You Deserve to Get Paid: Building a Sales Funnel that Honors Your Value with Réland Logan
EPISODE: 15
So many of us start our businesses with big hearts and a drive to serve—only to find ourselves uncomfortable (even apologetic) when it comes time to charge for our work.
In this episode, I’m joined by Reland Logan, founder of Gray Digital Marketing and creator of the Luxe Invite Framework.
We unpack what it looks like to build a sales funnel where every step is paid, why confidence is often the missing link in pricing, and how to reframe your first offer as a preview of your brilliance—not a giveaway of your time.
If you’ve been stuck in the free consult > custom proposal > fingers crossed loop, this one’s for you.
Key Takeaways:
Clarity builds confidence—and confidence builds trust.
Charging for the first step in your funnel creates buy-in, not barriers.
The right funnel should feel like a guided invitation—not a performance or a pitch.
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE HERE 👇🏻
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[00:00:00] You treat things differently when you pay for them. You treat things differently when you pay a lot for something too, and the shift was almost immediate. I first originally went to having proposals paid, and I went from $2,500 months to $15,000 months in two months. Welcome to Sales Is Service. The podcast designed to help you change your mind about sales.
Literally, I'm gonna help you change the way you think about selling. I'm Tam Smith, your host. Sales bestie and pitch partner next door. You're tired of bros with biceps telling you how to crush a million dollars in your sleep or battling imposter syndrome on your own. You've come to the right place. All you need to do is listen, then take action.
No gym membership required. Let's get started.
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Alright, let's get into the episode. Welcome back to Sales as Service. If you're new here, I'm Tam Smith, founder of Studio 3 49, sales Marketing. I help creative agencies and service based businesses build sales systems that feel [00:02:00] good and actually work so they can grow consistently without burning out.
This is the show where we pull back the curtain on what it really takes to run a sustainable service. First business. We talk about sales, yes, but always the lens of connection, intention, and long-term growth. Today's episode hits right at the heart of something. I think so many of us wrestle with confidence and pricing, and if there's one lesson I've learned as a founder, it's this.
So much of our success starts with the decision to believe in it, not just hoping it works out, but really deciding that it will, and then building from there, that mindset. Of claiming your space, honoring your value, and showing up with bold energy is exactly what drew me to today's guest. Raelyn Logan is the founder of Gray Digital Marketing and creator of the Lux Invite Framework.
We first connected on LinkedIn, and I can tell you her energy is unmistakable. She raises the vibration in every room She's in virtual or not. Her confidence is magnetic, but more than that. It's intentional because she knows what it's like to be the woman who second guesses her rates, who wants to serve [00:03:00] so badly.
She forgets to sell. Who's tempted to overdeliver and undercharge? And listen, I know that woman too. I've been her. And depending on the day, I'm still her. So if you've ever struggled to price your work in a way that reflects your full value, not just the hours, but the impact this episode is for you.
Raelynn's here to talk about confident client attraction. Building intentional relationships and now her Lux Invite framework helps founders connect with the right people in the right way. Let's get into it. Raelyn, welcome to sales and Service. I'm so excited to have you here. Hello, I'm so excited to hang out with you again.
Well, first up, let's start with who do you help? And how do you serve? So the people who hire me are women consultants and women service based business owners. And the way that I help them is by really finding their voice within the brand extraordinary method and getting that voice into a brand message that attracts champagne clientele.
That is what I do. At the heart and the core of it. And we have a lot of fun in the process. Yes, we do. In my short time, knowing [00:04:00] you, you have a lot of fun with everyone that you, you work with and interact with. So tell us what inspired you to create the Lux Invite framework? Oh my goodness. So I love that question on like what about the framework versus the business?
'cause they are two different stories in and of themselves, but the framework, I started to notice a shift in how I showed up as a mom and when. I wanted to do things. I needed to do things on my time, and I never really got a lot of value outta discovery calls. I felt like I was spending 15 minutes to an hour in the most un positive light right now, listening to people complain, which is okay because, you know, we're here to discover problems, but I, I am a very solutions-oriented human being, and I was like, there has to be something better because I.
Somebody who wants to help people. And I like, I'm really kind in that way and. I will just afford a listening ear. And I was like, this isn't making me money. This isn't helping the person on the other end. [00:05:00] And so in my state of frustration, which is usually where a lot of good ideas grow, I decided I wasn't gonna do it for free anymore.
