Why Authors and Creatives Struggle to Sell (And How to Fix It) with Janine Bolon

Janine: The biggest thing is it's sales first, then marketing. And because marketing people are so good at what they do, an unwary business owner, somebody who maybe has never run their own business before, maybe somebody who just didn't ever have any kind of training in business whatsoever, like most of my authors and stuff like that, the thing that they struggle with is they start marketing before they've done sales.

Harry: Joining us today on the Sales Made Easy podcast. I'm thrilled because Janine has been selling, and acting, and being an entrepreneur since she was 10 years old, and that's more than a few weeks ago. She's been doing this successfully for a long time, and she's written quite a number of books, I'd say ranging in the double digits. So Janine has got a lot of background in business as well as being around sales, and listening to some of the experts over the years. I'm thrilled to have her here on the show today. So Janine, welcome to the Sales Made Easy podcast. What's the good word?

Janine: What is the good word? Well, first of all, thanks, Harry. It's always great to be here. And I just have to let your listeners know, how did Harry and I meet? I was begging for authors because I had the 99 Author Book Project. It ended up becoming Published Profitability, and Harry is in one of the chapters, page 102 for those of you who have already gone out and purchased your copy. So that's how he and I met, and ever since then we have been like glue because we both sell the same way, which is we don't walk people down a path. We do not try to get into their mind and sell them something they don't need, want, or have a use for. We make sure we're selling products we can stand behind. We make sure that we're giving somebody something that will change their life. It will either save them money, save them time, or save their sanity, right?

Harry: Oh my goodness, that is so true. Loved all of it. You and I were speaking recently and there's a lot of authors out there listening, and they know they need to be better on the sales side of things. But it's often the last thing they wanna do because they say things like, "Sales is gross. I'm not a salesperson." And they talk themselves out of it before they ever start. They've got this great book, great ideas, and it's sitting there on a shelf doing nothing but collecting dust. So let's talk to those people. Maybe we can help them get out of this mindset that sales is gross. What's your thought on that, Janine?

Janine: Well, I will be happy to speak to authors, but I would like to talk to all the creatives out there, whether you have art that's sculpture, painted, whether you draw, maybe you doodle. Maybe what you do you don't even think of as art, but I would look at it and go, "Oh my gosh, you have a product." And the first thing people tell you is "get on social media," and you and I both know that's ridiculous. You want to make revenue. It's all about making money — not for money's sake. Why did I get really good at sales? Because I wanted to start the next business. I wanted to write the next book. I wanted to go on vacation. Money was just a tool.

It wasn't something I want to be known for. I've always known that I wanted to be a millionaire so I could help millions. And now that I'm in a place where I live comfortably, I have all the things I wanted when I was in my 20s, and I got those things by the time I was in my 40s — now it's about reaching back and letting people know how to get to what you call success.

Let's just take somebody who doodles — this is actually a true story of one of my clients. She just doodled. And I said, "You could get revenue from that." And she goes, "Oh, no, I don't wanna sell my art. That's no fun." And I said, "Well, what if you were teaching somebody how to draw?" She goes, "But I'm not a teacher." I said, "I know, which is why you would be brilliant at teaching somebody how to draw, because you just do it."

So this is all about revenue. Whatever you're doing, there's an opportunity for revenue on pretty much anything that is written or created.

Harry: So the whole point about making sales easy — how do you do that? Well, you really do need to know what is your level of success. I had one person say, "Well, if I make $125, that's a success."

Janine: She made $125. I looked at her and said, "You are now a successful artist." And she broke down bawling. "I am, aren't I?" See, it's an identity shift. So when you say sales is gross, we're gonna have to change your identity. Because you identify sales with grossness. Would you please understand that the sales you attribute to being gross were done by subpar professionals? If you talk to Harry or myself, you would not think that we had sold you anything. You would think you had walked in willingly to whatever program or product we were sharing, and it would've been a delightful conversation, and at the end you'd be like, "I can't believe I just handed you $9,000, Janine." And I would say, "Yes, but you're doing it in a four-month payment plan. We're still good, or do you wanna back out? Because I'm not gonna lead you somewhere you don't wanna go." That's a consummate professional. That's sales made easy. But it starts with you having to change your identity.

Harry: So good. This is where the struggle is — most people think sales is just what they've seen in the movies. Glengarry Glen Ross. Always Be Closing. It's always portrayed as doing something to another person, not doing something for another person.

Janine: Right. That little shift — it's huge. That's a fulcrum right there. Doing something to versus doing something for — a doctor does something to you. You're going to get that injection whether you want it or not because it's good for you. But what's the difference when you have a coach wanting you to rise to the level of your highest performance? A lot of people want to be successful, but they've never taken the time to determine what success means to them.

I never had the desire to have a yacht or my own airplane. Why have all that maintenance when I can just suffer through TSA and somebody I don't know will fly me where I wanna go? The levels of success some people think they need have been a smokescreen. Go back to when you were five or six, when anything was possible. What did you want to do?

One kid told me, "I wanted to be an astronaut." I said, "Did you know you only need $3 million and you can be an astronaut now?" I could not have achieved my own success if I had in any way tried to run a business without revenue. By the way, if you're running a business and you do not have revenue, we call that a hobby.

Janine: The biggest thing is we've been taken advantage of in our willingness to believe we can be anything. And then when we tried to move in that direction, we hit resistance. You truly can be anything you wanna be, but don't put such tight guardrails around it that you talk yourself right out of it.

