714 Are You Sabotaging Your Own Sales? 5 Ways Women Hold Themselves Back

Welcome to the Next Level Life podcast with Christine Corcoran. This podcast is made for the powerhouse business women who are ready to ignite their fullest potential. This is where we will dive deep into mindset breakthroughs and sprinkle in some pick up the butt motivation so you can scale your business with confidence and clarity. Whether you're craving more income, impact or inspiration, this podcast will be your ultimate resource for all things Next level. Listen in as we have authentic conversations with game changing female entrepreneurs as we reveal the secrets of what it takes to rise and thrive. So go ahead, ignite your inner fire and let's get you taking massive aligned action. Are you ready to elevate? Let's go. Hey. Hey. Welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. I have a new three day accelerator happening in November. The 12th to the 14th of November. If you've been oscillating between say like 2 or $3,000, $5,000 a month and you really want to hit 10k months this year, then it's time to put a game plan in place. Or if you are even just concerned about the December, January slump, right? You know that if you work with business owners especially that you know that they go on holidays or they go on break and they sometimes pause your support or they don't need your services over that time, what you do now will make such a big difference in whether you have consistent income happening over those months. And you've got to put up a game plan in place. You cannot be reactive. You've got to be proactive with managing the narrative of what's happening in the space and in the market and going and being proactive with your clients to make sure that they don't reduce their hours with you and also changing the way that people think about investing in your services over the Christmas period. So we're going to dive into this on the predictable 10k months accelerator which is happening the 12th to the 14th of November. It's really about putting a game plan in place because when it comes to sales, you must have a plan. You cannot keep winging it. So I'd love for you to come and join me. The link is in the show notes to check it out. You can register for free. You'll get live coaching, you get support to make sure that you're implementing it specific to your business. And honestly, like everyone that joins my challenges, love them, love them. So the way that I'm creating this one is really more about setting it up to be an accelerator rather than a specific Challenge. So come and join me. It's gonna be so worth your time. All right, so let's dive into today's podcast episode. Today we're talking about whether you are sabotaging your own sales over the years of working with women in business. I'm gonna talk about the five things that I often see that hold women back from making consistent sales in their business. Because really, at the end of the day, you are the one running your business and majority of the time it's us. It's us that holds us back from actually making really incredible income. And so I want to talk to you about the subtleties of this and how it can show up in certain behaviors. So it's not just mindset blocks. It's definitely behaviors, beliefs and habits that quietly chip away at your confidence, your energy and your conversion rates. So I'm going to break down the five most common self sabotaging patterns that I see in women that I work with who are really incredible at what they do. Like, honestly, like I know that you are good at what you do and now it's just time to believe it, back it with a plan and consistently land aligned high ticket clients. All right, number one, mistaking marketing for sales. I see this so often and it's honestly one of the biggest things that when people come and work with me, it's usually what they're doing. They're saying, I feel like I'm doing all the things, I'm doing all the things, I'm posting constantly, I'm networking, I'm, you know, running my business, doing all the admin, serving my clients. But really all the things that they tell me they're doing, none of them are actually sales activities because marketing and sales are different. Okay? You need to acknowledge that marketing is about getting more eyes on your business. So obviously creating this space where people are paying attention to your business, sales is actually what you do with those eyes. Are you guiding people to the next step to work with you? Are you nurturing them to trust you and to build credibility in their eyes? And then are you helping support them through the decision decision making process to buy from you? There is so much more that goes into that and people spend way too much time focusing on a marketing funnel without considering the sal sales element. Number two, desperation selling. If this is you, I feel for you. It's something that everyone gets stuck in when they're in scarcity, right? When you're stressing about where you're going to find your next client, where the bank accounts getting low, where you know, you need to find another client. You often come from an energetic place of scarcity and lack and you go and sell and people can feel it, the desperation energy. Now this can happen when you get too caught up in delivering and serving your clients and you forget about the sales activities in your business and you know, you think you know things are working really well and then all of