And I found a coach who taught. That portion to not be free. And I was like, okay, well that's cool. And I found another coach who taught me that proposals didn't have to be free anymore. So I was like, oh, well there's two things in alignment that don't have to be free. They both had like the same general idea, but I was like, I think they could be a part of the same sequence.
And listening to those two coaches and Pia being one of those coaches who I'm very close to, I was like, I can. I can find time as a mom and really give extraordinary value to the person that I'm working with. But also what I found in some of those discovery calls is it always felt like a power play that I didn't wanna be a part of.
And it was a power play of like, I'm gonna get on this call with her and I'm gonna tell her exactly what I want her to do, and then I'm gonna pay her for it and like if I want to and or I'm gonna collect [00:06:00] as much free information as pos as possible. And I was like, still, no, like. When I go to the doctor's office, first and foremost, I say, what's going on?
And then he tells me what's wrong with me, not I go and tell him what's going on and then tell him what's wrong with me. That's not how that works. I also, everybody always laughs at me. 'cause I say this often, I'm like, I, you don't go to the grocery store and negotiate the price of grapes. So like, why are people negotiating with me on what I'm gonna charge and what's gonna fix the problem?
So I decided I didn't like any of it. Long story short, I didn't like any of it. Tam, I hated it all. And I don't like hating things. So I sat back and I was like, there has to be a better way. Yeah. And I said, okay, Pia has taught me this. I cannot remember the name of the other coach. I'm sorry everybody. It was a course, so I didn't know her personally and I realized that I have a lot of skill sets, not only in brand strategy, really hearing people reflecting it back in a clear and concise way.
And I wanted to work with the people I want to work with. Mm-hmm. [00:07:00] So that's what created this Looks Invite framework is first people work with me and. In the brand extraordinary method, which is my Luxe Invite framework, I invite you to create your own name. It makes everything way more powerful when you name the baby.
But the first step is to do a brand Muta brand breakthrough, which is where I will have somebody fill out a form. It's really an expensive. It's today in this moment, $50 and you fill out the form and then I go in and I look at what you say your goals are based on the few things I asked for. And I send you a loom video of me going through your digital presence.
And I will go line for line. I will talk about how it doesn't match to sales psychology. I will go through some of my frameworks that are done and then further in the steps of my ran extraordinary method. And I will literally give you like. Real time things that could be tweaked in order to get to the goal that you asked for.
If I feel like I can help make a difference on those things, then I invite folks to the next step, which is [00:08:00] to brainstorm and brainstorming is where I sit down with somebody for 90 minutes and I listen to it all. So I. I've seen it, but now I'm really hearing it and like truly, deeply, what do people want?
I ask a lot of questions and I take that and I put it into a strategic plan that tells people what they need to start doing and what they need to stop doing in order to get to the next level of success that they desire, and if I feel like I can make it, make a difference. Because really guys, it's a matter of can I do it or can I not?
Then I will invite somebody to do a making Waves intensive, which I will then help with whatever was in that strategic plan, bring it to life in two to three business days. 'cause let's be very transparent with ourselves. We do not have all the time in the world. We need to get it done now, and especially as women, we also need a helping hand to pull out our voice to have a very much an alignment brand message.
But it's more than messaging. I mean, I do sales systems and frameworks, and as my girlfriends told me so kindly and a retreat, [00:09:00] I am more than a brand strategist and a sales systems expert. What that is, we don't know yet. We'll name the baby later. If we get through that intensive and we feel really, really strong about it, then we move into, and I only take about five folks a year into extraordinary authority, where I will spend a year with somebody developing their thought leadership content and building out a really strong digital presence and footprint from the standpoint of evergreen content through blogs, YouTube videos, if somebody wishes, or a podcast, and breaking that down into social media posts.
'cause nobody should be on a social media hamster wheel. But those are the steps to take. Knowing that that with the emphasis being on every step is paid. And you kind of touched on it a little bit, but how had, did you know what the shift in, the impact that it had on the client relationship and the sales process?
You treat things differently when you pay for them. You treat things differently when you pay a lot for something too. And the shift was almost immediate. So the, when I, I first originally went to having proposals [00:10:00] paid and I went from $2,500 months to $15,000 months in two months. So from a monetary portion like that was a high impact for me personally, but for the people that I did work for, I've.
