Not every sales call should end with a new client!

Oh, yo, yo, I can taste yo, yo, yo, yo I can taste. Good evening. Happy 2nd of November. Happy Wednesday. Happy to all the things. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach, coming to you live. This is actually my second live today. I went live in my private community earlier today and if you would like to join me there. The brave biz community is its own place where you can connect with other brave ass business owners and just be amongst your people. We also have the brave biz lab calls on Friday mornings, every Friday at 11:00am Eastern Standard Time. All the invites are there, all the information is there and you get me doing special lives and stuff. So that's kind of cool. Just putting the link in, in the comments and I think it should show up. And if it didn't show up in some places, then I will go back and I will add it later. Anyway, wanted to go live this evening to talk about closing percentages. There's nothing that sounds more sales bro than talking about your closing percentage. Okay? So your closing percentage is basically how many closing clients you typically get from having a sales call. Okay? So if you have 10 sales calls and you get 10 clients from those 10 sales calls, like everyone signs up, then your closing percentage is 100%. Okay? If only five of them sign up, then your closing percentage is 50%. If only one of them, then it's only 10%. You get what I'm saying here? Okay. Now, yes, it's kind of sales bro, like sales talk. But it is important for you to pay attention to because your closing percentage indicates how healthy your business is. And so I said this in the description of this live. So when I start with a new client, I'm on with a prospect and they're super excited to share with me that they have a hundred percent closing rate that every single person they talk to signs up with them. They're really shocked to at my response because I'm not happy with that. Of course I'm happy that they've gotten clients and they've built their confidence and they're really excited to work with people. Yes, all for that. But if you're getting 100% yeses, that tells me you're actually not charging enough because like you need to be getting at least 50 to 75% no's for me to know that you are charging enough. All right, now there are a few things that go into this. You know, if everyone is saying yes, then the thing that you're selling is super fucking valuable. Okay? If everyone's Saying yes, like it's a no brainer. What you're selling is really valuable. Okay. You know, it's going to make them value it more and put more work into it and show up by charging more. Let me see, how random is this? I'm drinking red wine, have American Psycho movie playing in the background and thinking conversion. Oh, God. American cycle. Yeah. So this is the sales bro talk that I'm talking about, Jason. Thank you. Yes. Yeah. Oh, God. That's like the worst one too. That's like the, you know, he's imagining murdering people. That's awful. But yeah, it's like all that like icky stuff that like sales bros are super, super enamored with their closing ratio and like how fancy their business cards are and like their fancy cars and like chopping people up. Anyway. No, not all sales bros chop people up, just some. Anyway, it's amazing how this works. But anyway, no. So when you have something really valuable to offer and you offer it at unbeknownst, at a discount, what you're basically telling people is that they can get this super valuable thing for really cheap. And so you're actually doing a disservice to your own marketplace. Okay. By being so cheap, you're actually doing a disservice to other people who are in your industry. Like, you wouldn't want them doing it. It's kind of like undercutting, you know, someone. I don't know. I'm, I'm not even going to try to come up with a, an example. My, my metaphor machine is broken today. Embossed business cards. Ivory, of course. Oh, yeah, I bet you have one. Jason. Just kidding. Hello. Hi, Daljeet. Thank you. And I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly. So you need to charge for the value that you provide. Okay? You need to charge for the value that you provide. And let me just call out, most of the time people, most of the time that the closing percentage is 100%. When we do the math, the amount of money that this person is making in their business does not equal a full time salary. So they can work full time hours and then some and still not be able to pay their bills. Okay? I'm, I'm not okay with that. Okay? I'm not okay with that. For my clients, I'm not okay with that. For people who aren't my clients, I'm not okay with that. For my worst enemies. Like, I still want my worst enemies to be able to put food on the table and, and afford shelter. Okay? They haven't been that bad to me. I guess maybe if they've been worse, I would wish more harm on them. But you, you