#151 - 3 simple tweaks to sell well in a c**p economy… (Encore Episode)

So one of the beauties of having a small business, guys, is that we are nimble, we are agile, we can go, oh, something is happening. I can get in there and I can start making some changes today and I can see the impacts of those changes tomorrow.

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 you do online. But better, easier, and with a ton more profit too. Are you ready? Let's do it.

Hello. Hello everybody and welcome to the hello Funnels podcast, also known as the Doing It Online podcast. Clearly my coffee hasn't kicked in today. I normally say that other way around, but anyway, I am Kate from hello Funnels. I am so happy to be in your earbuds. I hope I've got some. Well, I know I've got some pretty valuable stuff to share with you today. So lace up your shoes if you're heading out for a walk. Let's get those dishes happening if you're doing homework or driving the kids to school. Yeah, it's so awesome to be hanging out with you. Let's get started. Today I wanted to talk about three simple things that you can do, simple tweaks that you can make. And these are things you can do all of them or one of them or none of them, whatever feels right to you to help you to continue to sell, to continue to sell without having to spend more. That's very important. None of these will cost you a dime when the economy is a little bit crap as it is right now. And I think we talked about in last week's episode how we are in and hopefully by the time this episode comes out, the freeze is starting to thaw. But we are in a period of freeze and for some industries, some niches, some different types of offers and things, that means that things can all of a sudden like they suddenly just stopped or at least slowed the hell down. And how can we unslow them, get things moving again without being, without going and doing stuff that's going to be risky, that's going to, as I said, cost you more money in a time when you probably you want to be being sensible with your spend. That's what we're all about today. Grab pen, grab earbuds, put in sneakers, whatever you're doing, let's dive right on in. So first of all, before we get into the do's and the don'ts and the hows and the what's. I just wanted to put in one of my cake caveats here, and that is I want to make sure that before you're doing any of these things that it's all about being in integrity, okay? Because this is what we teach. We teach non sleazy sales. We teach make you feel good marketing, okay? We, we, we very much believe in it. We very much do it ourselves. Everything you do, the way you sell, the way you show up, the way you market, the way you create offers, they should all feel great to you and to your potential client, your buyers. It's all about creating win wins, right? What we're doing here, the things I'm going to talk about is there's nothing here that's about tricking people, okay? We're not going. When we talk about how to make more sales in times where economies are a little unstable and people are finding it harder to say yes to things just because they're a little concerned. We're not talking about like tricking people out of their money or making them spend money that they shouldn't. If your offer is as good as you say it is, if it does what it's supposed to, if it genuinely helps them and it will continue to help them, even right now, right then it is a service that you are offering, you are helping them. We're talking about how can we make sure that the people who need your help and want your help, but just potentially right now, like I said, they go, oh, I'm just a bit scared to put down my money because I'm just a little worried. How can we relieve that worry for them? How can we. They call it like a risk reversal. How can we take away some of that risk for them? They can still say yes, feel good about that, yes, come in, get the results that they really want, get that help that they really want. It's not about putting things in place to like con people out of their cash. I hate. That's bro marketing. We don't do that. And some people might be like, yeah, sure, that feels like a subtle line, but it's not. It's not. We're talking about helping people to make, to say the yes they want to say to get the help that they need to help to improve their lives and, and do it in a way that is conscious absolutely of their budget and is not at all encouraging them to spend money they don't have. But it's around helping to like remove some of that risk for them and make It a feel good yes and a profitable yes for you and a great life changing yes for them. Got it. Everyone's on the same page. Hallelujah. Let's move on. Okay, so before we jump in to the tweaks, I want to quickly cover off some really common mistakes that people make in this season of freeze. So first of all, and these aren't just like that solopreneurs and small businesses make. These are ones that big businesses make. Like my husband works for a really big luxury brand, right. And they make some of these mistakes and we saw them make it at the start of COVID and then we saw them trying to fix it after they realized a huge mistake they'd made and it like took a big chunk out of their sales going on like that. A lot of people kind of get stuck in short term thinking in times like this. It's like, what can I do to give myself more money today? They don't, they're not thinking about how can I while, yes, making sure the cash flow is still coming in because cash is king and recurring revenue is queen. But we need to be having, still having those longer term goals and that, doing that longer term thinking. So we don't make decisions right now that while they might slightly alleviate some of the pain, some of the stress today this month is actually going to really hurt us down the track. The first one, and the one you might have guessed that I'm talking about is that they stop investing. And by investing and usually that means what they, they really slash their marketing budget like crazy. Slash it, right? Because it's one of those, usually one of the big expenses and you cut it down, all of a sudden that feels good because you've got that money back. But guess what? 