Latest / Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love / 229: BEST OF 2023 | Nikki Rausch | Improve Your Sales Conversations to Skyrocket Your Revenue

Transcript

229: BEST OF 2023 | Nikki Rausch | Improve Your Sales Conversations to Skyrocket Your Revenue · Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, Helping you create a profitable, sustainable law firm you love

• 0:00
  Intro: Happy holidays. We hope you have scheduled some time this month with your friends and family to rest, relax, and be together. Devina is taking a brief hiatus from recording new episodes of the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. We hope you enjoy our best of 2023 lineup of the most popular episodes of 2023, and we'll be back in January with more episodes of the number one podcast for women in law in The US. Welcome to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast.
• 0:27
  What if you could hang out with successful women lawyers, ask them about growing their firms, managing resources like time, team, and systems, mastering money issues, and more? Then take an insight or two to help you build a wealth generating law firm. Each week, your host, Devina Frederick, takes an in-depth look at how to think like a CEO, attract clients who you love to serve and will pay you on time, and create a profitable, sustainable firm you love. Devina is founder and CEO of Wealthy Woman Lawyer, and her goal is to give you the information you need to scale your law firm business from 6 to 7 figures in gross annual revenue so you can fully fund and still have time to enjoy the lifestyle of your dreams. Now, here's to Vina.
• 1:15
  Davina: Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast. I'm your host, Vina Frederick, and I'm excited today to have a friend of mine on Nikki Rausch, who has twenty five years of sales success and an extensive background in neuro linguistic programming. She works with her clients to help them become better at having sales conversations because we know no matter what business you're in, if somebody doesn't buy what you're selling, then you're not going to have a profitable, business. You'll have a charity or a hobby, maybe, but not a business.
• 1:51
  So welcome, Nikki. I'm so glad you're here.
• 1:53
  Nikki: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to have this conversation with you.
• 1:57
  Davina: Wonderful. So tell us a little bit about your journey and kind of your expertise. Give us an insight into how you came to where you are now with your business Sales Maven.
• 2:08
  Nikki: Well, my background is as a professional sales rep, and I came from the technology space. I was working in a field that was very male dominated. I was one of very few women in the industry. And so I really had to figure out kind of my approach to sales. And, you know, I'm not the, like, go out and hunt the big game and, like, that kind of bro marketing, like, push, never take no for an answer kind of stuff.
• 2:34
  Davina: The dragon.
• 2:35
  Intro: Yeah. You
• 2:36
  Davina: know, if everybody wants to eat, somebody's gotta slay the dragon.
• 2:38
  Nikki: That's right. That doesn't really fit my style. And so I needed to figure out a way that I could be successful at what I was doing and that it would feel genuine to me. It would feel authentic in the way that I was approaching. And through my sales career, I was always really curious about personal and professional development.
• 2:58
  And I found my way to studying neuro linguistic programming. And I started studying it. And if that's a new term to anybody listening, it's essentially the study of communication. The way we process information in our brains is the neuro piece. Linguistics is the language piece.
• 3:12
  And then the programming piece, although it sounds maybe negative, but it's really just about habits and patterns. So I always describe NLP as it's it's more like learning how to add flexibility to your behavior to put the other person at ease. So I started studying NLP because I thought it would make me a better salesperson, and it certainly did. But what it really did was it improved my ability to develop deep connections with people, to be a better communicator, to be a better listener, all the things that make for rapport and relationship development. And as I started, like, applying what I was learning into my sales career, I was having a lot of success.
• 3:48
  I was the top producing sales rep in North America for one of the larger companies in the world, and I was the traveling road warrior. They said, like, this is no joke. My airline that I used to fly all the time used to send me a Christmas gift every year because that's how much I flew with them. So think about whether or not you've ever received a Christmas gift from an airline, then you'll know you're a road boy or you're a traveler. So I was doing a lot of that, and I was just about to turn 40.
• 4:14
  And I felt like there should be something a little more fulfilling in my life, and I wasn't sure what it was. And I got really curious about it. And I ended up leaving the industry and going to work with my NLP teacher because I thought, you know, I love NLP and the impact that it makes in people's lives and in their world. And I'm gonna help her grow her business, and I'll do sales and marketing and event planning for her. I don't think she was really ready for somebody like me who is used to making really, really good money, somebody who had that really, like, internal drive.
• 4:44
  And I don't think she wanted to work as much as I could sell her to work. So it wasn't a great fit, but what it did is it was the first time I got to really hang around entrepreneurs and specifically women entrepreneurs because I think I mentioned I came from a very male dominated industry. And as I was getting to know these super cool women entrepreneurs, I love that entrepreneurial spirit. I didn't think it was ever something I really had. And the thing that I really attracted to about entrepreneurs is they're so filled with passion.
• 5:13
  So filled for passion for what they're doing. And I used to just wanted to, like, rub up against them. And I was always like, maybe some of that passion will rub off on me. So as I started to get to know some of these super amazing entrepreneurial women, I realized that they were really struggling to make money in their business. And the piece that they didn't understand was that sales conversation.
• 5:35
  And that's really like, I'd been doing it for so long. It felt very natural to me. And I just started helping some of them on the side. Like, you know, I was there to talk about NLP trainings and classes, but I just wanted to make an impact for them. And the people that started using the things that I was teaching, they were getting good results with it.
