5 things I don't do to Sell my programs

Hello, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. I help ADHD business owners make more money in less time with your distractions. Anyway, coming to you tonight, to the Facebooks, to LinkedIn, to YouTube and I guess Twitter. I just haven't changed the setting on that. Honestly, I only have like seven followers. They're not going to notice if I leave. Anyway, Good evening. Happy Martin Luther King Day. And also Blue Blue Monday. Although I imagine my UK friends are all asleep by now. Or at least I hope you are. Anyway, I wanted to talk tonight about the five things that I do not do in my sales process for my programs. I'm also going to tell you what I do instead. What I do instead is so much better. And if you are curious, curious about any of the strategies that I teach in this live or that I share about my own business, I teach all of it in holistic selling. Well, some, most of it I sell most I, I include most of it in holistic selling. I will be referring to some marketing stuff, but running that sales call like there's a really integrity based, relationship building way to do it that won't leave you feeling sleazy. And it's my program, holistic selling. I can't speak more highly of it. Obviously it's mine anyway, so number one on the list, let's just get right into it. Number one is cold outreach. Okay? So this is a cold call. This is like telemarketing. This is dming people who I've never spoken to before to ask them if they want my service. I do not do this in my business. Now, there are industries in which cold calling is a norm and it can be effective. Typically those industries, the companies that do it have more than 200 people. They have a sales force. They have a whole team of salespeople who appointment setters will call a whole list of people and try to get people on appointments for that salesperson. If you are a solopreneur or you have a team of like 10 people in your business, cold calling is not not it for you. Cold calling is going to be the worst. Because here's the thing about cold calling. You hear no a lot and when you hear know a lot, it crushes your soul. Especially when this is your business, okay? Because you just start thinking like no one wants this. It's not that no one wants your service. There are plenty of people out there who want your service. They just don't like you cold reaching out to them, okay? Especially not on LinkedIn. Especially not on Instagram and especially not on Facebook. So what do you do instead? Okay, so this is the one part that I'm going to point to that isn't in holistic selling. This is you have to show up on social media, you have to post, you have to get known as the person who solves the problem that you solve, okay? You have to talk about the, the things that you care about. You have to let people get to know you. Okay? You have to be a human in people's eyes. And you are a human, like, right? If you're watching this, I hope you're a human or else the robots really have taken over. I side note, so I just listened to a TikTok where, where this guy shares a song that AI created from two. Two songs from Linkin Park. Whatever. It was a good song. It was a really good song. But it terrifies me beyond all measure that AI can do shit like that. Anyway, so posting on social media is one of the best ways to not have to cold reach out. Another cool way to get in front of people because remember, people can't hire you unless they know that you exist is honestly to go networking, okay? And you can network in person or you can do the whole like pando style, like networking via Zoom. There's still plenty of groups out there that are doing networking online, highly recommend it. But I do not cold dm. I never will. And I would never put my clients through that torture. Okay, here's number two. And I bet you didn't know that this happens. Now this, I just recently learned about this in the coaching industry, offering a third party credit company to make your programs more accessible. Now let me tell you how this goes. So you go, you come across a coach or a business guru or something and they say, hey, listen, my program's $20,000. And you're like, great, I don't have $20,000. And I'm, I'm very poor and I, I won't be able to make that. And they say, great, I have a payment plan for, you know, a thousand dollars a month, you know, 20, you know, times 20. And you say, great, I still don't have a thousand dollars extra a month. I can't make that work. And they say, oh, no problem, no problem. We have a third party creditor who will come in, loan you the money, pay us, and you can get a lower payment schedule. Now what ultimately ends up happening in the fine print that you're signing for that loan, you're basically saying that you're okay with the coach, that guru, not pointing to myself because I don't do this. Basically, you're okay with them getting commission for introducing you as a customer to this creditor. You're paying a lower amount per month. However, you're paying a lot more because this is a high interest loan. This is an unsecured loan. So they have made this accessible to you in the here and now, introduced you to a creditor, made some money off that transaction, and now you are locked and loaded with this creditor and there's no out. There's no out because you loaned money or you borrowed money from, from the creditor. This is one of the reasons I offer group programs. Okay? I actually like, after describing that, I just need a deep breath because that makes me feel super gross. Okay? So here's what we get to offer. Okay? So here's how we do this in my business. Every Friday at 11:00am Eastern Time, I do Brave Biz Labs, okay? It is a free community call for any brave business owner who has any question on their business, who has just, you know, anything that they're troubled with or just wants to go and get some community or hear what other people are asking. You know, it's a way to make my work accessible to those who cannot afford to work with me right now. Now, I also have holistic selling, which is a great foundational piece to you starting a business. Because to have a business, you need paying clients, and to get paying clients, you have to know how to sell. And most people when they start a business don't know how to sell. They've never sold anything