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 months from now, you're going to have a lot less sales because the people who needed to find out about you today to be able to buy six months, six months from now will not find out about you. While I'm not saying you should be going and spending money on things that aren't bringing you roi, I mean, this is, again, this is why one of the methods that we teach and we think is really important inside your course empire is that you make your marketing pay for itself. Because when your marketing pays for itself, it's actually not an expense. Therefore you're not going to cut it because it's like, okay, it's ticking its own box there. We don't need to stress about. You definitely don't market less. Okay, don't, don't shut yourself away. Don't hide, don't feel bad about. So for a lot of people listening to this, you may not be spending money on paid ads. You might be really still relying on organic or social or things like that to referrals, word of mouth. But the fear might start to come in again because of the times we are in that it feels bad to, to be selling. So just remind yourself and if you need to go back, look at your offer, look at your testimonials, look at some of your clients successes and remind yourself that yes, I am providing a valuable service that is needed regardless of what is going on in the newspapers. Then do that and don't hide right now. Don't stop showing up in whatever way you are currently marketing. Do not do less of that. Maybe like as I said, if you ask if you are spending a lot on ads, it might be a good time to, if you've just kind of been letting it run to get a little microscope out and make sure that everything is doing as it should, that it's, it's ticking its KPIs. Like I said that if preferably your marketing is paying for itself but don't, don't do it less, don't cut things and stop things now that are going to impact you later. The second thing that I see a lot of people happen is while the rest of the world is freezing, they freeze too. And they don't get out there and try to make some of these tweaks, make some of these small changes, you know, make some of these small pivots, not necessarily complete pivots in the tweaks and updates to their offer that and they leave it too late. They wait until it's been too many months of too little sales that whatever they do make is going to make too little a difference. So one of the beauties of having a small business, guys, is that we are nimble, we are agile, we can go, oh something is happening, I can get in there and I can start making some changes today and I can see the impacts of those changes tomorrow. I don't need to have 35 meetings with 25 people and put a 90 day roadmap together and blah blah blah before we can do anything. We are not big slow moving behemoths. We are small agile businesses and we can come in and make changes fast. The third mistake I see a lot of people doing is it's kind of like the opposite of number two is people go oh my gosh, this thing that was working really well isn't working anymore. I'm going to throw it all out and I'm going to start again and create a whole nother thing. Now that's not to say that an amazing idea isn't sparked from right now because in times of uncertainty is where some people come up with their absolute best ideas. But just remember that you know the what's going to work in these times again won't necessarily work in six months from now. Don't go throwing the baby out the bathwater, abandoning what you have set in stone. What has worked for you for years consistently and what has potentially just slowed down a bit to kind of some whole new thing that's going to take over and need to be it's starting from scratch. It needs to be mastered, it needs to still be figured out. And again it might be that short term solution, but it if that's going to then take over from your business and be detrimental to your main business, then it might actually not be the thing I know you might. You're going, Kate, you just said I need to be able to change quickly and you're saying don't change too much. I realize it's a lot of gray that I've just dished up to you, but everyone's business is different. Just when you are making these decisions and the tweaks I'm going to talk about, these are small tweaks you can make make a big impact to your existing office and existing business. I'm not talking about creating nothing new, but if you are feeling pulled to do a big change and a big pivot, just make sure you come back to hope. I mean hopefully if you're listening to this podcast, you've worked with us either inside ecosystem or maybe you've done the six figure school and therefore you've done some of our work around setting the big vision around creating that longer term plan around your business deal breakers and that you can know with confidence that when you make a decision, even if it is a big decision, that is still getting you towards where you need to go. All right, what are the tweaks? Let's get on into the fun stuff. Tweak number one is to as I said these are all about adding also removing risk for your for people right now because that's people have extra averse to risk and in times like this. So how can we without being detrimental to our own business and our own profitability, our own standards and values, how can we help to remove some of that risk? And some of these are actually Just good ideas to have all the time. One of the first ways to do this and again, make sure this feels good to you, but is adding a guarantee. Now note I said guarantee. I didn't say refund policy. There's a difference. I saw a really, really great example of a guarantee the other day and I can't even remember where I saw it. And I was like, I love that. I love the wording of that. I love that it's a win win. I love that it sort of is. Still keeps, it still protects the brand, but it also protects the consumer. It's not giving refunds just because people have changed their mind, which we do not believe in. I thought it was beautiful. We are now implementing this into our own business. And, and you know, as I said, this is just something that we've never been a believer in. Refunds, particularly in programs that are high touch like ours, where you get a lot of time, like you can't give that back. Like it has people coming in to our programs. There is a cost of business of them being in the programs because of the amount of contact and stuff that they get. Refunds don't make sense because it's like, well, you can't give us back that time. However, a guarantee is, as I said, I love it that in that it protects you and it protects your consumers as well. And like I said, it's a great risk reversal. So the guarantee, the rough wording that I saw, and there's lots of different ways to do this to splice and dice it, but this one is really designed for people who have a program that's got like a set time frame. And so the guarantee is saying that I guarantee you'll get and pick a result, pick an outcome. Don't make it a big crazy like only the best people in your program who do apply everything completely kind of outcome. But an outcome