The Story of How Selling from the Heart was Born

The one thing I knew for sure I’d never do when I left my corporate job was teach people to sell – how wrong I was!

Because here I am, I’ve been doing it for 13 years and all it needed was a twist – to teach people how to sell from the heart, instead of the traditional sales approach based on closing and objection handling.

Today I’m telling the story of how my business Selling from the Heart was born. After many years of seeking and  struggling to find my purpose, there was finally a clear day where I knew what I was here to do!

Watch the video below or scroll down to read the blog:

My journey into sales as a career, and later a business wasn’t even planned or chosen – I feel like I fell into the career, and later into the business – and not without much seeking and searching as I tried to discover what I was really here to do.

Age 27 after many years of travel and living abroad doing everything from making solar panels at a kibbutz, to picking custard apples in Australia, the only job I could land with very little conventional work experience was in travel sales.

I did really well in travel sales so a few years later I moved on into the world of recruitment. Imagine the most cutthroat, target-driven environment you can think of – well, that’s pretty much exactly how it was.

It wasn’t long before I was earning six figures and paying more in tax each year than my parents had earned combined but it felt pretty meaningless. It felt like the entire purpose of my existence was to make money for the company I worked for, a percentage of which churned into my own bank account every month.

However, I DID love talking to people for a living and I did really enjoy the process of sales – but only when I did it my way, not using the manipulative techniques I’d been trained to use.

Eventually I took a sabbatical (which I didn’t actually return from) and went seeking deeper purpose. I worked a project leader on youth projects in Ghana, trained as a yoga teacher and energy healer in India, and as an acupuncturist in Sri Lanka. I returned to the UK and trained as a life coach, a nutritional therapist, a hypnotherapist —you name it, if it was designed to help others I tried it!

But somehow nothing clicked. I remember sitting in front of 121 coaching clients, and having a fully sold out yoga class and walking up the hill to my studio flat afterwards feeling really deflated.

I just couldn’t shake the sinking feeling “this still isn’t it”

All the while, I was surrounded by people struggling to get clients. All of the people I had trained with from the coaching, hypnotherapy, nutritional therapy and healing world etc were struggling to get clients, and one day to my surprise I discovered I had this reputation amongst them of always having plenty of clients!

They would say “Catherine how is it you always seem to have no problem getting clients?”

Well, I was getting clients, but things didn’t feel good. I discovered that the only clients I REALLY loved working with were the ones who were running their own small business – even if they came to me for a different issue, it was talking about their business that lit me up.

Around this time I started wondering why I couldn’t get a proper business off the ground despite all my had work and sales ability.  I concluded that I must have money blocks that were sabotaging me, so I signed up to work with a money coach. After a very thorough assessment and long questionnaire she came to the diagnosis:

There’s nothing wrong with your relationship with money, you just haven’t figured out how you are going to make any!

Running my first Sales Workshop

She then immediately challenged me to go to the coaching school where I’d trained and offer to run a sales day for coaches.  This was one of the most terrifying milestone moments in my business development!
I remember sitting over coffee with the founder of the school trying to pluck up the courage to ask him.

You know, we so often don’t take action because we are afraid of failure. I was so afraid that he would say no, that I almost didn’t ask him. It was truly a “sliding doors” moment.  And somehow, from somewhere deep inside me, I found the courage and I asked the question. And to my amazement, he said Yes!

So on 25th November 2011 I travelled in to London to deliver a 1 day workshop for qualified coaches called “Sales Success for Coaches”.  Thirteen coaches had each paid £47 each to be there.  After room hire I split the profit with the founder, I came away with less than £200 – but I’d found my thing!!

That was the day that I realised my sales skills and knowledge were not just common sense, not just things that everyone knew.

On my way in that morning I felt mortified because I thought that what I had prepared for them was just so obvious that these coaches would all feel they had wasted their day and their money.

Instead what happened was a complete revelation for me and for them. The coaches who attended learned how to have genuinely heart-centred sales conversations that fit with the way they wanted to do business, and they left looking forward to inviting more people to transform their lives by working with them.