in their life. And I want to just like, for those of you who come from sales and are like starting a business and are freaking out and are really nervous like, oh my God, well, what's wrong with me? Just, I want you take a deep breath with me. I have to train most of my clients who come from sales how to sell their services, okay? It's a different type of sales process. Okay? It is normal to not know how to sell your program. Okay? It's normal. I want you to just know that there's nothing wrong with you. You're not broken. Your, your services don't suck. They are incredibly special. Now you just haven't learned the skill, all right? You just need the skill and that's okay because you're smart and you're resourceful and you are a good learner and you can absolutely learn how to run a sales call so that you get high paying clients for your service. Right now. I had a tangent there. Oh, so that's holistic selling. So that's my, like digital course that I offer. So that is like awesome value for someone who's just starting out. It's only $327. Awesome value for just starting out. So if you can't afford to work with me, then you have some options. Now the next tier up is byob, my build your own business group program. This is a fraction of what I charge for my one on one clients, but you get all the foundational work and it just makes my, my services that much more accessible to folks who are really bootstrapping their businesses. And that is my specialty people. I love the bootstrappy. Like, I started my business, I started my business and I'm trying to think like my tech stack. I think I was spending like $75 a month on my business to run my business, you know, and I already had a computer, so I didn't have to buy a computer, but like $75 a month. And like I grew my business to where I am now. Like, that is pretty cool. And if I can do it, you can do it. All right, okay. So we don't, we don't do the third party credit thing. Okay. Let's just get that energy out of here. Okay. Number three is we. I don't use manipulation tactics. I can't even say the word manipulation. Those pushy, like, gross, marmy, slimy sales tactics that like, we all think of when we think of like a used car salesperson. Not into it. I'm not into it. And here is why. Anyone who has to be manipulated or pushed or coerced or bullied into buying your thing is not going to be a happy client. They. There was a part of them that was screaming, I don't want this. I don't want this. I don't want to do this right now. Not the right time. This is scary. I don't want to do this. You want clients who are ready to work with you. You want clients who are like full ass in. They're not half assing their. Yes, they are a full ass. Yes. All right. Now what I do instead, which I train in holistic selling again, is I get really, really clear on what they want. Get really clear on what they want. I also get really clear on what they're like, bumping up against that's preventing them from getting what they want. And then, and I explained it in far more detail in my digital course, but you can go and check that out. But at the end, like If I know that I can help them if they're willing to do the work. I explain how my program works and based on everything that they've told me, it's either a yes or it's a no. And that's if I invite them to be a client. I don't invite everyone to be a client. I just did a TikTok on how you can like sort out the like red flag bad vibe people on a sales call. So you can go check that out if you want. But we don't use manipulation tactics. Okay. This is so sales is about building relationships. It's about creating trust. Because here's the thing about selling a service is you are not gonna never see this person again. And that might have been a confusing way to say that. Like it's not like you're selling a car and they're gonna drive off the lot and you're not gonna see them again until like their service or they get a new car. You are going to be in it with them every day. Like they can, they can reach out to you. You are their service provider for whatever it is that they're doing. If they felt bullied into working with you, that can make the whole process that much more ugly. You do not want unhappy clients. They. They suck the bejesus of soul out of you. I don't know how to say that. My language skills are like limited right now. I'm so tired. I've had a kind of a wild weekend. I'm sure I'll do a live on that at some point. It's a little too fresh right now. Anyway, you want clients who just see the value. They see how you can help and they are so happy. By the way, your marketing is going to help with this. If you're really clear about how you help people and you show testimonials and case studies and you're really clear about this is how I'm useful to you. It's easier for them to be a heck yes when they get on the call with you before you even have the whole call. All right? So marketing builds incredible trust before you get on that sales call number four. I don't do a lot of email follow up. I don't. I used to as a salesperson because I had Salesforce and it would tell me to do it and my manager would check if I did it. But honestly, I have found the best way to avoid doing this in my business because I hate it. I have ADHD and it's just like one another thing that I can forget. And it's the yes, no call. Okay. Another thing that I train in my holistic selling program, but if you're on a sales call with someone and they say that they need to think about it, you, you say okay, great. And, and then you book a yes, no call with them so they have something on their calendar. And of course, like this is, there's more that goes into it. You can check it out in holistic selling, but it's, it's simple. Like if they know that they have a call with you, it's not annoying. Follow up and then you're going to get an answer either way because it's a yes, no call. You're either going to find out yes or no. Like, and if they need more time, then you schedule another one. You schedule another one. Like it's fine. But I don't do email follow up. Maybe I should. Maybe like that'll be something that I assign to a salesperson who I bring in to sell my smaller programs. I don't know. But I don't do it. You don't really have to either. You can. I will train my clients on it. If they have a really rich