Authentic Selling E-Book

Kendrick Shope

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 378

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

How to sell your way without selling your soul.

Selling can feel like a necessary evil, but it doesn't have to be. In Authentic Selling®, internationally recognized sales expert Kendrick Shope reveals the secrets to selling with integrity, compassion, and undeniable success. This isn’t just another sales book. It's a blueprint for entrepreneurs, business owners, and sales professionals who want to make millions without sacrificing who they are.

Packed with practical strategies, engaging stories, and Kendrick's signature Southern charm, Authentic Selling® guides you through the proven steps to:

• To genuinely connect with clients and build relationships
• Close deals with confidence
• Build a business that not only brings in sales but also leaves a lasting impact

Used by over 80,000 students per year to close 80 to 90 percent of their sales calls, compared to an average of 30%. Get ready to transform your sales approach from pushy to persuasive, sleazy to sincere. Whether you’re a seasoned pro or just starting out, Authentic Selling® will show you how to sell more while staying true to yourself.

Your path to profitable, purpose-driven sales starts here.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Authentic Selling

®

Orientation

What Comes to Mind When You Think of Selling?

Gratitude

Life Balance? Umm, No Thanks

Money and Time

The First of Its Kind

Your Fabulous Four

Shope Sales Stories

Chapter 1: Your Authentic Selling

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Mindset

Selling is helping.

The Five Foundations of Authentic Selling

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Your Sales Guardrail

Authentic Selling

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Tools Takeaways

Chapter 2: Your Customer's Money

The Most Important Sale You Will Ever Make

Chapter 3: Authentic Truths

Why It Matters

You Think You Know Your Customer But You Might Not

Customer Journey Triangle

Applying the Journey

The Four Stages of the Customer Journey

People Buy Off of Emotion and Justify with Logic

The Power of Stories

Authentic Selling

®

Sales Takeaways

Chapter 4: Your Authentic Business

Experts Sell More

Diagnosing Your Customers

Authentic Selling

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Sales Map

Authentic Selling

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Definitions

Sales Map Language Take‐n‐Tweak from Chapter 4

Rocking Chair Epiphany

The $25,000 Mastermind

Authentic Selling

®

Sales Tools Takeaways

Chapter 5: Your Authentic Communication

Words Matter, Y'all

Why Authentic Selling

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Benefits Tools Matter

Normal Rules of Conversation Apply

Going Speechless Meeting Heroes: A Shope Sales Story

The Conversation That Changed Everything: A Shope Sales Story

The Authentic Selling

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Villain Tool

The Authentic Selling

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5 Senses Tool

Does Happiness Sell?

Authentic Selling

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Tools Takeaways

Chapter 6: Your Authentic Sales Conversations

Too Much of a Good Thing?

What Is a Sales Conversation?

Chapter 7: Your Authentic Close

The Most Dreaded Words in Sales

Why It Matters

The Anatomy of an Authentic Selling

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Sales Conversation

Your Heart Doc Called and You Can't Afford It: A Shope Sales Story

Your Customer's Money Is None of Your Business

Dangerously Directionless: A Shope Sales Story

Authentic Selling

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Drive With Five

Authentic Selling

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Tools Takeaways

Chapter 8: Your Authentically Written Sales Page Copy

Your Customer's Time

10 Steps for an Authentic Selling

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Sales Page

Chapter 9: Your Buyer's Brain

Why It Matters

Your Buyer's Brain

Finding People Happy to Buy from You

Five Steps to Creating Your Authentic Selling

®

Opt‐In

Authentic Selling

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Prospecting Method #2

Avoiding Pitfalls

Authentic Selling

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Prospecting Method #3

Authentic Selling

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Tools Takeaways

Chapter 10: Your Authentic Business Plan

The First of Its Kind

Down the Rabbit Hole

The Biggest Sale of My Life

One Night Only: A Musical Masterclass for a Cause

A Lesson for You and Me Both

Your Own Authentic Selling

®

Journey

Your Authentic Selling

®

Business Plan

You Are Entering Your Best Era in Business Yet

What It Takes

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Index

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Authentic Selling® Orientation

Begin Reading

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Index

End User License Agreement

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Authentic Selling®

Be Real to Seal the Deal

Kendrick Shope

Copyright © 2025 by Kendrick Shope. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per‐copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750‐8400, fax (978) 750‐4470, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748‐6011, fax (201) 748‐6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permission.