I've been doing a much stronger job of collecting testimonials lately, and I had one person who literally emailed me and was like, I just want you to know that this had such a huge impact on my business and I actually booked my first case study client within days of getting this. I. I mean like wild levels of impact.
I was just on somebody's show this week. Um, it's brand new, so it hasn't aired anything. Hasn't aired yet. But she was saying, she's like, this was the most valuable thing I have received in years. As it pertains to getting me to the next step, and that was for the brand me to brand Breakthrough and for making Waves intensive.
Usually I'll do them online and we'll interact over Zoom and we'll get off Zoom, we'll get back and all the fun things. I actually had somebody fly out from Virginia and I'm on the west coast, [00:11:00] y'all, so for somebody to say, actually, I'm coming to you and to get the work done, she left saying, you help me find my voice that I didn't know I needed to find.
And so I. Feel like it is way more helpful. It's way more impactful. It's not treated passively. People are active participants in making these things happen. Some people are like, wow, you told me the hard truth. I actually had somebody email that last night. She was like, well, some of it was hard to hear. I was like, oh, I'm sorry.
She goes, but I will book the next, next thing. How do I do that? Send me the link. So it's the impact. I'm starting to see a shift of. People who really wanna make change because people who really have a problem will pay to have that problem solved, and they also want to do the work. And I think that that's very powerful and I'd rather work with folks like that than people who wanna be passive about life.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, for, for founders who feel stuck in that traditional, you know, free discovery proposal, hope cycle, what is. [00:12:00] I guess the kind of the first, the mindset shift, so much of this work is just like mindset shift that they need to make to adopt this kind of framework and how can they. What's the first step to identifying or how do you help them identify and design that first step in their process?
So I was actually just doing this with a person a couple weeks ago before I left town. And we were, we were talking, 'cause she was like, well I've had a lot of fit calls, I've had a lot of discovery calls, and then I make the proposal and then they ghost me. And if you start seeing a trend in that, there, there's a couple things.
One, you need to learn how to sell better. So keep listening to Tam's podcast 'cause you're gonna learn how to sell better. And then I also was telling her, I was like, well, we need to sort who's serious and who's not serious fairly quickly. I go, but your time shouldn't be wasted when you sit back. And I, I want you to like grab a piece of paper and I want you to sit down and look at all the discovery calls you've had recently.
If you haven't had any discovery calls, well then this isn't gonna help you. So we need to go solve a different problem. If we've [00:13:00] had a lot of discovery calls that haven't moved to proposal, we need to stop and say, why? And, and you're not gonna find a mindset shift until you start to pinpoint what a problem is.
And if you can identify the why. Like for me, I was too busy listening to people and not actually giving tangible things that would get them to the next step. So I had to remove myself. From the situation that came in the form of, okay, great, I can, I can send you a video. Some people you might, you might need to hire somebody who can do discovery calls for you because you don't have something in your business that can act as that first step.
But you need to discover what your ratio is of converting people to a proposal. When we got that data, then we can look now in. The lens of the person who I was helping, she had no problem getting them to a proposal. The issue at hand was she was creating these proposals and the proposal didn't show the [00:14:00] value that she could actually provide.
And that sometimes, like, we wanna think of like these like deep mindset shifts, like, and we're gonna invoke Buddha and like the world's going to change. Like no, like look at the numbers first, please. Let's be kind of realistic. I asked to look at her proposal and I'm gonna tell some people some things that are gonna hurt when you look at your proposals.
Are your proposals a bunch of nonsense about why you're great and like what, what your business is, and then numbers to work with you. Because if that's all that your proposal speaks to, is like, hi, my name is Rayland, and here at Great Digital Marketing we do branding services. You can choose if you want a logo or if you want like strategy or if you want this, and we give them a menu of options like it's McDonald's.
And then we say, and I think yours should cost $1,200. Well. It's five pages long. I regret to inform you. That sucks, right? And um, it's doing nothing for you. So like look at it, right? Like look at it and say, oh shoot, that's mine. And then the [00:15:00] reason I get to charge for proposals. Ultimately is because there's a whole lot of value about the person themselves, and there's a lot of value in sitting and having somebody listen to you and say, I can solve your problem.
