Today, I want to talk to you about something dairy tactical.
So many of you coaches, consultants, accountants, financial planners,
event planners and experts in service-based industries.
Ask me about how their sales process should be set up.
And they also ask about pricing, how much to charge,
how they should be managing payment plans compared to payments that are paid in
full and fast action rates and how to really optimize the entire
area off sales. So in this video,
I want to give you my exact procedure and everything that we do in my business
to manage our sales process,
as well as how we manage our pricing structure and the different pricing levels
and payment plans and everything that we do in that regard, as well as always,
before we start, make sure you hit the bell and you subscribe to our channel.
So you always know when new episodes become available here every week.
Welcome to powerhouse business. I am your host, Carolin Soldo.
I'm a business owner, business scaling master, and mom of two boys.
I love thinking big pushing boundaries and doing things differently.
Most of all, I'm all about achieving massive growth with ease.
And how do you scale your business by living the life you love?
Let's go many, many years ago, when I first launched my business,
my sales process was not organized whatsoever. It was very time consuming.
It was very manual, but as we grew and we build a sales team,
we hired a sales manager.
We had a team supporting us on the backend with operations.
It became more and more important and obvious that we needed to establish a
procedure for our sales department.
And that is really important to make sure that you're not dropping the ball.
So you're not losing sales.
You end up making mistakes in a process you're charging what you should be
charging.
You make sure clients are being charged and you're making sure the entire team
works very efficiently together.
It also makes sure that you're creating a really elegant customer
experience to answer that when your customer actually comes into your
programs and from the time they have a sales call with you or someone on
your team to, and they actually begin to work with you,
they have an amazing experience, right?
From the start before we dig into the sales process,
I want to share with you that the way I think of my sales process is from the
time that a customer is actually on the phone with me or my sales team to when
they become a fully involved client.
So when they've gone through all the steps and we have entered them into all the
systems in our process to make sure they're taken care of. Now,
if you're in a consulting type business or in a agency
type environment, or maybe even an event planner or, or some other industry,
you may be using proposals,
and I'm not going to talk much about the proposal process in this video.
I'm going to assume that you, if needed,
have provided a proposal to the customer,
you have gone through maybe a few iterations. You have presented that proposal.
And now you're on a sales conversation or in a meeting with this customer where
it's time to make the final decision.
Let's start by talking about what happens on your sales call, right?
So your sales process begins after marketing has been done.
Lead generation has been done,
and you're actually looking at someone who potentially wants to buy from you.
So this is what you might be doing, or your sales team might be doing.
So you're on this call or you're in this conversation.
And this person is deciding whether they want to buy it from you.
And there should only be three outcomes. Okay?
And this is sometimes a big aha for people. So maybe this helps you too.
So the three outcomes on a sales call should be either a yes, yes.
They want to buy or a no, no,
they don't want to buy ever or just not right now. And then it's,
it's done right? Or three,
they are a follow-up and they have to think about it.
So when they're a follow-up and they have to think about it,
your next step is to book a followup call.
Don't let them get off the phone or let them leave the room and get them on a
follow-up call, booked them in on a follow-up meeting.
So you know that you have that taken care of we're going to be touching base
with that person at the right time. And then from there,
the sales process continues for the longest time in my business,
our nos were not followed up with so nothing was happening.
Nobody was following up with them. They were going back into the CRM emails and,
you know, leads that we were collecting.
And we at one point,
figure it out that by really following up and putting these nos or not
now into a followup procedure and process helped us get a little more of
them back, stay engaged with them, keep them engaged, right?
And therefore in the long term, make more sales.
And so highly you follow up. Well, ideally you want to optimize that process.
There are really great tools out there that you can use.
One of them is closed at I O C L it's forest Ontraport
to send you notifications or whatever tool you're using right now,
make sure that the tool has a follow-up system integrated.
They will send you a notification or that even creates a task list for you.
So, you know, when it's time to follow up with now,
what happens when you actually make a sale? Well, from there,
the process extends and your sales process of course continues.
And here is an example of what you might consider establishing in your
business. If you have a sales team or you are the one handling the actual sales
conversation, you may want to split sales role from the back office
operations slash administrative role, right?
And so this is what this could look like when you're hosting the sales
conversation. And you have a, yes,
the first thing you want to do is take a full payment or one of the
payments, if it's a payment plan. So we like to take payments over the phone.
