#6 - 5 Secrets to 5 figure months - The 3 systems everyone needs to sell more(3/5)

Put together the absolute ideal welcome sequence for your new buyers. Not only will it give them an even better experience and make sure they have everything that they need to dive in with confidence and get great results. But again, it saves you a lot of time, both manually by not having to send out all the bits and pieces every time, and also by not having to field all of these questions that people kind of come back to you with when they get stuck. And let's face it, a lot of these questions are probably the same ones over and over.

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.

Hey. Hey guys. It is Kate McKiven here again and welcome to the Doing It Online podcast. Episode number six. Six. I can't believe how quickly this is all going and how much fun this has turned out to be. Who would have known podcasting is this much fun? If I had known this, I would have started my podcast back in 2014 when I first thought it might be a good idea. But anyway, you know, speaking of things that people put off for way too long, that is pretty much the topic of today's podcast. So if you've been following along, you'd know that today is actually part three of our five part series called five Secrets to Five Figure Months. Now, day one we talked about how you need to create a profitable product that is easy to sell and that leaves you with money in the bank as well. Very important. Number two, we talked about how to choose the right promo plan and the right launch strategy for where you are in your business. And today I'm going to talk about one of my favorite topics and that is systemizing and automating. So this is nerdy talk time and we're going to talk about how you can get started with a few simple but killer systems and automations that'll help save you hours and hours of admin that you can then spend on more important things. And if you do them right, they will help you make more sales and more profit too. So to start off, I'm going to make the assumption that that if you are not hitting five figures a month just yet regularly, you are probably a team of one or maybe one plus some contractors and maybe a va. Either way, your time is limited and Precious. And you probably have a to do list as long as your arm that is growing by the day. So what I'm going to tell you now may feel counterintuitive, but it's part of a really crucial mindset shift you need to have if you're going to make your business into the success you know it can be. And that is you need to get into the habit of dedicating some of your very precious time to creating assets in your business, not just ticking off tasks. And by assets, I mean creating things that you're going that are going to help your business to grow and to profit even after you have created them. Things that are not a use once, never use again kind of thing. These things that are not like a plastic bag. We're talking about creating those gorgeous reusable canvas bags for your business. It's probably not a good analogy, but you know what I mean. So this includes what we talked about yesterday, where you're spending the time to master and perfect some rinse and repeat elements for your promotions and launches. Like nailing a really great webinar you can use again and again, or coming up with a really killer challenge that you can use over and over because these are things you can run more than once and a big chunk of the work and the time you spend on it keeps paying off again and again because these are assets you've created. Now to take this one step further is to create things that once you have spent the time creating them and setting them up, then run 100% hands free. These are simple systems, automations and yes, even funnels that help to create a little engine running behind the scenes in your business that keep it moving forward even when you're not the one actually doing the, you know, doing the work, doing the hustle. These are three main areas that if you can jump in and get automated and systemized asap, will make such a big difference to your business. So what are they? Well, let me tell you. So first up, you need to automate your new client inquiries and follow ups. How often have you received an inquiry from someone asking about your services or a product? And then because you're so busy, you've left them waiting for days, if not weeks, and forget about following up with them. Who has time for that now? These days this can come from all over the place. It might be via email or dm, or you might be a form on your website. So there are a few things that you can do to really streamline this to save you time and also to give those prospective clients a better experience. So first of all, I want you to write out some response templates or canned responses and save them inside your email. So most email has this built in. It's called canned responses in Gmail. Save them as a little template. You can also now save them as a template in your Instagram DM section or inbox, whatever that's called, which is an awesome new feature that they added just recently. And the third place that I want you to save them is as a keyboard shortcut on your phone. So this means you kind of covered like maybe someone asks a question underneath a blog post or, sorry, a Facebook post or something. So this means that you are able to get back to people and respond to people really quickly with just a couple of keystrokes. So that's the basics. Now if you want to take things up to ninja level, you can create an opt in form using your email service. And they all do this so that it's Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign or ConvertKit. And you want to create one for each of the, you know, your products or services or offerings so that you can, you have one set up for each that you can direct people to, depending on what they're asking about.