• 5:53
  And somebody pulled me aside finally and was like, why aren't you teaching women how to sell like this? It's so easy. And I thought, well, that's stupid because who would pay you for easy? But it turns out my business was really born out of wanting to hang around with women entrepreneurs and teach them something that was gonna make an impact in their life. And now people pay me money and I have the best job in the world.
• 6:14
  And SalesMaven was just born out of me wanting to be of service and share skill set that I had. And it's been a great ride.
• 6:22
  Davina: Wow. Wow. I love it. I particularly wanted to invite you on here today because our audience are lawyers, but beyond being lawyers, they are law firm owners. And this obviously is geared toward women.
• 6:36
  We do have male listeners as well, but law firm owners. When you become a law firm owner, you have taken a step beyond just being an attorney. You have stepped into being a business owner, an entrepreneur. One of the most challenging aspects of that is realizing that you've got to get business, you've got to have conversations with people and sell them your services, sell them your legal services, or they're going to go to the attorney across the street. It's a real mindset shift for us because when we go through law school, we're taught we're one of three learned professions, theology, and medical and legal, right?
• 7:11
  You're the lawyer, your doctor, or you're a minister or priest or something. And this is something that we're taught in law school, and we're not taught practical skills like how to actually take your law degree and use it and turn it into money. But if you own your own law firm business, or if you're working for a firm and you're responsible for building a practice, you have to develop sales skills. And you may not like to call it sales, but really, truly, that's what you're doing in a consultation. And I find a lot of lawyers get tripped up in the consultation because they believe the consultation is where they give a legal advice.
• 7:43
  And really, the consultation is where they're assessing the case, determining if it's a right fit, and then helping the buyer make that decision. So I wanted to invite you on to give us, I think a lot of women law firm owners have told me that they're uncomfortable with that part. They don't know how to ask for money. They're afraid of people's reaction to their fees, which can seem like a lot to people who are not used to working with lawyers. So could you give us a little bit of insight today in sort of how to adjust our mindset to begin with around this consultation or the sales conversation.
• 8:19
  Nikki: Yeah. Yeah. Well, one of the big misconceptions about sales is that sales is something that you're doing to another person. And I teach that sales is something that you do with. So when you're doing something to somebody that feels manipulative and it feels uncomfortable and weird, when you start to reframe what the actual sales process is and you realize that it's a collaboration, that what you're doing in the sales process is understanding, Does the person have a need or want?
• 8:47
  And do I have a solution? Can I help solve a problem for them? And if so, my job is to offer the opportunity for them to get that solution. And the way they get it is by paying me money. So it's such an important distinction.
• 9:02
  Your job is not to convince people to hire you by demonstrating your expertise, by, you know, spouting out legal advice that the person isn't paying you for. Because what you think you're doing is you think you're demonstrating your expertise and why the person should hire you. But what you're really doing unintentionally is you're saying to this person, what I offer has no value because I don't charge for it, so I'm just gonna give it to you for free. And what has no value, people won't do anything with. And therefore, when they walk away, they'll be like, that person's not very good.
• 9:35
  I better look for somebody else. So they're not gonna hire you. And because they don't hire you, now they miss out on having their problem solved and getting the solution that you can provide. So super important to make that distinction. The consultation process and the way I teach it so I teach a five step process to a sales conversation.
• 9:53
  I call it the selling staircase. My third book is written all about the five steps. Step three is that consultation. I call it discovery. And the reason I teach it as discovery is because, again, your job is to understand what's the problem, what's the need, the want.
• 10:08
  And the way that you do that is by asking really smart questions. And those smart questions should lead the person who you're asking the questions of. It should lead them down this path to starting to uncover, like, oh, you know something or you can potentially help me with something. So you're the right solution for me. So it helps them self identify that they're in the right place.
• 10:32
  It creates safety for them. And now they're gonna feel really comfortable and good about themselves for finding the right person to help them solve whatever their challenge is. Right. So it's not to give legal advice. It's to uncover the problem through good questions and offer a potential solution, which is in the form of hiring you, not giving it for free.
• 10:57
  Davina: Yeah, I love that. And I cannot agree more. And I used to do that. So I understand like it's the learned skill. It's a skill that people have to learn.
• 11:05
  You mentioned something that I want to dig a little deeper in, and that is you use the term self identify. So talk to me a little bit about how we get people to self identify because this is a part of them making the decision through their own agency, not us convincing because we start getting into feeling like we're trying to convince then we start to feel that manipulation energy that a lot of us think feels with. So how do we distinguish that in terms of maybe language?
• 11:33
  Nikki: It's in the form of a question. So for instance, now some of these questions are going to be specific to the case or the reason they've come in to talk to you, or some of them are going to be specific to your law firm and the things that your expertise. Right? But just a general question that I think 99% of people should be asking in a sales conversation is what's important to you in regards to and then you insert whatever the context is. So what's important to you in regards to selecting the attorney you're gonna work with, for instance.
• 12:02
  That could be the question. Now, their answer to that question. Chances are they haven't actually thought of an answer to that question yet. So, by you posing that question and putting it planted in their mind, now, our minds are like Google. If you ask our minds and or Google a question, it's going to try to come up with an answer.
• 12:23
  So, when you ask a smart question like, What's important to you in regards to the law firm that you're going to choose to represent you in this matter? Okay, for instance, that might be the question. And they have to sit back and go, What is important to me? Well, the first thing that's important is that there's a good communication between us, that you have an expertise in this particular whatever the issue is. You have some kind of an expertise around this And that your fees are within, you know, an affordable range for me.
