#115 - Hate sales calls? Try this instead!

By actually switching the way that you sell is gonna help you do that. Cause you're gonna repel the people who need the hand holding in the first place and you're gonna be attracting the ones who don't. So it is a win win, even if it seems like a scary one.

This is the Doing It Online podcast with your host, serial entrepreneur 6 and 7 figure funnel strategist and super nerd Kate McKibben, where every week we're here talking nerdy and sharing the things that actually work to help you do what.

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Hello. Hello everybody, and welcome to episode number 115 of the Doing It Online podcast. I am Kate here from hello Funnels. And today, if you are listening to this episode, I take it you saw the title and you stopped everything that you were doing, canceled all your plans, sat down and hit play. Because this is such a topic that I know people have really, really strong feelings about and I know if you're going to find this useful, hence hopefully the people who are listening, that this is something that you're probably going, why do I have to do this? I don't want to do this anymore. I don't enjoy it. Surely there is a better way. And I am here today to tell you exactly what that better way is. The title of today's episode is Hate Sales Calls. Try this instead. We weren't being at all clickbaity. We're literally going to talk to you about, well, why sales calls are in our opinion and from what we're seeing with our clients, you know, they are no longer necessary. Look, I'm going to chuck in a cake caveat here. You know how I love those that if you love sales calls, then this probably isn't really the podcast episode for you. Because we are all about helping people design businesses that work for them, that allow them to do the work they love. And if you love sales calls, sweet. Keep doing sales calls. Okay, but today we are talking to what I assume is probably the larger proportion of people.

Who sales calls are just they're not your favorite. Like you. First of all, you think about sales calls, whether or not you even did enjoy jumping on that call and having a chat with a potential client, they take up a lot of time. Now, most people are particularly if what you are helping people with is not sales related, you're probably not actually a trained salesperson. Sure, you might have gone and done some sales training to help improve your conversion rates, but it's probably not the thing that you absolutely excel at. You're probably spending a lot of time, you're probably not even converting as high as it could. Like generally numbers that kind of get thrown around are for a non salesperson sales call, a good conversion rate is 20 to 30%. That's either 1 in 5 or 1 in 3, right? Is that my my math, right? That means if these sales calls are like 60 minutes long, which often they are, that you're spending five hours to make one sales call, like sort of worst case scenario. And some people don't even convert. And those rate like just looking at plain old return of investment for your time. Like sure, if you were selling a $50,000 package, maybe that is, that is worth it. But again, most people aren't. I know there's people out there doing sales calls for like thousand dollars offers, which again is just crazy. Please come chat to me and I'll help you out. But like let's break it down. Like as I said, most people don't actually enjoy the process of the sales call. They don't like that actually having those kinds of conversations, sure, love talking to clients, love helping clients. But sales call conversations a bit ick. Two, they take up a lot of time. Three, they don't even convert all that well. And then let's just throw an extra little spanner in the works here. That is most people don't actually like attending sales calls. Like think about who your ideal client is. They probably are busy, right? Like that's probably how you're helping them. You're helping them to do something better or faster or improve something in some way. And most of those people, particularly if they are investing in a higher level offer, which is the type of offer that requires a sales call, quote unquote. Traditionally they are usually more successful slash busier people and busier people do not want to sit on a, on a call for 60 Minutes being sold to. So it's like this really weird situation where your client doesn't want to do the call, you don't want to do the call, but there's hasn't been a better option thrown in. So people just do the calls because everyone, it seems to have been drilled into US Digital Marketing 101. Sales calls are required at certain price points. But I think the.

Magic of how humans have evolved particularly in these last few years, right, like with how with COVID and all that stuff and how people are now so much more happier with Zoom and with all these other things which they didn't think they used to like, used to have to have meetings in person. My husband, he works for a German based company. They would fly him from Australia to Germany for a meeting, which is like a horrendous thing to do to an employee, to be honest. Because that jet lag, particularly once you're over 40, it is not friendly.