And for me, it was the day I realised that this is what I’m here to do – teach heart-centred sales to people who are here to make a difference to others.

And 13 years later here I am – I’m still teaching heart-centred business owners to get more clients and grow their businesses – always from the heart, always in integrity.

Prior to this business, I had never done any other work where I didn’t want to leave and do something else within the first 3 months – even if I stayed for several years. As soon as I’d learned the job I would feel bored and disillusioned.  But the work I do now has kept me intellectually challenged. Even after all these years I’m constantly learning, and I’m constantly challenged by my clients to be a better mentor.

Plus I make a difference to others every single day of the week which was really all I ever wanted – even if it’s as small as answering a question in a FB group or coaching someone to become unstuck on a group call.

But here’s the thing:

I felt like an imposter

Even after the success of that workshop, and the decision that this was what I was going to build a business around, I didn’t feel confident enough.  Imposter syndrome kicked in – and hard.

“Who did I think I was to teach sales?”

“Did I really know enough?”

“Didn’t most people already know this stuff already?”

” Did I really know how to help people make more sales, wasn’t it just fluke that I could do it myself rather than something I could actually teach others to do?”

I spent that Christmas all alone, hidden away consuming as much information as I could – I read book after book, and bought courses on how to sell.

I learned 3 important things:

1. I knew a whole lot more than I was giving myself credit for – I could have written some of those books myself. Heck, I could have done a better job of some of them myself.

2. There was a whole lot being taught about sales that was very commonplace but that I absolutely didn’t want to do, and I was pretty darn certain my heart-centred clients didn’t want to do it either.

3. There were things I’d always done that I wasn’t consciously aware I did, but when I learned them from from someone else I got that “aha!”moment “this is something I can actually teach people to do”.

All this led to me developing my own unique style of sales – that I still teach today

I took the way I’d always done sales and I consciously turned it into a step-by-step structure that I could teach others, and it’s worked a dream.

For me, sales isn’t about “closing deals”. It’s about healing your relationship with sales, money, and yourself. It’s about showing up for your clients in a way that feels good—both for you and for them.

Every sale should be an act of service, and trust me, when you see it that way that changes everything.

Every sales conversation should be a healing conversation that leaves the client feeling better about themselves, regardless of their decision.

It still blows my mind that the thing I had been doing for years—selling—was something I would end up teaching. I’ve heard it said that we can’t see the thing that is right at the end of our own nose – how true that was!

All it took was for me to see that I’m not here to teach it in the traditional sense. Not the high-pressure, manipulative stuff that gave me a knot in my stomach when I was taught to do it myself.

Instead I understood that this was my business and it was up to me if I wanted to teach people to sell in a way that felt authentic, aligned with their values, and genuinely helpful to others.  And if some people didn’t like it, well they didn’t have to learn from me!

It turned out that the fact I’d trained in reiki, acupuncture, coaching, hypnotherapy, nutritional therapy also gave me a unique insight into my clients businesses and the way they would want to do sales and marketing – in a way that is totally congruent with how they want to be with their clients.

So after all of those years searching for my “thing”, Selling from the Heart was born in a way that was completely unexpected.

Years later I am still grateful for all of my experiences, even the time in the more cut-throat corporate environment that was so totally not “me”,  and felt pretty meaningless, as it guided me to this point in my career and it makes sense why that was part of my journey.

Every step in the journey makes sense when you look back. Even if at the time it felt like the wrong path. All you can do is follow the breadcrumbs, but it’s only when you look back that you can see that it all makes sense.

How about you, was there a time when you were looking for answers, purpose or meaning and couldn’t find it – but later when you looked back the whole journey made sense, even the hardest parts? Do let me know in the comments.

LEARN THE 7 STEPS TO YES!

If you’d like to get started learning my unique style of sales, you can do that with my 7 Steps to Yes. It’s a free training where I teach you step by step how to guide your potential client through a totally supportive sales conversation that will lead them to a ‘yes please’ to working with you…if it’s truly right for them.
Sign up here: https://www.catherinewatkin.com/7steps