Transcript 224: Why Aren’t More People Doing Sales Calls?

1:48  

Well, hey, friend, welcome back to another episode. I know last week I said I was trying to batch these episodes before having baby and then I was so frickin tired after the last episode. I wrapped up my day and made dinner for the family. Actually, no correction, my eight year old made dinner for the family. We made sushi bowls. We do that each week. Fun fact that was one of the most engaged Instagram stories I have posted in quite some time was my sushi bowl recipe which apparently blew everyone’s minds around why I think of that. So let me just spoil, let me give you my sushi bowl recipe, not that you care but I love cooking. We love food in our house. We eat a lot at home but we love sushi, and sushi is expensive, right? And my kids love sushi. I’m like you too boujee like tone it down so we do sushi bowls. 

2:41  

And we started doing this when I got pregnant because the boys wanted sushi and I mean raw fish. I mean I’ll eat it, it’s fine, but like probably shouldn’t. So we started using I would like boil a salmon and then we’d flick up the salmon and use that and then we morphed into what we do now, so here’s what we do. We’re gonna call this sponsored by Costco but not really. I take sticky rice from Costco is the base of the bowl or oftentimes we just make really good jasmine rice and the instapot. So base of rice and then on top of the rice, you take out of a can you can do canned tuna or canned salmon and you mix it with Japanese Mayo which they sell at Costco. it’s Kewpee Mayo. So Kewpee mayo, Japanese mayo and then Siracha which fun fact if you didn’t know Siracha is like out of stock everywhere because there’s a whole story around how this one specific farm who grew these peppers for Siracha how they burned like it burned or something and then there was like a weird contract with a vendor and anyways. 

Siracha went sideways and you can’t get Siracha anywhere but Costco has Siracha powder seasoning. So we use that we shake that big into the mayo to make your own spicy mayo. Mix it with the canned salmon or canned tuna and then put that on top the rice. Add cucumber add avocado, add for khaki which is like a mix of I don’t know it’s like a seasoning topping you can add or you could add sesame seeds, and then we crinkle up Costco pack of seaweed chips and it’s frickin delicious or you can do like the the little longer ones and mix it round. Anyways, it’s a favorite thing. We had it last night. It made my day. It was wonderful. My eight year old makes it for us. I just felt like I had to declare that somewhere and so let that be, maybe your takeaway if you’d like sushi, make it easy do it at home. Do it through Costco. You don’t have to spend a lot of money. That is the gem that you didn’t even know you needed today but here we are. 

4:43  

It is the end of my days, end of my day, end of my week, and by the time you hear this, a lot has gone down. But at the moment of recording this is the absolute last task I will be doing to officially quote unquote closed down my business for maternity leave. I’m headed to the hospital first thing tomorrow morning at 37 weeks to get this baby out due to the complications I talked about last week’s episode. So this is my last task, I had planned on doing more episodes, pre recorded, it’s not going to happen. Instead, we have an incredible series of replays and recaps happening over the next few weeks. 

5:26  

Next week, we are going to recast my interview on the art of online business. And oh my gosh, it’s so good. I actually do a coaching session with the co host, Kuayjo. I coach him through how to address messaging in a different way. So if you want to hear how I coach people on messaging, you’ll get that next week’s episode, then we’re gonna do some other recaps and maybe some best of episodes. You’re gonna get a good dose of Heather between now and the end of the year. 

We are going to take a break on the show. You know why? Because I can and I’m having a baby and you know, sometimes we have to breathe. We don’t have to stick to the schedule just because we feel we have to. So we’re going to take a winter break around, let’s say Christmas time for a couple of weeks and we’ll be back in the new year with some incredible episodes for you. So thank you, for those of you sent me well wishes during this time. I can feel them. I can’t wait to find out if this little baby nugget is a boy or a girl and can’t wait to decide what we’re going to name this child because we don’t know yet. It’s all going to be so mysterious and exciting and here we are. 

6:32  

Alright, let’s talk about what are we digging into this week and why was I so hell bent on recording it. We’re talking about sales, and we’re more specifically talking about sales calls. Now we’re talking about for a variety of reasons but this is the oh my gosh, the sales in general is I think the stickiest point for most business owners. And for me personally, I have such a different relationship with sales. I love the selling process. I love making sales. I love helping people say yes to offers that have a huge difference in their life. To me, this is such an important topic, but I understand why it’s so uncomfortable and why it’s so hard. We’re going to talk about why I think sales calls are the most underrated and perceived annoyance factor for most business owners but I think we’re just looking at it the wrong way, and I want to talk to you about why I think you need to prioritize and add sales calls if you don’t have them to your process and to your plan in 2024 for a variety of reasons so let’s jump into it. 

7:44  

Now I’ve talked about sales on the before I’ve shared with you my stories around my background in sales. So if you didn’t know before I started my speaker coaching business, I was a speaker on stages. I was an executive at a consulting and management firm in the healthcare space for 10 years. I’ve been speaking on stage for 20 years in a variety of capacities from nonprofits, to the Miss America program, to working in corporate, to being a professional speaker, but what I want to share is my my decade of experience as an executive in corporate working with entrepreneurs. The thing that I taught was sales. 

