More Sales Isn't Always the Answer In Business
In this live YouTube talk, Sarah Williams challenges the common belief that simply increasing sales will solve a business’s problems. She begins by highlighting the shift toward e‑commerce, noting its continued outpacing of brick‑and‑mortar retail, and presents stark statistics about small‑business failure rates (18 % in year 1, 50 % by year 5, 65 % by year 10). Using her own 11‑year subscription‑box experience, she explains why many entrepreneurs get stuck in a “more‑sales‑or‑more‑subscribers” mindset that leads to panic and unsustainable growth. Williams reframes the issue by focusing on three foundational levers—traffic, conversion, and retention—and outlines seven concrete actions to improve each: 1. Define a clear niche to attract the right audience and avoid diluting focus. 2. Create engaging, value‑driven content that builds connection and drives both traffic and conversions. 3. Maintain a simple, clean website for a frictionless user experience that boosts conversion rates. 4. Generate trust and social proof through reviews, testimonials, and visible customer feedback. 5. Provide high‑level, VIP‑style customer service to retain subscribers and turn issues into loyalty moments. 6. Surprise and delight customers with unexpected perks, gifts, or coupons to deepen loyalty. 7. Know your numbers—track gross and net profit margins, expenses, and cash flow—to ensure profitability isn’t sacrificed for volume. Throughout, she stresses that sales dips are normal, especially in an election year that creates consumer uncertainty, and encourages entrepreneurs to view dips as opportunities to strengthen the fundamentals rather than panic‑driven acquisition. She shares personal wins (e.g., beating last year’s Mother’s Day box sales) to illustrate that small victories can compound. The talk ends with a call to action: focus on the basics, improve traffic, conversion, and retention, and keep profitability front‑and‑center.
Chapters
Good morning. Happy Monday. Today we're talking about more, more, more. I need more sales. I need more sales. I need more sales. But do you really need more sales? That's what we're talking about today. I'm sure everyone would love more sales, but sometimes that's not the solution to our problems. And what happens when all you think about is having more sales, more sales, more sales while your sales are declining? I'm going to help you reframe that today. I'm going to help you understand what you should be looking at and what different things we can do to make a difference when our sales are down. All right. So if you'll let me know in the chat that you are here, I would love to say hi to you this morning. I'm gonna come over. I can see we've got some YouTube watchers. Andrea's here. Good morning, Andrea. My team is here both on YouTube and on Facebook with you this morning. Good morning, Simone. Good morning, Carolyn. Good morning, Rebecca. Good morning, Stephanie. Good morning, everybody. I was reading some stuff over the weekend and it just had me like really questioning this in my mind, like really thinking about this. One of the things that I read was Like, I, I've been seeing so many retail establishments, retail locations, big ones just shut their doors over the last couple of years. And I know COVID had a big, a big factor in that. But what we're seeing is that total e-commerce growth is still continuing to outpace retail growth by over 7% year over year. So when you think about where you're at with your business, I want you to remember that e-commerce is still trending higher than a physical location retail establishment, okay? And we're seeing that phase out more and more. And we saw it a few years ago because people wanted to stay home, people didn't wanna be around other people, but we're seeing it now because it creates a convenience. How many of you, I just wanna, give me a little hand or just say me in the chat. How many of you have purchased something online it over the weekend? This last weekend, how many of you have purchased something online over the weekend? Just say me or give me a hand raise in the chat. Um, I think it is so easy and it's so convenient. And whether that's a boutique, uh, maybe Walmart pickup, maybe Amazon, um, maybe your medications, like whatever that is, it has become convenient for us to go online and make a purchase that we do it without even thinking about it anymore. And for me to have to get in the car, go to a store, shop, probably try things on, and then make a decision and leave— I could have bought a couple different things online already, tried them out in the comfort of my own home, send them back, whatever I don't want, and move forward. And so we're seeing the e-commerce growth continue to trend over retail. So I want you to remember that that as we're talking. Okay, now there's this, um, there was some other stats that I pulled that I want to share with you because I want you to understand this and then place yourself in, in this timeline here. 18% of small businesses fail within their first year. 18%. That's 1 out of 5. Okay. Um, while 50% fail after 5 years. So half of people that make it to 5 years, they fail after that. And approximately 65% have failed by their 10th year in business. I always call small business years like they're