need to be able to do the math. So literally, to figure out how much money you should charge, you need to take how much money you want to make in a year. You need to divide it by 12, 12 months in a year, and then divide it by how many clients you want to carry. Okay? So sometimes you'll have some one on one clients and then you'll have a group program or maybe a digital course that you offer. Okay? There's a way to slice and dice and do the math so that it all equals that ultimate income that you want to make at the end of the year. But you have to start with that first. Okay? The mistake that most people make when they're setting their pricing early on in their business is they either are like, well, I'll offer a discount right now because I'm new. I'll offer a discount right now because I'm new. I'm sorry, do lawyers do that? Do doctors do that? I don't think so. I don't think so. Many other professions do this, and it's ridiculous because you have the expertise, you have the training, oftentimes you have the certification. Okay? We don't need to discount ourselves just because we're new, okay? And maybe Instead of charging $500 an hour, we charge $300 an hour. Think that's fine. Okay, so we start with that or we look at our, our corporate job that we came from, our job, and we look to see, like, how much was I making per hour in that role? What did they value me at for that role? And then we think, okay, cool, well, they were paying me $75 an hour. That's what I'll charge my business. I have some bad news for you. If that's how you're doing your math and you're figuring out how to charge, you were working 40 hours plus at that job, okay? They were paying you for 40 hours and then overtime. In, you know, most cases, unless you're managing people, you're not going to have 40 hours of paid work in your business. It's just impossible, okay? Because remember, you still have to do marketing, you still have to run sales calls, you still have to do a shit ton of stuff, okay? You need to build in a buffer in your hourly charge, okay? That's it. And if you want to be able to go above and beyond for your clients, you need more free time. Like one of the things That I offer my one on one clients. The clients that work with me one on one, either my massive program or my medium program is they get on demand support with me. So literally my clients get to text me with a 911 and I will hop on the phone as soon as I possibly can to talk them off the ledge. They get text me a six one one which is, hey, I have like a time sensitive thing. Can you get back to me at some point today? Absolutely. I have time for that. Or 31 1. They just want to brainstorm something and it's not time sensitive. Now if I were working 80 hours a week and trying to do 40 hours of paid work and like three 30 something hours of marketing and business development, would I have time for that? Absolutely not. But it's one of the things that makes my work so effective with my clients. Jason, the ratio surly is in relation to scale. I've seen mine at 83 when focusing more on lifestyle, smaller revenue, but then at 40% when scaling up for bigger deal size but longer sales cycle plus more. So, Jason, I mean, if you don't mind me outing your business, you know, you're in the adventure space. I think by the time people get to your website and they want to go and scale Mount Kilimanjaro, they've pretty much already decided they want to do it. They're like looking at you versus someone else and you're the best. So of course they're going to go with you. I'm talking more about like the transformation page. So your leadership academy, your leadership academy should have between 25 to 50% closing ratio, but 40% for the bigger deal sizes. That's phenomenal. That's, that's great. I would love to see you maybe actually drop it down a little bit and charge more the potential and 83% also for. Yeah, I mean I would want to push it so that you're down closer to 60%, but for what you do, it's so specific and people really have to seek you out when they want to sign up for it individually. You don't necessarily have to adhere to the exact thing that I'm prescribing here. And for everyone who's listening to me talk to Jason about this, know that I'm, I'm telling you a generalized rule. Okay. It depends based on your industry. It depends based on like what you do with clients. Okay. It depends on what your own personal strategy and goals are. But Jason, if you are looking to reduce your amount of time on the mountain and Maybe outsource it to other people. You could raise your rates, drop your, your yes. Rate down to like 40 to 50% and offer like a really elevated experience. It's an option, but it really depends, it depends on your strategy. This is what I love doing with my one on one clients is really pinpointing, you know, what are your strengths, what do you want to spend your time on, how much money do you want to make and what experience