8:25  

And what’s always really interesting is the industry that I worked with was in the medical space and when you think medical, you don’t think necessarily sales unless you’re thinking pharmaceutical sales, or you’re thinking like medical device sales. It was none of those things. You may or may not know this, but I worked with audiologists. They’re hearing care doctors. They go to school to help people hear better. Most of them have stories related to why they want to work on that field and why they want to support people with the hearing journey. 

8:54  

Now the company that I worked for, we helped audiologists grow their private practices, so we specifically work with entrepreneurs who owned private practices. They went to school to become doctors. They didn’t know how to run businesses. So we taught them the business side, so whether that was marketing, finances, operations, human resources, and like what’s the human one, human resources, HR, professional developments with training for staff and so on and so forth. 

9:25  

We help them in such a variety of different ways but my team, specifically, we are the learning and development team. We taught them with the training for their team around patient care, specifically, these private practices, one of the biggest revenue sources, it wasn’t from insurance collection, it wasn’t from people coming to get hearing tests. It was from them fitting patients with hearing aids, hearing technology. It was I mean, arguably the biggest solution, right, if you have hearing loss, hearing aids could help. It’s I wear hearing aids it’s one of the big reasons like why I worked in that field for so long because of my own hearing loss story. 

10:02  

Now, here’s the interesting thing is when I was working with these doctors, most of them had a very tumultuous relationship with the concept of sales. They wanted to diagnose and share with people like, yeah, you have a hearing loss and then they want people to jump to a logical solution of, oh, you have a hearing loss. Now let’s get you fit with hearing aids. 

10:24  

But what they resisted was, it’s not just about the hearing aids. There’s a psychological journey a patient would go on and a lot of times it was a elderly patient who was really having a life moment of going, Oh, my gosh, I am getting old, and not wanting to accept the aging process and the perception around hearing loss with old, like being old. It was a big taboo thing, although I am a spring chicken and I have a hearing loss and I think hearing aids are sexy because they make me here but that’s not the norm, right? 

10:59  

It’s it’s one of those things, it’s just a lot tied to it in a lot in the identity of the patient of accepting help and a big thing is, these patients didn’t necessarily think that the hearing loss was as bad as it was, even though they could see the results of their tests in front of them. The thing about hearing is they weren’t really aware of how, like how much it was happening, right? Fun thing about hearing is, we think we can hear but then we don’t realize that there’s a difference between hearing and volume, and hearing and clarity, aka understanding. 

11:33  

So for example, when you’re in difficult listening environments, like a restaurant or a busy conference, and there’s a lot of background noise, you could probably hear the people at your table talking, but it might be very difficult to pick out what exactly they’re saying. Now for most people, they would go I don’t I mean, it’s just loud environment, or people just mumble or it’s just hard, right, but I can hear. Same thing for me, that was really what I battled for a long time. And the reason why I share this with you is that is a hearing loss. So the inability to make out specific tones and words, you might not have a volume issue, the clarity issue, and the challenge for these audiologists was they had to educate their patients quite a bit on understanding their own hearing loss in order for that patient to accept treatment, accept help. 

12:22  

So what my job was, my job and my team was to help these audiologists put into words and help them create a conversation and have a really effective consultation with these patients so these patients could understand and make the choice that was right for them but the entire thing was a sales process. And oh my gosh, I fell in love with this process for a variety reasons. Because I saw it change in so many patients lives. I saw it change so many providers life. But I’ll tell you, it also changed mine. 

12:56  

So when I started working in this job, I did not wear hearing aids. I was one of those patients that didn’t understand the nuance between hearing and understanding, volume and clarity and it took me a while to finally accept treatment. But once I did and once I understood what was on the other side of accepting help, holy crap balls, I was then on a mission to help other patients get out of their own way, help providers stop focusing on the logistics and the science and the diagnosis and the logic and start tapping into the reality of their patient space to help them understand and accept treatment. I just became very, very passionate about that and that’s what took me globally all over the world sharing my story, working with providers. I work with in providers in Mexico, in Canada, in Europe, in Denmark, worked with, there was a group I almost went on but I couldn’t in New Zealand. I mean just all over the world, audiologists and providers, I gotta go out and teach them and teach their teams to shift their entire perspective around what selling meant, and that’s my goal for you today is help shift your perspective around what selling means because what most people think is selling is oh my gosh, I have to convince this person that they need this. I have to convince them that this is the right time. This is the right product. This is the right thing, I’m the right person. And the reason why we have that perception is we’ve all been sold to or experienced sales that have turned us off. We’ve all experienced the schmucky selling where someone is just selling so hard through their teeth, trying to convince us of something that we know we don’t want or need. But they are like full ass committing to trying to find a loophole to get us to buy the damn thing. 

14:48  

We’ve all had those experiences. Everyone uses the like used car salesman thing which I don’t even know if that’s a thing anymore. I mean, we bought a car. I mean granted it was a very long time ago but I’ve had very pleasant experiences in the car buying journey. I mean, I think I think it’s the old wrap right around that but it’s this quintessential example around the schmucky car sales but it’s this idea of we think selling is pushy. But one of my favorite quotes that my old boss used to use, I don’t know where it came from but it’s this idea of in the sales process, when you’re talking, you’re pushing but when you’re asking, you’re pulling and that was one huge pivotal shift that I had early on in my journey of learning how to approach sales in a different way but how I now view sales, is I think about it as a magnetic process where you are the magnet and your responsibility in your sales process is to attract or repel. The magnet, think the front of the magnet, the back of the magnet, attract or repel the right person to your offer. 

