems to see if you want your CRM to do all of that. The best CRMs have the ability to make it super easy for you and your staff to be on the same page about any given client or prospect at any point in time. That's the point of them is literally to be a database that houses the second brain for all of us, so we can be on the same page about any one prospect or client. That's what they're for.

SPEAKER_00: 27:52

I know a percentage that I see with businesses we work with that don't have a CRM. And once we implement one with them, we usually, for those that are listening, we usually start them with something simple like pipe drive. It's very easy to use. It's a nice little clean, fresh dashboard. We see sales go up 20 to 30 percent, just not doing anything extra other than having a CRM because no prospect gets forgotten.

SPEAKER_01: 28:18

Absolutely. So what you think about, you bring about. So a CRM is absolutely a place where your whole team is concentrated in the right area, they're all moving in step to the same sheet of music, and they're paying attention to client acquisition, also known as sales, right? So they're paying attention to bringing dollars into the company through acquisition of new clients, and that's what we all should. So, to Michael's other question, so a CRM is taking care of all of them. The pipeline is literally it's just that. I mean, it's not a hard concept. You've got oil in Alaska, you want it in Texas, you build a pipeline to get it from one place to another. In in business, what that looks like is I have some prospects, some people that don't buy for me over here. What is the thing I build to get them over here into my bank account? That's what a pipeline is. So stages. Simply put. Uh, stages, one stage, two stage. Like, let's keep it easy. How many stages do we need to get from all the way over here to all the way over here?

SPEAKER_00: 29:26

How many do you suggest? I always say not more than five.

SPEAKER_01: 29:30

That's just I was gonna say so. Four, four, I I do love a four, okay, right? Because there's like the end goal, and then there's where they start. And then ultimately, now that doesn't include touches. So when Michael's talking about like industry jargon, one of my least favorite things about sales is that we use language like touches. How many times do you need to touch a client or a prospect before they become a client?

SPEAKER_00: 29:55

Um that just sounds gross.

SPEAKER_01: 29:58

It does sound gross.

SPEAKER_00: 29:59

Like I that's where the icky sales comes from, right?

SPEAKER_01: 30:02

So I guess like if it if it's just that part, I I'm like, hey, how many times can I pick up the phone and call somebody? Like that doesn't hurt anybody. So you will know best how many stages of your pipeline there need to be. You know who has the answers, your previous clients. How long did it take to get them? What were the steps for you to get them from all the way over there to in in your pocket? Like, what did that look like for you? Is that true of all of your clients? Go back to your client data and you will be able to figure out how many stages you really need in your pipeline. It's already there for you.

SPEAKER_00: 30:36

Again, go back to your clients. Like they have the answer. Quit trying to figure it out. I love it. So let's talk about your business coaching side. What are some insights, some challenges that you see with business owners that you see over and over? And what are some ideas or insights that can help them overcome those?

SPEAKER_01: 30:58

You mean out there's their dislike of selling notwithstanding.

SPEAKER_00: 31:03

Yes, that's number one.

SPEAKER_01: 31:05

Right. So outside of that, you know, um there's uh humans will human, and that is true of our prospects, of our clients, and ourselves as business owners. So one of the challenges that I see constantly is literally the challenge of mindset. Like, how badly do I want this? I say I want to be a business owner, but I'm happy to quit monthly because my my staff is driving me nuts or my clients are aren't paying their bills, or like whatever it is. So four things like that, what I try to impart is the end result, not the day-to-day. You know, when you're um, I don't know if this is you, Michael, but if you've ever actively tried to lose weight, say for a cruise, because you knew you were gonna be going and getting a tan on the pool deck. If you look at yourself daily when you're working out and eating quality food, you may not see the changes in your body. If you step away and you do all the things you're supposed to do to get healthy and look, look and feel better, and then you come back and you look at yourself, it's so much easier to see. Oh, my jawline has changed, right? If I have such a healthy glow to my skin, whatever that is, it's the same in business. Right. So working on your business instead of in your business is quality time that often gets deprioritized by the day-to-day and really needs to be the thing that we pay attention to as business owners, especially, especially for your target market who are big a little bit bigger in business, they should be working on being the president or CEO, which requires a lot more working on instead of in.

SPEAKER_00: 32:54

Um that's almost like you were in a meeting before this episode, because my client that I was just at their office, he said, You often say work on and not in. Can you give me some examples of what working on the business would look like for me? Can you do that for us? No problem.