a sudden you're like, oh gosh, I need a new client. And then you, you jump online and you create some content and it's all from a place of lack or desperation. This energy shift needs to happen where you get out of scarcity because it's all perception and the way that you're thinking about it. Because the numbers on a screen in your bank account don't create safety, your perception of it does. Okay, so we need to shift out of that scarcity mindset and into your grounded CEO energy of believing in what it is that you serve and believing value that you deliver and knowing that there is plenty of people out there who need what you have to sell. The desperation selling can really sabotage someone's business. And it's because people wait too long to put in a sales process. Because when I think about service businesses, right. If you're a service based business owner, it usually takes about 90 days for a lead to go from cold to converted. Okay. That's if you are doing the steps to nurture them to convert. Okay, I just got to highlight that because some people go, oh, but I've been marketing for 90 days and nothing's happening. Yeah, because you're not doing any type of conversation conversion content, you're not nurturing them, you're not building trust in their eyes and you're not nurturing the decision to buy. So knowing that it takes about 90 days to convert, sometimes we forget the first 60 days because you're busy in your business doing all the things that keep you busy and serving your clients. And then you try to smash all of that last, you know, the attraction, nurture and convert in that last month and a feeling of desperation can come through. So you've got to get out of that energy first and get back into building consistent habits in your business that will serve the growth of it. Number three, avoiding objections as we're talking about the sales process, right? So you're nurturing people to trust you and to build credibility in their eyes and to nurture them through the decision making process to buy, to get ready to make that investment. Part of that is understanding what the objections are that your ideal clients Have. If you don't know what the objections are to buying your specific service, it's time to find out what they are like. You need to uncover those. Now, sometimes people always go to oh, it's because of money, or they don't have the time. They are surface level objections. Okay? So normally the main three common objections are time, money, and ability. Now, it's important that you understand those objections so you can overcome them in your content. Overcome them in utilizing case studies or test testimonials in order to communicate how you've overcome those objections. And once you know those objections, but then go one step deeper and uncover the next tier of objections truly aligned to your ideal client. So then it's not just surface level, you're able to utilize that as part of your conversion process. Right. If you're avoiding objections in a few different areas, one, on sales calls, you're most likely going to get ghosted. Or you'll have people say yes on the phone, but then never follow up and just completely ghost you. Or they won't actually convert at all. Right? So they will either ghost or they'll be like, yeah, yeah, but I'll get back to you when it's time. Or they'll say it's not the right time. Like there'll be other, those, those types of service level objections. It's because you haven't taken the time on the sales calls to uncover the objections and work through them with the client. And that comes down to confidence in sales process. Right? So if you have never learned sales before, you can't expect yourself to know this. If you feel the fear of it and the fear of rejection, you worried about that silence that happens on a sales call. Instead of really being grounded in your service offering and grounded in the value that you deliver and grounded in your sales process. So you feel confident in it, that you know it's not about rejection and it's not about you not being able to overcome the objection, it's being able to hold space in that. In that it's being able to hold space for the objection to be worked out on the call. And so if you are avoiding objections in your sales calls, in your content, even in just normal conversations you're having in DMS and things like that, it's most likely going to impact your sales. And so we want to start to build your confidence in your ability to overcome objections and even address objections. So my first suggestion here would be literally to do some market research calls to find out what are the main objections, what are the Common objections your ideal client has specifically to your service offering and start talking more about them. Okay, number four, not having a sales plan in place at all. Right? At all. So we've got a marketing plan and we're doing all the content posting, but not actually thinking about what your sales strategy is. The market has shifted so much that people do need more nurture and they do need to really trust you before they buy. So that means you need to be delivering more value in order for them to feel comfortable converting. Okay, so you want to consider like, how am I further nurturing people? How am I giving of more of my expertise? How am I helping them? How am I creating quick wins for them and solving problems for them way before I ask them to buy? So when you don't have any type of sales plan in place, it's