We are allegedly not in a recession, even though some signs that typically
point to a recession have been happening.
Listen, I'm not an economist, but I do know that the cost of living is too
dang high for most people out there.
And a lot of online business owners are also feeling this.
Crunch many customers are hesitant to spend extra money right now.
Overall social media engagement is down and has been since the
world is sort of opened back up.
And a lot of us are comparing our 20, 22 numbers with our
2020 numbers and thinking.
What changed?
What am I doing different?
So here's the thing the world has changed and the world is always gonna change.
The only constant in this wild world of freelancing is change.
So we have to be able to adapt to whatever's going on in the world, whether
that is season, whether that's a day of week, whether that's economic situation.
World crisis, et cetera.
We have to know how to respond and sell differently in those situations.
So today I wanna share a few different selling techniques that have been
working for me in this season.
Now, of course, this could be completely irrelevant.
Six months or a year from now, it's important that you, as a business
owner just are able to listen to your customers, understand what
they're really wanting right now.
And also just be empathetic, be understanding of people's situations
so that you can sell accordingly.
And of course still meet your goals and all that good stuff.
So the first thing.
Developing a service mindset.
Now this should always be a thing, but I think, especially in this time, in
this season, people are not, not buying.
They are still buying things, but they are looking for value.
I think in 2020, when people were sitting at home and the people who were fortunate
enough to still be employed, like they were actually saving money because
we weren't spending money on eating.
We weren't spending money on vacations, hanging out with friends.
And so just throwing money at a program or service like social media management
was kind of like, sure, why not?
But today we're back to our normal grind.
Gas prices are up and down.
Groceries are more expensive than ever, and people really wanna make sure.
The investment that they're putting in is going to yield them some results.
I describe a service mindset, simply as this it's the passion to serve over
the passion, to sell and make money.
I genuinely, if somebody is buying a course from me, if somebody
is hiring me to do a service, I want them to see results from it.
Like, I don't want to just make a quick buck.
I want it to actually yield the results that everyone is looking for here.
So going into it with that mentality.
Almost always gonna guarantee that you're gonna be successful versus
having this scarcity mindset where you just have to like sell, sell, sell.
Oh my gosh.
I hope they say yes.
And not being confident in your offer and not really looking
out for their best interests.
So to illustrate this a little bit for you, I'll tell you
what this means in the past.
I have never done discovery calls for my courses.
I've always just sold via a landing page, maybe one or two webinars.
I haven't even done a lot of those in the past and sold their content marketing.
It was.
Impersonal, you know, it's like read this landing page, do this thing
and buy the thing that worked, you know, in 2020 that worked even before
2020, but today people are looking for a little bit more connection.
So I've been offering discovery calls for those who are very serious.
I'm not offering it widely because I would be on calls all day long.
I'm making it very clear that this is for people who are very interested
in my higher ticket courses only.
So the courses that are, you know, 500 to a thousand dollars,
I'll hop on a quick call.
It.
15 minutes outta my day.
My close rate, I think has been like 90%, but again, they just want
some of their questions answered and somebody told me I actually had
one yesterday and she was like, it just means a lot that you are here.
Like a lot of people send their, you know, assistance to do this.
Or I thought I was gonna be meeting with.
Somebody on your team and it just kind of confirms for me that you are the
type of person I wanna learn with.
If you are this invested in your students and actually wanna get to
know them, it has also been extremely helpful for me because I've been
doing these discovery calls before the course kicks off in a couple of weeks.
And I've been able to hear exactly what they're looking for outta the.
So that if it's not written into the course, I still have time to throw
in a lesson about one of the things that they're looking for help on.
So it's actually been really mutually beneficial and has
not taken much time at all.
So that's something that you can consider doing.
If you don't offer discovery calls or you don't offer kind of meet and greets,
if you will, for some of your, uh, more passive income products, it's something
that you can consider in this season.
Another thing that I've been using a.
Is video responses.
I've talked about ARD before.
I'm a big fan of it.
I use it for everything.
I use it like to chat back and forth with my clients.
I use it to host videos, a backlog of videos that I just wanna save
for later and I use it to sell.
So again, since I'm selling a course right now, I just had a discovery call, like
I said yesterday with somebody and she.
Is brand new to social media management.