SPEAKER_01: 33:15

Uh one of the ways that you can work on your business instead of in your business has to do with planning, goal setting. Ooh. Oh, I know. Simple. Additionally, if you want to take it even further, your CEO time is your most creative time. Remember way back in the beginning when you were a business owner and you had all these ideas and you wanted to take over the world and it was so great, but that was the exact thing that kept you from growing. So you had to like tamp, tamp, tamp down until you got some success under you. Well, maybe you need to revisit that self. The creative time that we spend on our businesses so that its impact can be aligned with what we want, so that its legacy can be aligned with what we want, its culture, the staff, the experience we want to provide them, the experience we want to provide our clients, all of that requires on instead of in.

SPEAKER_00: 34:10

That's good stuff. Well, I know that you've owned three businesses, or this is your third business, serial entrepreneur. Congratulations. Yeah, yeah. You're just like me. I get out of the you know, mental world. But um what are some pivots that you've experienced? What were some good ones? What were some bad ones? Because the show is about small business pivots, and I know that business we had, or at least for me, the business I had originally in mind is not what it looked like three, five, ten years down the road. So, but I had to kind of crunch through that. I had to be adaptable. I had to, there were some there were some processes. I had to go say, Michael, you're not right, but how do you do that? How do you put it?

SPEAKER_01: 34:56

But so hold on a second. So I have a question for you. Can I ask you a question?

SPEAKER_00: 34:59

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 35:00

Are you mad about it? Are you mad that today the business doesn't look exactly like you thought it was gonna look when you started it?

SPEAKER_00: 35:08

No.

SPEAKER_01: 35:11

The reason why I ask, and I think it's really important that your audience hears that, is because we get so stuck on what we thought it should look like based on absolutely nothing whatsoever. So listen to what Michael was saying. He had some ideas for what he wanted to put out in the world, so he created a whole vision for it. Fandamtastic. Excuse my French, right? That's brilliant. That allowed him to get to the next place where he could insert data into this dream and create a bigger and better vision for what his business was going to look like. Brilliant! And then he did it again. He continued to add data, his client stories, not just his own, dare I say, ego into this thing. And it now lives to incorporate more than just Michael. How beautiful is that?

SPEAKER_00: 36:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 36:07

Why is it so hard to think that a why do we think a pivot is bad? If that's what it gets us in the end.

SPEAKER_00: 36:17

I've also heard the word iteration. Do you find those to be the same thing?

SPEAKER_01: 36:22

Yes. I think pivot, what pivot came around as soon as COVID hit, right? So all of us with COVID PTSD, everybody felt like we had to pivot. When I would say that what I did with my clients back then is I said, hey, remember, every year we have the strategic business planning retreat. You literally just wrote out your whole plan for this year. What can we make happen faster instead of slower? Because there's been these changes worldwide, right? Instead of how can I pivot my business? We don't really need to do that as much as we think we do. Uh, we may have to rearrange what we had planned for our growth to do some of those things before, you know, when um when COVID happened, I was caught flat-footed, as I'm sure a lot of us were. I absolutely had plans to be a coach who coached nationally instead of just locally. And when COVID happened, I was wildly unprepared to do so and found myself in a place doing exactly that, right? Now I'm speaking on stages in Australia because of Zoom or Canada. Uh, and I was like, okay, well, so I guess we're just gonna get this started nine months early. That's fine.

SPEAKER_00: 37:31

Yep. It's sometimes it's a little, you know, light the fire under you. I see that your services are let's see, you've got top six mastermind consulting and speaking. So let's talk about each of those because I'm sure each of those help business owners.

SPEAKER_01: 37:48

All of them help business owners if I do it right. Yeah. So the top six mastermind is two separate masterminds. Your first 250k for everybody listening. Do you remember earning your first 250k? Felt good, didn't it? Hard until you did it, but felt great once you got there.

SPEAKER_00: 38:04

So very and then once you passed it.

SPEAKER_01: 38:07

Well, and that's the thing, right? So your very your very first 250k is a very specific skill set that you need to learn, mostly how how to do with you, but also how to sell. Most of those are skill sets uh in selling. And then from your first 250k to your first seven figures is a very different space. So I run the top six mastermind and the advanced mastermind for those two groups of people. And then the consulting that I do is for larger businesses where I'm literally an outsourced consultant for their sales space. And then I do speaking engagements to go teach entire rooms of people how to love selling.

unknown: 38:43

Oof.

SPEAKER_00: 38:44

That sounds so much fun. I forgot a question earlier, and I meant to ask this. I know a sales playbook because you mentioned scripts earlier.

SPEAKER_01: 38:53

You mentioned scripts. I didn't mention scripts, I mentioned scripts. Very clear. Sorry.

