The Fierce Business Babe Podcast Ep. 98 Your Sales Process

Today I am going to be digging into all things around your sales process and how to create yours. As you start to build and scale you want to start putting together your own systems inside your own business.

Your Sales Process

By: Melissa Lin

Today we are going to be diving into all things around sales processes and how to start to structure your sales processes. Before we get started, can I ask that you take one minute of your day today to give my podcast a fierce and raving review (link below). This really helps the podcast spread so that more people can find us and learn how to scale their businesses and create a bigger impact in this world. I would appreciate it so much.

Now, I'm so excited to be diving into the topic of your sales process. As you start to build and scale your online business, you will want to start to put together your own processes, inside your own systems of your business so that you can start to actually create repeatable tasks that you can, down the road, hand off to somebody else to do, right? You cannot be a one-woman (or one man) show for the rest of your life.

So, one of these things that we can create repeatable tasks around and hand off down the road is your sales process. You don't necessarily have too; however, for you to really scale, you do get to hand things off at some point. So, let us take a step back for just a minute. If you are newer to the online space, if you were newer to starting your business, or if you are new to sales: lets dig back into “Okay. What is a sales process? What does that actually mean?” This is going to be different for each business and definitely isn’t cookie cutter. Nothing in business is. But basically it’s your system or your process. It’s the steps that you take in order to make a sale in your business. And yes, like I mentioned earlier, we can put these into repeatable tasks so that you can continue to increase your very own sales.

Creating A Like, Know, Trust Factor

So, the first step that we get to do before we really dive into all of the sales process steps is we are going to create a ‘like, know, and trust’ factor with your audience. Your audience gets to know you. They get to see value in you and your offer before they’re going to ever reach out or apply for your programs, your courses, your packages, your services, whatever it is that you’re selling. This can look like you going live once per week. Maybe you’re creating content that helps your ideal client solve something or you’re giving them a quick win. This can be used by sharing about your personal life and how you were in their exact shoes not too long ago. I do a lot of this in my content. I am always thinking back and looking back to where I was when I first started and sharing that experience with my audience. Where I was when I had my first 5k month and sharing that with my audience. When I hit my 10K months, 20K months, 30K months, above and beyond. I’m always sharing those experiences because I want people to be able to connect and relate with me and the content I am creating. That helps increase that ‘like, know, trust” factor. And as your audience starts to connect with you more as you continue to build your relationship with them, you’ll see that your touch points will be moving them closer to the warm lead and that hot lead bucket where they will be ready to start that conversion process. If you aren’t sure what touch points are, take a look at my most recent episodes and posts, I did one just a few weeks ago where we talked all about touch points and lead conversion.

Nurturing Your Leads

So now that you know, “Yes, I get to create content that really attracts my client. I really get to connect with them. I get to build relationship with them and get to really nurture them.” Now let's dig into what that sales portion actually looks like. And that’s what I want to walk through with you. We're going to start to dive into that actual portion. I’m going to walk through an example of the sales process for you of somebody that maybe has an application based program. So, if you have a one-on-one private coaching spot or a group coaching program where your leads need to apply beforehand before they can move forward in the process. This is something that we call taking the time to pre qualify your lead. You are pre-qualifying your applicants or people before they come to work with you. Because you do not want to work with just anybody. However, if you are launching a course with the buy button, you most likely aren’t having some type of pre-qualification process. Because you’re here to serve more people and with courses you usually don’t need that stuff.

Pre-Qualification Process

Let’s talk about going through an application based program and what that process can look like. We actually do this in some of our programs with a lot of our higher-level masterminds because there are only limited spots. We do a pre-qualification process because we want to make sure that the right fit is coming to the program. So, let’s say that you have somebody interested right? They’re interested in you, they see value in you, they’ve been watching for a while. I like to call this lurking. They’ve been lurking. They’ve been your silent supporters. Maybe they’ve been your loud supporters. But they’re interested and they apply for your program. So that’s step one.

Sending the “Next Steps” Response

Next, your team will let you know “Hey Melissa, there’s a new application” or maybe you’re just starting. You’re still the one woman show for now. You may not have a team. So, you see the notification pop-up from Google forms or type forms, whatever service platform that you're using. And within 24-48 hours, you send them your next steps email for how they can move forward to a sales call with you to see if your program is the right fit. And then, set up the next steps to getting them enrolled on the call.