do you want to give your clients? And all of that stuff is reverse engineer and it's reversion, reverse engineer in a way that's complementary. But I was, I was on a roll with another point and I've lost it now. But anyway, Jason, how's, how's the movie? What part are you in? I'm buying time right now. Oh man, where did that bit go? It was really important too. It was like a really critical bit about your closing ratio and oh, the other element of this, the other element of this is like as your business grows and as you come in contact with more people and as you get more clients, if your closing ratio is 100% and you're charging too little and you're not sorting, you're not paying attention to, is this a normal human being, is this someone that I really want to enjoy or I'm really going to enjoy hanging out with, is this someone who is going to actually benefit my business? You're going to invite in some crazy people. You just are. You're going to invite in some people who are troublemakers, who don't treat you well, who don't treat your staff well. You absolutely get to be discerning about who you allow to enter the doors of your business, be it real brick and mortar or figurative. Okay? You, it is your, your responsibility and yours only to do a gut check and make sure is this the right person for my business, okay? Especially if you're doing stuff that requires like an energetic exchange. Okay? And especially, especially, especially, especially if you run any kind of group programs. Jason. Yes, I'm a total knob for offering discounts, eg, full payments in my bank rather than deposit or payment terms. But the foreign exchange rate issue is killing things. So to remove the discount, increase rates, offer more value, perhaps this other way, etc. Etc. I, I thank you, Jason. I love being told I'm right. We can also dive into this. But back to my point. You, you get to protect your energy, you get to protect your sanity, you get to protect your people. There, there are some harmful humans out there. There are some Unreasonable humans out there. And you do not need to take them into your business, even if they are willing to pay your rates. Okay? So yes, your closing ratio depends, you know, determines or is an indicator of how correct your pricing is, but it also indicates how correct your boundaries are. Okay? Because we're maybe you're super desperate for money right now, but I guarantee you, six months down the line, view, if you let a trouble client into your business, you are going to be so desperate to get rid of them, you're going to wish that you had given up food for a week that month that you took that client because they are just going to make you pay for it in other impossible ways. Also, six months later, if they've made your life a misery for four months, you're not going to be in the best mood, which means that you're going to be doing marketing with like a sour, a sour face and with a grouchy energy. And no one wants any of that. Okay? You get to protect your energy. It is the only thing you have with your, your time and your spirit. You get to protect that. Okay, let me see. Part, oh, part in the movie where they first exchange business cards and Patrick Bateman thinks he's the best. Yeah. Oh, Patrick Bateman. I had a coworker who is also a sales bro when I worked in sales in San Francisco who was obsessed with this movie. Obsessed, like oddly. And he had a roommate who was like as much of a clean freak as Patrick Bateman. We never really found out if that guy was a serial killer. I'm really happy we didn't. But anyway, this, this is like a tangent filled live about closing percentages. I hope, I hope this helped make it more interesting because it's kind of a dry topic anyway. If you, if you are hearing this and be like, well, I get too many clients or I'm not getting any clients, like, what is she talking about? This problem, I want you to DM me. We're gonna hop on a quick call, generate income strategy call, and we're going to figure out what's going right and what's on going, going wrong. And I'm going to give you some feedback on what some small things you can do. And if you're curious about working with me, then we can talk about that as well. But anyway, in the meantime, Jason and Dalget, thank you so much for joining, Jason. I hope you enjoy the movie. It is late there, young man. You also should be going to sleep soon. Live with benefits. Extra value. Exactly. I'm dying. Well, Anyway, it is. It is 9pm here. It is almost my bedtime. I'm gonna. I'm gonna go pass out. Thank you for joining, Jason. I hope you have an amazing day. And for anyone else who wasn't brave enough to jump into the chat tonight, remember, you can always DM me. Anyway, have a good night, everyone. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. Talk to you soon. And happy end. Or, I don't know. Endings are weird for me. Happy Wednesday. Happy Thursday. I don't know. Bye, everyone.