SPEAKER_00: 38:57

I asked you about scripts at your uh credit or your children's book thing. That's where it was. Yeah, and but then we quickly pivoted. So, what is a sales playbook? How detailed should it be? I'm I'm sorry, folks, listeners, all that we're kind of going backwards, but this is so important because I hear people say, Should I have a script? It should it be word for word? Do I have a sales playbook? Oh my gosh, what is all of that for a small business? What does that look like?

SPEAKER_01: 39:27

Way to make things super complicated, people. At the end of the day, the reason why I had a sales script for selling children's books to stay-at-home moms is because somebody, an institution way before me, had talked to so many stay-at-home moms that they created a script. If the size of your business allows for that much time and dedication to craft all of that, go for it. Or, more simply speaking, if you're the business owner that's done the sales and now you're looking to hand that. Off to a sales team, you can absolutely write a sales playbook that walks them through what a good sale sell is going to look like for them. What it's going to look like for them is the same thing it looks like for every business outside of specific language that you may use for your target audience. And that's going to be you're going to qualify the prospect, you're going to present your solutions, and then you're going to ask them for the business. So, in an effort to keep it simple, stick to the shortest sales funnel that you know and go forward with that. Qualification, of course, is asking all of the questions, authentically being curious about the prospect in front of you. When I ran my last business, which we grew to a$6 million run rate in under three years, my team would come up to me and say, Katie, you're going to be so proud of me. I've scheduled X amount of meetings with these clients. And I would literally, they'd have such pride about this. And I'd say, Great, what color underwear are they wearing today? And yes, it was absolutely rhetorical. I did not really care. That didn't have anything to do with my business. The point was, how well do you know them? How many questions did you ask them about them? Or are you just happy you have a check mark on your I have some sales activities list? Because that one does mean no good. The other one is gold.

SPEAKER_00: 41:20

Yeah. You have some books behind you, and we talked earlier about those books. What is a good beginner sales book for listeners to pick up?

SPEAKER_01: 41:32

Um, a good beginner sales book is gonna be something like traction, right? So I actually Gino uh here. Traction. Uh Gino Wickman is a great author. He's got a couple of different books available, but traction's always a really good one to start with. I have an entire you want to know about uh selling, go get a classic. Jeffrey Gittimer's Little Red Book of Selling. He'll make you giggle while you're nibbling on sales tidbits. Um and then, of course, if you're a business owner, there is no point in selling if you are not going to keep any of it.

SPEAKER_00: 42:18

Yeah, profit first.

SPEAKER_01: 42:20

There's some amazing things that you can take away from profit first uh that I that we teach in my program, and to anybody who will listen, really like keep your cash, build your business so that you get to keep your cash. That's kind of the point.

SPEAKER_00: 42:35

How can someone learn more? How can they connect with you? Where's the blit best place to do that?

SPEAKER_01: 42:41

Uh the best place to do that is on LinkedIn. Just drop me a note, Katie Nelson, the sales catalyst. You can also find me at SalesUprising. Uh, if you want more little tidbits, I have a YouTube channel under Sales Uprising where you actually can see me talk to you about sales for like a minute and a half a day. So you want a good laugh? Go check me out there.

SPEAKER_00: 43:02

I cannot imagine. I'm gonna do that as soon as we're done. And so salesuprising.com is the website. Is that the only website that you have for the sales?

SPEAKER_01: 43:12

Did I need more?

SPEAKER_00: 43:13

No. Okay, some people have like a personal and they have a blog and sales uprising, everything, baby.

SPEAKER_01: 43:19

It's all me.

SPEAKER_00: 43:20

Okay, everything even has an about section if you want to learn more about her. Well, I always end with one last question. That is, if you're in a room full of entrepreneurs, business owners, different industries, length of business years in business, what is one thing that's applicable for all of them? And I always say it could be a quote, a book, one last insight, mindset, tip.

SPEAKER_01: 43:45

What I would say is that they're just like you. And don't forget that. Regardless of education level, experience level, um, all of us have this big dream to do something to make it under our own steam and with the help of some people that we hire. So don't ever think that you're not ready to be the biggest entrepreneur in the room or that you're the smallest. We're all the same. We all have the same dream. Amen.

SPEAKER_00: 44:18

Amen. Well, you've been a wealth of information and a blessing to many. Katie, thank you so much. Wish you continued success.

SPEAKER_01: 44:25

Thanks, Michael.

SPEAKER_00: 44:26

My pleasure. Thank you for listening to Small Business Pivots. This podcast is created and produced by my company, Boss. Our business is growing yours. Boss offers flexible business loans with business coaching support. Apply in minutes and get approved and funded in as little as 24 to 48 hours at business ownership simplified.com. If you're enjoying this podcast, don't forget to hit the subscribe button and share it as well. If you need help growing your business, email me at Michael at michaeldmorson.com. We'll see you next time on Small Business Pivots.