So the shift that me and her went through is I was like, you need to start charging for these. Mm-hmm. And you need to do like. Figure out what usually stops people from working with you. So full disclosure, she's a virtual assistant and I told her, I was like, what usually pisses you off? The next thing you're gonna find is you're gonna look at the data and then you're gonna find what pisses you off.
I go, what pisses you off about people not being ready to work with you? And she's like, well, they really don't know what to hand over. Or like what things they can actually take off their plate. And they are like so beholden to it that I can't even really get to do the work I need to do. I go, okay, so.
Now if that's what pisses you off and doesn't, and people aren't ready to really work with you, your, your proposal now comes a strategy session on brainstorming with them on what they can let go of and move [00:16:00] forward for. So it's also set up that proposal stage is set up to make it easier for you. The next leg.
It's really like the first, the first thing that would happen in a working relationship. So they get a taste of what it's like to work with you too. So it's kind of like looking at, okay, what are the first steps after someone says yes that you can maybe pull a piece of that out and turn that into part of your.
Overall sales process and charge for it. And charge for it. Genius. Thank you. So that is really, that's really what it looks like. 'cause you're gonna do it anyway. So why are we working so hard for free? Just make it easy to hit the ground running so you can get results faster. Love that. So we've got kind of the, the pre-sell process and we're monetizing that when you get into the actual.
Sales conversation. What in your experience are you seeing the mistakes that founders and business owners are making when they are actually in a sale [00:17:00] selling premium services? Oh, gosh. A hundred. Let's see if I can narrow it down to my top three. Top three. I knew it was coming. Don't you worry? You don't ask enough questions and in not asking enough questions, you're not discovering the unseen people come to you with a problem, and if the problem was so pressing, they would've solved it already.
Mm-hmm. You need to figure out what is a deeper problem that we can bring to the surface to put urgency around actually solving it. By not asking enough questions, people start to talk about why they're great and it's not about you. Mm-hmm. You guys learned nothing from me today. It's not about you, and, and that's okay because we're here to solve a problem.
And so asking the questions to get to what is the problem, and then starting to uncover other things. A great example of this was. I did a lot yesterday. I even talked to you yesterday, but I did a lot yesterday. And one of those things was somebody was telling me like, they're like, I want a one to mini group.
I want a one to mini group. I want a one to mini group. And I was like, okay, great. And she goes, but I don't want to have to do [00:18:00] one-to-one. And I'm really great at teaching people one-to-one. I go, have you realized that your one-to-one is your limiting belief that you really feel like you have to do it?
Why can't you let go? And it was listening to those like little things of like, I want one to mini. Well, I could have sat there and told her all the ways to do one to mini. That wasn't the problem. The real problem was I'm afraid to let go of one-to-one, and when you can bring urgency to a new problem, people are more likely to hand you money for the new problem than the one they were fine making excuses for before.
Yes, that's the first mistake I see on a regular basis. The next mistake is not being mindful of how you speak, so. I actually just was working with a speaking coach a few weeks back and he was talking about the fact that his name's Brett Lavender, you can look him up. He was talking about how people always talk on the upswing at the end of their sentences and when you are communicating something that's not a question you need to talk on the downturn, and he can explain this way better than I can, but the idea is [00:19:00] when you speak.
Up on the upturn all the time, which I don't typically naturally do very well unless I'm excited and out with my girlfriends drinking wine is, you have, it's a, it's a calming and more authoritative if you can say something like, we'll, just use my name for example. Like, hi, my name is Reland. A lot of times that is how we talk, but it makes you seem unsure of yourself.
Whereas we need to end on a low end and start high. So like, hi, my name is Reland. And then that way we are holding more authority in the way that we talk and sometimes we don't realize how we communicate is actually telling them something different. And that also includes your body language, not just tone of voice.
But I do find when I'm watching people sell, they seem very unsure of themselves. Mm-hmm. Then the last thing that I would say holds a lot of people back in these sales conversations, especially once they start talking about the money piece, is we start making excuses as to why it costs that much. Right?[00:20:00]
And I'm gonna call them excuses 'cause that's what you're doing. So. If I were to hand Tamara a present right here, right now, like here, Tamara, take this thing through the screen. Thank you so much. You're so welcome. A lot of times what we'll do is we'll hands me your present and as we're taking ripping off the tissue paper, ripping off the paper, we will go, oh, you may not like it.