usually then your feel completely out of control of your business and don't know how you're going to find your next client, let alone convert that next client. So, so we need to put a sales plan in place. Right? It is the most biggest killer when it comes to your income in your business. And as part of that sales plan, you need to follow up. If you're not following up, it's also part of your sales strategy, then you're most likely leaving a hell of a lot of money on the table. Because we need to remember that in this day and age, sales don't happen in one conversation, they happen in multiple conversations and they're in conversations over whether it's DMs, emails, whatever your nurture sequence is. We need to make sure that we're holding space for someone to take the time to think about investing and making sure that you're touching on overcoming those objections and moving them to see the value of working with you and communicating your value effectively. And having a follow up process is part of that because you need to show how much you care. So having a plan in place and following up, because the majority of people that I work with, they're so fearful of the rejection, they're so fearful of being ghosted, so fearful of not even knowing how to handle that conversation that they just don't follow up and they leave people feeling like they don't care. It's not nice. It's not nice. So if you truly do care about your clients and the impact that you want to make with them and the outcome you want to create, the results you want to achieve with them, stay present in the conversation, stay connected, you're more likely have a better result when it comes to the end of the month. Okay, last one. Number five is your self worth entanglement. We can often so closely tie our worth to our results, to our sales numbers, to our work that we do with our clients. And so we over deliver to gain approval or validation. We discount because we don't believe what we're charging is actually worth what we're charging. And we play small by doubting our own worth. So when you think about you earning more, charging more, it all comes down to your self worth and the connection that you have to it. Because often what we do is we connect our value. Sorry, often what we do is we see our value based on our worth instead of seeing the value based on the offer. And so we want to disconnect our self worth from our offer and from our business so we can see it as a separate entity. Your offer, your service delivers incredible value on its own, right? Yes, you were the one that delivers the value. You're the one that takes the actions and does the things right. But really on its own, it does deliver value. And you've got to start seeing the value of that from the eyes of your customer, not from your eyes. We get so caught up in just believing that, oh, I shouldn't charge more because it's easy for me, or it comes naturally to me. No, you have studied on it, you've learned, you've educated yourself, you've practiced it. Like there are a certain level of skillsets that you've developed that allows you to do it faster or allows you to do it in a certain way that that creates a certain outcome. You've got to own that. You've absolutely got to own that. So if you feel like you've been stuck at a sales plateau, or you feel like you are just so annoyed with how your sales are just inconsistent, or you feel like you just want to push it to the next level. I want you to look at these five things, right? Are you marketing versus selling? Are you selling from a desperation energy? Are you avoiding objections altogether? Are you not following up? Do you have a sales plan in place? Do you have anything in place in order to convert your clients? Do you have a sales system? Because again, in this day and age, it's so important to have other ways for people to show interest in what it is that you're doing, so you're not trying to sell to the masses from a perspective of sell to everyone rather than selling to invested and interested people. And lastly, your self worth. Do you feel like it's really entangled in what it is that you're offering. If any of these are showing up for you, I'd love for you to come and join me for the predictable 10k months accelerator. It's going to be so worth your time. We're going to dive into all of these and so much more and help build out your game plan so you can hit 10k months. I'm a big believer of everyone should be earning 10k months in their business because anything less than that, it's not worth you spending all this time and energy building a business. You may as well go back to a corporate job or a job and get paid the same, right? Because by the time you remove all the taxes and all the expenses, you're not really left with much. So I want you to consider like if you feel like even if I'm saying that like 10k months feels so out of reach or feels like, oh, I shouldn't want that. That's your first block, right? You should want that and it's okay for you to want that. So DM me the word sales on Instagram, or if you find it's easy, jump into the show notes, click the link there and register for the accelerator and come and join me. Thank you for listening. And if you found any value out of this episode, make sure you hit the follow button so you get access to the episodes as soon as they are live. And make sure you come hang out with me on Instagram. You can find me at christinecorcoincoach. Have an incredible week. It.