Number one, it's effective and efficient.
You can take care of that right away for the customer.
It's also safe because then you don't have to transmit their credit
card information or their bank information over email or anything like that,
which is not safe.
So make sure that you take him over the phone and you get paid in full.
Or if you're selling in payment plans,
you take that first payment and you take care of that piece.
Then what I suggest you do is create a form for your sales
team or a document in Google sheet, in Excel sheet.
That is a new client document. Now,
why is the new client document important?
It's because it's this one place that holds all of your sales,
all of your customer data.
And it's a way to communicate to your operations team,
that there was a sale made and they have to take the next steps.
So to make it really easy, let's say you have a bigger sales team.
You could create a Google form. It could be a survey monkey.
It really doesn't matter,
but it's a streamlined form that your sales team can fill in.
Or you can fill in including a customer's name, their email, their address,
the program, or service that they bought, the payment plan, the terms,
the star stage, all the important information.
And then you just click submit and all those data goals inside of your
CRM or a Google sheet, for example,
or a place that is safe and where your admins can access that
information. At this point,
your admin takes a look at the new client document and they see, Oh,
there is a new sale here,
have new clients coming in and here is what they might be doing next.
The first thing they may want to do is send an agreement.
So there should be a standard agreement for your consulting,
coaching or other services.
And the admin can change the details. They can update the name, the date,
the details of the program or service the customer has bought and push that out
electronically through DocuSign Adobe EchoSign.
There are many e-sign tool to East signing tools at a safe and
secure these days. Once the agreement has been signed,
that means that you're ready to finally enroll the client and take care of
anything that is still outstanding. If you're a consultant, let's say,
or a coach,
you may want to then enroll the client in any online materials they need access
to. So if you have a membership sites and online program faults,
if you need to give them access to any tools or systems now as a time to
push that out to them over email.
So the customer receives a notification that they have been enrolled in your
online systems.
The admin should also take care of booking the client's call.
So if they have any meetings coming up with you, any coaching calls, consulting,
meetings, anything of that nature,
the admin will know that based on what the sales person entered into the
form.
And so your administrative team can then reach out to the customer and say,
you know, when's a good time for you. When should we be booking your sessions?
Next thing your admin should be doing is entering the customer into your
financial system that makes sure that you get paid. Now,
if the customer paid in full well, the phone that's of course not a big deal.
That's already taken care of. However, if the customer is in,
let's see a payment plan and you have outstanding payments that still need to be
taken.
It's a really good idea to make sure a system charges the customer
for you. So you don't have to think about it.
So what we're doing Ontraport is we enter the customer as a new contact.
If they're not already in the system,
there is a purchasing or a billing section. And onto Ford,
you go into this section and you can establish payment plans so that Ontraport
can then bill the customer. They can charge the credit card for you,
and you don't have to worry about it. If those payments ever declined.
And there are any issues with the credit card, for example,
Ontraport will let you know that your admin can then easily follow up with your
customer as well.
The last thing you admin might do is to send your customer an official welcome
email. Okay? And in this email, your admin might say, congratulations,
you're in the program you enrolled here is your program summary,
and here are your next steps. We already booked you for your meetings.
You have access to your materials. Here are the times of our calls.
Here's what's going to happen next.
And it's one document and one nice place for your customer to reference if
they ever have any questions.
And it makes them feel like everything is taken care of nothing is being missed.
And it's an amazing, really well organized first customer experience.
Here's a little bonus for you. If you want to really wow, your clients,
you might, instead of sending them a gift, a welcome gift. My,
so think about little handwritten notes, maybe flowers,
maybe a gift basket, maybe a journal,
write something you can send to clients that they don't expect to make an even
better first impression. And this completes to a sales process.
So it's really not that difficult.
And you can proceduralize this entire process.
So I highly recommend that you sit down maybe by yourself or with your team and
you document the entire process.
From the time you have a sales call to the time the customer actually is a
client and the whole process has been completed.
So document every little step that you need to take document
who takes that step and who was responsible for it,
and even document the system that you are going to be using to complete that
step with that, no matter what happens in your business,
you may have new people join. You may have people leave. It doesn't matter.
Your process is solid, it's safe.
And it happens with minimal or no errors at all. Let's talk about pricing,
shall we?
Some people have some real aversion to pricing.
They don't want to talk about money and pricing. It's a really sort of,
you know, awkward subject for them,
but it doesn't have to be money makes the world go round, right?