like dog years. I feel like if you make, if you make it, you know, 1 year, it's really 7 years. We're celebrating 11 years in business this year, actually this month. And I feel like it's a huge milestone. I feel like it's 70 years in small business world. And so when you look at these stats, they are alarming. And the reason that people are failing is because they're really looking at the wrong thing when it comes to growing your business. And so that's what we're talking about today. We're talking about, it's not about more sales, but what is it about? And so I really want you to understand this. Maybe you write this on a Post-it note and you put it on your desk. If you— I want you to tell me what year in business you are. Maybe this is your first year, um, maybe you're in year 3, maybe you're in year 20. Tell me in the chat, um, tell me in the chat, uh, what year in business you are. I think that if you were in business pre-world pandemic, you're gonna make it. Like, if you're still around, you're gonna make it, because we've been through some of the most challenging seasons of our business so far. But I want you to remember that these stats are alarming because people give up too quickly. When you become an entrepreneur, there's this shiny, glamorous thing like, oh, I'm gonna be an entrepreneur, I'm gonna create my own schedule, I'm gonna make a lot of money, I'm gonna do all the things that I wanna do. And in reality, it's really hard. It's really hard to be an entrepreneur and actually make an income for yourself and to have a long sustainable business. And that's why all these kind of flashy marketing things, they're like, oh, let's go viral, let's do this. They're not long lasting. When we build our subscription box business, we're building a long lasting business that's going to pay us well, give us an income and has a long life to it. It's not a fly-by-night business. And that means we've got to work hard at it. And it means that we're going to have we're going to have some great months of sales, and it means that we're going to have some bad months of sales. It also can mean that we can have some great years of sales, and on the flip side, we can have some bad years of sales. But what happens in those bad months, bad weeks, bad years is what is going to give us the true grit to make it long-lasting. And that's why so many people, so many small businesses fail, because they're not willing to go the distance with their business. They're not willing to push through the hard stuff. They're not willing to— when things get tough, they're out. Well, I can't do this anymore. So we're going to talk about it today. And there was another— there's another really fun fact about this year. Not really a fun fact. I wouldn't call it fun, but this year is an election year. Okay. So any time— and if you've been in business, some of you have been in business more than 4 years, if you've been through a year, an election year with your business, you know that an election year affects our economy in a lot of different ways. It affects the stock market, it affects people's buying habits. And so this year we're in an election year and that creates uncertainty for people. No matter— I don't get political here, but no matter how it ends up, it's going to— it creates a lot of uncertainty for people and a lot of uncertainty comes with money. And so when we talk about this being an election year, it's going to affect our economy and it's going to affect our economy closer to the second half of the year than right now. But I want you to be mindful of that, that this is an election year. And when we have an election year, the uncertainty makes people hold on to their money tighter because they don't know the outcome of what's about to change in their life. And so what I wanna talk to you about is things that we can do. I had some conversations with some of my mastermind students and also a couple of my friends over the last few weeks about sales and I need more sales, I need more members, I need more subscribers, I need more this. And I'm like, but you have a ton right now. What's the goal? Is it a number goal? Is it a sales goal? Well, I don't have enough. And when I really try to peel back the onion, when someone says I need more sales, I need more sales, that's the goal of every entrepreneur is to make more sales to continue to grow. But we shouldn't be doing that in a panicked way. Maybe you don't need more sales. Maybe you need more profit in your business. It's not, it's not always about sales. Maybe you need higher retention with your subscribers, not new subscribers every time you turn around. But this mindset of I need more, more, more all the time puts us in this hamster wheel of feeling like I gotta have more, I gotta do more, I gotta jump through hoops, I gotta do more marketing, I gotta do more things. When actually, if we just pull back the layers of our business and we're more profitable and we have a higher retention rate, we're not on this hamster wheel of I need more, more, more all the time. And so that's what I wanna reframe for you today. My sales are down, my sales are down right now. I'm completely transparent about that and I'm not ashamed of that. I'm not ashamed to tell you that my sales are down. My sales are down for one-time purchases, My sales