• 12:52
  Maybe those are their answers. I don't know. So you just got a myriad of information from them on how to earn their business. So when we get through the discovery process, the asking of the questions, and we get to the place where we're gonna offer a solution to them, now I'm gonna reference back the fact that, you know, one of the things that you can count on from us is our communication. And this is how we do this with you.
• 13:18
  The other thing is that we do have an extensive background in this particular area. Here are some of our, you know, case studies or here are some of our results that we've received or whatever you're gonna share there. Because now you're just speaking to them and what is really important to them. It's like if you go to a foreign country and you don't speak the language. It's super uncomfortable.
• 13:39
  And then when you find that one restaurant that you go into and somebody speaks your language and you're kinda like, oh, thank goodness. It's been so hard to talk to all these other attorneys because they just don't speak my language. And now they're talking to you and you're speaking their language. They're like, oh, I'm gonna come back. This is where I'm gonna go.
• 13:56
  So we wanna put people at ease. So you got to speak their language. And when you can talk back your solution specific to the things that are important to them, they're gonna self identify and go, well, you're my lawyer. I don't want to work with anybody else. You're the person.
• 14:12
  I feel like you see me, you hear me, you get me. And that's what we want.
• 14:16
  Davina: Yeah. I know you work with women entrepreneurs in all different kinds of businesses, whether it's something like coaching or health, you know, teaching people about health or teaching people about business or being a lawyer or financial advisor or whatever it is. How do you help people get out of the habit of going right into doing the thing that is their area of expertise in a sales call, in a consultation. In other words, we spent so many years as lawyers learning how to be a good lawyer and learning the answers to questions that we still don't know the answers to all questions, but the few that we know, we're eager when somebody comes in our area of expertise. And I find this is the case with coaching.
• 14:56
  It's the case with whether you're a yoga coach or you're a business coach or you're, you know, any kind of advisory role that the thing you automatically want to start doing is telling people what you know, because you have this knowledge. Help people get out of that habit.
• 15:11
  Nikki: So the easiest way to get out of that habit is to have a set list of questions that you ask and have a process for your consultation. Now, the other advantage of having a process is that it's easy then for you to teach that process to somebody else on your team who might at some point be taking those consultation calls for you. So you wanna have a structured process with some structured questions. Now that is something that I work with clients on all the time is, like, what are the right questions they should be asking? What's the process?
• 15:41
  How do you pre frame at the start of the call to create safety? How do you open it up so that you're the lead in the conversation? It's not just somebody, like, spewing their story at you, which as much as a story is interesting, it's also a huge time suck. And if you're only going to allow, which I think you should in a consultation, no more than thirty minutes, you need to have a structure to it so that you move through it. And if you don't have a structure, then it's easy to go off book.
• 16:06
  It's easy to just, like, start offering advice. And I'm the same. I mean, I love to coach. You spend a half an hour with me, and you're just asking me random questions. If we're sitting at coffee, like, I'm probably gonna offer you some coaching advice.
• 16:21
  Because I love to coach. But I also know that when I just give coaching in those moments, it has no value. I always say it's kind of like, imagine all of your resources. You went to school. You got this law degree.
• 16:34
  You passed the bar. Like, you show up to that meeting with so much expertise. And I would say, imagine all of your expertise, all your years of experience, everything you know, everything that you bring to your clients and what they can benefit. Imagine behind you is all these resources, and it's like a big, beautiful beach. You know, you go to the beach, and the beach is beautiful.
• 16:55
  It's made up of millions and billions of grains of sand. Every one of those grains of sand is one little piece of your expertise or knowledge or years of experience and all these things that you bring, all your resources. And you're in that consultation, and you know that behind you is this big beautiful beach with all these resources. You give this person a grain of sand. Because to you, it's like nothing.
• 17:17
  Because you got this big beautiful beach behind you. You've got all these grains of sand. You got billions of grains of sand. You give them one. They don't know what's behind you.
• 17:27
  They don't know the beach is there. They don't know what you know. So that grain of sand to them is the beach. You give it for free. Why should they hire you now?
• 17:37
  Davina: It's just enough to go do something with that they don't have to make that decision in the moment. They can go take that knowledge and do something else instead of doing what they really need to do, which is hire you because to help you see the full thing. You see the full speech as it were.
• 17:54
  Nikki: Yeah. Right? Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.
• 17:56
  So important to have a structure so that you keep yourself from coaching, giving advice. So a structure in the set list of questions. And it's not that you necessarily have to ask every single question on your set list of questions, But having a set list of questions kinda keeps you on script. And I don't mean like you should sound like a robot, but you should have a process and a structure because it's something that you can duplicate. How about that?
• 18:22
  Over and over and over again. Once you start to do it, then it becomes easy. You will also start to pick up red flags because you'll go like, oh, whenever I ask this question and this is the kind of answer I get, that usually indicates this is not a good perspective client for me. So I'm gonna bless and release this person. I'm not even gonna get to the place where I offer a chance for us to work together.
• 18:44
  Or like, oh, when clients say this to me, then I know this is a really good opportunity, and my expertise is gonna fit really well here. So that's where the magic starts to happen because you'll have enough experience. It's like building a muscle. Like, you get to this place where you're like, I've done so many reps that I've got this muscle. I know how to do this.