People know that there was an exchange of value happening.
So of course they'll be paying for your services. Now,
depending on the type of industry you're in,
you may or may not be using what I call a fast action offer,
but you might be. So let me just talk about that for a minute.
Over the last couple of years, you have used fast action pricing,
very successfully, and our clients have really,
really enjoyed and benefited from the strategy.
It's a way to really incentivize if that's the word customers who are
making quick decisions and people who take fast action,
and that means they actually make a decision to buy your program and enroll with
you on the call on that first or maybe second sales call.
So you're giving clients a real incentive to say yes,
by saving money.
And you want to make that difference very enticing.
So I always recommend that you take off at least 20%
off your regular retail price. And you share with the customer,
if you are joining me today, and if you're ready to go,
I'm able to take 20% off the price and give you an amazing
special today, right? So you might say, I have something really special for you.
If you are ready to go today,
I'm actually able to take 20% off your price and give you this amazing
reward from making a quick decision and actually getting started by the way.
So you're giving people a little bit of a, an incentive,
but a not you motivate them to get over their hesitations to make a decision
to buy it there and to move forward. Now,
fast action pricing could be paid in full. You could also be a payment plan.
And when you move someone into a payment plan, again,
I would charge them 20% more.
So you have your fast action rate paid in full,
which is 20% less than your regular retail price.
But then if someone moves into a fast action payment plan,
you go up by 20%.
So they actually paid 20% more overall than what they would be
paying if they paid you in full. Okay.
So that's always 20 interest tagged onto the payment
plan.
So the most a customer would ever pay is a regular price payment plan,
which ultimately will cost them the most as always.
I would love to hear from you down below,
leave me a comment and let me know how you're going to be improving your sales
process from here. Did you have any ahas? What about pricing?
Let's have a conversation. Leave me a comment Mike now.
And because this episode was so tactical in nature,
I'm going to be including the entire sales process that we talked about
today, down below in the description of this episode.
So if you didn't write everything down and you'll maybe miss something,
check out the description of this episode and make your own sales [inaudible]
procedure that you can then share with your team.
I also have something really special for you today.
We have a brand new ebook and many documentary, and it's a brand new,
a topic that I haven't talked much about, but I think it's really,
really important,
especially for my ambitious driven business owners.
If you're someone who has been working in your business for many years,
potentially, and maybe you've been feeling a little bit of stress,
or maybe a lot of it,
maybe you have felt a bit burnt out a bit uninspired,
or maybe you're even ready to say I have fallen out of love with my
business, but you don't know what to do. Next.
I have the perfect ebook and video for you.
Go down below in the description. There's a link it's Carolyn
solid.com/love. And that will bring you to our brand new mini documentary.
It's a mini video or movie that I want you to watch right now.
And it also comes with a bonus ebook where I want to share with you the eight
ways,
the eight special ways that you can use right now to fall back in love
with your business, without letting go of what you worked so hard for.
Again, the link is Carolyn solo.com/love. Go there right now.
It's completely free.
It's going to inspire you and motivate you to remodel and
reinvent the business that you're going to fall madly in love.
I'm excited to see what's going to happen to your sales process, your sale,
your pricing, and how that's going to impact your business.
I hope you love this episode. If you did make sure you give me a like,
make sure you share it with your friends,
subscribe to our channel and make sure you back again next week.
Now staying focused on your goals and continue to make the difference you're
making in the world. If you liked this episode, make sure you Mia,
like subscribe to our channel and make sure you share it with your friends and
colleagues who might benefit as well.
Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you again next week.
Are you an expert and you building a coaching and consulting business,
or are you already in coaching and consulting and you to grow your business in
the easiest way possible?
Well then I'm your coach for the last 10 years I've been running an inc 5,000
ranked international consulting business.
And I specialize in helping women just like you achieve fulfilling success.
It's all about helping you grow your business with ease and so that it makes you
truly happy. So if you want to gain better clients, if you want to assist in my,
as your business,
if you want to go from offline to online marketing and automate your entire
marketing process, I want to help you this month,
we're offering complimentary business strategy calls and on these calls,
we help them for you to customize growth plan so that your business can grow
with ease. All you need to do is go to Carolyn
solver.com/apply book in a time.
And then we'll be talking in just a couple of days from now.
I look forward to helping you grow your company with ease and excellence.