And so she was wondering if I've had students who were also brand new in the
past, and if I had any success stories from them, so a couple of things I
actually dug into my data, and this is why it's so important to be getting.
Feedback from your students or your clients, if you're doing
full service work, as you go so that you have this stuff readily
available, when people ask for it.
So I dug through my survey spreadsheet, my exit survey spreadsheet, and I literally.
Went on ARD and I anonymized all the data, of course.
So I protected my students' identities.
Um, but I just walked through the spreadsheet and said, these are all
the people who said they were brand new to social media management.
Here's what they say.
I think it was 36, outta 38 of the people said that they recommended the
course for somebody who was brand new.
And I could actually show her that data and talk through it with her.
And it, again, it just made it a lot more personal.
It also made it a lot more legitimate.
Showing raw data there.
Like I couldn't make that up.
So that's something that you can consider doing.
You can do the same thing for service based work.
I just sent over a proposal last week for a service based project put together
the proposal, the same proposal that is in my social media management toolbox.
And that's in the social media management accelerator that
I'll teach in a couple of weeks.
I used that template and I put together my proposal and I thought,
you know, Some of this stuff, like it just needs additional context.
So I did the same thing.
I shared my screen on video yard and I just presented that proposal just like I
would, if I was in a room with that client or prospective client, bringing that
sales process to life, bringing the human side of you onto the screen for them.
Really really helps.
And they were super impressed by it.
They were just really happy that I took the time.
And you know, there's just little tidbits that you can add into your presentation
verbally that aren't gonna be there if you are just sending over a PDF, how boring.
Right.
So the next thing that I have been keeping in mind and that I recommend you do too,
is meeting your customers where they are.
So again, I'll use the course example since that's what I'm most heavily selling
right now, the price point for this.
Is a little bit higher than my other courses.
It is my highest ticket products.
And I stand by that pricing comparable courses are selling for 1500 to $2,000
more than what I'm selling it for.
So I couldn't really lower the price too much.
I genuinely feel that this is what it's worth.
I think it's actually worth more than what I'm selling it for.
However, what I can do.
Is I can offer payment plans, which I didn't typically like for the
early bird offer where I pre-sold, because that was already sold at a
little bit of a discount in the past.
I've never offered payment plans for early birds.
I've always said you get this early bird discount.
If you pay in full.
That's that, but keeping in mind, everything going on and people
feeling the crunch of the world, I just wanna be accommodating.
So I offered the early bird as a payment plan and we still have a
payment plan going for the full price, regular thing as well.
That's something that you might consider doing.
I have seen other entrepreneurs in my network offer extended payment plans
where maybe they do have a $2,500 product, you know, Might be a little
bit harder to sell in this season, higher ticket product like that.
But what if, instead of doing three payments of whatever, that's gonna
be seven 50 or whatever, I can't do the math in my head right now.
Um, but instead of offering the three payments, why don't they offer six?
Now, keep in mind that does come with some risk because the thing with payment
plans of course means that they need to keep up with that monthly payment.
If their credit card declines, it, there is a potential that
you're gonna be losing out.
Income.
So use your best judgment there.
But for me, it was a risk that I was willing to take, knowing that maybe one
or two people might default on their payments, but it's gonna bring in so many
more people that really outweigh that.
And again, it's just giving that service mindset.
It's showing my customer that I genuinely care about them, that I
want them to be successful, that I don't want this to be a, you know,
credit, ruining investment for them.
I want to make this work for them and I've gotten several.
Saying that like, oh my gosh, thank you so much.
I really appreciate it during this time in particular.
So think about what you can do in terms of payment plans or just, you
know, making things a little bit more accessible for your clients.
The other thing that I've been able to do again, I can't really
lower the price a ton because I genuinely think this course is.
Priced very competitively already, but I can offer bonuses.
I can throw additional things in, what can I do that is not gonna take, you know, a
ton a ton of my time, but that can offer huge payoff for the people in return.
So something that I did for S M a, this course that I'm selling right
now is I decided to do group calls.
Through the rest of the year.
So normally we just do the eight group calls as a part of the program.
They graduate, they get their certificate and I'm like, okay, good luck.
Keep in touch, tell me what's going on in your life.
But I thought, you know what, let me do a quarterly call.
That means four calls over the course of the next year.
That's four hours of my time.
That's.
