It happens all the time. Someone says, yes, they want to work with you, and then, somehow, it doesn’t happen. Their payment never arrives, things seem to get strange, or sticky, or complicated. And it just never happens.

Even after you’ve made a great heart connection and there’s been some real trust built, they still ding and ditch, say yes and poof into thin air.

What’s up with that?

Stage Diving Into Your Business

I spent my teen years in the punk rock scene. You know, ripped clothing, funny haircuts, loud and angry music. Stage diving.

Stage diving is an awesome twist on the whole “fall and catch me” trust exercise. You climb up onto the stage with the band, usually three to five feet above the floor. Then you dive out into the crowd. And they catch you. Continue reading →

The Sacred Moment Seminar
Learn how to talk to prospective clients with integrity and heart, and still get paid.
Live in Portland, March 25-26, 2010
No Cost Call on March 3

Selling has had a well-deserved bad reputation for a long time

You’ve probably been pressured into spending money you didn’t have. Or maybe someone just flat-out lied to get your money.

Our culture has some seriously whacked-out attitudes around money, and since selling is where money changes hands, it gets whacked-out, too.

You really care about what you do, so of course you want nothing to do with the slime of sales. So you maybe never handled the sales conversation.

So clients that really could use your services disappear. You struggle to care for yourself and your family. Resentment grows and so does the chasm between you and selling. Continue reading →

You might know that I have a master mind group, actually called a “Brain Trust” in this instance because it was named before I got there, darn it all. I say that because I want to fully disclose that the two things I’m going to mention now are from two of my Brain Trust buddies.

These are people who I’ve seen, and they’ve seen me, as complete messes, in all of our vulnerability, and also in our brilliance. I love them like family, and I have the highest regard for the work they do in the world, which is why I let them mess with me compassionately every two weeks.

Here’s two of them and current things they have going that I’d love for you to know about. Continue reading →

When someone’s interested in an offer of yours and the two of you end up in a conversation, how do you stay connected to their heart and yours?

I was assisting in a class at the Sufi healing school I attended, watching a pair of students as one practiced connecting to the other in prelude to a healing session. The instructions had been to first find your own alignment with Source, then connect to the client’s heart, and then go into the healing.

When you’re talking to a potential client in a sales conversation, it is kind of like a healing. You don’t need to do the healing woo-woo, but the alignment and connection pieces are so important. How often does it happen when someone is talking and talking and the other person is tuning out, overcome by that “glazed eye” syndrome? If you lose connection with someone, you’ve lost the heart of what’s going on.

As I was watching this pair, a small smile crept onto my face. The one in “healer” mode was doing the classic “attempt-to-connect.”—leaning forward, hands outstretched, a curious strained expression on their face.

He was sincerely trying to connect, and it just wasn’t going to work like that.

Let’s talk about connection, shall we?

Connection Already Is

Everything is from the Divine, and everything returns to the Divine. As such, everything is already connected as part of the whole. In fact, “connection” implies that disconnection is possible, and it really isn’t. However, the illusion of disconnection is always available when we get too caught up in the materialist world around us and forget the existence of Source.

The experience of disconnection is a near-constant for us humans. For instance, I can’t clearly hear what my wife is saying to me from the next room. I’m talking to someone and I get triggered because I misinterpret their intention. My cat bites my hand while I’m typing, warning me to not rock his world.

Disconnection is painful, whether it draws blood or not. (Ouch! Rafi! Don’t bite, I’ve got to finish this article…)

Because the experience of disconnection is one of distance, a sense that something or someone is outside our reach, the seemingly intuitive reaction to connect is to reach out, physically, emotionally, or psychically. Often the reaching is completely in vain.

Reaching out can be exhausting. And it can be felt by the other person as a push, an invasion. It can also totally draw a blank, where the connection is as powerful as a spent match that’s been soaked in rainwater for three days.

Take a Cue From Your Senses

None of your five physical senses—taste, hearing, touch, smell, and sight—function by reaching out. They seem to at first blush, but they don’t. Although you may reach your fingertip out to touch a glass pane to check the outside temperature, the sensation of touch is a receptive one. Your finger receives the information from the contact.

Same with sight. Light waves bounce from the objects around you deep into your eyeballs where they land on your retina. Same with your nose, tongue, and ears. All the physical world’s information is coming in to you. You need to do nothing more thansit back and receive to be connected to your environment.

Your heart is a sensory organ as well, a spiritual sensory organ. It puts you in touch with the majestic, unseen mysteries around us. And neither does it reach out. It receives.

It’s challenging, confronting, to receive someone else’s heart into yours as connection. It requires vulnerability and humility. To do it this way means abandoning attempts to wear a mask and control or manipulate the situation. True heart-centered selling is a meeting of hearts.

This heart meeting is one reason that some people shy away from the sales conversation., It can be so vulnerable. That said, you don’t want to expose your deepest self inappropriately or in an unsafe manner.

But don’t worry. Thankfully there are Divine safety measures in place.

The Divine Veil

Source (the Divine, God, however you name the Isness) is the mediator between everything in existence. And the Sufi teachings tell us that the foundation of everything in the physical world is compassion and mercy. There is an innate Divine caring at work that cares for the hearts of everything in love.