15:53  

Now, what I find specifically challenging in the online space, is we’re fed this, this idea that selling should be hands off, that all you have to do is put together an offer, slap together some copy, get it in some kind of funnel on a web page, create a little video thing, and then it should just sell itself, and that BS is the most unhelpful, unhelpful thing to entrepreneurs because here’s the thing. If you’re in business, you have to master the selling process. You have to get really good at articulating the value of your offer, but also listening and understanding and educating and supporting your ideal customers. Because here’s the thing I want you to think about and experience where you’ve bought something where you have felt bad about it. This happened to me, probably about a year and a half ago. I was at a conference and I totally got sold into a super high ticket mastermind at an event that I’d already paid five or six grand for and I told myself, I would not buy anything and then I frickin bought it anyways. And it was just the whole process from the event itself all the way to the mastermind by, I was annoyed, like so annoyed by the whole process but I wanted the thing that they were talking about so much that in spite of the process, I bought it anyways. 

17:32  

Fun fact, it’s the only program I have ever asked for a cancellation on because they oversold and very much under delivered. I will not be disclosing what that was or who it was. So don’t come for me and ask but I think everyone has had a similar experience. It might not have been a course or a program, although I hear a lot of people feeling like they’ve been burned in programs before. But it might be something like you trying to buy something at the mall, or I don’t know, just think of a scenario, right? We’ve bought something but you’ve bought it kind of in spite of the super crappy sales process, right? You didn’t feel good about it, but you wanted the thing so much. Okay, that is not what selling should feel like. 

18:14  

I want you to conversely to think about something that you spent a lot of money on but you felt so grateful and excited and happy or emotional when you bought it, when you got the thing. I know for me, like I think about my kids. So my kids, when they ever they get their money, they get super excited to try something on their own for the first time and they treasure that little thing way more than something that mom and dad got them, or I think about like for me when I save up for something, or I find, conversely to my terrible program buy, conversely to programs that I have purchased before and been so freaking excited and grateful to be part of the program, like oh my gosh, it’s the best freaking feeling. 

19:03  

My question for you is, what do you want the feeling to be for your buyer when they get your stuff? Do you want them to grit their teeth and be like I really want that program so bad, I’m gonna buy it regardless, or do you want people to feel freaking good about it? Now, I would bet that if you are in my world and a listener of the show, you want to be in that second category. You’re not just here just to sell for the sake of selling. You actually are here because you want people to feel good about their experience because you know that they’re going to be going through a transformation and chances are in what you teach that transformation might not be so like cakewalk, right? They might have be facing some challenges so we want them to feel excited about what they’re buying, excited about the transformation and that process. 

19:50  

So let’s talk about why I believe that sales calls are the best thing that you can add to your business this year. Now what I often find when I’m working with entrepreneurs that I mean, at any level, but specifically entrepreneurs under that half a million dollar mark, is I find that people are trying to jump to the scalable solutions too quickly and I talked about this in last week’s episode talking about staying in the, like the revenue band strategy that you like you’re in, like, just really making sure that you’re focused on strategies that are appropriate for your scale or your growth in business. 

20:28  

And what I find is, so often entrepreneurs, especially making under 250 grand, is they’re sitting here going, how do I scale this? How do I scale this? I know one day I’m going to have a bajillion people in it, so I want to build it right from the start right now. And any entrepreneur who has the longevity in their business has seen a building their business consistent, profitable revenue in their business will tell you that you’re not gonna build it right from the start for anything, so you may as well learn and start building iterations. 

21:02  

So what I find often is people are wanting to jump to how can I do an application process, or how can I set them straight to a sales page, or how can I do an just an automated webinar with a high ticket thing, like does that work? Does that convert? Like they want to cut the conversation from it. Meanwhile, their emails aren’t being read. They’re not being clicked on, their sales page is not converting, their webinars are not converting, their speaking opportunities are not turning into things. 

21:33  

If you’re a client of mine or in one of my programs, listen up on this right now. If you’ve ever struggled to try to put together your messaging, if you’re struggling around coming up with the examples to use in your talks, or struggling to make sure that you’re providing relevant information in your webinars or really focused on a copy of your webpage, maybe you’ve tried outsourcing that to a copywriter, but it’s still not necessarily working, or maybe the copy is really great, but you can’t articulate it. 

22:01  

What it comes down to is this, the more conversations you have with prospective buyers, the stronger your messaging can become. And what I often find is people especially in that under under 250,000 mark, is what they’re doing is they have worked with a few people but a lot of those people were referrals or they worked with him in a couple different capacities and they haven’t had to go through a lot of sales calls. It’s been more of the delivery of the program or the coaching thing, or it’s less about the selling, right, of the persuasion to get them in and more of the delivery of the thing. 