are down for subscriptions right now. And so that makes me feel a little uneasy and not in a panicked way because I've been in business 11 years and I know that we have these ebbs and flows in our business and we're going to be up and we could be up for a great amount of time and then it's going to come down and it may go back up or it may go down further. And I know that and I know that the only thing that I can do is to stabilize my business the best way possible when I'm in a dip. Okay, I'm in a dip right now, and I'm saying that because I want you to understand that being an entrepreneur and being in e-commerce is not always this. It's not always, it's not always that growth chart that just goes up, up, up. It is this, and sometimes it'll be this, and then sometimes it'll be this. Okay, and And that's what I need you to understand. But there are things that we can do when we have a dip, um, and, and it's, it's not hard. We just got to go back to the basics, okay? So the basics in, in our sales world are traffic, conversions, and retention, okay? So I've got 7 7 points that I want to make today. If you're a note taker and you want to take some notes, I want you to think about these 3 things: traffic, conversion, and retention. When sales get tough for me, I want to look at these 3 things— or these 7 things. Okay, number 1, clearly defining your niche. This is going to help with your traffic. Okay, we can't be all over the place. We have to niche down and we have to be clearly defined in that niche. Okay, so clearly defining your niche. Do you know who your perfect person is? Do you know your customer inside and out? Do you know what they like to do, where they live, how old they are? Do you know them? We have to clearly define that because it affects so much of what we do in our business and it's going to help us bring more traffic to our business. When we have a clearly defined niche. You can go broad, but the broader you go, the less visible you're going to be. And I know it sounds weird, but the riches are in the niches. You will be found, you will be more visible if you have a clearly defined niche, okay? And when we get astray from that, we gotta bring ourselves back. I had a customer come into my warehouse last week looking for some 'Guy gifts.' And, um, I'm sitting there, and one of my warehouse ladies was helping her, and I'm sitting here listening to the conversation about how they need some gifts for some graduation for some boys. And I'm like, 'Oh, I should have had something. I should have carried something.' No, boys are not my niche. Men are not my niche. Ladies that love monograms are my niche, and I cannot get a— I cannot stray from that. Because the moment I do, things are going to stop working for me. Things are— yeah, could I sell a few more things? Could I sell some leather wallets with monograms on them? Could I? Sure I could. But what does that— what does that take away from my regular focus? If I spend my time on that, what is that time taken away from? I want you to think about that. Don't have your hands in everyone's cookie jar. Okay, it's not always about making more sales. It's not always about making more sales. Could I make more sales if I had a line for men that women could buy? Sure. Do I have women in my audience that would buy men's gift? Absolutely. Is that where I need to spend my time curating men's gifts? No. Oh, number 2, I want you to spend time creating engagement content. This is going to help you with traffic and conversions. If we are just putting out fluff content all the time, we're not building connections. We need to serve our audience with engaging content. It could be how-tos, it could be tutorials, it could be best tips and tricks and advice. We need to engage with that audience. Okay, if we spend time engaging, it's going to pull traffic to us. It's also going to help convert the traffic we have. Spend time creating engaging content. Quit acting like it's one more thing to do on your to-do list. It is one of the most important things to do on that to-do list. Number 3, a simple and clean website. This is going to be for conversions. We've got to create a good user experience that's not clunky. I'm going to talk about one of my Scale Your Box students, Misty Money. Um, we were over in the Scale Your Box group, um, and we were sharing pop-ups because I was working on the pop-up training for next month and I was wanting some examples. And so she said, I've got a pop-up, here's my website. And I went to look at her website And I was, I, Misty's been with me for a long time and I can remember her first version of her website. It was clunky, it was hard to navigate, it wasn't visually appealing. Her website is so beautiful right now. It is clean, it is simple, it is organized, and it's, there's not too much going on. So number 3, a simple website. Simple and clean website. Don't be doing too much. I bet I say this a lot, like, they're doing too much. Don't be doing too much on your website, okay? Make it simple and clean and a clear user experience on your website, and that's gonna help you with conversions. You're creating the traffic, you're getting traffic to your website, let's convert them. If we could convert our traffic at 1% higher than we used to, we're going to have more sales, we're going to have