Trademarks: Wiley and the Wiley logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries and may not be used without written permission. Authentic Selling is a trademark or registered trademark of Kendrick Shope, LLC. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Further, readers should be aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762‐2974, outside the United States at (317) 572‐3993 or fax (317) 572‐4002.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic formats. For more information about Wiley products, visit our website at www.wiley.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data is Available:

ISBN 9781394254057 (Cloth)

ISBN 9781394254897 (ePub)

ISBN 9781394254903 (ePDF)

Cover Design: Paul McCarthy

Cover Photo: Mia Farrington

My beautifully brilliant Halianna,

This journey that created Authentic Selling® was started by you, for you, because you deserved a role model for a mom who believed in herself enough to follow her dreams. Don't quit on your dreams, they are out there waiting for you. I believe in you, and I believe in your dreams.

“I love you, Mom”

Authentic Selling® Orientation

Hi Gorgeous Genius, you may be tempted to skip this introduction. I understand, believe me; I am someone who likes to jump in and get going, too. But one thing you will learn about me early on is that I am direct, and I'm going to shoot you straight so that you have less confusion and faster success. It’s true, that being blunt can sometimes come across as harsh, but the purpose in this book is to bring greater clarity and reduce confusion. And let’s be real, and bold is hot, y’all! This is more than a simple introduction. This is your orientation to Authentic Selling®. One of the things that makes Authentic Selling® unique is the way it is taught, in a “step‐by‐step” linear process. Don’t test me because it's nothing for this nearly 50‐year‐old to break out into song with some New Kids on the Block “Step‐by‐Step,” y'all!

There are nearly 20 educators in my family including teachers, principals, directors of schools, school board members, and even presidents of universities. I've been around teaching my whole life.

What's any of that have to do with you?

I'm glad you asked! It means that the way that I teach Authentic Selling® is very much like a fun class and you will learn proven tools, processes, and strategies that you have never heard before no matter your comfort level with selling. In fact, even seasoned salespeople who have studied sales most of their whole adult lives share that learning Authentic Selling® helped them find and close more clients and make more money.

Trust is a big freaking deal to me personally, and I'm going to ask you to trust me along this process. I'm as sure as my hair is red it's all going to come together in the end to make sense. You're going to have a process that is proven, allows you to stay within your integrity, not be a sales bully, and that works. Your learning starts here with the orientation. There are tools included in this orientation, including Your Fabulous Four, that will make the way you talk about your products and services easier.

If you've ever:

Struggled when someone asked what you do, it is imperative that you read this orientation.

Wondered how to show your expertise without sounding braggy or arrogant, this orientation is for you.

Wanted to get people's attention so they trust you without waiting weeks, months, or years to build that trust, keep reading this orientation.

Let's start with some Authentic Selling® confessions and get some items out of the way. Besides who doesn't love a good secret? Don't get too excited, the juicy ones come later after we get to know each other a bit more, but be prepared, this book is full of great confessions – like the story of wanting to be a sex dancer when I was five, or the one where I sold drugs (the legal kind, y'all!), and how New Kids On the Block changed my life. And that's just the beginning.

You might be thinking, “I thought this was a book about selling?” It is! But darlin’, if this experience can't be entertaining and educational at the same time, what's the point? We have enough boring sales books, and for that matter, boring business books that all sound the same. As sure as my hair is red, this book will not be a snoozer.

Instead, I predict you will laugh out loud. You may suffer second‐hand embarrassment for me at times because I excel at making mistakes, and most importantly, you will learn how to get anything you want in life … read that again. Authentic Selling® will teach you how to get anything you want in life.

Where were we? Oh yes, let's clear the air about a few things before we jump in with some Authentic Selling® Confessions.

