Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Susan Trumpler. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Susan, thanks for joining us today. Folks often look at a successful business and imagine it was an overnight success, but from what we’ve seen this is often far from the truth. We’d love to hear your scaling up story – walk us through how you grew over time – what were some of the big things you had to do to grow and what was that scaling up journey like?

I think sometimes women business owners think that because they are really good at something they can start a business, put up a website, start doing social media, and clients will just naturally flock to them.

I know that I had that notion in my mind when I started my business.

I was a seasoned professional at sales and marketing. I had been in the corporate world for over 20 years. I had experienced a lot of success. So naturally I’m thinking in my mind, why not do this on your own? I mean really why should you work for a large corporation and have them benefit from the skills that you’ve cultivated over a long period of time?

So, I did just that. I created a website starting to post on social media and at first I was able to leverage my internal network and did have some success. But that isn’t enough to really grow a thriving business. To scale your business you really need a plan. A systematic process that will move people through their buying Journey and eventually into becoming clients.

In order to scale my business to the size that I had a vision for, I had to get really savvy about understanding where my ideal clients were in their buying journey – especially in relationship with what they knew about me and why they would even consider me to be a thought leader or expert in my field.

Over the course of three years I honed in on getting a deep understanding of the online buying sales process and how I fit into that realm – so that I could attract more people into my funnel and then purposefully nurture the relationship to the point that they would commit to doing business with me.

But it wasn’t easy and it wasn’t smooth. And this is so funny because I am an expert in sales, in this arena it was so different than when I was selling in corporate. I was selling ME as the product and it was personal. Nott only did I have to really ramp up on what I did and how I did it, I also had to really become very adept at monitoring the mindset in which I was doing these things.

Because this is the bottom line, you can learn the skills and processes required to scale a business, but if you don’t control the primitive part of your brain that is telling you that you are not safe and going to crash and burn, you won’t be able to execute on your plans at the same level of creativity

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Rarely does someone go into business because they are driven to become a professional sales person. And yet, shortly after launching, they find out that is exactly what needs to happen! Selling is the lifeblood of your business. Isn’t it time that you got really good at it and watched your revenue soar?

Enter: Unstoppable Women in Business. Susan has created a safe place for women entrepreneurs to come together and get really clear on how to find and connect authentically with their ideal clients so that they can get to YES faster and more often. No woman should build her business alone on an island with no one to turn to for support!

After 20 years of selling in corporate America and then going on to own a sales research company that identifies the key skills that sellers from top tier corporations use to bring in the most revenue – Susan got tired of supporting the “big guys” success. She translated all she had learned from her own personal experiences AND the data that she collected from the research work she was doing into the key information that women entrepreneurs needed to be successful in their own businesses.

Susan is making it her mission in life to stomp out the phrase “I hate sales” from every woman entrepreneur’s lexicon! In her book, “OH SH*T, I’m in Sales?” she teaches the reader a proven process to turn around their sales mindset from one that feels “pushy” or “salesy” into making sales her BFF. She is so proud to be making a dent in this vision and will continue on for the rest of her career. This is a critical service to provide. Without a clean sales mindset, you cannot survive as an entrepreneur. If you can’t sell, you won’t have income. If you don’t have income, you don’t have a business!!

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

There’s two ways that I like to attract clients that works best for me. the first way I believe is really important is speaking… a lot! When you can speak to a large group of people or even a small group of people it’s a one-to-many ratio. you have an opportunity to be all eyeballs eyeball with a good number of people let’s hear your thought leadership direct from your mouth. They can sense the type a person that you are and this escalates the relationship aspect copy equation. if you can speak in an interactive situation all the better. so while main stage speaking is awesome, small group speaking give you the opportunity to interact more directly and create that relationship. I know that this works because 80% of my clients have heard me speak. they got to know me not only through what I said from the stage, but then I nurture the relationship via my email touches and eventually they become a client. speaking is the magic sauce to creating relationships and scaling your business.

The second method that I use more than anything else is networking. I know a lot of people will have a negative attitude about networking and I think that’s because they’ve not been part of the right networking groups. I can’t tell you how satisfying it is to meet someone in a networking event oh, not for the purpose of selling them, but for the purpose of finding Partnerships and ways to leverage each other’s businesses for the common good of both. just this week I met a woman in a virtual networking meeting we can both tell we enjoyed each other’s energy and Outlook about business oh, we’ve since had a one-on-one meeting and found ways to be able to work together and jointly promote our businesses and find referral sources. when you approach networking in a way that expands your professional community it becomes an amazing resource for new clients.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

One of the keys to my success has been learning how to communicate and connect with my ideal prospects. I was introduced to Donald Miller of StoryBrand around 10 years ago. He wrote a book by the same name. In this book Donald teaches a framework for creating sales and marketing messaging that is above others. I highly recommend anything written by Donald – starting with the book StoryBrand and then moving onto his book, Business Made Simple. My business wouldn’t be where it is today without the content in these two books.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.unstoppablewomeninbusiness.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unstoppablewomeninbusiness/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UWIBusiness
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susantrumpler/
• Youtube: http://bit.ly/YT-UWIB