You can return it if you want. I hope you like it. I don't know. It might not be your color. And we start doing all these weird things instead of just. Zipping it and letting them feel grateful to take the present because they were excited. You gave them a present. They're excited to have a solution to the problem that's been haunting them and keeping them up at night.
These things cost money. Mm-hmm. We live in a capitalistic society. Get over it and if you have an issue with it, go back to like 1774. I don't know what to tell you. So we kind of, we kind of killed the deal before anybody can ever get excited about it. 'cause then they're like, well, what's wrong with it?
Right. What are you hiding? Right. Right. A price is a price. And very early in my sales [00:21:00] career, I, I realized like I can't have a conversation with someone based on how I would spend money. You know, like I, I cannot project my attitude, energy, whatever, about, you know, um, how I would spend on the client because I don't know, and I, I can't, you know, make assumptions about what is expensive or not expensive for anyone.
You, you can't make those assumptions. And if you're the type of person who does. The excuse iis within the sales conversation. You need to do some mindset work around what are your money barriers, and you need to really ask yourself, why do I not feel worth the price that I'm telling them they need to pay?
Yep. I wanna back up and ask you. About, I love hearing people's origin story, so I just wanna hear like, how did you even arrive in this space that we're having this conversation with Gray Digital Marketing? Like how, what was sort of the, the launch and the evolution of your business? So many valleys, oh man.
And in those valleys were hurricanes that she made. Those [00:22:00] valleys, COVID made me do it. Mm-hmm. So a week before my 30th birthday, I was let go. Because of COVID and I felt like an utter failure going into my 30th year, like th third decade of life. And I was a single mom. I had no idea what to do, and I'm on hold with unemployment.
And for anybody who was in that space during COVID, it was total hell. I'm in a waiting queue person like 1052, I swear. And it's on speakerphone. As it's on speakerphone. Grayson, my little one is playing Disney cars, and he's about two and a half, three in that range is like two and three quarters a thing.
Anyway, he's playing cars and my sweet baby, who I swear will win an Oscar one day or will be the person with crazy NFL, like dances in the end zone is playing and he liked to pause the tv. He would take all the cars off the table and put the new cars that were in the next scene on [00:23:00] and like reenact it.
And I'm scrolling through Instagram and literally the horrible thought of how am I gonna pay for Disney Plus is running through my brain. And I was scrolling through Instagram and I was like, well, I know how to design. I went to art school. I taught people how to do sales. Like I understand, does anybody know what they're doing on here?
And I hung up the phone, spent my last $250 and started. Great digital, which we would've been like, yay. Happily ever after. Yeah. No, no, not at all. So then George Floyd was murdered, and I live in a very predominantly white city, which is fine, but a very liberal, predominantly white city. And in that space, I started getting all these messages because I would talk on panels.
Um, there was a lot of attention to what it was like, what it is to be black in America. And I was asked. How do you market to black people on a regular basis, which is so harmful? Never ask that question. Don't put any race in and ask how you market to them. [00:24:00] Don't do that. Okay, full stop. Everyone. Don't do that.
And I was like, I don't know. How do you market to people? And at the same time, the American Marketing Association, CEO, pulled an all lives matter, and that created a huge uproar in all of the chapters across the United States and parts of Canada. So a group of us came together and we wrote the American Marketing Association's Diversity, equity, and Inclusion Pledge.
And it was a huge part of that and a huge part of like getting videos and these things done and co-authoring that and that, that kinda like pushed me forward even more. But it's, that's really important to my origin story because there's people who do great diversity, equity, and inclusion work and they can power through and they do incredible things.
And that was not for me. I actually ended up becoming the director of sales and marketing at a place that did DEI consulting as well as staffing and with a focus on ensuring like diverse people get hired and I went into an extreme depression because there's nothing worse for me than having to deal in [00:25:00] the spaces of hate that exist in our country, even if it's trying to make it better.
It really, really messed with me. Yeah, hard to separate yourself from that. Yeah, it was, it was dark. Yeah. Sorry, everybody. There is a light at the end of this tunnel, and so I'm trying to navigate that with a social media agency. I'm trying to figure out why I'm so unhappy and I am a happy human. Like there is more than enough times in my life where everyone's like, oh, she's just a ray of sunshine.