22:43  

And what happens is when we don’t have a lot of the conversations with our buyers at the earlier stage journey, it makes it really difficult for us to be effective with our selling and our message at a broader scale. The reason that I am so freaking damn good at the head nod effect and my conversions and when I show up on webinars and I mean I know how to create a damn good talk. I know how to communicate effectively, I know how to adjust my voice and make myself sound more interesting and I know how to captivate, I know how to tell stories. This is what I freakin do people and the fundamental skill that I learned along the way is I know how to sell. I know how to have a two way conversation. And for me, I’ve had so many I know your challenges, I know a lot of times your thoughts, your desires, your goals, and often I can articulate them better than you even can. 

23:47  

I bet you’ve had this moment before we are heading on along with a podcast and be like holy shit, Heather is in my head again. Like oh, frick, that is exactly me. That is my problem. That is what I want. And a lot of times you’d be like, Oh, I couldn’t have said that better myself, like damn, that is the thing that I’m struggling with. Yes, I know that. I know all these things to be true because I know you. I know my ideal client. I know the entrepreneur who comes to work with me and is in my audience and I know this because I’ve had so many conversations. 

24:23  

I think one of the biggest mistakes that you can make as a business owner is to assume that you know your customers pain points and desires without having the quality of conversations to really validate that. When I was working with audiologists there was a lot of assumptions happening. Let me give you an example of this. Give you a great example of this. Okay, this is gonna sound really, really obvious and partially dumb but let me give it anyways. 

24:51  

Okay, so I want you to imagine here for a second. You’re a hearing care doctor and you can you know you can help. Somebody sits in front of you know, they have a hearing loss. You know you can help them, like same for you think about what you sell, like for me, entrepreneur, you sit in front of me. Hope you have a program, you want to grow your programs, I know my programs will help you. whether or not you have the desire to speak on stages, I know what I teach will help you tremendously because I know like, you have a program, you have a voice, you talk to people every single day if I can help you talk more effectively. You’re going to make more sales. You’re going to brand yourself a little better. You’re going to be more confident when you show up and people buy from those who are confident. I know that, right? But you might not know that if you’re sitting in the chair in front of me, but like speaking coach, I don’t need that. 

25:34  

Now, I want you to think about let’s go to my audiologist example with a doctor. So these doctors, they know they can help people and what they just need is that little fact check of oop, I’ve tested your hearing, here’s what it shows, I know I can help you. Now what we had designed in this process is these audiologists would ask them a series of questions and what would happen is, they would ask a question and like, for example, like talk to me about television. Do you watch television? Tell me about your experience with that and you turn up really loud? What is your spouse think when you turn it up really loud? And then they would ask some follow up questions to kind of do the motions of like, what’s that like when your spouse is always riding it, you turn the TV down and they would then open up and be like, actually, it’s kind of embarrassing, like I would like to watch the news but like, I can’t frickin watch the news or I can’t watch my favorite series. Everybody Loves Raymond, right? Like, I would like to be able to do that, and here’s where the mistake would come in. 

26:36  

The audiologist in their head is hearing all this and they would be head nodding and like have empathy on it. But oftentimes, they would say something like, excellent, perfect and they would say these positive affirmation words which did not match the emotion their person was sharing. And it was because in their head, they were already making the assumption and they were already 10 steps ahead about in their mind going, they weren’t saying perfect that you’re having these feelings. They weren’t actively thinking like, oh, yeah, you’re pissed off, you can’t write like watch Everybody Loves Raymond. Ah, gotcha. That was not the thing. It was from a deeply excited and empathetic space of them going perfect, I can totally help you with that. Awesome, yes, this is going to be, you are gonna, your mind is gonna blow here in a few minutes when I help you into these hearing aids. 

27:29  

And where this comes back to you when I said one of the biggest mistakes you can make is this assumption with your patients is so oftentimes are for you with your clients. So oftentimes, we look at the person in front of us or we look at the numbers of people who’ve played on your sales page, the numbers of people who have joined our webinars, and we look at all of them and we group them all together, like you work with one entrepreneur, you work with them all, like you, you know, you know them all, you kind of know the gist, you know the path. You’ve created the ideal customer avatar to the extent where you blended all these people together, right? 

28:02  

So for you, every time you talk to a group or you talk to an individual, your brain is already templatetising them if you will. You already know, you know their struggle, you know the journey they’re gonna go on, you know where they’re gonna go, in your brain, it’s like fast pass. Let me just get you to the saving Graceland and help you with your problem. But what you have to remember is your person doesn’t understand all the hundreds of thousands of whatever people that are just like them. They are one unique person having one unique human experience. And when you make assumptions or try to drag them through the process as quickly as possible to convert them, you rob them of the experience of them getting present to their current reality. 

28:49  

Help them really understand their true problem that they’re having. Help them understand the implications, implications. Amplifications, that was not a word. Implications of their problem. Helping them understand the impact of their problem, the emotions they have tied to it because if your clients are anything like me or probably like you, we don’t really slow down. Even when we rest, our brain is still moving or we fill it up with Grey’s Anatomy or other things in our brain. When it comes to our pain points and problems, we don’t really sit in them and reflect on them too much. We actually try to run from them and hide from them. 

29:32  

So one of the biggest gifts that I got working in audiology and being a patient myself is forcing myself to sit in my own problem. The day that I had an audiologist sit down with me and run me through the sales process that ironically, I and my team then taught, I even though I knew the process, being involved with the process, actually taught me to really reflect around how much my hearing loss was impacted my life. I didn’t recognize it. I didn’t, I didn’t understand how much my hearing loss was impacting my career. I didn’t even realize how much it was impacting my marriage. I was newly married at the time. I hadn’t even considered those things because I was living in the reality and I only knew the way that it was. 

