Rethink your sales approach and be more sensible
What if the least important moment in your entire sales process is the moment someone hands over their money?
That’s not a trick question. It’s a core belief of Synne Lindén, founder of Tidle, creator of the Empathy First Sales Method, and someone I’d classify as a thoroughly sensible business owner, which is a massive compliement!
The Sensible Business Owner
Before we even get to empathy, sales, or the fairly ambitious goal of putting more money in the hands of all women everywhere, there’s something worth saying about how Synne runs her business.
No sprawling content calendar or frenetic 24/7 marketing, it’s clear Synne is really intentional about where she puts her energy and why.
“Time is the most precious resource we have as business owners,” she says. “And I’m a very firm believer in being extremely intentional about where we place our time.”
Her test for any new activity is this: is it going to move the needle? Is it something she can sustain? And crucially, is it actually enjoyable?
The analogy she uses to explain focus is one that came from a racing with her daughter along a pavement. Her daughter kept glancing sideways to check where Synne was. And every time she looked, she slowed down. After the race, Synne told her: when you’re running somewhere, there’s you, there’s where you’re going, and there’s nothing else.
Which is exactly how she approaches running her business too. (Synne that is, not her young child…)
Trusting your gut
A pet interest of mine recently is intuition. How can I foster it? How can you tell the difference between a gut feeling and not making a choice because it’s going outside your comfort zone? Synne has a lot to say on the matter, especially the way women are conditioned to override their ‘knowing’.
Synne is emphatic on this: her gut feeling is always right. When it tells her something is right, it’s instant and clear. Every time she’s ignored it, it’s bitten her on the bum.
“If you ask them [women], do you know what the right thing to do is, almost a hundred percent of the time they’re like, I do. I’m just afraid to do it, or I just don’t know how to do it, or I just don’t know how people will perceive me.”
It’s not that the instinct is absent. It’s the second guessing that’s making them ignore it. That’s definitely something I’m working on myself! To be able to tune into the insights I already have in me and not to be so swayed by external inputs like opinions that aren’t relevant.
Of course the science backs all this up. The gut-brain connection is well documented. What feels like an unsubstantiated hunch is often the subconscious having picked up on something the conscious mind hasn’t clocked yet.
The practical upshot: when your gut says yes, act on it. The discomfort of ignoring it tends to cost more in the long run.
Sales outreach – how not to do it
Synne teaches the Empathy First Sales Method, and nowhere is that philosophy more visible than in how she thinks about outreach aka the activity that sends most of us business owners into a wibble.
Her top tip is ridiculously simple: remember you’re talking to a human being.
“Pretend you’re at an in-real-life networking event, or you’re meeting them for coffee. Because when we’re doing so much of this online, we forget that we’re just sending a message.”
The second piece is about releasing the outcome. A lot of people freeze on outreach because they’re worried about what the other person will think of them, whether they’ll be ignored, whether they’ll be judged. Synne’s reframe is this; you are not responsible for, nor in control of, how others choose to respond to the world around them. The only thing within your control is your intention and how you choose to show up.
And she’s clear on what the intention should be; genuine curiosity about whether this is someone you could serve. Not “I hope they buy.”
“In good selling, the least important moment in the entire sales process is the moment that money changes hands. All the moments before it and long after it matter far more.”
Tidle: Synne’s ambitious leap towards her mission
Her mission to shift money in a different direction, has lead to Synne’s biggest project yet – Tidle. It’s the Matchmaking Agency for business owners who want to find the right service provider, first time.
The problem it solves is one every business owner knows intimately. You need help. You need to outsource something. And so begins the nightmare: Upwork, Google rabbit holes, doomscrolling LinkedIn, asking for recommendations from friends who rave about someone who turns out to be entirely wrong for you. You spend so much time and energy solving the problem of finding someone to solve your problem.
Tidle cuts all of that out.
You tell Tidle what you need. They have a 45-minute call with you (built on the Empathy First approach) with the aim of helping you to get clear on your problem, what a solution might look like, and what having it resolved would actually feel like. Then Tidle matches you with vetted service providers from their partner network. You have one or two conversations. If it’s a fit, you work together.
And for the client, this service is entirely free.
Why Women?
Tidle has a structural mission built into its business model; only women and non-binary people can be vetted and certified into the partner network. Which means every transaction that passes through Tidle puts money into a those hands. An additional 2% of every deal total goes to causes focused on women’s and girls’ financial literacy and freedom globally.
The venture capital numbers make the case plainly. In the last 30 years, VC funding to female-founded companies has never exceeded 2%. And in recent years it’s gone backwards, sitting around 1.7%.
Synne’s view on shifting this isn’t to stand outside the system asking those with power to redistribute it, which she sees as an almost impossible ask when human beings are fundamentally focused on their own survival. Instead: build something that reroutes the money automatically.
“This is money you’re already spending on outsourcing. Let’s just make sure we leverage that existing function in business in women’s favour.”
The phrase that Synne uses throughout, and the one that best sums her up, is ‘captaining your own ship’. Initially it sounds like straightforward business advice; stay focused, know your direction. But by the end of the conversation it feels to me like something much bigger.
Connect with Synne:
And while you’re at it, why not connect with me on LinkedIn here.
And find out more about my offer positioning and messaging services here.
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Timestamps:
00:00 Show Intro
00:09 Meet Synne Linden
01:49 Streamlined Marketing Focus
05:52 Trusting Your Gut
13:20 Empathy First Outreach
18:34 What Is Tidle
23:18 Women Wealth Shift Model
24:55 Including Nonbinary Founders
30:16 Building Systems for Equity
34:58 How to Follow Tidle
35:56 Wrap Up and Subscribe