Sometimes people may not always see that email come through, if you do send them an email with next steps. So a little backup that we like to add into our sales process is we also send our applicants Instagram messages letting them know that we have sent them an email to book a sales call to move forward to that next step in our sales process. If you’re thinking “Okay, what does that look like? What do I say? I don't know.” Well, don't worry. I'm going to go into an example for you.

So what this could look like is something along the lines of “Hey Melissa, I wanted to let you know that you’ve been accepted into the next phase of the application process for your program or services. You should have received an email to chat more about your goals and see if this is the right fit for you. Please let me know if you don't receive the email.” And a question that we actually received recently inside of our Fierce Business Academy a few weeks ago was “Well Melissa, what does one of these next step emails actually look like? What do I actually say?” They come through and they apply. They look like a fit, so do I just email them my schedule calling? Do I give them a few times that fit for me? What does that actually look like? So, I do want to be able to give you some things that you can put down on paper for that. So, here’s an example for an email you send out if you want to do this.

If this is part of your sales process. It would be “ Hi Melissa, I received your application or my team received your application for The Mastermind program, for the Fierce Business Academy, or whatever the name of your program is, and I’d love to schedule a call with you so I can learn more about you, your business, and your business challenges to see if this is the right fit for you. Let’s go ahead and hop on a call in the next few days. Here is my link to get scheduled in!” and then add your link there. Then, let them know what the next steps are. Let them know you’re so excited to chat and then sign off with whatever signature that you have.

Automating and Handing Off Your Sales Process

Something I would recommend is that we want to automate as much as we can in our business. The more hands-off time means more time you have to be in your zone of genius. So I would recommend setting up some type of automated scheduler so that it can be a very hands-off process for you. So in the past we have used Calendly and we’ve also used Acuity. Both work well, but they have different Aesthetics. I believe both have free versions. So definitely go check those out. Whatever your sales process is, I highly recommend noting down the steps or recording a training video on how you do it. So that when you do hire somebody on your team, you can easily train them and pass the sales process to them. Because for you to really scale to six or seven figures, you’re going to be in your zone of genius most of the time as your building, so we do want to be able to hand some of these processes off.

So, to leave you with an action item today: go ahead and map out what your current sales process is on paper. It may not be an application base program. And that’s totally okay. However, you’re still going to have a sales process.

For example, our academy is not an application base program. However, we do talk to a lot of people in the DMs and reply to emails to answer questions to see if it’s the right fit. Because we want to make sure we answer your questions before you do move forward. But for example, that sales process looks very different. Somebody has been nurtured. They are ready to buy. They’ll get to our sales page, they’ll purchase, and then our sales process has some automation on the back end to get them enrolled into the program. We send them a welcome email and then we start to get them enrolled.

So the sales process looks different. However, we do have it all down on paper so we can train our team on how to continue as we continue to scale. How to continue the process, right? These processes and these systems will be much easier to train your team to do if you have them on paper or if you have a training video recorded for them to start to go through.

So, map out your current sales process. Whatever that process looks like for you. It may look different, right? Businesses are not cookie-cutter. So your process may look very different and if you have questions, feel free and send me a DM. I would love to chat and help you really dig into your sales process because the more efficient it is then the easier it’s going to be for you to really scale that up. So map it out in a Google doc somewhere that you can easily make notes because as you get started your process will change and you're going to make improvements. You’re going to see one thing works and one thing doesn’t, and when you start to hire your team members it will make it so much easier to train them. So I cannot wait to hear about your biggest takeaways from this. I know it was jam-packed with so much information for you and a great example of what a sales process can look like. I’ll see you next time!

Topics we cover include:

What you need to do to scale
How The Sales Process with Applications Works
How to get your clients on a sales call
What your follow up process should look like

And so much more!

Times to check out:

(6:09) For you to scale you get to do this!

(8:35) Example of the sales process for a 1:1 application program

(10:30) How to get your clients on a sales call

(14:09) What your follow up should look like

(15:42) Map it out

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