The Fierce Business Babe Podcast Ep 120: Increase Your Sales Conversions

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In today’s episode we will be diving deep into all things sales. We will be discussing your sales plan, what your sales process could look like and how to recognize and close any gaps you may have and start to increase your sales conversions. Plus, so much more!

Increase Your Sales Conversions

By: Melissa Lin

Welcome back! We are rocking and rolling right into a 2021 and a big thing on many of our minds is sales, selling, promoting. For many entrepreneurs, sales is one of the harder aspects of business, and it could be because maybe they haven't spent time on their sales skills, maybe they don't have a sales process in place and are kind of winging it each month. And if that's the case, That’s Ok, we're going to start to change that so you do have a plan in place.

Your Sales Plan

When you have a plan in place, things just feel more doable, you know where you're heading, you have a better idea of your business and can start creating sales projections in your business, too. We want to be able to predict how sales are going to be coming into the business. We want to be able to predict monthly recurring revenue, predictable income, that type of thing. So you know what's coming. Then you can start to think about the different things such as next hires, what else you're going to do to expand your business, other things you can improve, where else you can spend some money if you're reinvesting some of that into your business. But you want to know how your sales are projected to look.

Your Sales Processes

Now, we will be diving into the sales process for a business and where the gap could potentially be for you, how you can start to close the gap and increase those sales conversions. And of course, if you fund bonus tips, because we know that over here at Melissa Lin Headquarters, we love all things sales because selling means we're serving and creating an impact.

Now, believe it or not, at the moment you do have a sales process. So let's walk through this and we can even walk through an example in my business. Now, when somebody comes to your Instagram, when somebody comes to your Facebook, YouTube channel, Pinterest, whatever platform you're on, somebody finds you on your platform, they start to poke around on your content and they are attracted to what you have to say. If they stay, they’re attracted to what you have to say, your content, the value you and you have now created a connection with this new person, this new potential client.

Now, what's going to happen is this person will then continue to watch your content. They'll build additional touch points with you. You know, it can take on average anywhere from seven to ten touch points to go from a lead to a paying client. So, this is you nurturing them, then you share about your offer, maybe on your Instagram stories. Maybe it was an Instagram caption. You had a call to action to apply for your program, or maybe you're even in the DMs having conversations with them, chatting with them and asking them for the sale right there in the DMs, asking if they've considered applying for your program. This next step is you promoting, you're selling, you're closing the sale.

Right now, you have people in your audience at all of these stages. And I would recommend mapping this process out. So, after they apply for your program, what happens? You most likely review their application, most likely invite them to a sales call to determine if it's a fit. If they are fit, you'll most likely offer an invitation to your program. When they say yes, you sign, you send them your contract, they sign, they pay you, and then you and your team empower them into your program and send out their welcome email. Sounds pretty familiar? Especially if you have some type of application based program.

So as I walked through that example of a sales process for somebody that attracts clients through a social media platform into their application based program, I want to ask you what comes up for you? Where do you feel there could be some gaps in your process? Now, what we want to make sure is that, you know, when X happened, then Y happens, right? We want you to feel like you know what to do in each step as you bring those potential clients through your sales process, which can definitely look different for your various programs that you have.

Mapping Out Your Sales Process

So, in our business over here at Melissa Lin Headquarters, our sales process for our courses is different from our sales process for our one on one private coaching package. For example, our one on one private coaching packages are application based. You must apply. You must be approved. You must go through that sales process. Now, our sales process for a course may be just a buy button.

So ask yourself and start to map out for your business. Grab your notebook, If you don't have it yet. OK, how do you actually bring new people into your community each day, each week, each month? What are you doing for attracting new potential clients? What content are you intentionally and strategically putting out to your social media platforms to attract? Now let's create a list, as long as you can, keep adding to it. Here are some examples. If you feel unsure of what you can add to your list, you're doing things in your business right now to attract people to you. Now, some examples, maybe you share your freebie to your page. Maybe, you are collaborating on a podcast and someone finds you by listening to that podcast and comes to your page. Maybe you engage outward and they love what you have on your page and stick around. Maybe you shared one of your blog posts on Pinterest and they found you on other social media platforms and are hanging around. If you have an online business, what this means is your business happens online, which means your sales process also happens online. So what we get to do is we get to show up, we get to be consistent and I mean consistent and consistent and consistent, right. Your potential clients, they can't pay you, they can't work with you, if they can't first find you.