One woman told me, "I'll never be able to afford a home." I said, "No, you won't." She looked at me like, "I thought you were supposed to coach me." I said, "Lesson number one: whatever you say out of your mouth is going to manifest." There's scientific proof now. When I would listen to myself on radio shows and talk shows, I could pick up on what I was saying that I knew in my heart was inaccurate, and I had to change it. It's subroutine programming — some of it done without your consent. And so what are you going to blame your lack of drive on? You're making excuses. The first thing is you start recording your Zoom calls and go listen to them. You'll actually hear the stuff coming out of your mouth and go, "Oh my gosh, I don't believe that. Why did I say that?" The thing is you're aware of it. Make sure you don't say it anymore. That type of mental note is no longer allowed.

In order to be really good at sales, you have to have discipline. We are in a battle in our own heads. The person we want to become is having to struggle with the person who had subroutine programming put in their head without consent.

Harry: What is in your control is who are you going to do outreach to? Who are you having conversations with? Who is your ideal client? Speaking to those people and finding out what they need will lead to revenue. Thoughts on that, Janine?

Janine: Well, you're singing my song. We're in chorus on that. The biggest thing is it's sales first, then marketing. And the thing that they struggle with is they start marketing before they've done sales. That's why I say, "Right now you're running a hobby." How many clients do you have right now? None. Zero. I work with people who are at level zero. I say, "How many people are on your email list?" Because as an author, those are your readers. "How often do you email your readers?" And they're like, "Maybe once a month if I feel like it." I'm like, "You're not even taking care of the people who bought your book."

So that is the one thing I focus on — sales first, then marketing. And what is sales? Sales is where you pick up the phone. You have to sit there with a mirror in front of you. Smile and dial. If you had to make 150 to 200 phone calls to be considered the beginning of a sales professional — that was the beginning. When people picked up the phone and were willing to listen, I was so grateful. And then I would decide: did they really need the product I was offering? Because what you're doing with these phone calls is not only establishing a relationship, you're pre-qualifying them.

If you have bad news, brace the person first. I learned that from an FBI hostage negotiator. "Hey, I need to talk to you for five minutes. I have information you're not gonna like."

Harry: Good prep.

Janine: Let's go back to that discipline piece. I had a client challenge me that I could not start a business in an area I had never been in before. And he said, "You can't use ads." I'm like, "I don't do that. Not a problem." I only had four hours a week — from 8 AM Saturday until noon because I'm a single mother with four teenagers. Over the course of three years, I gained over 1,778 people's addresses so I could send them cards.

You have to have high tech and high touch — send something in the mail as well as take care of them online. They never knew what was gonna happen when they open a card from me. It was never meant to be a revenue-generating business — it was a promotional arm.

So let's talk about revenue. I want my authors to be able to afford to publish the next book. If you are a self-published author, you need at least $5,000 to publish. So let's make sure you make enough revenue so you can afford to publish the next book.

Harry: Yeah, brilliant. So where do we go from here? What's a practical first step for the person who knows they want to be successful and just wants to get going?

Janine: The very first thing — master contact sheet. Every business starts with the people that you know. You are not pitching to them, you are not selling to them. You take every contact in your phone and download it into a spreadsheet. Put it in a spreadsheet and start calling people. I take an hour a week where all I do is call people. One hour calling, one hour following up on texts, one hour connecting on Facebook — you can download your friend list. Download your Facebook people, your LinkedIn people. Put everybody in there, and you'll stay busy for the first year.

Harry: You don't need millions of people to do this. In my world, I'm looking for ideal clients who can afford my coaching. All I need is a few hundred people. If I get a couple of sales a year, things can go pretty well.

Janine: A lot of people don't know how many people they know. And then they download their phone, go onto Facebook, and they're like, "Oh my God, I have over 1,000 people. I didn't even know." You can only truly keep track of about 150 to 160 people, which is why you need the spreadsheet to write notes to yourself. For authors, so many haven't even told their friends and family they've written a book because they're terrified of being judged. When I say I start at level zero — that's where I start with a lot of these creatives.

Janine: Yeah, it's all about the revenue. I train these beautiful creatives to let people know what they're doing, let them know they have work, let them know they just finished a project. I can't tell you how many times a creative sold a painting for $1,200 to $1,800 — paintings they thought were trash — because they sent a picture to somebody who said, "How big is it? Oh my God, I have the perfect wall." All because they were reaching out and sharing their passion.

Harry: Yeah.

Janine: You mentioned the master contact sheet. Are you excited about your own product? Do you even know about your own product? I can't tell you how many people tried to sell me something and I could tell it was their first week on the job. They had not educated themselves on the product they were selling. You're not gonna sell me anything. You don't know enough to sell me. Nothing irritates me more than shoddy sales. It makes us look bad.

Harry: Yes. There's a lot of it out there. But you don't have to be incredible to be good at it. If you do the right things, know your stuff, and have conversations about outcomes rather than products, a lot of good is gonna happen.

Janine: Dentists — do they get into the business because they like teeth? What is the dentist selling? Better outcomes. They're saving you time, saving you money, getting you out of pain. So don't sell yourself short. Sometimes you don't have to be super energetic. Sometimes it's just that you have a message with your book, with your art. You are trying to get that out there, and then you let people make their own decision.

Who are you not touching that needs what you have? How dare you not sell your product? How dare you not sell what you have as a message? Somebody out there needs you. Now get off the pod, stop listening to this after we're done, wait for the outro music, and get on the phone. Sit your butt in the chair and dial and smile.

Harry: Oh, so great. Janine Bolon, this has been a blast. Where can people find more of you?

Janine: The best way is to come to Open Friday Coffee, which is free of charge. I get on once a week on Zoom. Join my community there. You can go to janinebolon.com/connect — that's the easiest, fastest, best way.

Harry: And Janine will find you back, that's for sure. Great stuff, Janine. Thank you so much for helping make sales easy.