But they're like, you must do your meetings in person now. No one gets on a plane. Everyone's totally happy with Zoom. The world goes on, everyone's fine. People have evolved, right? How we expect to be communicated with it has evolved. But yet there's these old supposedly tried and true marketing tactics or marketing rules that we are adhering to that have, that our clients and us have actually evolved past as well. So it's time to throw them in the bin. Okay. Because there is a different way and is. And we have been very happily using non sales calls and non sales call strategies for the last few years to sell our own programs. I like when I designed Ecos Empire. It is a premium offer. And I sat down and I designed it. And I was working with a coach at the time and we sat down and we mapped out how we were going to, you know, to sell it. Because I was, I had just had a baby. I had a newborn. I was like one. I never liked doing sales calls. It was always on my must be avoided at all costs list. And I was like, I didn't just. I'm not designing my business, I'm not designing offers around something that makes me. Takes up so much of my time doing something I don't like. And then I just had a baby, so I had no real schedule. And I was like, again, I'm like, even more than ever before, I am not doing sales calls. We got a bit creative. We had a look around, we found and we came up with something that worked really, really well for us. And then since then, have added to that because there's people are clever and people have evolved and it's. And it's all kind of evolved in our favor. So anyway, I will stop being kind of vague and I will get to the point. Cause I know you're sitting there going, I got things to do. I got kids to pick up. Come on, woman, hurry up. So that's the problem. Now let's talk solutions. First of all, when it comes to getting rid of sales calls and creating offers and systems for marketing and systems for selling that don't require sales calls that still convert at just as high, if not a higher rate, that is still an enjoyable Experience for your customer and your clients and for you. There is one thing you need to like a little mindset shift you need to make and that is that you need to move away from targeting a needy audience. This is, like I said, we'll get into the specifics in a second, but the specifics are going to be a lot harder if you have designed your offers. If your way you are speaking in your marketing is that you are targeting and you are speaking to a really needy audience. And what I mean by needy is the type of person who needs to speak to you to make a decision. Because the thing is, these are the type of people who will be very needy clients. Now this may annoy some people and that is totally fine. But I believe again that we get to set up our programs, our offers, our businesses to serve people we love working with in ways that we enjoy and to help them with something we're really passionate about. And you do not want to fill up your print your programs, no matter how premium they are, with clients who cannot make a decision without you holding their hand every single step of the way. Because it doesn't matter what you were teaching or what transformation you were helping them with, if they are going, if they haven't sort of evolved themselves yet to the point where they have any kind of autonomy over what it is they're doing, they're going to be a pain in the butt. It's going to make your life really hard. And if you have a lot of these. So if that's how you are selling, if that's how you are marketing, if you are filling up your programs with people who are treating you like Google, then that's not a win win either. Okay, so you got, you got to backtrack a little and go, all right, well how can I tweak this offer, tweak this delivery, tweak my marketing that I'm not speaking to and attracting the kind of people who need you to hold their hand every step of the way. I'm not saying that you're not going to be there, you're not going to them, you're not going to help them and give them really great value, but you need people who have. It's just like if you're going out and hiring an employee, do you want someone who's a self starter, someone who if they come across a small little hiccup, knows to look in the resources that they've got, knows to quickly jump on Google or knows to read a help document? Or do you want someone who Goes like five times a day. I don't understand. I don't understand. Help me, help me. How? I'm a special snowflake. How does this work for me? That's point number one. Don't target a needy audience. And that might have hit hard for some of you, especially if you have a program that is full of very high maintenance people right now. It can take a little undoing to get course correct and start attracting those more self starter, more proactive, more autonomous clients. But it is possible. And by actually switching the way that you sell is going to help you do that because you're going to repel the people who need the hand holding in the first place and you're going to be attracting the ones who don't. It is a win win, even if it seems like a scary one. The next step is you need to make sure you are adding in the right core funnel for your offer. When it comes to premium offers, funnels have a slightly different place than when we're talking about more signature offers, more entry level offers. When I think premium, I'm meaning anything like over $2,000, really anything over three. But there's this weird little gray area between the two and 3,000 depending on, on what your niche is with the type of funnel you choose and how you choose to use it. That's a whole other topic on itself and probably a whole other episode. But I just want you to know that whether and the types of funnels that really play here are application funnels, webinar funnels, and self liquidating offer funnels, but not usually in the way that you would expect. And we go into like, this is part of the stuff that I love mapping out with our clients is how you go, okay, well this is my offer, this is how I want to market it. This is how I want to sell it. Okay, now which is the funnel that needs to come in here and support it. So as I said, make sure you choose that right funnel. A little extra tip here, and this is something you can go in action straight away, is to be a thank you page ninja. Okay? I mean be a thank you page ninja. I don't mean like you're like karate chopping people through the screen. I mean you have it using some little ninja tactics on your thank you page. And that is when I want you to think about the hottest people in your audience. And I'm not talking about your