An important Authentic Selling

®

Confession #1: I have diagnosed Attention Deficit Disorder. I’ve been told that the inside of my head would look like “herding cats!” So why do you care that I have ADD? Well, I simply want you to know I will go off topic from time to time, but I will find my way back, so enjoy the ride.

Authentic Selling

®

Confession #2: As a Southerner, my first instinct is to greet you with a hearty “Hey y'all! How are you doing? Grab a glass of sweet tea before we start, and let me take a moment to thank you for choosing this book.”

What Comes to Mind When You Think of Selling?

Is it a guy with a fake tan, too much mousse in his hair, and a cologne cloud trying to get you to buy a new car you don't want? Or maybe it's someone on Facebook inviting you to “parties” with essential oils, fancy underwear, or special knives that you absolutely don't want? Yep. Been there.

I promise this book is going to change the way you sell and think about selling. By the time you read the last page, it is likely you will enjoy selling and close 80–90% of every call you make with your ideal clients. I know you will be successful if you use the techniques in this book because those are the same techniques that have worked for thousands of entrepreneurs, business owners, and salespeople on multiple continents.

Gratitude

The first foundation of Authentic Selling® is that most every tool you're going to read about begins with gratitude. You will learn more about this in a later chapter but for now let me say thank you for taking your time and spending it with me. I understand how valuable that time is, and I assure you, this is going to be an experience, not just a book.

Authentic Selling® will teach you not only how to get rid of the old pushy way of selling, but you will learn how to get what you want more of in life. Umm, sign me up for more of what I want and less of what I don't. While we are on the subject, all this talk about balance drives me bananas.

Life Balance? Umm, No Thanks

“I just want to live while I'm alive.”

— Bon Jovi

Seriously, I don't want balance, I want the scales to tip my way and give me as much of what makes me happy and as little of what I loathe as possible. Balance? Gross. Give me an unbalanced life with my family, money, NYC, and happiness tipping the scales toward unbalanced … oh and shoes and shopping, I want to add those to the unbalanced side, too. Yeah, shoes and shopping, and Broadway musicals. Okay, if you want to take a few minutes to jot down how you want to get unbalanced, go ahead; I'll wait.

Money and Time

Often people share they are short on two things: money and time. Time you can't make more of. So this book is going to be intentional with every second of your time! Inside this book, Authentic Selling® is going to teach you how to make more moolah! Now I know that many experts, books, and products promise to help you make more money but unless it's a book about selling, those promises are not the full story. Speaking of money, we need to introduce you to Authentic Selling® Truths and Authentic Selling® Pro Tips.

Spoiler Alert → This first Authentic Selling® Truth is one that you must understand for Authentic Selling® to work in your business and life.

Authentic Selling® Truth → The actual definition of the word selling is “the exchange of money for a product or service.”

Authentic Selling® Pro Tip → Whenever I'm trying to understand and reframe my ideas about something, I first need to figure out what exactly is the actual meaning of this thing that makes me feel gross, which is why I went to the definition first.

Read that again: The dictionary definition of selling is: “The exchange of money for a product or service.”

Were you surprised to read that? When I first looked it up, I was shocked because the definition seems simple and no sales bully required. I don't know about you but I hand over my debit card to pay for stuff every day. And I rarely feel icky, sleazy, slimy, or gross about any of those transactions. I mean, come on. Let's be real. When you go to Starbucks, do you cringe inside when you hand over your credit card in exchange for a latte? Or when you pay your hairstylist or barber to cut your hair? Yep. Didn't think so. When you really think about it, what is so icky, sleazy, slimy, or gross about selling? What's pushy about getting paid to give someone a product or service they need? We feel like selling is icky, sleazy, slimy, gross, crusty, musty, or dusty or at least uncomfortable because every single one of us has had a bad sales experience, spending too much time in that overly air conditioned room freezing our butts off waiting for the car salesman to just let us buy the damn car we want already instead of listening to him try and convince us that a fancy warranty is essential or that we should buy the more expensive model. There's a lot of negativity around selling, which is why we're going to start by getting crystal clear on what selling is and what selling isn't.