more customers, we're going to have more subscribers. So don't just think it's always about acquisition and getting more and more and more people into our world. It's about converting the people that we have into subscribers. Okay, number 4, generating trust and social proof. This is a conversion play. We've got to generate trust and social proof. Okay. So when you think about everybody that raised their hand that said they bought something online over the weekend, how many— I want you to just think to yourself, how many of you, before you made that purchase, looked at reviews of that item, looked at the social proof of that item? Every time. Every time. I want to know how someone else feels about that product. I will look at it on— like, if I am scrolling Facebook endlessly and I see something, like, there's this cute denim skirt that I really want to buy, um, but I want to know how it fits right before I buy it, right? So I'm looking in the comments of that ad that's in my feed, and I'm waiting to see if someone has purchased this. I got the skirt, I love it. I got my normal— like, I'm, I'm wanting to see the feedback on that social media about that skirt before I make my purchase, right? Also on Amazon, if I'm gonna buy something on Amazon, I'm scrolling through at least 10 reviews before I click buy. That converts me to making the sale. If someone I don't know says they love it, I'm in. It's that simple. It's that simple. I just need someone to say that yes, they got this and they love it. I just need a confirmation that what I'm about to spend my money on one is going to be worth it. So don't forget that when you think about your own business. Do you have social proof on your website? Do you have social proof on your, on your Facebook page or Instagram? When you are posting something, are your subscribers engaging and telling how much they love it? That's what we need. That's going to help your conversions. I saw this comment in the chat. Tell her I said thank you. I appreciate that. All right. Number 5. Kathy says people will trust strangers first over the people they know. A lot of times we know this in our business too. A lot of times the people close to us do not support our business. And I'm not saying that's true for everyone, but a lot of times you will have more support from people you don't know than you will from your own friends and family. And I don't know why. I wish I knew the psychology behind that. I don't know if it's, it's in their face too much, or there's jealousy, or they just don't believe you can make a living by not going to work and clocking a punch, you know, punching a clock all the time. I don't know if that's what it is, but you will have more support from people that you don't know than you will your own family. And we tend to trust people we don't know when we're looking at those reviews, right? Okay. Number 5, high-level customer service. High-level customer service. If there's an issue, we got to resolve it quickly. If there's any kind of weird feeling about anything, we gotta resolve it quickly. We gotta take care of our customers. We've gotta treat our subscribers like VIPs of our business. They're above everyone. We take care of them because they've committed to us. It's a retention play. If I have an issue with a subscription box or an item from the subscription box, Maybe someone had it for 6, 7 months and it's falling apart. That's my subscriber. I'm gonna take care of them. I don't care that they've had it for 6 or 7 months. They give me their credit card every month. The play is to make them happy, okay? It's different if that's a one-time customer. I'm like, girl, what you been putting in that bag? You know, it's different. But if we can treat our subscribers with a customer service VIP first class level. Like when you get on the plane, you know, I don't, you know, I don't know if you've ever ridden in first class or just walked by and checked out what they were doing up there. But, you know, they get their, they get their meal on a plate with real silverware and glasses. Like it's a whole thing. We get peanuts in the back. Okay. So we have to treat our customers like they're sitting in first class. We have to treat our subscribers like they're sitting in first class. How can I handhold this and make it right for them? Because they are committed to me month after month. High-level customer service. That's a retention play. It makes me feel good. It makes them feel good. All right. Number 6, surprise and delight. This is a retention play to surprise and delight them. You don't have to tell them. Let's surprise them. I have a, I have, if you text me the word surprise, I have a little PDF that's 10 ways to surprise and delight your subscribers. And there's 10 different ways that you can do this. And I've experienced with, I've had experience with most of these on the list, if not my members have, but What if I sent all of you something special today, just out of the blue? You would feel good about that. You would feel excited about that. You would feel special. That's what we want to do with our subscribers. They are committed to us every single month. So if we can throw a coupon to our shop in there, if we can throw an extra item in there, if we give them a birthday gift when it's their birthday month, how can