• 19:06
  I know how to pull this lever. I know what's gonna happen here. So, you get much better at identifying who are your ideal clients, who are people that you should bless and release and encourage them to go find somebody else to work with because they're not going to really be a good fit in your practice or they're going to be, like, frankly, more trouble than they're worth.
• 19:26
  Davina: Yeah, I've certainly heard many, many stories from women law firm owners with those types of clients. And I think that comes out of a kind of a lack mindset around if I let this one go, then there's money walking out the door. And so there's fear that money won't continue to come in the door. There won't be more prospects, won't be money coming from other places. I often think with women law firm owners, with people in general, that learning the certain words that you say and use is huge.
• 19:53
  Having a script or a formula or something that is your guide is something that unless you get it from someone who's already done it, you probably will be missing something in there. I know for me, when I started learning how to have sales conversations or consultations, I didn't know what questions to ask or what language. It wasn't until I got some sort of guidance on the type of questions I should ask, in what order, what the goal was, that I really got much better at that. But I think there's another piece and that is maybe self esteem or confidence. I hear a lot of people talk about imposter syndrome.
• 20:31
  This idea that somebody is going to find out that I'm a baby lawyer and I started this business, or that I've been doing this. I have many people, women lawyers tell me, well, I've worked as a lawyer for years, but I just started my own firm, my own practice. And so that self confidence in the legal part they have, but in the running of the business part, including consultations, they don't have. So what advice would you have for people who may be sort of struggling with that, their confidence in having sales conversations?
• 21:02
  Nikki: Yeah. So some of this, it's a mindset thing, right? So you got to work on your mindset. And I actually teach a process from my background in neuro linguistic programming. It's called the NLP Mandala.
• 21:13
  It's a way to, before you go into that meeting, to really be present and also be focused and show up from this place of credibility and confidence around who you are. One of the biggest things I have found, and I experienced this myself when I started my own business, until somebody pointed out to me what I was doing. And then I was like, oh, it was like a light bulb went on because I was diminishing. I have an extensive background in sales. I've been in sales for over twenty five years, and I've had my business.
• 21:44
  I'm going into my tenth year in business. And when I started out, I acted like I didn't know anything, which is not true because I already showed up with, like, seventeen plus years of sales experience and pretty significant, closing multimillion dollar deals, you know, having achieved some really high levels of success in my industry. And I discounted those because I was like, well, those don't count because it wasn't when I was, you know, when I had SalesMaven. And that's just not true. So one of the things I work with clients on a lot is really standing in this place of their own credibility.
• 22:19
  So just to give credit where credit is due, NLP Mandala actually comes from a story when JFK was elected president. There was a conversation between him and his press secretary that he was kinda nervous of being in front of the press because what if they asked him a question that he didn't know the answer to? I mean, he's the president of The United States. He should have all the answers. Right?
• 22:42
  And I think in business, we think we should have all the answers. You know? Lawyers do, especially. Yeah. Of course.
• 22:48
  Yeah. So that's a lot of pressure to show up from this place. So I would imagine that being the president and being a lawyer, there are some similarities around pressure.
• 22:58
  Davina: We like to think where there's similarities between the presidency and practicing law.
• 23:02
  Nikki: Yeah. Yeah. Why not? His press secretary pulled him aside and he said, I want you to before you go in front of the press, you've gotta focus on your state management. So that's mindset.
• 23:13
  Your state management, your state of mind. I want you to say these four things to yourself before you go into this meeting, and I don't want you to just say them. You have to actually feel it in your body. Now for anybody who is super pragmatic, they probably just thought to myself, oh, here's another one of those quacks, you know, talking about feeling stuff in your body. But the thing is, imagine right now that we're all sitting around a big table, and I ask somebody to come and bring and put in front of all of us a juicy slice of a lemon, a big, juicy slice of a lemon.
• 23:44
  And I ask you, now imagine picking that slice up, putting it in your mouth, and sucking all the juice out of that lemon. Can you feel it in your jaw already? Oh, for sure. There's no lemon. There's no lemon in front of us, but we can already feel it because that's how powerful our minds are.
• 24:00
  We know what things feel like in our body. K? So when I say these four statements that I'm gonna give you, imagine what it feels like in your body. And it might take you a little bit of time to do this. By the way, when I first learned this, I learned it on the weekend in an NLP training.
• 24:17
  I had flown to San Francisco that Monday morning for a very high profile meeting. It took me two years to secure this meeting. And I sat out in my rental car, and I was so nervous because I was like, I don't wanna blow it. It took me two years to secure this meeting. Like, what if I blow it?
• 24:36
  And this was back before, like, you know, AirPods and even Bluetooth headsets. So I was sitting in the car, like, really talking to myself. And I was saying these four statements over and over and over again until I really felt them in my body before I went into the meeting. I'll tell you what happened after. But, okay.
• 24:54
  So here's the first statement. I'm glad I'm here. So what does it feel like when you are glad to be somewhere? What does it feel like in your body? And imagine the last place that you went to that you were really thrilled to be.
• 25:05
  Could be a vacation. It could be with friends for lunch. It could be some new hot, you know, restaurant, whatever it is. I'm glad I'm here. What does that feel like in your body?