Well, here's the thing, negative connotations go WAY back in history. Way back in the day, traveling salespeople would come into town and offer up elixirs that promised the moon. Imagine someone walking up to you with a bottle in 1800‐whatever and saying that you would feel like a teenager again if you bought it. Like most of our ancestors, I'm guessing you might have bought what that person was selling. But what was in those magic elixirs was something we still have today: alcohol. So while the sales proposition was true – people did feel like teenagers again for a while – they also felt terrible the next day. And when everyone's hangovers showed up … the salesperson was already on their way to the next town.

Of course people felt swindled and scammed.

That's why many of us feel icky, sleazy, slimy, or gross when we are on a sales call, centuries later.

As a culture, we have learned to be skeptical or negative about sales because everyone's grandma's grandma's grandma bought some elixir and felt the same way we did back in college before we learned the hard way about hangovers. Isn't that crazy? Though I will say that all the cologne some modern‐day salespeople wear doesn't help, y'all.

You have my permission to drop the story about selling being bad. Because I don't know about you but I haven't been approached by anyone on a horse talking about magic elixirs lately.

The great news is selling doesn't have to feel icky, sleazy, slimy, or gross, and with the Authentic Selling® Tools throughout this book, selling will feel totally different. In fact, I would challenge you to reframe that icky feeling you may have regarding selling and think about selling a new way. Selling is helping. Your business is meant to make a positive impact on the lives of your customers; however, it's challenging to reach your people if you're using sales strategies that feel pushy.

The First of Its Kind

Authentic Selling® is not about perfection; it's about being genuine and true to yourself. Your Authentic Selling® Sales Guardrail (I'll talk about this in Chapter 1) is always available to help you do a check‐in with yourself to make sure you're honoring what is genuine to you as an individual. In fact, the ability to check in with yourself is one of the things that makes this process unique, like you. It's the first sales system of its kind that provides a tool for you to do a self‐check so you can make certain you are within your personal integrity. It's able to be adapted to different people's comfort level so that you never have to do anything that feels off. A perfect example of what makes Authentic Selling® uniquely customizable is that all of the different options that you will learn in later chapters are adaptable to you to work through objections and close sales. Some of the options are less direct while others are super direct.

Your Fabulous Four

Inside of Authentic Selling®, you will find custom proprietary tools created by me to help you do more of what you love and make more money. Now, we're going to get into that really in‐depth later, but first, you're going to learn your first Authentic Selling® Tool. Your Fabulous Four is a series of five questions asked in four steps to help show your prospect who you are, what you do, why they can trust you, and why it matters, without being braggy.

Why Your Fabulous Four Matters

You can use Your Fabulous Four in two situations. First you can use Your Fabulous Four to shine a light on your expertise when you're selling your products and services. One of the biggest hurdles you will face when selling anything is the lack of trust that exists between seller and potential buyer.

When you share Your Fabulous Four in your marketing, you establish trust as an expert and become more likable to your prospects, which increases your chances of making a sale.

You can also use Your Fabulous Four when you are the buyer to empower your decision‐making process. When faced with promises that seem too good to be true as you consider your next business investment, or even buying your next car, Your Fabulous Four serves as your secret weapon. Before investing in any educational programs, mentors, or most purchases, by using Your Fabulous Four, you can erase buyer's remorse and protect yourself from fraudulent claims. This tool doesn't just guide you – it steers you away from “shiny object syndrome.”

These four steps, if you take the time to ask, will change your relationship with the internet, with content, and purchasing for the better. Who am I, in other words, the person you're learning from? Why do you care, and why can you trust me? One of the most important things I teach is to ask, “Why do you care?” or “Why does that matter?”

Creating Your Fabulous Four

Step 1: Who Are You and What Do You (or What Does Your Product) Do?

It seems like a super simple question, right? But if I had to guess I would estimate nearly 100% of businesses I have worked with spend too much time working on how to articulate what it is they do. Have you ever had a friend or loved one ask what your business does, and you feel like a deer in the headlights must feel? This feeling of fumbling your way through is what I call being stuck inside an Authentic Selling® Marketing Vortex. Many businesses will get stuck in an Authentic Selling® Marketing Vortex when trying to answer the first question in your Fabulous Four. The feeling or act of fumbling your way through to questions about what you do is an example of an Authentic Selling® Marketing Vortex.