pipeline that they can go through. We'll craft like all these different emails and, and do basically like a small campaign with people that you've already spoken to in the past to see if there's anyone who's ready to jump in now. But yeah, I'm pretty bad at it myself. Like what is it? The shoemakers? Kids never had shoes. Okay. And that takes me to number five. Number five, you do not need to discount your services to get a client. This is something that I did. Oh my God. So my very first client that I ever got was actually like a friend from childhood. I was in my coach training and we had to give away 30 minute sessions to practice coaching. Right. You can't get better at something unless you practice it. And so I got on the phone with this person and I'm being very vague, I don't want to disclose who they are. I got on the phone with this person and did the practice session and went to hang up and, and they were like, wait, wait, wait, wait, like, how do I get more of this? I want this. And my answer was like, oh God. Like I haven't thought about pricing. I haven't thought about anything. How do I even accept money from this person? And I heard myself, it was like an out of body experience. I heard myself utter, well, my hourly rate is 150, but I have a 50% discount for friends and family. So $75 an hour. And they were like, yes, great, I'm in. And, but I want to point out that I discounted my service before I even heard from this person. If $150 an hour was too much, you will get price objections in your sales call. Okay? It's a given. It's, it's part of, of, of selling anything. It's. If you're not getting price objections, I would actually argue that you're not charging enough. But here's the thing. If someone wants a solution that you provide enough, they are going to find the money. They are going to figure out how to make this investment because they can see that the path is a lot easier with you on their side. And that's that. So one of the, so some things you can do here as well is you can offer similar programs. You know, if you have any, you can offer to circle back like there, there are so many ways you could do this. Dealing with people asking for a discount is, is what we call an objection in sales, in sales lingo and it's basically a reason why they're not moving forward. Now in holistic selling, which I feel like I'm plugging a lot, it's just like it's the catch all for all the stuff that I do, I actually offer a 15 minute objections call to everyone who buys that course. Because the objections that you're going to get for money are going to be so different in your business, right? So like if you are a nutritionist who helps women after having a baby, they the money objections you're going to have are going to be far different than if you are selling copywriting services to a tech company. Right? They're very, very different. So I wanted there to be some kind of custom way for me to advise on how you can deal with objections. But anyway, so these are the things that you actually do not need to do in your business to be successful. So you don't need to cold DM or call if you have people's phone numbers. You don't have to do the third party credit. I advise not. It's just so unethical. You do not need to use any manipulation, gross salesy tactics. No thank you. You do not need to annoy the crap out of people by following up a million times. Absolutely not. And you don't have to discount your services to get a yes. All right. If you have been listening to this, you're like, oh God, like you don't what I Need. I think I need more help than what Katie's talking about. I want you to DM me, and we're going to schedule a time to hop on the phone and talk and just see where your business is at and what. Where you're getting stuck. If you did want to learn about holistic selling and see if, like, you really do need to learn a new. A new way to sell your services, I did put that link to holistic selling in the description for this live. So go and check that out. This landing page. I am so proud of this landing page. This was built for me by Mike Walters, who did Leah Turner's landing page. He is like the Prada purse of landing page designers. Like, I will. I will spend way more money with him than I ever would a designer bag, because I don't like designer bags. But anyway, that example. Anyway, I hope that was helpful. I hope that gave you, like, a. A little less crunchiness and worry about how to sell your services. And I just want you to know, and just remember something very simple. You. You are you. And people who book calls with you are interested in talking to you. They're interested in being closer to you. Okay? You. You probably have a service or a solution that, that could help them, but you're the one that drew them in, and I don't want you discounting that. It's, yes, they could go to other people, but you're the one right in front of them. You're the one that they initially booked that call with, who spoke to them at some point and made them think, wow, I think I want that. And you are special. I know it's hard when you're out here, especially on the interwebs, right? Because you're talking about what you do all the time. And the Google machine is seeing that and thinking, wow, this person is really interested in copywriting. We should show them all the copywriting ads forever. It's. It's incredibly triggering for your imposter syndrome. Okay, But I want you to know, like, the only reason you're seeing all those ads for copywriting is because you talk about copywriting all the time or for coaching, because you talk about coaching all the time. Okay, I get all these ads for, like, business building stuff and money mindset stuff, because I talk about that shit all the time. And I just want to remind you, the person who booked a call with you, they were seeing some of those ads too, and they chose you. And that says a great deal. So anyway, with that happy selling of your programs, if you have any questions for me, you know where to find me. Just shoot me a dm And I will be going live every day this week. Weekdays only, Monday through Friday. If you have any topics you'd like me to talk on, then please DM them to me. I always love, you know, sourcing my creative content from you guys. And that's all she wrote. Have a great night, everyone. Thank you.