Episode 350: The Real Reason You’re Afraid to Sell (Sell With People, Not To Them), with Nikki Rausch

Why We’re Afraid to Sell (And What the “Mom Voice” Has to Do With It)

There’s a voice a lot of us slip into the second we have to say a price out loud. I call it the mom voice. You’ve done it: “It’s $300,” said in this careful, coaxing tone, like you’re trying to get a kid to tie their shoes, when you’re actually talking to a fully grown, capable adult who wants to work with you. Or you skip the moment entirely and never bring it up at all. This is so common, and it’s not about whether you’re good at what you do. In 17 years as a business coach, I’ve come to understand that there are layers to selling well, and most of it comes down to one thing. So many of us are afraid to sell, and no one ever taught us it doesn’t have to feel that way.

That’s exactly what my guest this week teaches. Nikki Rausch is a sales strategist and the founder of Sales Maven, and after 25 years in sales, she’s built her whole approach around helping people have confident conversations without feeling pushy or fake.

Nikki and I get into why so many of us freeze up, get weird, or just stop talking the moment a sales conversation starts, and what changes once you stop trying to talk someone into something.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• Why sales is something you do “with” someone, not “to” them, and the one condition that has to be true before you ever try to sell
• The real reason we get so weird the moment it’s time to name our price, and the softening phrase that makes the budget question easier to ask
• Nikki’s “cat calling versus dog calling” framework for creating curiosity, and the answer to “how are you” that opens doors instead of closing them
• The rapport bank account concept, and why your very first interaction with someone starts you at zero
• The one question that helped a client realize her ideal buyer would never hire her the way she was actually showing up

Listen to the full episode

Watch the Full Episode

https://youtu.be/QoOZQ6g6lPI?si=-u_bLC7JwU8_yRRL

Selling With People, Not To Them

Nikki’s approach starts by taking apart a misconception about why we’re afraid to sell: that selling is something you do to another person. As women, we don’t want to do things to people. It feels manipulative, and it feels like it’s all about us, not the other person. Nikki says that’s backward. As women, we’re natural collaborators with servant’s hearts, and sales is actually something you do with another person.

She lays out three things that have to be in place before you ever sell to somebody, and the third one is the one people miss most.

“You should have permission before you ever sell to anybody. And if they haven’t given you their permission, you shouldn’t be selling to them.” — Nikki Rausch

When you approach a sales conversation as a “with” conversation instead of you pushing your own agenda, the whole dynamic changes. It stops being about convincing somebody and starts being about finding out whether there’s actually a fit.

Why We Get So Weird the Moment It’s Time to Get Paid

As women, we have a complicated relationship with money because of how it’s moved around the planet for years while we weren’t the ones holding it. There’s a residue from that on all of us, and it shows up in a very specific way: we’ll bend over backward and do almost anything for free without blinking, but the second it’s time to actually get paid for it, we get weird.

“We have such a complicated relationship with money … So we have no problem bending over backwards, nearly killing ourselves, doing anything we need to do for free. No problem. No problem at all … But once it comes to getting paid for it, boy, do we get weird.” — Sarah Walton

Nikki sees this constantly with her clients, and she traces it back to two habits. The first is projecting our own limiting beliefs onto the other person. Then the second thing that most of us do that’s detrimental: we hallucinate that we think we know what the other person’s thinking.

“Unless you have psychic as your profession, you do not get to say that you can read somebody else’s mind.” — Nikki Rausch

When you get uncomfortable talking about your price, you send that discomfort straight to the other person, and they read it as doubt about whether they can afford it, whether it’s right for them, or whether you even think they’re capable. Get comfortable with the number, and it becomes something the other person can simply receive.

Ask the Budget Question, Even Though It Feels Terrifying

Nikki says one of the questions people are most afraid to ask is the budget question. Instead of avoiding it, she teaches a “softening phrase” borrowed from her NLP background: leading with “Would you be willing to share…” before you ask what someone is looking to invest. Say it, pause, and most people are already nodding before you finish the sentence.

She told me about a client who skipped this question entirely on a proposal she was excited about. The client had priced the work in the thousands. When she finally asked, the prospect was thinking somewhere around $150. Neither person wasted that time on purpose, but asking up front would have saved a session’s worth of work and let her simply thank him and move on to opportunities that were actually real.

The Rapport Bank Account

One of the approaches Nikki uses with every relationship, sales included, is what she calls a rapport bank account. Every deposit you make — being kind, being helpful, following through — builds the balance, and every misstep is a withdrawal. The trouble is that in a brand-new relationship, there’s no balance built up yet, so an early misstep can put you in the red before the relationship even has a chance.

“I always think I have a rapport bank account with every person I come into contact with.” — Nikki Rausch

Nikki compares it to a favorite restaurant you’ve been to twenty times versus a brand-new one. A restaurant with a built-up balance gets a pass on an off night. But a brand-new one with no balance doesn’t get a second chance. In any new relationship, sales included, the goal is to make a deposit as fast as you can.