Example: Who is Kendrick?

I'm Kendrick Shope, creator of Authentic Selling®, author, and media personality.

Marketing Vortex

Authentic Selling® Definition → Marketing Vortex: A state of continuously striving to achieve marketing goals without making significant progress, often characterized by repetitive efforts and strategies that don't yield desired results. In the marketing vortex, you can feel trapped in an endless cycle of planning, executing, and tweaking campaigns, with little to no tangible outcomes, making it challenging to break free and move forward.

Remember I said that often a business will get stuck in a marketing vortex when trying to answer this question? To avoid the marketing vortex, I've created some questions to help break down the “what do you do” question to help you get an answer you feel proud to share. These tools are tools within a tool to help you drill down in this case to more specific language. We call these tools Authentic Selling® Drill Down.

You can use these tool as you complete Step 1 of Your Fabulous Four or only if you get stuck when creating Your Fabulous Four.

Authentic Selling

®

Drill Down

I _______.

Which really means I _______.

Which really means I _________.

Example

I teach businesses how to sell with integrity.

Which really means I teach businesses how to make more money and reach more people.

Which really means I help people/businesses create more freedom so they can do anything they want.

Authentic Selling

®

Drill Down

People buy my product/service or hire me to help them _______________.

So they can __________.

Example

People buy my product/service or hire me to help them increase their sales and to find and close more customers so they can sell without being a bully, help more people, and make more money.

Authentic Selling

®

Drill Down

Our customers often struggle with/experience _______________.

[Insert name of business/product] provides them with _______.

So they can____________.

Example

Our customers often experience a decrease in sales. Authentic Selling® provides solutions to increase sales that work in today's fast‐paced online world replacing outdated, pushy tactics. So their business reverses the decrease in sales and creates increased revenue and reaches more prospects.

Back to Your Fabulous Four.

Step 2: What's Cool About You?

But there's more to you than your Authentic Selling® Drill Down, right? I know you may be thinking this is a useless question but, said with love, you're wrong. Your customers want to do business with people they actually like so while my 25 years of sales experience is relevant, we need to share more. In today's social media online world, lifestyle and who you are outside of work is just as important as your expertise and experience. Consider what part of your personal life you are comfortable sharing publicly. The goal is for your potential customers to see commonalities between themselves and you.

Example: What is cool about Kendrick? (I commonly share at least part of the response below as an answer to this question.)

Like you, I wear a lot of hats everyday. I’m a daughter, sister, CEO, wife, and mom to the best kid on the planet who is my whole world. I was born and raised in Sweetwater, Tennessee, and am a third‐generation graduate from the University of Tennessee. But here’s something you may not know about me: I’m actively having an affair … with the greatest city in the world! I fell head over heels for NYC decades ago, and it will always be part of who I am!

I’m loyal to the core – and, believe it or not, I fell in love for the first time at 13. My very first crush? Jason Bruce, who was 18 and graduating high school while I was in 7th grade! So yeah, minor snag … he had no idea I existed! After Jason unknowingly shattered my heart – and, you know, because the whole thing was illegal – I rebounded fast. Enter Joe McIntyre from NKOTB. Joe was only four years older, not five, but still technically illegal! I fell hard, and here I am, 30+ years later, still a proud Blockhead and even consider Jason a good friend, you know now that he can’t get arrested for talking to me and all that.

By now, you’re probably catching on – I do things in a big way, am loyal to a fault, and don’t take too kindly to following rules that cramp my style! A total mess of contradictions, you might find me in Neyland Stadium watching the Vols play on Saturday night or in NYC at a Broadway show holding the Red Bucket for my fave charity Broadway Cares Equity Fights AIDS (BCEFA)! As you can see, sharing what’s unique about you helps potential clients connect with you on a more personal level. They get a glimpse of what makes you, you, and are more likely to remember you.