30:16  

For you and your client, the conversation, the value of a sales call, is for you to be able to be in the present with them and help them explore the problem, help them understand why they are in this position in the first place and then help them start seeing alright, what is it going to take to solve this problem? What does that journey look like?

30:45  

You’ve probably heard this phrase before, but at the end of the day what people want is they want to feel seen, they want to feel heard, they want to feel understood. And I think you taking the time to be on the phone with people, this does not need to be a therapy session, it’s not gonna be a super long thing where you’re digging their life story, but specific to their problem. If you can get them understand, tell me tell me a bit more about insert the specific thing that you do. 

So for me, I’ll give you an example for my sales calls. When I’m talking to people on the phone, they’re there because they are wanting to hire me as a speaking coach. So I flat out tell them, I want to start with a goal of tell me like what motivated you to reach out today? I want to get the context for why they book the call, then I’m going to follow it and say, tell me how speaking is showing up for you right now and where are you feeling? It’s holding you back? 

By asking that question, I unlock Pandora’s box around what they perceive to be the problem, what they’re experiencing with that and unknown that we can provoke around. Okay, what feelings is that? How is that impacting other areas of your business? Where is that limiting you? How is that preventing you from showing up? There’s all these follow up questions that I can dig in, but essentially get to the heart of the problem and how they perceive the problem, how they feel about the problem and oh, my goodness, is it telling? 

32:07  

I want the same for you. You don’t get that on a webinar. You honestly you don’t get that on your ICA, this like calls where you interview people. People aren’t, sorry, people aren’t super authentic on those because they’re speculating on what they think you want to hear. They’re not actually sharing what they really feel. Whoopsie I said it, I don’t know. I think ICA calls can be a real time waste. There’s some that can be helpful, but will be more helpful for you to study your ideal person is to get on some frickin sales calls because if people are actually in that position where they’re wanting a solution, they’re going to give you real information. 

32:41  

So a sales call, right? If you’re like, okay, so what does that sound like. I teach a five step process in the discovery call or sales process. I’m not gonna teach you that here today because I don’t want to overwhelm you. But part of that process is unlocking the true problem of your customer. Now, funny enough, is the parallel of what I teach in speaking really mirrors what I teach in the sales process is just instead of one way, when you’re on a stage, the sales process is two ways. And if you want to be a better speaker in 2024, if you want to get more of that head nod effect, it really starts with you understanding the sales process. One, you have to understand your customer. You have to dig in to understand their true problem and their words, not yours, and really sit in it with them and then guide them to the solution. That guidance piece is you helping them see the bridge between where they are, the possibility of where they want to go, and then getting them excited about making that track. 

33:36  

Inside my programs, we call it the messaging mountain. You have to help them over the mountain which for them can seem very daunting. But when you have one on one conversations, you can pick up on things, you can see what lights them up, you can see what they get excited about and you can lean into those things. You can also see where they’re hesitant. You can see where their eyes fall, where they look off camera and they go quiet. You can dig into that, what happened, what’s going on there. 

34:03  

When you have the confidence to sit on a zoom call or even on just a phone call with someone and explore the problem and solution and then how you get there, it might seem for you to like ah, it’s like such a time suck. I hate people. I don’t want to do all these calls. Well, I think this is an example around sometimes we need to what’s the expression, we need to slow down so we can speed up? I think trying to jump to the more scalable solutions out of the gate without going through this due diligence. You’re actually taking the you think you’re taking the shortcut, but you’re totally taking the long cut, my dear. 

34:41  

So inserting sales calls into your process, whatever that looks like, it’s really actually going to save you time because you’re going like having, let’s say 10 of these conversations over the course of a quarter. You are going to be so much better at connecting with your ideal client S.o you’re probably wondering, alright, so how like when you say put it in your sales process, whatever, like, what does that even look like? I’ll give you some examples of this. 

35:08  

So, if you are a consultant, if you are a speaker, if you are a coach, and you do any kind of one on one, you can easily do sales calls for any of these things. So I would do sales calls for all of my speaking gigs. I do sales calls for my one on one clients and I don’t do a ton of one on one anymore. So now I have an application for like a different type of offer that there’s not a sales call for. I don’t think I’ve accepted sales calls in the last six months. It’s just not in my business model currently, but the first five years of my business, hell yeah, hell yes, sales calls.

35:41  

So where can you put them? So you can easily have a button on your site where people can directly book a call with you. When I got started, I had Kajabi as my website. I had a button. I had it linked, essentially, to how I set it up was I wanted to collect their email and that kind of stuff first. So I had a form and then that form fired up confirmation email that had a scheduling calendar button in it. I use the free version of Calendly. 

36:06  

Now with that, I make sure I ask people questions in advance, because I want to ensure that I’m not, I mean, I’m getting the right people on the call. So I’d have some copy in there to help them self qualified and make sure it’s a good fit, but booking calls straight from my website was how I got started for the first few years for sure, so that’s a great way to do it. 

