When you are making an offer to potential clients, if you get shy or nervous, are you aware of how you act that shyness out? Because your potential client is having a reaction as well, and you may not notice if you’re caught up in your own awkwardness.
The two reactions, yours and your potential client’s, may be working against each other and stopping people from hiring you.
However you react to your shyness or tenderness, I’m guessing it has you picturing potential clients in less than friendly ways.
I know for me it’s easy to fall into painful backflashes from high school, where popularity was important, and feeling rejected, ignored, or insulted was a daily occurrence. (Side note: who in the heck created schools like this?)
It’s quite natural to want to protect yourself from that kind of experience, and everyone has a different reaction when they feel shy, or tender, or just nervous. Some get quiet. Some get stand-offish. Some get awkward. Some even get louder and more boisterous.
Take a moment now to become aware of your own tendency. For myself I tend to get quiet, reserved. I say less and observe more. I don’t take risks in conversation or interaction.
Whatever you notice, hold it tenderly. Your reaction helped you get through difficult situations in the past, and you want to honor that. Allow your heart to rest into the compassion available in having a defensive reaction that helped protect your heart.
It can be hard for me to accept the tenderness I have there, yet when I do I feel such a sense of relief. A client of mine similarly had trouble approaching her tenderness because it arose from such painful experiences from her childhood. And still, relief, healing and love were available when we took time to allow her heart to open in the face of those feelings.
Now About Those Waiting Potential Clients
Because so many, perhaps most, of us are walking around with this tenderness, we have a heightened yearning for acceptance, for love. This yearning to be accepted, to be chosen, to be picked, when unfulfilled, can feel so painful.
Now notice if you are feeling awkward or distant when you make an offer to a potential client, you may say or write something like this:
“Here’s my offer for you. I’m only wanting you to choose to work with me if you think it will be of benefit.”
Notice how formal that language sounds? Formal language creates distance. When you write like that, here’s what you’re (unconsciously, awkwardly) probably meaning to communicate:
“I don’t want to be pushy, I want you to choose what you really want, so here’s this offer and it’s no big deal and maybe you can pick if you want it, and that’s okay anyway…”
Unfortunately, because your potential client may also have a tender reaction in bringing their vulnerable sense of stuckness to you, they may hear your formal language like this:
“Well, I only work with people who are good enough, and I’m not sure you’re good enough, so maybe, but you have to prove yourself to me, and I don’t care that much anyway.”
Wow! Who knew? That’s painful! And not very effective.
The Missing Ingredients: Warmth and Desire
When someone is feeling awkward, what sets them at ease? Warmth for one, meaning sincere friendliness.
The second thing is desire, a sense of someone sincerely liking to be with you, even choosing you.
How does this sound: “I love working with people like you, and my clients and I have a lot of fun together, even when we’re working on serious or tender issues. While I know it might not be the right timing for you to take me up on this offer, I really hope it is because I’m looking forward to getting to know you!”
You may be worried that if you express desire to work with a client you might sound needy and turn people off. If it is coming from neediness, meaning the underlying (probably unconscious) communication is, “Please work with me, I need the money!” Then yes, that is a turn off.
But if the conscious communication from the heart is one of desire and joy in doing the work with someone you respect and would love to support, then no, there is no neediness in that. Just the warmth of friendliness and desire. How did you feel when you read the paragraph just above?
Your Action Steps
First, if you didn’t take time above, take time now to hold the tenderness of your own heart. Be gentle with yourself. Spend time in Remembrance, or meditation, or prayer. Allow your heart to receive love around this.
Secondly, take a look at an offer you are making. Notice if the language is at all formal and protecting a shy/awkward/tender reaction. If it is, see if you can open your heart here and rewrite it to include warmth, friendliness and desire to work with the right person.
Please share your experiences with this, I really want to hear what you’re thinking. And if you have a before and after you’d like to share, that would be awesome and inspirational for us all. Come on over, we want to hear! Add your comment right below.
p.s. Feeling awkward about your website?
On average it takes 72 weeks for a business owner to get their website done. Unfortunately, the first 71 weeks is mostly spent just feeling stuck! And who wouldn’t feel stuck?
You could write the content for your website in just a week or two, and since 2006 thousands of people have used Creating Heart-Centered Websites to engage their audience in a heart-felt and effective way. You can avoid hype, manipulation or gimmicky tactics and instead have a clear outline on what pages you need and how to write them.
Why don’t you take a look and see if it’s for you?
7 Responses
Dear Mark, this is a life-changing insight and so timely. I have a funny story to share with you. I’ve been consciously working with feelings of tenderness around somebody choosing someone else and not me, and my practice has been to use your remembrance pretty much daily and an inner child healing meditation I’ve developed. These two processes have enabled me to sit in the tenderness and feel the apparently external need for love; for approval – to be chosen. In that space I’ve been able to find the truth of the love inside me, around me, in everything. The relief of that and how it takes away that pressure and neediness – wow. A couple of days ago an email arrived to say somebody has unsubscribed from my mailing list and the reason they gave was ‘I found something much better somewhere else’. I was laughing out loud because there was no pain, no trigger, some incredulity at their lack of tact but I felt free! My heart was so filled up with love, that comment didn’t gnaw at my insecurities when before I think it would have. This changes everything! In this post you have expressed exactly the tenderness that can hold us back and how that impacts on our businesses. Thank you always for your honesty, your laser sharp awareness and your love. This is such an amazing post!
Jackie, I love your story! Thanks for sharing — I laughed alongside you.
Mark, thanks for the reminder that there’s a fine balance and appropriate level of sharing and connection. I’ve been having a hard time striking that balance, and I’ll meditate on your lesson. I really think it can help me get some clarity!
Mark, this is such an interesting perspective. I’ve never thought about it that way.
Sure, people like choices. (Here’s an option of working with me, but here’s another option of not… that’s okay too.) But that can make them feel that awkwardness too from the seemly ambivalent communication. Sometimes they are just waiting for you to extend your hand.
Thanks for the article and a different way of thinking!
Kelvin- glad you found it useful. You are so welcome- thanks for showing up here!
Wow Mark! What a great article. So true and applicable. Thank you for reminding me to put the salve on the awkwardness and to approach my clients from an open, compassionate and friendly heart. Thank you, Thank you!
Thank you so much Mark for your insights. To embrace the ‘No’ without attachment takes away the awkwardness as we realize that with every ‘No’ we get, it is not a rejection of us personally but an ‘I don’t know’ and that’s okay! Maybe at some other point in time they will know and will then give you a ‘Yes’!