• 25:14
  The second statement is I'm glad you're here. So think about the person that you're gonna meet and think about if they were somebody that you already knew, like, and trust. Like, I know, like, and trust this person. What does it feel like when you show up and you are about to have a conversation with somebody that you are truly grateful, glad they are there? K?
• 25:33
  Now the third statement is the power statement, and this is I know what I know. This is that place where you stand in your credibility and you go, gosh, I don't have to know the answer to every single question because I know what I know. And you're a smart lawyer. Dang it. If you don't know the answer to something, you know how to find it.
• 25:52
  Davina: Right.
• 25:53
  Nikki: Right? Right. So you can show up from that place of confidence of I know what I know. And then the fourth statement is I care about you. And what is it like when you really do care for the other person?
• 26:04
  Doesn't mean that you're, you know, having odd weird feelings for them. But just like when you really truly care about somebody's well-being, what does that feel like? Now, sometimes when I teach this, people always say, if one of those statements doesn't resonate, then change it. Find something else that feels better to you. So, again, I'm glad I'm here.
• 26:23
  I'm glad you're here. I know what I know. I care about you. So here I am sitting in my rental car saying these things out loud till I get it. It took me about ten minutes.
• 26:32
  And then I went into the meeting. And I am not exaggerating. After I was done presenting to this big group, there was this guy who came up to me and he goes, wow. You seem so glad to be here. And I was like, oh, this works.
• 26:47
  And so I teach it to my clients all the time. I still do it myself. I do it before I get on podcasts. Right? I do it before I have a, like, high profile meeting with a prospective client.
• 27:00
  Sometimes I do it before I have lunch with my mother. Like, I just do this. Like, it's just a part of who I am. Now, it doesn't take me ten minutes anymore because I can say it to myself, and it causes me to shift my state of mind to go, like, be present, Nikki. Show up.
• 27:13
  It's okay if you don't have all the answers to everything. People will ask you questions you don't know the answer to. Sometimes you'll fumble and stumble through a conversation, but you can always go back to, I do know what I know. How many years do you have as being a lawyer? And I can guarantee you, even if you're fresh out of law school, you know a thousand times more about the law than I do.
• 27:35
  You know a thousand times more than the person who's sitting across from you thinking about hiring you. Because if they could do this themselves, they wouldn't be sitting in your office or they wouldn't be on that call with you. So you already know more than they know. They say that most races that people run, whether it's a car race, an actual running race, are won by less than a tenth of a second. All you have to know is a tenth of a second more than the other person to be first.
• 28:03
  That's it.
• 28:03
  Davina: Wow. Wow. I love that. I was giving a presentation on giving presentations, and I was fairly new at giving presentations. But the people who came, I knew that they didn't know as much as I knew about giving presentations or they would not have been there.
• 28:17
  Sometimes it's just you need a little bit more information than the person that is asking you for the information. You don't have to have the whole big picture mapped out about everything. You just need to know enough to help them get to the next step, whatever that is, and then you can figure out what's next. This is fantastic.
• 28:38
  Intro: If you're a fan of the Wealthy Woman Lawyer Podcast, I invite you to join us in the Wealthy Woman Lawyer League as well. In the Wealthy Woman Lawyer League, we share with you our complete framework for scaling a law firm business to high 6 or 7 figures so you can fully fund the lifestyle of your dreams and still have ample time to enjoy it. No more working yourself into the ground for success. In this exclusive for women law firm owners only community, you'll enjoy coaching in an intimate group setting, all the training materials, tools, tips you need to grow your law firm without overwork or overwhelm, and a supportive league of other women lawyers on a similar journey. For more information and to join the league, go to go.wealthywomanlawyer.com/lawyerleague.
• 29:21
  The link is in the show notes. We hope to see you in the league.
• 29:27
  Davina: One of the things that I kind of stands out to me is I hear so many lawyers, some of them young, maybe they don't have the social skills and so they're introverted or socially awkward or whatever. And then some are older and they're a little jaded, having done something for so long. And this idea of the client being, everything's great in business, but for the clients, right? If we didn't have to deal with clients, it would be great. So there's this feeling of almost resentment.
• 29:57
  And I remember a time in one of my businesses where I was realizing that I would get clients and then I would resent it because then suddenly I had to perform. And I had to do a lot of mindset work around that going because, of course, you're going to repel money if you're so focused on your performance that you feel uncomfortable, like getting the clients great, getting money is great, but then you have to do the work. And I've had conversations with others who've had those experiences. They don't realize that they just feel grouchy about their clients. And then when you start uncovering, start going, it's because you're having to do maybe work that you don't like doing or something you're in a position you don't like.
• 30:36
  I think this is fantastic. I also can see where people would go, well, I don't like people. And so I care about you doesn't resonate with me or I'm so socially phobic. I don't like to leave the house. I'm not happy to be here.
• 30:48
  Even if you have those sort of anxieties, by saying this to yourself, will that help you to kind of overcome that? Or do you need to find sort of substitutes for that?
• 30:59
  Nikki: It'll only help you if you can access what it feels like in your body when you say those statements. What does it feel like when the statement is true? Just like imagine the lemon again. Right? What does it feel like in your jaw when you put something super, super sour in your mouth?
• 31:16
  You have to know what that feels like. So if you don't know what it feels like to be glad to be somewhere, it's gonna be a hard one. And if you don't know that you really do care about the other person and there's no judgment in that, by the way. I had a client years ago. She did stand up by night.