Step 3: Why Can Your Prospect Trust You?

Step 3 is your chance to share why you're the best at what you do. It's where you highlight your achievements, awards, and the success you've helped others achieve. It's a way to brag about yourself without sounding arrogant. By sharing these accomplishments, you show potential clients that they can trust you because you've got the experience and a proven track record of delivering results.

Example: Why can your potential customer trust you?

I have studied sales for more than 25 years, half my life, and was a top‐performing sales expert for three Fortune 500 companies. I graduated top in my class from two corporate sales schools. I have been voted the #1 sales expert for health coaches, copywriters, and online business owners to follow as well as the top sales expert in the state of Arkansas.

Step 4: Why Does It Matter?

The final question in Your Fabulous Four is perhaps the most important. If you are around me for any amount of time, you will hear me ask this question. What you are basically trying to get across is what do the previous four questions and answers do for your potential customers and clients?

Authentic Selling® Pro Tip → Said with love, people – including your prospects and customers – don't care about you, they care about themselves and what you can do for them.

As you think about your answer to this final question, really consider what will change for your prospect as a result of working with you or buying your product.

Example:

Through Authentic Selling®I'm known for getting best‐in‐class results with clients and have helped businesses all over the world find more customers, close more customers, make more money, and create the freedom to do more of what they love. I will teach you to sell in a way that feels like helping rather than being a sales bully, which means more money in your bank account. The dictionary definition of selling is: “The exchange of money for a product or service.” Translation, without sales your business is broke.

Putting Your Fabulous Four Together

Authentic Selling® Pro Tip → You will not likely use all of this at one time but it provides you with a structure you can use over and over to avoid fumbling your way through a very important question that often serves as a potential customer's first impression of you, your products, and your business.

Now you just combine all the steps into one series of paragraphs.

Example

I'm Kendrick Shope, creator of Authentic Selling®, author, and media personality.

Like you, I wear a lot of hats every day. I am a daughter, sister, wife, and mom to the best kid on the planet who is my whole world. I was born and raised in Sweetwater, Tennessee, and am a third‐generation graduate from the University of Tennessee, but I am in a for‐real love affair with NYC.

I'm incredibly loyal to the point I fell in love at 13 with Joe McIntyre from New Kids On the Block and am a Blockhead to this day. A total mess of contradictions, you might find me in Neyland Stadium watching the Vols play on Saturday night or in NYC at a Broadway show holding the Red Bucket for my fave charity Broadway Cares Equity Fights AIDS (BCEFA)!

I have studied sales for more than 25 years, half my life, and was a top‐performing sales expert for three Fortune 500 companies. I graduated top in my class from two corporate sales schools. I have been voted the #1 sales expert for health coaches, copywriters, and online business owners to follow as well as the top sales expert in the state of Arkansas.

Through Authentic Selling®I'm known for getting best‐in‐class results with clients and have helped businesses all over the world find more customers, close more customers, make more money, and create the freedom to do more of what they love. I will teach you to sell in a way that feels like helping rather than being a sales bully, which means more money in your bank account. The dictionary definition of selling is: “The exchange of money for a product or service.” Translation, without sales your business is broke.

Where to Use Your Fabulous Four

Your Fabulous Four consists of four simple steps that can be used in two ways.

As the seller, you can use your answers or a portion of your answers:

At the beginning of a speech

At the beginning of a webinar

On social media

Writing your bios

As the buyer, you should look for the answers to these questions when considering a purchase to ensure that your investments pay off and you can trust the business selling the product.

Shope Sales Stories

You bought this book because you want results. You want to turn your marketing efforts into paying customers. That's awesome for both of us because I'm here for all of that. The techniques you are about to learn brought me from a clueless college grad stumbling from job to job to being the #1 sales rep for major pharmaceutical companies to my spot as the CEO of my own million‐dollar baby. These techniques have worked for thousands of students in every line of work you can imagine.

In fact, when I was a child not only did I want to be the greatest of all time in something but I believed with my whole darn self that I was going to change the entire world.