Warming Your Audience

So that's the first area I want us to look at in your business. We can't even talk about improving conversions if we aren't even attracting them yet. So, again, we get to show up, be consistent so your potential clients, your potential customers, they can find you. They can't pay you if they can't find you. So how do you then continue to add touch points to your audience? How do you build your relationship with them? How do you nurture them? Now, this does happen over time and is not an overnight thing. So, for example, I have some clients that were in my audience for years and I mean years before they ever signed up to work with me, before they ever purchased anything from me. I have some clients that were in my audience for just a few months before they bought from me. I have some clients that were in my audience for a few days before buying from me. So you get to warm your audience up right now in your business, ask yourself, what are you doing to get them excited to potentially work with you? So this is where I want you to start to add to your list some more.

Now, here are some examples. So what can this actually look like? This can look like you adding value, you hosting live streams, you sharing podcasts that you were on, you sharing your lead maintenance, you following up with people in your audience, having conversations with them, really getting to know them and what really matters to them. Now, what do you currently have in your regular content marketing? This is also another area of continuing to build the relationship and nurture your audience. So, for example, right now, every single week we release one new podcast episode every Monday morning and we release one new IGTV episode where it's a Q&A. It's called The Fierce Business Q&A, where we pull a question that a client asked directly from one of our programs. And in this Q&A, we share how we supported our client and how we answered the question. We're giving our audience what they're looking for. Some of our audience loves longer in depth content like our podcast episodes. Some prefer short, quick to the point, helpful answers to quick question like our IGTV Q&A that we have, our Fierce Business Q&A.

So again, it takes on average at least seven to ten touch points for them to go from a lead to a paying client. So make this easy, keep it simple. Something I love to teach my clients is that you can make your business work smarter for you and that you don't have to necessarily work harder, make all of this easy for you, automate your welcome sequence when somebody gets a freebie, and then add in a few automated nurturing emails. So this is very hands off for you. So if someone hops into your email sequence, they download a freebie, you send them a few emails and maybe in an email there's a podcast episode or a YouTube video or blog that you wrote or a nice TV episode or something that you did over on Instagram where you're adding touch points. Hands off, right. You are working smarter. You're able to add touch points and build relationships without you needing to spend twenty four hours a day on social media, making those one on one connections. You can still do it from one to many. It's not just one on one. You can build relationships from a one to many scale.

So, again, on average, it takes at least seven touch points. Make it easier for people, automate your email sequence, your welcome sequence, all of those things make it easy for people to book a call with you or apply for your program. The easier we can make something for a potential client, the more likely they will take action, make it easy for them, and we get to also direct them to certain things. So I can definitely chat about that on today's episode, too.

Asking For The Sale

So by now, you've mapped out a good amount of your sales process, right. So let's not forget the actual conversion part. So how are you asking for the sale? Is this only happening on Instagram stories? Where else can this happen for you and your business? What are the steps after you invite someone into a call or after you invite me to apply for your program? Are you following up with them? Do you have a process for this? Do you know that after X amount of days you send this type of follow up? Let's start to put that in place. And if you don't, then OK. Ding, ding, ding. There's a gap right there because there's a lot in your follow up. Fortune is in the follow up always.

So you've got it mapped out. Now, ask yourself some of those questions I just asked, what are some of those steps in which you are actually closing the sale? Now that we have that mapped out, we get to determine where your gap could be so that we can start to close the gap. So that we can start to then increase conversions.

Now, take a look at your sales process that you have in front of you. Where do you see things getting hard? Like where as you read through it? What makes you cringe? What makes your heartbeat a little faster and a little nervous? Is it hard for people to enter your sales process? Are you generating consistent leads each week, each day? If this is where you're getting stuck, if you're not getting leads all of the time, or if you don't know where to always be bringing leads in consistently, then lead generation is going to be your big focus point first. If we can't generate leads, the rest of your sales process will feel and be just as difficult, right? People can't pay you if they can't find you first.

Now, where else do you see things getting hard? Continue to look at your sales process that we mapped out. Do you seem to have consistently weak but low numbers of applications to your programs or low clicks on your buy buttons that you have in your sales pages? If this is the case, then we get to focus on continuing to build relationships with your audience, being more clear on where to go by being more clear about inviting people to your program.

Make Things Easy

Now, again, this is where I had mentioned, like, we get to make it as easy as possible and give people a step by step on where to go, how to apply. Like, literally, I want you to do this. What I want you to do this week is take a screenshot of a step by step for some type of action you want somebody in your audience to take. If it's to apply for your program, screenshot, screen video record, how to get there. Show them how to get there. Screen record, you going to your Instagram profile, clicking the button in your bio and clicking the apply button, literally show them step by step how to do so. The easier we make it for them, the more likely they're going to take action. OK, so we get to be more clear about inviting people to your program.