Like her name's ran. Like she's a ray of sunshine. It wasn't. Then I went full or on the world and I remember going to the hospital, well actually I was in Cabo where my best friend's bachelorette. I didn't wanna go back to work and I lo I went, got up from our last breakfast and cried in a bathroom stall.
I was like, this is not normal. Like this is not normal. At the same time, I had a speaking coach who told me. Ray, your skillset in life is not helping people create a scroll stopping money maker. That's not what you're great [00:26:00] at. Where you're great at is helping people find what's amazing about them and then putting it in a way where they can make money off of it.
Wrote that in a notebook. I'm depressed. Like all the things that can't get outta bed, all the things that you imagine happen. And then one day I'm like flipping through this book and like rereading my notes and I read that and I was like, wait a second. I am not good at social media. In fact, I was like, I'm really good at branding.
And she just didn't know that's what that was. Mm-hmm. And so I re. I actually went through, I found PO, my coach, and I put, I put it all together and I went from $2,500 months, like I said earlier, to $15,000 months in the span of two months and rebranded a social media agency to a brand agency. But it took a lot of shit to get to that point.
That is a like rapid transformation though, just, and it speaks to, you know, you find your, I, I call it magic, but that thing that really lights you up, that you know, [00:27:00] comes. Some, you know, naturally effortlessly in that, you know, you're in that great space of, you know, you figured out how to get compensated for it.
I mean, it wasn't fun getting there, but we're hearing it great now. But no, i, I, on, I appreciate the transparency of, it's like, by the time you know these, a lot of you have these conversations. It's the, the success story and it, and understanding that it, there's a lot that happened, you know? Before to get to the place where you can share that, you know, with confidence.
There's a lot that happens. You know, it's not thought. We don't see the everything that happens before you get to this space. So thank you for being so transparent about that. Of course. Yeah. I mean, it happened and I'm emotionally over it. So here we go. We're gonna jump into our fast five. So. Your I can't live without it.
Software or app chat, GBT, and not for the reasons people think. I don't really super use it for content. I use it to organize my thoughts. It is an excellent thought partner, favorite prompt, or the one you use most frequently. My favorite prompt is [00:28:00] for chat, GBT to take a free write that I have written and turn it into three stories that would resonate with my core audience based on a tone of voice, the audience themselves, and the goal of my business.
Best advice you've ever received about sales and business development? It's not about you. Excellent morning routine. Must have, I don't like mornings, so I have to like, I have to brush my teeth. That's what tells me I am awake. Your walk-on song, the one song that always pumps you up, oh God, it changes so much.
I'm such a music junkie formation by Beyonce today. Good one. If you only had one hour each day for business growth, how would you spend it? I would spend it getting podcast interviews and thank you for being on this one. So where can folks find you online? Oh, you can find me all over the internet. You just have to type in my name 'cause nobody else has it in the conjunction of Raylon and Logan.
But that is Ireland without the eye. Logan. And you can also find me, I have my own podcast that. Tam is also on called the Lux Leap, and if you see a lady [00:29:00] in a sparkly dress with blonde brown hair, you found me. And then we have the Lux Leap. You can also find me on LinkedIn. That's where I am the most. I'm on Instagram as Rayland brand strategist, and you can find me@graydigitalmktg.co where you can start the process for my lovely brand extraordinary method and see it in real time, what it looks like to create your own lux and bite framework.
Awesome. Thanks again so much for being here. Of course, my pleasure. That's it for today's conversation with Rayland Logan, and I hope it was the reminder you needed that your sales process should honor your value, not just your time, but your energy, your clarity, and your expertise. So with that in mind, here's your sales as service challenge For this week, review your current offer stack and sales process.
Take a look at every step from that initial inquiry all the way through to final proposal and ask, where am I giving too much away for free? And where could I introduce a simple paid first step that builds trust and filters for fit. And if that paid step [00:30:00] still feels a little uncomfortable, just reframe it.
You can always position it as a credit towards your full offer. It's a win-win. Your prospect gets a meaningful preview of what it's like to work with you, and you get compensated for the investment of your time and expertise regardless of the outcome. At the end of the day, this is about building a business that reflects your worth, not just your work.
Hey, and a quick update before we go. I've had such a strong response to the podcast and so many great conversations in the pipeline that I'm making the leap to a weekly publishing schedule. So starting now, you could expect new episodes of sales as service every Wednesday, dropping on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
And if there's an episode topic you'd love to hear or a challenge you're working through that you want me to unpack. Find me on LinkedIn and let me know. I genuinely love to hear from you, and until next time. Remember, sales is just an act of service. It's about what you give, not what you get, and when you serve well.