36:26  

Another thing is, is when you are out there speaking, like giving them an offer, making your call to action to book a call with you, but you got to have a purpose for it, right? If you just tell people book a call, they’re like hell no. Nobody wants to get on the phone anymore, because they’re like I don’t want to be sold to. So this is why people call them discovery calls. I kind of think that that is now an overused term so now people are using like strategy call. Figure out what works for you but what you want to remember is they need to perceive value in the phone call, but it also should not be a disguised call where you’re going to be doing something with them and they’re not aware that you’re also going to be talking about your program or your offers, right? If they come into the call thinking that they’re getting a free call for something and then all of a sudden you this tiny thing and then bait and switch them into a whole sales pitch, they’re gonna feel great about it, right? That’s where you get that pushy sales thing. 

37:19  

So you want to be transparent around that and how I always approach that is, I think the selling process is mutually it’s like a mutual interview, right? I’m trying to see like they’re trying to see if I’m a great fit for them. I’m trying to help them decide, am I the right coaching style for them? But also, are they the right client for me? And I don’t mean the right client like, do I like them? Sure, that’s important. But also, are they the right phase in business? Do they have the right goals like am I truly the best coach for them? 

37:46  

Great example, if someone were trying to work with me because their number one goal was to do a TED talk and that’s all their eyes are on, I would not be the best coach for them. One, I’ve never done a TEDx talk or TED talk of any degree and I don’t coach people to that. Very, very early on in my business, I said yes to helping someone with that because I didn’t know any different and I’ve literally never taken a TED client again, not because they were bad or not because I had a negative experience but I was humbled and learning that look, I am not a TED coach, like there’s a very specific thing that needs to happen for a TED Talk. It’s 18 minutes. And friend, you know, by now that I am not doing anything in 18 minutes. I am a long form speaker and my sweet spot is helping people take their message into a talk that brings business back to their ways so they make money beyond the stage. That is my jam. That is my niche and it took me some years to figure that out. But great example, if somebody were to fill out a form or book a call, and they declared that as the number one goal, I would refer them to another speaking coach. I know that if somebody wants to be a full time professional speaker, that that’s the only revenue source they want to make. I know my program can help them and I’ve had people come through my program, that’s their goal. But they’re most likely other coaches that teach the business model for professional speaker. If you want all your money to come from your fees being onstage, I can help you with that but also, that’s not my business model and I’m probably not the best speaker or fit. 

39:14  

So instead, I focused on teaching people how to get paid to speak as that as a revenue source but also, again, how to make money beyond the stage. That is my jam. That is my business model. That’s what I’m super freakin passionate about. 

39:26  

So sales calls allow you to really dial in who your perfect client is. But that process is mutual, right? You’re trying to figure out is this a great fit for me? Am I the best coach for them, and you’re also having them interview you right? And making sure that they feel competent, that you’re a good fit. It’s a mutual, it’s a mutual thing. I’ve had people before on sales calls that, for example, weren’t particularly coachable and if someone is not coachable, I will not be a good coach for them. 

39:56  

So there are situations where you’re like, you have a call on the person is just not a great vibey match. You don’t have to offer your solution, right, or you don’t have to work as hard to offer your solution. So sales calls, it really can function in a lot of ways. But I really think if you want to dial in your who your ideal client is and how to help people accept help, getting these on your thing. So working back having a button on your web page and just having people book a call with you, as long as you have some kind of content around that, right? Give some information around what the call is for, who’s it for, who’s the right fit, who’s not a right fit, and then have like a little mini series of questions. But on that note, if you put a really long application in front of people, you are not going to get very many sales calls. Okay? So if they want to get on the phone and talk to you have some questions to filter it out but if you put too many, you’re not gonna have very many calls. And I think when you start doing calls, you want as many calls as possible so that you can flush out your awkwardness, you can flush out your fumbles, your flubs, you really can dial in who your person is so I think that’s one way to do it. 

41:07  

Another way that I’ve done sales calls in my business is when I launched my high ticket program for the first time, my OG program, Speak up to Level up in, let’s see, in October of 2019. I wanted to do a webinar because I wanted to go through the webinar process and start getting good at it but I also knew that it was high ticket, so I didn’t want to necessarily leave it to the webinar. 

41:31  

So I did a full webinar and then as part of my pitch, I simplified what’s called my pitch stack, which was going over the offer, I revealed the price and then I had a link to book a call for enrollment and it was a no strings attached call. But the only way you can get the cohort and how I position it was limited seats. There’s only 12 seats available and I wanted to make sure that we had the right fit in the program but I also wanted to understand their goals so that I could customize the program to fit the group. 

42:03  

So there was like a mutually beneficial reason for me filtering, also doing the sales calls made it feel even more special, more exclusive. People want to work with the coach in a program like a group coaching program to have that one on one conversation. It was highly desirable. So I think that program ended up doing, I don’t know, 18 calls. We sold out the 12 spots easily. It was a great experience, and now the sales calls were pretty much, hey, let me answer any questions that you have about the program, what hesitations do you have, like those were much simpler because I’ve already gone through the webinars. So you can use it as a closing mechanism to really help people feel comfortable and competent making decisions because remember, people want to feel seen, heard and understood. And in any kind of launch or any kind of sales process, even though you can have the most banging copy and all of those pieces dialed in, what people are wondering is is this really fit for me? Is this fit for me, this specific business type or this part of the journey? 