• 31:32
  That was, like, her hobby, but something she loved. So she was very funny and very quick. And when I taught her this, she was like, I like it, Nikki, but I do not care about everybody I come into contact with. And I was like, okay. Totally fine.
• 31:46
  Let's Yeah. Come up with Like, please be honest. There's no judgment again about it. Like, I'm totally fine. I'm here to be of service.
• 31:53
  So what's gonna help you? What's gonna help her in this moment? So I said, let's come up with something else. And we played back and forth with some different things. And it wasn't about me telling her what that forced statement should be.
• 32:04
  It was about her finding something that really resonated. And her fourth statement that she ended up coming up with was, I learned something new in every situation. She was a lifelong learner. Learning was very important to her, and so she really loved that. And so that was what she would take into her sales conversations.
• 32:21
  So she knew what it felt like to be glad to be there. She did actually like to be around people. She loved to make people laugh. Like, getting a laugh was like the highlight of life. Right?
• 32:31
  So I'm glad this person's here. She was very confident in who she was. So I know what I know really resonated. And then I learned something new in every situation felt good to her because it allowed for her to feel excited about going into the conversation because she knew she was gonna learn something. So you do need to know what it feels like in your body.
• 32:48
  And if one zero four or two zero four of those statements don't resonate, then change them. And if you don't even like that, throw that out and find something else that allows for you. What is it gonna take for you to really focus and manage your state? And there was a study done years ago where they took people in really high, high stress negotiations. And, you know, we're trying to understand what's the difference between the person who could go into a really high stake negotiation and kinda keep their cool versus the person who would go into a high stake situation, negotiation, and kinda crumble.
• 33:23
  And they found consistently across the board that the difference between the person who would keep their cool versus the person who would crumble was that those people who would keep their cool did something to manage their state of mind before they entered the conversation. So this is why I offer the NLP Mandala. There's other things that you could do that would help for you to manage your state of mind. And that's really the point in what I'm offering here today. Yeah,
• 33:54
  Davina: I think it's so powerful. And I couldn't agree more. Just language like instead of I have to do this, I choose to do this. I mean, that's for me something that I use all the time. I've never been somebody who loves to work out, but it's necessary for my health.
• 34:08
  So I like it a whole lot better when I say to myself, I'm choosing to do this. I want to go do this. I want to go work out now or I need to go work out now because stress or whatever. So it becomes much more instead of I have to go get on the Peloton or I have to, I switch it to something that I'm choosing because truly I want the outcome. Have switched to saying, I want the process.
• 34:33
  I want the process as well as the outcome. I want the process because I find that the process itself gives me daily relief and energy and all of those things. Anything you can do to sort of switch your thoughts, what's the thoughts turns to things, know, so anything you can switch your thoughts and change your feelings about something is going to make a difference. You talk about specifically about being very protective and proactive about managing your mindset. Tell me a little bit more about that.
• 35:03
  Nikki: So I truly, truly believe that you need to have boundaries around who gets access into your mindset because it's easy for, like, people who turn up in your life in lots of different ways with, I'm gonna put in air quotes, good intentions, who wanna give you feedback or advice unsolicited. Oftentimes, that feedback or advice, that unsolicited advice can feel leave you feeling pinched, can leave you feeling less than it kind of puts a chink in that confidence. And so I think it's really, really important that, yes, we all should be open to criticism and feedback, constructive criticism and feedback from trusted people. But not everybody has earned that place to have that trust and have proven themselves to have those good intentions. So I'm really clear with people when they say, so, Nikki, I just thought you should know.
• 36:03
  That is an indicator right off the bat for me. If somebody uses that language with me, I'll usually stop and say I'll hold my hand up in the stop kind of mode, but not quite as harsh, a little softer. And I'll say, now let me check with you before you say what it is that you're gonna say. Is this something that is, like, absolutely imperative that I know this in this moment? Because I have to check my own mindset.
• 36:26
  Because sometimes I'm in a mindset where I can take feedback, good, bad, ugly, and it'll just roll off me if it's you know, if I don't agree with it. But there are other times where I can be very vulnerable. And if I receive feedback in those moments, it can really crush me. It can, you know, get into my head and it can cause, you know, some long term stuff where it can take me days sometimes to get out of this. Like, everybody hates me.
• 36:56
  I should just close my business. This is I'm a failure. Like, all of these things. So being really clear as to who gets to give you feedback. And this is also, you know, now people feel like because they can give you feedback on social media.
• 37:09
  And then, you know, it's learning to say no. I don't A lot of times, especially when people want to post something on social media or if somebody wants to send me an email that feels frankly rude and hurtful. Right? Then in my mind, I actually have some things that I do to protect my mindset. So the first thing I do is I unsubscribe them from my email list because that's an asset in my business.
• 37:36
  And I have to pay for people to be on it. And I get to choose whether or not people get to remain on it based on how they treat me and my team. It's my own little thing. Now to them, it probably means nothing. Right?
• 37:47
  Like, who cares that Nikki unsubscribed me? But I care. I care because I'm choosing using your words. I'm choosing who gets to be on that list. And I am very respectful of anybody I come into contact with, and I expect the same.