Market Research and Lead Conversion

Now, where else do you see things getting hard? Do you seem to have a low conversion rate? Are you hearing no, after no, after no. If this is the case, then we get to focus on your sales skills or potentially look at your offer that you're selling and really ask yourself, is this something that your audience is really looking for right now? Is this really something that people are attracted to right now? Market research, market research, market research? So, if this is the case, then we get to focus on your sales skills. Now, gather more data, gather more research. You know, ask them why aren’t they buying? If you do hop off a sales call and it turns out to be a no, and you spend time handling objections, ask them what the no was for. It is really good to know why they aren't buying. Gather more data. This is another form of market research for you and your business.

Now ask yourself, OK, out of all of that, out of all of those steps and also just walking through, where is my gap in my sales process? Is at the beginning, the middle or the end? Try to close them. Are you freaking yourself out and getting nervous when you handle objections and end up not handling objections. Where is it at? Where are you getting stuck and what shifts do you get to make? I would love to hear what you feel your gap is. Go ahead, send me a DM on Instagram. My Instagram handle @TheMelissaLin, let me know.

Extra Special Tips

Now, before we wrap this up. I want to give you just a few more tips. For every one person who reaches out to you, for every one person who applies for your offers, for your programs, there are 20 more lurking, silent supporters, I like to call them. Creeping, watching all your stuff, wanting to buy. Maybe they just don't feel they have the permission slip to do so. Maybe they don't feel they're quite ready. Maybe they aren't sure of the steps on how to apply. So, if you're unsure of who in your audience is interested, you get to do some market research. We do market research every single day in our business, and it's absolute gold. So market research. Utilize some of the tools that social media provides you. If you're on Instagram, poll your audience, ask them questions, throw out pain and pleasure points, see who responds and reach out to them individually. Start that conversation, start to nurture them, start to build that relationship with them, send them some tips and resources, build the relationship. We get to be creative and chat with our audience and ask them questions in different ways because some are going to answer polls. Some will answer your question box. Some will send you a direct example with their question without even needing permission to. They'll come and ask you questions. Some will go and apply to your offer without you even needing to pledge. They'll poke around, they'll find it. Not everyone does each of those things. So we want to have tons of options for them.

So, if you're unsure who in your audience is interested, do some of those things, poll your audience, get more research, create that market research. Now, my next tip is something I had mentioned earlier, but if they didn't buy, ask why, ask why they didn't buy. We do this with our offers. If somebody doesn't purchase the program, we ask them why so that we get feedback and we know things that we can shift in our business or our offers. Maybe it just wasn't the right fit. Maybe it was a little out of budget for them. We get to ask them why, because you get to know some of these reasons. As you start to gather more data, you may want to make a tweak. Maybe you start to learn that a lot of people couldn't afford it. So you can then add in an extra payment plan, a more flexible payment plan. You can do a lot with your data and it's a lot easier to make decisions in your business the more data that you have.

Now, the next step. I want to give you a little bonus tip here. You get to create urgency in your sales process, please create urgency. So ways that you can create urgency are number of spots, amount of time, bonuses expiring. The reason we get to create urgency is people feel safe with money. If you give somebody forever to spend money, I guarantee they will take forever to spend money to buy, because they feel safe. Right. So create urgency and you creating urgency is not forcing anybody to say yes or no. It's helping speed up that decision making process for them to either say yes or no. Right. If it's a no, that's OK. It wasn't the right fit. We asked them what the reason was for the no so that we can gather more market research. Right. Then we can move on to the next potential client and continue to nurture those who weren't quite ready or offer something that is a little more feasible for them if you have some type of downsell. So, create urgency, response time. Maybe you have some bonuses that expire. We love to do that. We list the bonuses and we love to have them expire over time. Now, again, I would love to hear your takeaways. Enjoy. And let's start improving those sales conversions so that 2021 can be your best year in business yet.

Thank you for hanging out with me today. Did you love this episode? Any questions you might have? Thoughts, takeaways, all of the goodies you want to send my way. I'm always going to be your biggest cheerleader. So you taking time out of your day to hang with me truly means the world to me. I'll see you next time.

Topics we cover include:

Your Sales Plan
Your Sales Process
Mapping Out Your Sales Process
Asking For The Sale

And so much more!

Times to check out:

(4:39) Your Sales Plan

(6:13) Your Sales Process

(8:44) Mapping Out Your Sales Process

(10:33) Warming Your Audience

(17:50) Make Things Easy

(20:28) Extra Special Tips

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