Are you Funny About Money?

My “Get More Clients Saying Yes!” programme started last week and the first module was spent exploring how our beliefs and attitudes connected to sales and selling can really hold us back in our businesses – after all, if you believe there is something inherently “dirty” about the whole process of sales or that it is “wrong” to charge money for your gifts or talents, then it really doesn’t matter what sales structure I teach, or how many great tips I share, this “stuff” around sales and money will just keep getting in your way.

When we looked at relationship with money this really struck a chord, with many people owning up to being “funny about money”

How about you, is YOUR relationship with money getting in the way of your business success?

• Does talking about money make you feel uncomfortable or embarrassed?
• Do you have blocks around charging what you know you should, maybe setting a low price because it’s all you feel comfortable with?
• Do you give away free sessions or frequently let your sessions run over time?
• Do you sometimes justify your fees or offer discount before the client has even commented?
• Do you feel guilty about charging money for your service?

If you answered ‘Yes’ to any of the above then it’s official – you are “funny about money”!

Being “funny about money” in business commonly stems from one of two main areas:

1.  Professional

Being “funny about money” with a professional cause normally comes when you doubt the value of what you do.  Perhaps you wonder whether you really can make the difference that you want to make or that you are promising your clients?    This lack of “professional self-worth” can naturally cause you to lose confidence because after all if you don’t fully believe in what you are selling, how can you sell with integrity?

Equally, lack of confidence in communicating both what you do and its value can also lead to an awkwardness about money – because if you don’t know how to fully communicate the value of what you offer, when you come to state your fees it can feel  incongruent to you even though you know in your heart your work is worth it.

If this is you, then I have good news for you!   This type of “funny about money” can be resolved relatively easily through increasing your sense of professional worth and confidence.    Collecting testimonials and keeping a success notebook can help increase your sense of value – maybe even working for free with a couple of clients to get the clear results you need to give you confidence.   And getting support with your sales process can help you to set the right price congruently, get comfortable communicating what you do and give you a structure to your sales conversations so you become more confident.

And before you know it the money part of the conversation will just flow for you – as will the clients who will be attracted by your confidence and congruence.

2.  Personal

This is where the problems lie a bit deeper – particularly if your unhelpful attitudes to money stem from deeper programming, often dating right back to childhood.

For example, how you feel about money and pricing can be directly connected to low personal self-esteem.   If you connect your pricing to a sense of your own personal self-worth and you don’t feel you are “worth” what you are asking this can really keep you stuck.  This can also lead to overgiving and overhelping where you take too much responsibility for others and feel you want to give away your services for free – not a great model for a successful business!

Many people also carry around deeply embedded negative beliefs about money or people with money, for example if you grew up hearing the people around you saying things like “money is the root of all evil” or  “rich people are greedy and dishonest”.   If these are the messages you received in childhood it can be very hard to shake these off as an adult no matter how you might “want” to adopt different views.   You might also have picked up beliefs such as “I will always be poor” or “money brings unhappiness”.  Or you may have suffered some sort of trauma around money as a child for example if your parents fought a lot about money, or if they faced bankruptcy or lost their home.

If this is the case, not only will you find it hard to set solid prices and stick with them and therefore  earn the money that you need to make your business viable,  but you will also find it hard to keep hold of the money you do earn because at some subconscious level you feel you have to get rid of the money in order to feel like a “good” person.

These deeper beliefs can be more insidious than the Professional money issues, and will continue hold you back in business if you don’t make a clear commitment to yourself to work to overcome them – perhaps by working with a good money coach or EFT or NLP practitioner.

Let me know what you think – do you recognise that your money attitudes could be holding you back?  And are you prepared to make the commitment to overcome them?