The end of the world that is not like so much time that it just doesn't
outweigh the amount of additional revenue that it's gonna bring in.
And frankly, it's also fun for me.
I enjoy connecting with my students and I do actually miss them once
they graduate from the program.
And I'm like, I wonder what they're up to.
So I think it's gonna be a win-win and announcing that bonus on
my last, uh, webinar that I.
Got people really excited.
They were like, oh my gosh, this is what I need.
A lot of courses that I've taken have just kind of like scooted me along and
treated me like a number, but this is gonna be having a real relationship with
you, you know, throughout the next year.
And I really think I'll be able to help serve.
In a different way and in a better way than I ever really have.
So maybe it's that for you, maybe you have a smaller ticket course.
Maybe if you are doing full service, you can throw in, uh, you know, an additional
set of graphics or something like that.
That is not gonna take up a ton of your time, but is gonna be that
thing that kind of gets people over that hump and gets them to see that.
This person actually cares about my success.
They're invested they're on board and this is a great deal.
People do wanna deal.
Okay.
I get it.
The last thing I wanna talk about is surprising and delighting.
I love surprising and delighting my clients all the time.
I love feeling like a little.
Fairy and just like sprinkling and like, oh, you need this.
I got you.
Let me, you know, give you this little bonus or, you know, let
me introduce you to this person.
Or, you know, just whatever I love connecting people.
I love making people happy.
Like, I don't know.
It's just a lot of fun, but again, especially in this season, figure
out ways that you can just, you know, really show up for them.
So whenever somebody enrolls in one of my courses and they tag.
Me or they tag the online business launch lab account.
I make sure that I follow them.
It's a really simple little thing, but I'll follow them and maybe stock
them a little bit on Instagram.
Show them some love on Instagram.
It's a very small gesture.
Right.
But it, again, just shows that we're showing up for them, that we're
excited to meet them in the course that we're like hype about them,
that we're here to support them.
So a little tiny thing like that can go a long.
I haven't done this personally, but somebody actually in one of my kind of
networking groups was telling a story.
I can't remember who they were talking about, but some kind of business
coach or educator or something, he said that he actually calls people
after they enroll in his program.
I actually love that.
I.
Would totally consider doing that for a higher ticket product, picking
up the phone and calling your client and saying, Hey, thanks so
much for hiring us as your agency.
I'm so excited to start working on your social media account or, Hey, thank you
so much for enrolling in this course.
I can't wait to meet you in September.
How cool would that be?
People just don't do that stuff.
When I joined my first mastermind group.
It was a higher ticket mastermind and it was, yeah, it was a pretty big
investment, but I was like, whatever, I really like this lady, like, I think
it's gonna be the right decision.
And I ended up getting a package in the mail with a couple of books that we were
gonna talk about throughout the year.
It was a year long mastermind and I mean, that's like a $40 cost for her.
And I was a multi.
Thousand, like, I think it was like $5,000 or something for this mastermind.
So it wasn't about the money at all.
I could have bought the books myself, but it was just like that little gesture
that again, showed that she cared, it had a handwritten note, things like that.
She also sent me a Christmas card later that year, little things like that.
So think about how can you surprise and delight?
How can you show your clients that you are grateful for them?
Even little.
Like on my master classes, I always try to end them with a
thank you so much for being here, whether you purchase this or not.
Thank you for supporting me and watching my videos and
sitting through this webinar.
I had fun with you, little tiny things like that can make
people feel really appreciated.
And the thing is, people have a lot of choices.
You know, people have a lot of choices nowadays, the online business world.
Saturated.
There's a lot of people doing what we do.
So we have to be grateful for the people who made the choice in us.
That's it short and sweet one for you today?
I just want to share these three things that I think we should be
paying attention to in this season, or just any season where things are
a little bit, you know, a little bit difficult when the going is getting a
little bit tough in regards to sales.
Let me know in the comments, if you're watching on YouTube, if you
have any other tips or any other sales strategies or techniques that
have been working well for you.
And as always, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.
A wonderful weekend.
We are wrapping up sales for S M a.
If you are interested in joining, I'll leave the link for you down below
class starts in just a couple of weeks.
We'll be closing the doors pretty soon here.
So be sure to get in there.
If you're interested, you can send me an email or a DM.
If you have questions about it as well.
And I will talk to you in my next one.
Bye.