What this means in practical terms is that the spiritual world is a safe place, and you don’t need to armor yourself against connections. By trusting Source and opening to receive the people around you, two things are true:

1. Your inner sanctum, your holy of holies in the most tender part of your heart, remains untouched. You know all of that talk in Old Time religions about God being a Jealous God? Well, it’s really just saying that this deep and beautiful place at the core of our soul is only for our connection with the Divine, and the Divine will not let anything in there that doesn’t belong there. You’re safe.

2. Because you aren’t reaching in to someone else, but just receiving what the Divine brings you, you won’t be accessing anything inappropriately. You won’t be violating other people’s boundaries or scavenging through the intimate attic of their heart. You can trust that the Divine will just bring your heart what is appropriate for you to receive, and nothing more.

It Really Works

At the Sacred Moment Seminar, we work with this kind of connection extensively, and the results are astounding. At one end we’ve had participants suddenly feel a deeper sense of intimacy and connection, and consequently trust, the moment one of them wordlessly started receiving the other’s heart.

And at the other end, in role plays during the Seminar, we’ve seen the person playing the prospective client feel so much trust and intimacy that they want to take several steps closer to the one playing the business owner. All without words.

It’s very sweet. So how do you do it?

Keys To Receiving a Heart Connection

• First, connect with your own heart.

That means taking a moment, right now would be a good time, to notice how your heart is feeling. And, no matter what is going on, notice that there is space. Upset? Worried? Stressed? It’s happening in your heart, and it’s already there. So there must be space for it. It must be okay.

Ahhh…

Now, in that space, ask the question, “Is love available even here?” Wait for the answer. Notice how your heart feels when it remembers that love is available.

• Who Do You Want to Connect With?

Notice who you want to connect with, whether they are in the room or not. Focus on them, and then… sit back. Relax. Open. Soften.

There’s an interesting thing you can do where you keep your awareness on the person while at the same time bringing your focus into your heart. I find it very helpful to stay in Remembrance, which is the Sufi practice of calling a name of the Divine into your heart, (as I describe in our free workbook, or other devotional practice that helps you bring awareness to the Divine as mediator of it all.

What do you notice in your heart? In the softness and openness of sitting back and receiving, what are you aware of about the other person? Let yourself be willing to be surprised, and trust it.

This does take some practice, mainly in trusting and letting yourself soften, reversing the years or decades of training we’ve all had to tighten up and outwardly grasp.

• Helpful Add-on: Bowing

In addition to just receiving the heart of the person, let your heart bow in service to this person. Become aware of how you don’t need to take anything from them, you just want to be in service to them as a manifestation of the Divine.

And then bow. You don’t have to literally bow, just let your heart bow. I know that may sound wacky (like the rest of this hasn’t), but I think you know what I mean. Yeah, that. Exactly. You’re doing it.

Attention: This Really Works

I love practical stuff. I love hands-on information and structure. And I also love that the physical reality around us is not the sum total of our existence. The Divine exists. The spiritual realms exist.

With some humility and trust, with some sincerity and practice, bringing this sense of connection to your conversations with potential clients will have a tremendous impact on your effectiveness. And it just feels darn good.

Let me know how it goes.

p.s. Seem like a lot to grasp from an article?

I teach this live, and people practice it together, and everyone, everyone in the room gets results.. We’re doing it again March 25-26 as part of the Sacred Moment Seminar: How to talk to potential clients with integrity and heart and still get paid.

The sales conversation is often treated like the unwanted stepchild in business, and yet there is so much possibility for healing and love in these conversations. Plus, it’s that moment where you get paid or you don’t.

It’s over two-thirds full already. Read about it, and if it speaks to you, join us. The Sacred Moment Seminar.

About fifteen months ago my one-year old baby yoga practice came to an abrupt end when our twin sons arrived on the scene. More than a year later, it’s time to start figuring out how to get back into it.

The class I was in before isn’t available because the teachers left town, and that time of the morning doesn’t work anyway because I don’t want to leave my wife (and she doesn’t want to leave me) to care for twin toddlers who are just waking up and needing food, diaper changes, and everything else first thing in the morning.

So, I start looking for yoga classes online. And I saw the “yoga photo:”

Continue reading →

Many small business owners I talk to always seem to be playing catch up when it comes to their marketing.

Last week when I told a small business owner that she was doing a good job with her marketing, she replied “Oh, but I have so much to do!” in an apologetic tone.

So I asked her, “What is it that you have to do?”

“Well,” she said, “I need to redo my website, write a new brochure, update my Facebook page, and call clients whom I haven’t seen for a while. I’m also wondering, do I need to get a Twitter account and do I need to have a blog AND a website?”

Listening to her, I felt sad. I mean who the heck laid down these requirements that a small business has to have so much in place so fast?

Continue reading →

The sales conversation has been on my mind, and with enrollment now open for the Sacred Moment Seminar in March, this article from 2009 seems really appropriate to take a second look at.

How to Avoid Chasing Down the “I’ll Think About Its”.

So, have at it, and let me know if it is helpful.

p.s. Ever have a potential client tell you, “I’ll think about it” and then disappear?

The sales conversation is actually a sacred moment of connection between you and your potential client. It’s also where the rubber meets the road: either they say “Yes” and you get paid, or they don’t, and you don’t.

March 25-26 we’re offering our two-day Sacred Moment Seminar, How to talk to potential clients with integrity and heart and still get paid. It’s already more than 2/3 full, so take a look and see if it’s for you: The Sacred Moment Seminar.