Now this form is going to be set up so that when someone pops in their details and you'll keep it simple, you'll just ask for name email address, just like a normal kind of opt in. It will then trigger a sequence of emails and follow ups with that person which then provides them, you know, information, FAQs it sends them. Maybe you have a PDF of your offerings, you know, follows up saying, hey, did you want more information on that? You know, are you still interested? That kind of thing. Like you kind of map out what would be the optimal sequence of what you wish you could do manually, but you can't because you don't have time. And you know, someone could be submitting this at 2am and you don't want to leave them waiting till you're able to respond to them, you know, 24 hours later. So really, really simple thing that you can set up. And now you might be thinking, okay, but what if someone DMs me? Like how do I, you know what happens there? So what you're going to do is make sure that these little canned response snippets, a little follow up snippets that you created and saved in as canned responses in your Instagram inbox and as the keyboard shortcuts on your phone that they actually the call to action in them is for people to go and complete this form. So then if someone DMs you, you can say, and they say they want to know more about X product, you can just say, yep, awesome. Just pop your details in here and we'll send you all the information straight away. Hey guys, it's just Kate here. So first of all I just had to quickly stop by and say thank you so so much for listening to and supporting my brand new podcast. It really means the world to me. And to help kick this puppy off with a real bang, I actually have an amazing free bonus just for you guys, which is I'm giving away access to my 5 day mini business accelerator workshop worth $97 totally for free to everyone who leaves a 5 star review of the Doing It Online podcast on itunes right now. This five day workshop walks you through creating your own killer online business plan for your online course. Business. One that is scalable, profitable and enjoyable too. It's chock full of my very best lessons and strategies from over 13 years online and today it's yours for free. All you have to do is step one open up iTunes, click on this podcast, click write, review and then click those little five stars and share what you love most about the show. Step 2 Head to katesbonus.com that's K-A-T-E S B O N U S.com Kate's bonus and pop in your contact details and itunes account name so we can know the review is from you and we can send you your login details for your bonus. It's that simple. Step one leave a five star review. Step two head to Kate's Bonus.com and send us your details. And that's it. And as an extra little thank you, I'll be choosing my favorite reviews every week and sending that lucky reviewer an exclusive I Do It Online mug so you can sip along in style while you listen to your favorite show. So what are you waiting for? Hit pause, go, leave that review, then head over to katesbonus.com, pop in your details and claim this amazing five day workshop for yourself. I'll see you inside. So I want you to think about how much time that will save you going back and forth with the same questions and how many sales that you will save because you don't need to remember to follow up with people. And in case you haven't noticed this already, the real trick with these sales is in the follow ups like that. I would say that a huge proportion of people are losing potential clients because they don't get around to following up with them. Now bonus points here if you want to, you know, go nerd level 11 is to actually set up a simple trigger in your email system so that when someone purchases it will then end that follow up sequence for them so they're not continuing to get reminders otherwise. You have to do it manually when someone buys, but it really depends on, you know, what you're offering is what your other systems are and things like that. Okay, so now on to the next thing that you need to streamline and automate. So that was automating your client inquiries and follow ups. Now you need to automate how you onboard and welcome each new student or client. So if you spend a bit of time here to put together the absolute ideal welcome sequence for your new buyers, not only will it give them an even better experience and make sure they have everything that they need to dive in with confidence and get great results, but again, it saves you a lot of time, both manually and by not having to send out all the bits and pieces every time and also by not having to field all of these questions that people kind of come back to you with when they get stuck. And let's face it, a lot of these questions are probably the same ones over and over. So how do you do this? Well, it normally starts by taking the time to really sit down and look at how people move through your programs to be able to, you know, you want them to be able to get started with confidence. So think about what do they need. Look at any common places where they might get stuck or fall off or see if you can add in, you know, an automated little email around that time with some extra encouragement or resources. It could be as simple as going, oh, I've noticed that a lot of people, you know, don't, don't actually do week number four. Like lots of people go through week one, great. Week two, great. Week three, slow, slowing down a bit. Week four, big drop off. So maybe you send them a little email halfway through week three, which is sort of framing it for them, saying, hey, next week's a chunky one. We know a lot of people feel triggered by this. Or a lot of people, you know, might start go thinking that this bit isn't important and think, you know, life can start getting busy right about now, but it's, you know, reiterate why it's important, give them some encouragement and help to sort of push them forward. Also good to look at the common questions that you're being asked and see how you can actually answer them first and make sure people have that information upfront so they don't need to ask the question in the first place. Or it could even be as simple as sending out an FAQ email like, this doesn't have to be complicated, but it is worth taking the time to really look at these key pieces and how you can make that onboarding and transition as smooth and as supportive feeling as possible, but in an automated way. Now this is something, if I'm honest, that you're actually probably going to be tweaking here and there forever or always looking to make it better and better as you and your programs evolve. And that's fine. So you don't need to worry about getting it perfect right now. But if you can even cut your workload for onboarding a new client by half, imagine what else you could do with that time. And also imagine how many more people you can now serve. Okay, so that's number two. Onto the third area. I think all online business owners need to systemize and automate and there are no prizes for guessing what this one is. Yep, the third thing I know you need to automate to be able to hit five figures with ease and then beyond is you need to automate your sales process as well. So yes, this means creating a funnel. And before you go thinking that it has to be complicated or it needs crazy expensive and complicated tech or a whole bunch of Facebook ads, let me stop you right there because the best funnels and I have seen behind the scenes and helped to create some amazing profitable six and seven figure funnels, the best ones are actually really, really simple. Very strategic, but simple complicated is actually a total conversion killer. Plus these days the tech is so accessible. In fact, the budget friendly stack that I recommend to my clients is only around $38 a month. And that gives you all of the stuff that you need to create a killer funnel. And the best of the best tech stack is more around the $150 a month mark. Again, nothing crazy like think about that is to run an online business. That is all you need. And this includes things like hosting your courses and stuff as well. So it's really not as expensive and crazy as it used to be. The, the way that the tech and the systems have developed over these last few years have made it so much more accessible. And lastly, if you're worried about wasting money on Facebook ads, that is actually again, a total funnel fallacy. Because you can create a funnel and I would recommend that this is how you start. That is fueled purely off the list building that you're already doing to grow your business. So if you're maybe adding 20 or so new people a list to your week, sorry, a week to your list, you could also be getting a sale or two a week and you don't have to lift a finger. It would just be because you'd create this funnel and it was running doing its thing in the background for you. So that is definitely an asset worth taking a couple of weeks to create, don't you think? Now those are the three things, the three systems that I believe everybody needs to be able to sell more and be able to hit the five figure month mark. If you agree, if you had an aha, if you are like going Hells yeah, I need to go and add this to my business right now, let me know on Instagram. I would love to know your feedback. Just tag me in a post or on a story. It's akemcub. And let me know what your biggest aha's were from this episode. And make sure you jump back in tomorrow for part four of my five Secrets to Five Figure Months series. You do not want to miss this one. It is a goodie. I can't wait and I will see you all then.

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 at stealmyfunnel.

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