we surprise and delight our subscribers? I've got a PDF for you. So just text me the word surprise to my text number and you'll be able to go in and opt in and download it. Let's start surprising and delighting the people that commit to us every single month. That's what we want to do. You just got to text me, not, not in the comments. Text me on my text app. Okay. That's a retention play. So we've talked about traffic, define your niche, create engaging content. We've talked about conversions, creating engagement content goes traffic and conversions, a clean, simple website, generating trust and social proof. And then we've talked about retention, high-level customer service, surprise and delight them. Now, the last thing that I want to talk to you about, and that's number 7, is knowing your numbers. When we think about I need more sales because of X, I need more sales to make more money, that's not always the case. I need you to dig into your numbers, okay? I need you to know your numbers. I need you to know your profit margin, and that's your gross profit margin and your net profit margin. Where is your money going? What expenses? What's coming out? What's the net of your business? This is coming in, this is going out. Let's look at it. Let's understand why. It's, it's like if I have 10 grand coming in and I have $9,500 going out, something's— you feel, you feel like a failure sometimes, right? You're like, how can I have $10,000 coming into my business this month and, um, my bank account is empty? I'm broke. We have to know your numbers, and then what we can do from that is make progress. If I know that I'm spending too much, my expenses are too high, how do we adapt and adjust? How do we shift and adjust that so that we can be more profitable? It's not about getting more sales, because if you're not looking at your profitability every month you're gonna have more expenses with those more sales. So if I go get $15,000 a month, I got more sales, yeah, but now I got $14,000 going out. I've only gained $500 and I've gained $5,000 more sales. We have to get that under control. We have to be profitable. It doesn't matter how much sales you've had You can be profitable month one in your business if you're smart with your numbers, and we gotta know that we're running businesses. If you're sitting here running a legit business and you don't know your profit margin, that's a problem. You're not able to make educated decisions about those expenses about. So you're in your mind, you're like, I just need more sales, I need more sales, I need to make more money, I'll have more income, I just need more sales. It's not always about that. It's about fixing your traffic problem, fixing a conversion problem, retaining more customers, and being more profitable. It's not about more, more subscribers is more expenses. So if you're not dialed into your profit numbers, that's only going to create higher bills for you. So we gotta lock in. It's not about having more sales. And if your sales are down right now, like me, there's 7 things that I can do right now to really help my business. And I don't know how long my sales are going to be down. It could be a few months, it could be the rest of the year. I'm in an election year, it could be the rest of the year for me. What am I going to do? I'm going to do these things. I'm going to connect, I'm going to drive traffic, I'm going to work on conversions, I'm going to love the crap out of my subscribers so they never want to leave me. That's what I'm gonna do. I'm not gonna keep going after the acquisition when the, when the bucket's got holes in it. It's okay to be down in sales. It's okay. I'm not a failure because my sales are down right now. I've got small wins. Um, we sold our Mother's Day box over the weekend and I've already beat last year on my Mother's Day box sales. That's a great win. Are my monthly sales still down? Yeah, it's okay. I'll take the Mother's Day box win. Those small wins add up to progress. And even if I don't win for the next few months in the sales department, I'm going to win in some of these other things. I'm going to work on my traffic, I'm going to work on my conversions, I'm going to work on my retention. Because those numbers matter. It's not always about getting more sales and getting more subscribers and having more and more and more. It's about really assessing what you do have and how do you make that better. Looking at the traffic you do have, how do I convert more of those people? Looking at the subscribers you do have, How do I retain more of them? Looking at your numbers and increasing your profitability. When sales aren't there, there's so much about our business that we can work on, and it's okay. I'm not a failure. There's nothing about me that's a failure, even though my sales are down. So I want you to remember that with your own business, and I want you to remember that we got to push through. The hard times, the hard weeks, the hard months, the hard years, because we don't want to be one of these statistics. We can do this. We go back to the basics, work on traffic, conversions, and retention. All right, let's get going. Let's make progress in any way that we can this week. All right, I'll see you guys soon. Have a great Monday.
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