Whether my dream was to be a singer (I can't carry a tune), ice skater (I grew up in the South), actress (still know every line in Rocky III), or that month when I was four years old and I wanted to be a sex dancer (I snuck downstairs and saw a few minutes of Flashdance), I went all in. Whatever my THING was at any given moment I could always come up with creative ways to practice. Even though I lived in the tiny, rural town of Sweetwater, Tennessee, I was convinced that I would be a superstar. I'm sure some of the adults in my life thought of me as deranged – but looking back, I decided to call myself ambitious. After all, my parents always told me that I could do anything if I worked hard enough and put my “mind to it.” For better or worse, I believed I could do anything.

By the time I went to college though, my “plans” to make it big and change the world seemed like a childhood fantasy. I had matured, grown up, and thought I had to start behaving like an adult. While my friends embraced college and wilded out a bit, I started to shrink. Within a couple of days I had lost all my confidence … and my ability to figure out how to get to the Humanities building on the big University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville on my own.

Here's the thing, y'all. When you start to lose your confidence, even a fraction of it, the whole shebang is gone before you know it and you're done, finished, it's over until you can find it again. I started to do what I see some of my clients doing when they come to me: spin out. I continued to have less and less faith in my abilities to do anything. I even started beating myself up for believing in myself! I thought things like, “Who are you to be famous? Just do what everybody else is doing and be happy with a business degree.” I felt angry because I did want to be like my friends – interviewing for entry‐level positions in marketing or advertising or finance, landing their very first jobs and feeling full of excitement about the future. I was mad because the only things I had ever really wanted to do – acting, singing, dancing, changing the world – seemed impossible and implausible.

Somehow over time I had lost touch with everything that made me … me.

I knew I had to figure it out so I went to the career services office and started taking all kinds of tests. But the results? You guessed it: actress, entertainer. But I didn't think those paths were possible for me, so I assumed I was screwed. I ended up graduating with a psychology degree. Over the next six years, I had four different jobs. I even went back to school … for two weeks. But in that time, I also realized I was better than most of my colleagues at talking with people, doing customer service, and selling. I assumed those things would be baked into what I was “supposed” to do. So I ended up as a telemarketer, signing people up for credit cards. But pretty quickly into that job, I realized their “offers” were exploitation in disguise so I quit. I ended up selling lumber, which is where I learned a key to sales is believing in what your product can do for people. You have no idea how excited I could get about a piece of plywood. But pretty soon I got tired of talking about screws, so I decided to take a chance and apply to work at GlaxoSmithKline or Eli Lilly as a sales representative. I have no idea how I landed the interview, much less two job offers, without knowing someone at those companies, but I did.

Working in pharma was a fun job that afforded me the opportunity to travel, shop, and have some flexibility. Pharma was good to me. I made life‐long friends and learned tons of priceless skills. Along the way, I got married to my husband, Blake, and we had a daughter, Halianna. My confidence began to come back and a small glimmer of the girl I used to be who wanted to do big things came back, too. I was excellent at pharma sales, made a lot of money, and had a lot of freedom within the scope of my job. But something still felt off.

I remember a particular night like it was yesterday.

I was sitting in a pink rocking chair, rocking back and forth holding my newborn daughter. Looking at Halianna, I knew that little piece of heaven, that being right there in my arms could do anything, be anything she wanted. This little baby – my baby! – had unlimited potential. I wanted her to believe in herself as much as I did when I was a kid. I wanted to nurture her the way my parents had. So every night I rocked her to sleep. That's right. I said every night I rocked her to sleep. None of that putting her in the crib. I wanted to hold her. I wanted to smell her. I wanted to fill her full of positive energy, hope, and possibility. I wanted her to believe she could do anything before she even knew what any of those words meant. And that one night, the idea hit me like a ton of bricks, like a leg of lamb, like my credit card statement. Decades ago, my momma and daddy held me just like this. They breathed all those same limitless possibilities into my stream of consciousness. There's not a doubt in my mind, even to this day, that my mom believes I can do anything. (I don't know about my dad. He's a realist.)

But what had I become? A dancer? Nope.

A singer? Definitely not.