• 38:03
  And if you're gonna be disrespectful in some type of way that you communicate with me, you get put on to you either get unsubscribed. And I actually have clients who have been really rude to my team, and they don't necessarily know this, but they get put on a special list in my service. That means that they don't ever get any promotions from me. So if I'm doing a promotion, they don't get it because frankly, I'm not going to go out of my way to make it easy for them to work with me.
• 38:31
  Davina: Right. Right. I do very similar things. I have two nephews who are 20. We talk about social media all the time.
• 38:38
  And I tell them I'm 57 years old. I have a lot of tools in my toolkit to manage my emotions at this stage of my life. Because I've gone through a lot, I've learned a lot and I've educated myself a lot. So I can't imagine being subjected to social media without those tools. Because even as somebody with all of the tools that I have, there are things that people say and do.
• 39:02
  I've gotten emails. It's very strange, just random. Have somebody email me, they'll get something for my promotion, I'll get an email and I'm like, how easy would it have been for them just to click the unsubscribe button? But I just do it for them And I just go, what did you say earlier about bless and release? That what you said?
• 39:17
  Nikki: Bless and release. Yeah.
• 39:18
  Davina: I try to bless and release and let that go. But I know that it can be much more difficult when you're actually dealing with people in person. Sometimes with clients, I know, especially if you've got contracts with clients or if you're an attorney and you contracted for this service to do something, and they're going to be clients that you miss the red flags for something and you still have to function and service those clients to a degree. Now there may become a point where you can let them go, but as attorneys, there's a point from which there is no return in cases because judges won't let you out of it. But protecting your mindset is still critical because that's really the only thing you can control is your mind and your behavior.
• 40:01
  So I think it's the same way in sales conversation. You choose to be there. You're choosing to be there because you're wanting a successful practice. So getting to a place where I'm happy this person is here. And then once they become a client, maintaining that I think is important.
• 40:18
  So it's not just having that these going through these statements when you're before you go into a sales conversation, you also may need to keep doing that in all of your client meetings after because things may get challenging, especially in certain areas of the law when people are really emotional and it may be incumbent upon you to keep and set a tone, you know, Yes. To something,
• 40:41
  Nikki: There's also something known. I learned this from my NLP teacher. She taught us about It's a term called selective amnesia. And she actually taught this to me when I was still in sales and I had started to work for a new company. And there was a We used to work with rep firms.
• 40:56
  This is from the manufacturer level, not relevant to the attorneys. But the rep firms technically worked for us. We were the manufacturer. The rep firms worked for us. And there was one rep firm, this guy in particular, who was very disrespectful in a lot of ways to me, like, condescending constantly, liked to correct me about stuff that, you know, frankly, he wasn't even right about.
• 41:19
  And I started thinking, like, gosh. You know, every time I would have to go on a, like, a ride day with him and go visit clients, Like, my stomach would be in knots. I just hated being around this guy. And so at some point, my NLP teacher taught me about selective amnesia where sometimes you just need to say to somebody, like, this is the way it is, and you need to be a little bit harsh. Now as a woman, sometimes that attaches a word, right, that we usually get called when we're standing in our place of credibility and authority and not letting people just, you know, bulldoze over us.
• 41:52
  And then once you have that, once you've said that, then the next time you interact with this person, you act as if it didn't happen. You just act your normal professional self. So I remember having to have a really difficult conversation and let this person know. He actually called me, screamed on the phone, and hung up about something that he was out of line about. So the next time I met with him, I let him know, this is the way that I handle my accounts, and this is what I expect in the way that you interact with me and with my accounts.
• 42:21
  And if that's gonna be a problem, let us know. Let me know. And I'll go and talk with my boss about finding another rep firm in this area. And he was very like you know, I was being a little more harsh than how I just said it to you. I was being a little bit more aggressive around it, but I wasn't being unprofessional.
• 42:37
  I was just saying, like, here's the line, dude. Don't cross it. Because if you cross it, you're gonna be out of a job. You know, for him in that particular, it was hundreds of thousands of dollars to him, to his business. So the next time I saw him, I just acted selective amnesia.
• 42:53
  I was professional. Not that my stomach still didn't have a little bit of knots. But, you know, he just went right along with me, graceful, and he was so much more respectful. And as a matter of fact, when I left the company, he was outraged that they didn't do everything to keep me. And he called me and he's like, I don't wanna work with this new person.
• 43:12
  I want you back. You know, he was so, like and I just remember thinking this is the craziest thing because he was such a child. He was such a little brat in the beginning to
• 43:23
  Davina: work And he stood up to him. It made such
• 43:25
  Nikki: a
• 43:25
  Davina: huge difference. Right?
• 43:26
  Nikki: Stand up to a bully and then all of a sudden but you don't have to stand up to the bully and then continue to, like, point out that they were a bully. You just you stand up. You stand in your place of credibility. The next time you see them, you act as if all is well between us. And now the onus is on him to decide, is all well between us, or am I going to still act like a brat?
• 43:48
  And in this particular case, he chose to now handle his communication with me in a much more professional way. And I can guarantee you, he would never call and hang up on me again.
• 44:00
  Davina: Oh, that's wonderful. And that feels so good when you do the hard thing and you have the hard conversation and draw the line. It can be a lot of people will avoid having a conversation and we'll just continue to sort of put up with it. And it usually gets worse in those cases. I bet you had to sit in the parking lot probably fifteen or twenty minutes before you had that conversation.
• 44:25
  Nikki: I felt sick to my stomach. I'll tell you that. Now, I say this in sales, but I think this in any client relationship too. There needs to be a balance of power. And I teach this a lot in sales.