43:02  

So being able to talk to you, to just share their story, their perspective, their goals, their situation and have you hear it, and then help them understand how what you’re selling fits into that. That reassurance, y’all that just does wonders. Side note, I now do this via Instagram DMs. So any of my launches that I do, I don’t do sales calls anymore. I just don’t have the capacity for it with little kids at home but what I always do is I open up my Instagram inbox for DMs and we do voice chats and I talk back and forth and I get that same benefit that I would have gotten on sales calls, but through little mini exchange. Sidenote, I wouldn’t start with those because if you haven’t gone through full sales process again, you start making assumptions and you start jumping to the convincing and selling of your program versus the listening piece and that’s what I think a sales call can be really great at. 

43:57  

You can add sales calls to other areas of your business but I think you’re smart. I think you probably could think about a couple different ways around how you can add it. You get to choose do you want the sales call to be optional or do you want people to book like your program without the sales call?

44:14  

Again, I’m going to leave that decision up to you on what feels like the right fit. My biggest recommendation for you today is that you prioritize them and add them to your calendar, add a way for that to happen. Now simply put, if you’re like crap, I have to add this to my website, maybe not. Could you just go out to your email list right now, Make an offer and book some calls from it. Now you’re gonna be like, how do I book these calls? I look clunky? You’re gonna have to work on that a little bit, right? I can’t give you all the things around today, right? Like how do you book them? How do you do it, right. 

44:45  

What you want to focus on is the entire call and the purpose of the call needs to be from the vantage point of how is this going to serve that person. And this is the challenge a lot of people have with calls right? So I personally, when people have a sales call process, I try to avoid them like the plague. I don’t want to be tied to zoom. I don’t want to be on tie the time. I know I’m going to get some schmucky sales process because most people have a schmuck sales process. I just won’t do it. However, if you give someone a reason for being on the call, a great example of this is years ago, Hailey Birkhead had a program called Recurring Profit. I watch her webinar one night and her call to action is high ticket program. It’s like 10 grand and the webinar like she’s got this down, like I loved her webinar style. I’m always looking at other people who teach webinars. And I’m like, yeah, she’s frickin awesome. She’s like, it was like a firecracker on that webinar. She’s talking super fast, super efficient, she’s straight to the point. She doesn’t have this program anymore, by the way. But her sales process was if you’re interested, apply, and we’ll book a call and what they did was your I don’t remember what it was called but it was something like your million dollar roadmap call and over the call in an hour, we will help create your million dollar roadmap for what that would look like for you to do what we talked about in the webinar and that I was like, that was smart. 

46:03  

Essentially, on the sales call. I got on it. On that sales call, they essentially mapped out okay, so you are here, your program cost is this, your dollar amount goal reoccurring is this, here’s how many to sale. Here’s my recommendation for you on what your schedule would be through the program and then it was the let’s talk about it. Let’s ask questions. Let’s go through those things. So the value of that call was pretty awesome because it was you had a deliverable too, right? So and of course along the way, they ask questions, they address those. Sidenote, I ended up being part of that program and I was a guest teacher in that program. I taught about how to how to really bring high energy on webinars, how to not use scripts, and how to really show up more competent and convincing when you are speaking which was super fun. I’m sad she closed that program because it was an awesome one. 

46:55  

Anyways, coming back to you, I want really want you thinking about is if you’re struggling to get people to book these calls, it’s because the calls are probably like book a sales call. Flip roles. Would you want to book that like read your own copy or read your own reasons for booking? If you’re not compelled, what makes you think they will be? So give them a reason for it. Now, you don’t have to have a deliverable on the call. You don’t have to build a roadmap for them on the call. I never did that, right. But for me, I think I called my when I started speaker strategy calls but they were short 20 minutes, but they always ended up being 45 minutes. It’s the thing is is like you just need to talk about like what is the goal. It makes the goal is clear and the purpose of the call is to explore what their goal is right? And talk to him about options for how to get there, right? And it even could be a call where you’re talking about different ways to work with me or different ways to get the solution. You can be creative in that piece but the whole point around this is you need to start making yourself more confident with sales and I think the best way to do that is twofold. 

47:57  

Number one, start making them more. Start making more offers and get on the phone more. But number two, learn a process that will give you the confidence that you know what you’re talking about. So if you want some help with that, the time this recording airs, let’s see. It is Thanksgiving week in the US. I am happily on maternity leave by the time you get this. Before I left on leave, I knew that this episode was coming into this was topic was coming. I knew I get fired up so much talking about sales. I’ve been talking about a lot on the podcast and I always get asked from people, hey Heather, do you teach sales? And I’ve never taught sales publicly before in the online space outside of a few specific guest speaking opportunities that have been enclosed or masterminds and the exception of in 2020, I taught a sales workshop inside that original program Speak up to Level up but I’ve never taught it since. And when we were thinking about okay, how can we really truly help our audience end the year strong and also make 2024, like kick off to a really great start? Yes, you know, my jam is helping you with your communication and your speaking, but I also know that your success is restricted by your ability to sell and as much as I can help you with being great on stage and helping you be more effective, the truth is, if selling skills are lacking, your conversion from the stage and any other place in your business will always be lacking. 