The ROI always follows. Thanks so much for being here. I'll see you next week.
You've just listened to the Sales Is [00:31:00] Service Podcast, the podcast to help you shift your mindset around selling. If you liked what you heard, be sure to hit subscribe and share it with a friend. Because we're all about more sales. Awesome. And less sales awkward. See you next episode.
MORE OF A READER? 👇🏻
In today’s client landscape, most service providers are still stuck in the cycle: offer a free consult, pitch a proposal, and hope the client says yes. It’s exhausting—and more importantly, it doesn’t reflect the value of your time, your energy, or your expertise.
As brand strategist and sales systems expert Reland Logan shared on our recent Sales as Service podcast episode, “You treat things differently when you pay for them. And when every step is paid, people show up differently.”
Reland is the founder of Gray Digital Marketing and creator of the Luxe Invite Framework—a paid-first funnel built on the belief that every interaction in your sales process should be an invitation, not a performance.
Like many of us, Reland started with the “standard” model: free discovery calls, free proposals, lots of free advice. But as a single mom and a naturally solutions-oriented thinker, she realized it wasn’t serving her—or her clients.
“I was giving away time, energy, and strategy... and people were ghosting me,” she said. “It wasn’t helping them take real action. It just kept them stuck.”
Her turning point? Deciding that every step of her process had to deliver real value—and be compensated.
Reland’s funnel isn’t complicated. It’s intentional.
It starts with a low-cost Brand Breakthrough, where she reviews a potential client’s digital presence and sends a personalized Loom video with honest, strategic feedback. From there, she invites the right-fit clients into a paid Brainstorming Session, then into an implementation Intensive, and—if it’s a good long-term match—into a year-long authority-building engagement.
Each step is a filter. Each step is paid. Each step is a deeper invitation.
And yes—it’s working. When Reland shifted to this model, her monthly revenue jumped from $2,500 to $15,000 in two months. More importantly, her clients got better results because they were invested from the very beginning.
If the idea of charging for your first step feels awkward, you’re not alone. I’ve been there. Most of us were trained to lead with generosity—and generosity is still important. But as Reland puts it:
“You’re going to do the work anyway. So why are you working so hard for free?”
If you need a reframe, try this: Position your paid first step as a credit toward your full offer. That way, your prospective client gets a meaningful preview, and you get paid for your time—even if they don’t move forward. It’s a win-win that builds trust and protects your energy.
Reland shared that one of the biggest mistakes founders make during the sales conversation is over-explaining the price—essentially apologizing for the value of their offer.
“You hand them the present, and then as they’re opening it, you say, ‘You might not like it. You can return it. I hope it’s okay.’ And then we wonder why they don’t say yes.”
Instead of preemptively softening your price, stay grounded. Make the offer. Let them unwrap it.
Start with a simple question:
Where are you giving too much away for free—and how can you turn that into a paid, valuable first step?
Reland said it best:
“People who really have a problem will pay to have it solved—and they’ll show up differently when they do.”
Your sales funnel should reflect your value at every stage. Because you deserve to get paid. Not just for what you do—but for how you think, how you guide, and how you help people solve real problems.
✦ YOUR SALES AS SERVICE CHALLENGE
Audit your sales process and identify one place where you’re giving too much away for free.
Ask yourself
Could this step be positioned as a paid strategy session or workshop?
Can I offer to credit this back toward the full engagement if they move forward?
This small shift can protect your time, reinforce your value, and build trust before the sale even closes.
RESOURCES & LINKS
Learn more about Gray Digital Marketing
Join the Sales as Service LIVE Office Hours – get your invite for the next session
LinkedIn Lead Generator – daily actions that lead to real conversations
Grab the free 5-Minute Sales Audit – a quick scan to see what’s working, what’s not, and what to improve
SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW
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TAM SMITH
I’m Tam Smith-Sales Growth Strategist and Founder of Studio Three 49. I help creative agency owners and service pros find, connect with, and convert right-fit clients through scalable, sustainable outbound sales solutions.
No pushy pitches. No bro-marketing. Just simple, structured systems that turn connections into clients.