Cat Calling Versus Dog Calling: How to Create Curiosity

Nikki teaches a signature framework for a successful sales conversation called the Selling Staircase, and one of its most-missed steps is learning to create curiosity. She explains it by comparing how you call a dog and how you call a cat.

“You cannot call a cat the way you call a dog.” — Nikki Rausch

Call a dog with big, excited energy and it comes running without even knowing why. Show up at a networking event with that same “dog calling” energy — talking at someone about how amazing your offer is before they’ve asked — and people instinctively pull back. A cat, on the other hand, needs a much softer invitation, a “here kitty, kitty” that piques interest instead of demanding attention.

Nikki starts clients on this with something simple: how you answer the question “How are you?” The answer should be one or two sentences, just enough to open the door to a follow-up question, never a full download of everything going on in your business. Anything more than three sentences, she says, and you’ve crossed back into dog-calling energy.

Would Your Ideal Buyer Actually Buy From You?

Nikki also pushes her clients on a question most of us never think to ask ourselves: would the person we’ve decided is our ideal buyer actually buy from us, the way we’re currently showing up? She told me about a client who was clear on paper about who her ideal buyer was, a polished, highly paid professional, but the people actually hiring her were moms in hoodies with their hair in a bun. So was she.

“…People make up to 10 judgments in the first 10 seconds of meeting you. And within two minutes, they’ve already decided, are you trustworthy.” — Nikki Rausch

Nikki isn’t saying there’s anything wrong with a hoodie and a bun as your brand. She’s saying you have to be honest about who you’re actually positioned to attract, and make sure how you show up matches it. On the other side, she’s seen this play out too — coaches going live on camera from bed, or eating breakfast cereal mid-podcast recording. None of this is about bashing anyone. It’s simply a missed opportunity to make a good first impression before you’ve earned the chance to make a bad one.

About Nikki Rausch

Nikki Rausch is a sales strategist, speaker, and founder of Sales Maven. With more than 25 years of sales experience and over a decade as a business owner, she teaches service-based entrepreneurs how to have confident sales conversations that lead to yeses, without feeling pushy or fake.

As a Master Certified Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), Nikki focuses on the language and communication behind selling. Her approach is rooted in building rapport, recognizing buying signals, and guiding conversations in a way that feels natural for both you and the client.

She is the author of three books, including The Selling Staircase, and host of the Sales Maven Podcast, ranked in the top 1% globally.

Through her coaching, programs, and speaking, Nikki supports women entrepreneurs in turning sales into a skill they can rely on, so they can grow their business with clarity and confidence.

Connect with Nikki Rausch

• Website: Sales Maven
• Podcast: Sales Maven Podcast
• Instagram: @your_sales_maven
• Facebook: Sales Maven
• LinkedIn: Nikki Rausch

Nikki’s Gift to You

Nikki’s gift to Girlfriends is her Sales Follow-Up Made Easy Guide. Inside, she covers proven follow-up strategies that increase conversions, ready-to-use scripts to make follow-up conversations feel easy and natural, and techniques to build trust and stay top-of-mind with your leads. Visit Sales Follow-Up Made Easy to get it.

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Related Episodes You’ll Love

Episode 211: 3 Easy Tips for Your Sales Conversations, with Jamie Gulino Davis — Jamie’s tips on building rapport and asking better questions in a sales conversation are the tactical follow-up to the “with” versus “to” framework Nikki lays out in this episode. Listen here

Episode 336: How to Sell Without Feeling Slimy — Sales Tools That Actually Work — This solo episode on using sales tools ethically, supporting people who already want what you’re offering instead of pushing reluctant prospects, is the same “with, not to” distinction Nikki draws in this episode. Listen here

Episode 216: How I Made $1 Million in a Year, with Kendall SummerHawk — Kendall’s own journey through fear and tears around money is the deeper dive into the complicated relationship with money that Nikki and I talk about in this episode. Listen here

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My Free Gift to You — Let’s Talk About Your Business

This episode might have you thinking about where you’ve been going quiet in your own sales conversations, or where you’ve been guessing instead of asking. If so, let’s talk about it. As my gift to Girlfriends, I offer a 30-minute discovery call. We’ll talk about where you are right now and what might be getting in the way.

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Connect with me

• Instagram: @thesarahwalton
• LinkedIn: Sarah Walton
• Free resources for you
• Join the Game On Girlfriend® community — subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube

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Love This Episode?

If you know a woman who’s afraid to sell, who freezes up the second a sales conversation starts, send this episode her way. She might just need permission to stop guessing and start asking.

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About Sarah Walton

Sarah Walton is a wealth consciousness coach, strategic advisor, and the host of the Game On Girlfriend® podcast. Her mission is simple: to put more money in the hands of more women. She helps women entrepreneurs build profitable, sustainable businesses without burnout — working through both the mindset and the strategy sides of growth. Because when women have more financial power, they don’t just keep it — they use it to take care of their families, support their communities, and build something bigger than themselves. Through her programs — including the Abundance Academy and The Art of Receiving — along with her online courses and one-on-one coaching, Sarah works with women who are ready to build profitable businesses and use that financial power to make a real difference in the world around them.