• 44:36
  You shouldn't hold more power over your client because they'll feel less than. They'll feel shamed. They'll feel abused by you. And frankly, they'll go find somebody else that can deliver what you can deliver. But if your client holds all the power, if you let them have more power in the relationship than you do, then the fact of the matter is they will mistreat you.
• 44:55
  And this is a little bit of human nature, frankly. We have a little bit of this in us, and we've seen this. And there were two studies that were done years ago. One was about parking spaces. This was done, I think, in the nineties.
• 45:07
  They found that if you were in a busy parking lot and somebody was waiting for a spot, it took the person who was in the spot almost twice as long to exit that parking spot than if nobody was waiting. Because we act a little bit like, this is my spot, and I'll take all the time I want to get out of it, and you can wait. Right? So there's a little bit of that in human nature. There was also one about payphones.
• 45:32
  This is gonna really date me. You remember payphones? Like, most people are probably like, what? There were these things on the side of the street. Payphones.
• 45:40
  They did a study where if nobody was waiting, it was just the person using the phone, the average length of the call was, like, thirty seconds or less. If there was one person waiting in line behind the person using, the average length of the call would go to like sixty seconds. If there were two people waiting to use the phone, the average length of the call would go to four minutes. Wow. It's human nature for people to abuse when there isn't a balance of power to abuse a little bit.
• 46:10
  Doesn't mean everybody will, but there will be that client. If you act like they hold all the power in your relationship, they will abuse you. They'll either be disrespectful in the way they speak to you. They won't show up to their appointments on time. You know, all the things, all the little things that start to kinda eat away at you and start to make you feel like, ugh, I don't even wanna meet with this person.
• 46:32
  They drive me nuts. Right? Right. But if you can make sure that you maintain balance of power, and sometimes that is by letting people know that, hey, our meeting's at ten. If you're not able to make it at ten, that's absolutely fine.
• 46:44
  Please know that the meter starts at ten. You'll be charged from that on. You know? Or however you need to do that. Then you have selective amnesia the next time they show up and you go, thank you so much for being here on time.
• 46:54
  Great. Let's get started. Right? Like, you don't have to rub it in. So it's not trying to, like, have a weird balance, but we want to be even as much as possible in any relationship.
• 47:05
  Davina: Okay boundaries to for yourself. I think a lot of time people misunderstand boundaries and then they think a boundary is something other people should or shouldn't do. It's really something that you're saying this is not okay with me. So I'm going to say I'm going to preserve this time for this or that. I see this all the time with things like emails or phone calls.
• 47:26
  Clients are emailing me on the weekend. Well, a boundary is I don't respond to emails on the weekend. A lot of email because for me, sometimes the time that I can sit down and think about something might be on a weekend, but I have no expectation of others to respond in that timeframe. Oftentimes I make a point to say, I have no expectation for you to respond. I'm doing this because it's convenient for me at the moment.
• 47:48
  But the boundary drawing part is not about getting angry at people for doing something. The boundary part is for you to set for yourself. I don't do this or I do this, and then communicate that.
• 48:03
  Nikki: I love that you brought that up.
• 48:05
  Davina: We could go into that for probably another hour. I know I've kept you for a long time today. Lots of stuff that we've great stuff that we've discussed, and I really appreciate it. Tell people how, first of all, how we can find your latest book and also where we should go to learn more about you and connect with you if we want more help with sales conversations.
• 48:24
  Nikki: Thank you. Thank you. Well, you can find my books anywhere where books are sold really, but, you know, Amazon, Audible, wherever, however you get your books. The latest book is called The Selling Staircase, Mastering the Art of Sales. I think I just gave the subtitle wrong, but it's actually The Art of Relationship.
• 48:42
  Davina: My books because mine are so long.
• 48:45
  Nikki: But if you just type in Nikki Rausch, you'll find it. But I would love to wrap a gift around a way for me to connect with somebody listening. If there's some way that I can be of service, if you're interested in talking about ways that we can work together, this is a way for you to get it. Or if you're just interested in learning a little bit more about how to have effective sales conversations, I have a gift. And it's an ebook and it's called Closing the Sale.
• 49:07
  And it's about building the confidence. And I kind of give some tips around the last three steps of the selling staircase. So closing the sale, you can get it by going to yoursalesmaven.com forward slash w w l for Wealthy Woman Lawyer. So w w l, and you'll get that book. Then we'll be connected.
• 49:25
  Happy to jump on a call with somebody who is struggling with their consultation process or struggling with have that money conversation. Any of those things that will absolutely make a difference to your bottom line as far as sales go. That's what I'm here for.
• 49:41
  Davina: That's wonderful. And that's one part we didn't get into that I might have to bring you back for, and that is the discomfort that people have around discussing their fees. That's a whole topic for another day, so we'll have you But back to talk about in the meantime, go there and get your gift for Wealthy Woman Lawyer, members of our community, a special gift. Go get that. Also I encourage you to check out her book.
• 50:03
  And thanks so much Nikki for being here. I really, really enjoyed it.
• 50:06
  Nikki: Thanks for having me.
• 50:10
  Intro: If you're ready to create more of what you truly desire in your business and your life, then you'll want to visit us at wealthywomanlawyer.com to learn more about how we help our clients create wealth generating law firms with ease.