Ryan Goslings or your Hemsworths. Like we're not rating our audience in physical attractiveness here. I mean, mean the people who are like, it's right place, right time for them right now, like they know they have a problem, they know what their problem is, they are actively looking for a solution. And the thing, that little piece of content or that ad or whatever it is of yours that just popped into their world just like sang to them like it was made for them. And they're like, right, I've got my credit card. Where is the button? All right, you need to make sure that those and those people are usually those, as I said, the people you're going to attract, the action takers, the self starters, the ones who are ready now, you want to remove all the obstacles for them, okay, While they're coming through your funnel and whether you're getting them to opt in for something, as I said, whether you're getting them to buy a low ticket offer first, whether you're getting them to register for a webinar or to, you know, to apply for something, whatever it is, that first little micro commitment they've made to there will usually be a thank you page. If there's not, there should be, okay, add one in. And on that thank you page, rather than it just being like, hey, thanks, go check your spam folder, I'll be back with you soon. Make that thank you page work for you. And actually give those ones that like that 10% of people or even 5% of people who come through who are just like, just show me what you've got. Give me the offer now. Give them the offer now. And by don't mean like putting all the details and having a sales page or anything like that, that doesn't, but give them like a little like a, hey, do you want to take that next step? Do you want to apply? If for example, they came through an opt in, like, don't want to wait, do you want to apply? Or we want to get on a wait list or do you want to say put down deposit, save your seat, like what is a next step, a next like small step or even want to have a chat, like DM me, I'm happy to talk to you and we'll talk about that kind of. I just given away a third point, but give those people who are ready a next step and, and then get out of their way, okay? Make it easy for them while allowing the people who are less ready to still go through the full funnel, to still get that full experience, the full education, the full engagement, all that stuff that they then need to be able to make a decision. All right, next step is you need to get comfortable sliding into their DMS in a non sleazy kind of way. Now this is something that we have been playing with recently and I love it. Again, it was something I resisted for ages. Why is it like I almost should just look out for those things where I'm going, oh, I don't want to do that. That's normally a thing that I should do immediately. We have inside Ecourse Empire. We have a system we get people to implement called the micro marketing system. And that is our content marketing system. It's how we show people how what to say, when to say, how to basically get big bang from their buck from their content marketing without spending a big amount of time or a big amount of money on it. So and as part of that, recently we started adding in starting conversations as part of their calls to action. So like, as you should all know, every piece of content you create should have a call to action. Hey, here's the next step. Some of those are more direct, like go and get this freebie, come and watch my workshop, whatever. But we've started playing with making those starting conversations, like asking them questions, getting them to DM and ask for something rather than just giving them a link. And by adding that conversation point and adding that conversation point throughout your premium offer funnel, it kind of replaces the need for a sales call because they still feel like they're being spoken to, but you're not having to jump on the phone. You or someone, your team is spending like 15, 20 minutes a day responding to DMS or following up with DMS and not in a salesy way that these aren't even really about closing. It's about conversing. It's about having a human touch point. But a human touch point that is scalable, that can be done at any time throughout a busy day, that can be completely outsourced to your team. Obviously there's the scripts and the systems and things like that, which help to really elevate that and help to make that work well. But even without the DMs part, like that's kind of like the bonus, that's the sprinkles. As I said, that's something we've only been playing with ourself the last few months, where you know, when people have questions rather than them going to email, which is really slow and just kills momentum, allowing people to DM us or to text us that we can respond faster and people get the response they need faster and it kind of keeps that momentum going. That has really has been like I said it's been the sprinkles on the icing on the cake. But the cake itself, like the system that we put in place that completely meant we did not need to have sales calls for our premium offers. That was our funnel and that's the funnel that we've been helping people with inside Ecourse Empire for the last few years as well. If this had you sort of hearing all this like hearing the possibility that you can kick sales calls to the curb and still actually convert just as well and all the time that that's going to free up for you and the stress and all of that stuff, if that has you fist pumping the air and excitement and you'd love to know more, there are two things that you can do right now. Number one is you can head to EcoSempire.com right now and you can apply to join our next intake before all the spots are taken. Or number two, you can come and join me live for a totally free 90 minute coaching session where I'm gonna walk you through the three steps you need to take to make five program sales every week without stressful launching or sales calls. So we'll go into more nitty gritty than what we did today, even if you have a premium offer. And I even wanna say like, especially if you have a premium offer, like it just works like even better when you do. So this is a totally free, totally live, like I said, 90 minute group coaching call. Just head to funnels co coaching or grab the link below, save your seat and I'll see you there.

Thanks so much for listening to the Doing it online podcast. If you love this episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. And if you're ready to take your online course sales to the next level with your own six or seven figure funnel, let Kate show you exactly how today@stealmyfunnel.com.

Sam.