that you know is something that people would be happy with and as a, as a bet, as a minimum. And that more than covers off their investment. Like they'd be happy to invest the money to at least get this right. That's what you kind of guarantee. The example that I saw was it was one around making, helping people to start making sales, right? They guaranteed that people would at least make enough sales to cover off the their investment twice. And if they didn't, then they were able to stay on inside their support container until they did. But the proviso was that they still, it didn't mean that they could stay there forever, not be implementing, not be Taking the steps. They had to be showing up, they had to be implementing the steps, they had to be asking questions, they had to be actually actively participating and trying. If they were doing that, then they were able to stay beyond the. If they got three months support or six months support or whatever included, they were able to stay beyond that until they had hit that benchmark. And I thought that is just so great because the cost to the business isn't there and it's not saying if you don't get it, we'll give you your money back. It's like if you don't get it in this time frame, then you can stay and we will keep helping you until you do. And I think that is a win win for everybody. So I loved that as a guarantee, but that's just something have a feel like most niches have probably got some way of adding that in. It doesn't always have to be monetary. Like that was a quite a simple one. But just think about like what is that? What is one of those goals that's not like the big end goal, but the one of the first steps that everyone who goes through your program, as long as they they implement should hit and can you guarantee that and as that just continue on the support if they don't? The second thing that you can look at doing is having a look at restructuring your pricing. And this is one of our Ecourse Empire students did this at the start of the COVID actually and she ended up tripling, I believe, her sales without doing anything different. And that's tripling her sales from the before COVID hit times like it just blew up. It was amazing. So looking at different ways to restructure your pricing and there's lots of different ways that you can do that. You can have an extended payment plan. You can go from monthly to weekly payments. You can have what they call tiered or staggered pricing. The first couple of one, two or three payments are at a lower rate. So again it gives them that easy, yes, that easier entrance point and then it goes up to a full price rate. And again it's just having playing with the numbers, thinking about like for the people in your market who are a bit more price sensitive right now, what is the number that they can easily say yes to, that they can easily afford? How can you build that in somehow to either be, as I said, the first few payments or making it a longer payment at that rate, like what can you do? Because there's always sort of like that little mental ceiling right of where people are Going, okay, I can't pay past this. Have a think about that. This is one of the things we love coaching people on Inside equals Empire. Like I love pricing, I love the psychology of pricing and the sales psychology. And coming up, like I said, I believe that we have a step by step process for how to set your prices. And I believe that it's, it's not. I'm all about using both sides of your brain and having things be logical and make sense on paper and running the numbers. But also they have to feel really, really good. And that if at point your pricing is out of alignment to you or to your client, that's when sales get stuck. But as soon as it feels like a fair exchange, then sales will flow effortlessly. We this is like one of those real key checkpoints for people going through our program is when they nail that pricing and all of a sudden it just kind of like removes these blocks and the prices be able to come in a lot more, A lot more, A lot more flow. Now the third thing, that simple tweak that you can make to sell more in this economy is to be making more offers. In fact be making offers all the time. Like I said, we don't really believe in big all singing, all dancing, all consuming, all stressful all. If it doesn't work, you're going to bankrupt yourself or end up with a huge amount of credit card debt. Launches that are not our style. We believe in what we call evergreen launches. And even if it's not that like even just as you know, ever, just think about every piece of content, everything that you are doing. How can you in some way be making an offer, Be letting people know what you do, be talking about your program, be talking about your clients, be talking about how people can take the next step to work with you, be sending people to your opt ins, to your funnels, to whatever it is that you have set up. How can you be, but preferably every single day be making micro offers to your audience? So we have a plan inside Equals Empire and it's one of our projects and it's called the micro marketing matrix. And it's kind of like step by step, like what to be doing each day on social, on email and how to make it break it down so it's really low, not too time intensive. It's something you can get set up and done and just like tick through it. But within that it means that people are literally making offers every single day. They can't, not with the way that we've structured it. And by doing that by showing up and making offers more often. Funnily enough, people generally find that their sales go up as well. I hope this has been useful for you guys. And I said I hope there is at least one, two or maybe all three. I mean definitely number three. Okay guys, please, please, please. If you're going to implement any of them, number three. But these are just as a three simple things that you can do. That's not going back to scratch. Sorry, that's not starting from scratch. That's not throwing everything out. That's not going to mean you have to spend hours and hours creating something new. These are small, simple tweaks you can make to make more sales. Do it in integrity. Still be serving people. Make it easy for them to have an easy and feel good. Yes. And for you to be doing it profitably as well. Let us know which one you love the most, which one you're going to be implementing. Hit us up over on Instagram at hellofunnels, send us a dm, tag us, let us know your ahas and then come back next week and we've got more value bombs for you then. Until then guys, have a great week and I'll see you soon. Bye.

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.