A professional, Olympic‐caliber ice skater? ARE. YOU. KIDDING. ME.

There wasn't even a rink in my hometown. Even though being an actress was kinda realistic – Reese Witherspoon grew up a few hours away from me – I hadn't been in a single play since I was 16. Clearly, I had let everybody down. Or was I just living in the real world?

Because giving up childhood dreams felt responsible to me. It might to you, too. It's what most people do. Everybody in my life at the time had given up their wild and crazy dreams for a “safe” career, a money‐making career, a home for their spouse and children. But sitting in that rocking chair night after night, the idea of being okay with the status quo began to feel unacceptable, almost nauseating. I think that little four‐year‐old girl inside of me was giving her last best effort, her one last fight to wake me up.

She was screaming. She was singing Bon Jovi at the top of her lungs. I had come so far from that little girl who believed she could change the world. I didn't even know that girl anymore because I had been living in “reality” for so long. However, I knew that I wanted to be the mom who walked the talk instead of just giving lip service to a dream.

In the past, I had heard athletic coaches say, “I'll never ask anything of my players that I can't do myself.” And in my game of life – that moment was IT. The bottom of the ninth with the score tied. I had to swing the bat, go big or go home. I was either going to put the ball in play … or I was going to play it safe.

Right then. Right there. Sitting in the nursery I made a choice that changed my life. I wasn't too old, or too dumb, or too anything. Throughout this book you're going to have the opportunity to read the conclusion of this Shope Sales Story and dozens of others because this book is about more than selling. I chose to become the woman, the mother that my daughter could look at and say, “My mommy did it. She believed in her dreams. She sacrificed. She worked. And she achieved what she wanted.” We had a fine life before this night. But fine just wasn't good enough. Not for my husband who loved me, not for my parents who had believed in me, and not for myself. And settling for a life that was less than I wanted wasn't even close to good enough for my daughter.

Picture this. Over the years, your wife has excitedly announced dozens of cockamamie, half‐baked, wackadoodle, head‐in‐the‐clouds schemes. One night this crazy gal bounds into your bedroom, right before you are asleep, excited as all get out and announces, dramatically:

“I'm living a lie.”

Bless him, Blake simply said, “Okay. Tell me more.” And I proceeded to share my awakening. I tell Halianna that she can be anything she wants. Right now she doesn't understand that, but one day she will. And she'll ask, ‘Hey mom, did you want to sell drugs for a living?’ (Obviously, the legal kind.)

“And I'll have to tell her no, I gave up on my dream. But you should follow yours – it'll be that whole do‐as‐I‐say‐not‐as‐I‐do thing. And I can't do that.” I went on to explain that I didn't want our daughter Halianna to look for role models at school or on TV or God forbid, on social media. I told my husband that I wanted to be the most important role model in our daughter's life.

At the time, I'm sure my poor husband was thinking, “Oh God. This business is her next thing.” And to be fair, I understand. At one point, I was sending videos, unsolicited, to Oprah! I had tried out to be an NFL cheerleader even though I had zero dance experience and had only cheered for Sweetwater High. All of my “things” up until that point had been total disasters.

But behind every one of those wild ideas was an insatiable thirst to find IT. Ever since I was a little girl, I had been on a quest to find my one big dream. What I was meant to do in this world. Every time I thought I found “IT” I went all in. And this time I was different.

Six months later, I quit my six‐figure job and started an unproven online business.

Sound familiar? This was IT, y'all!

I hired an executive coach who had me read a Martha Beck book. Briefly, my thing was becoming a life coach. But I'm not so great at allowing people to find their own way. Instead of leading people to drink the water, I hold a gigantic bottle to their lips and MAKE them drink. Life coaching clearly wasn't IT for me. Still searching, I joined a business mastermind. Another entrepreneur in the group mentioned that she was having trouble closing clients on sales calls. I figured that with all my experience and success in selling, I could help.

After 90 minutes, my new business bestie said “This is what you're supposed to be doing.” I remember telling her that I didn't even know what I did, exactly. But lucky for me, she had written down everything I said. Her notes became the early version of Authentic Selling®