49:29  

So when we brainstorm what has to get done before this baby pops out, I said we have to 1,000%, have to get a sales training to my people because they need it and I know they want it. So if you want to learn how to be more comfortable and compelling in the sales process, learn from me, my experience teaching sales over the last 15 years from stages around the world. I created a workshop it’s called Rock Your Discovery call process. This is a workshop I taught it a couple years ago. We went back through it and holy shit. It is so freakin good. I teach you my five step selling process of exactly how I lead and guide through sales calls, have high conversion rates, but also filter out clients that I don’t want to work with, and I teach you how you pitch your offer, whether that’s a group program, or one on one services. 

50:23  

Now, you can also use this if you want to use sales calls for a digital course or something like that, I highly recommend that you’re using this for offers that are $1,000 or more but you can definitely use this for things that are like $500 to $1,000. But going through that process, the sales call process if you can master this, it is going to make such a tremendous difference in your business. So we have bundled that up with a magnetic selling bundle and bundled it up with a selling bundle. Logic, Heather. So if you would like to get your hands on that I am giving you my sales call training workshop in addition, I am going to help you with selling on webinars. I have never released this training publicly and offered it outside of my speaking programs before. But when I help people, when I audit webinars, there are 10 things that I like consistently fix, consistently fix that is killing people’s conversions. And for the first time ever, we are offering that publicly so you can get my sales call training, you can get my webinar masterclass where I teach you how to avoid those 10 mistakes and make your webinar more effective. We have a couple other goodies, including something for my copywriter to help you with selling in your emails and we are toying with the idea of coming up with a customs objections training which typically freaks people out. That’s to come. We’re probably going to discuss that after I wrap up this session here. But if you want to check it out, it is my Black Friday offer. I have never put together a Black Friday bundle before with my content. But here we are, we are rolling out to you first and at the absolute best price that it will ever be. 

52:01  

So if you want to check out the Magnetic Selling Bundle by Heather Sager, follow the link in the show notes here. At the time you’re listening, the offer is live we launched it yesterday or today. I don’t know depending on when you’re listening to this. It will only be open for a week for this specific offer if you want to get your hands on it and get a little taste learning from me. Sidenote, if you are one of my Speaker Society members, which means you have come through my speaking program and now you’re part of my coaching program where we continually market, monetize and refine your message, spoiler y’all, you have these trainings for you in your masterclass vault. They are there. We snuck them in a couple of months ago. If you haven’t taken advantage them yet, check it out in the community. You can find out from that. But if you’re not a member of the Speaker Society or have gone through my programs, this can be a really great way that you can test drive my speaking style, start making some money so that you can then invest in your speaking skills later this next year. 

52:57  

Okay, friends, I hope that this episode got you fired up and it started shifting the way that you see selling and got you excited about learning this skill of selling. It might not be the sexiest topic, although making money I think is very sexy but we all have to start thinking about alright, what can we do? What can we can control in our business, right? You can’t control the algorithm, you can’t control whether or not Apple is marking your emails is opened or not like we can freak out about all these external things in our business all day long but the things that you can control, that’s where we need to focus. And I know you know that to be true but let me just hammer on this. Your conversations with potential clients, you get them on the phone and talking with people, you getting a group of people on a webinar and relaying the your your content and pitching your offer, you can control that. You get to control what happens in your Zoom room. And if you want to make that experience more enjoyable, so people love being sold to and buying from you. Let’s say this is the time to lean in and really master that skill. 

54:07  

At the end of the day, the number one thing I want you to do is add, build my speaking and selling skills in 2024. I hope you put that high on your list. Whether or not you invest in my programs this year or you you keep falling on the podcast and check it out my free content or you find another coach that’s more aligned to your style, whatever that looks like. I hope you put those two skills as your top priority because they will pay off for you in spades. 

54:33  

My friend this is my last official live recording of 2023 and holy cow this year has been a wild ride from ending a business partnership, in the business partner. She’s doing great by the way because she says hello, business partnership. The first quarter launching a new program, to finding out I was pregnant with our third baby after years of not thinking it was going to happen, to moving my family across the state, to study my kids at a new school, getting acclimated, not having my house sell in Westland, and to now be in situations where I have a pretty significant diagnosis and medical complication that I’m inducing this baby way early. It has been a journey. We’ve launched a new website. We’ve launched a new program twice, we launched a Black Friday sale. Here we go, we launched an on demand version pre sale a couple weeks ago. My copywriter and I were just talking earlier today that holy shit, this year, we played balls to the wall. And I just want to tell you, I am so grateful that you were here. I am so thankful for you and the fact that you show up and you listen to this show and my rambles and my tangents, and weird word flabs. It just means the world to me and my family, and I am so, so grateful for you. 

55:54  

My hope is as you go end the year, you get some rest. My hope for you is that you express the same level of gratitude to your audience, regardless of the size. We are so blessed to have the opportunity to do what we do and speak in the lives of other people, and I don’t take that for granted lightly and neither should you. My love to you in all of the ways. I will be around on Instagram once I’m feeling a little better and to be able to show this baby to the world a bit. If you want to hang out with me there I’m @theheathersager and of course to check off the latest. Be sure to check out the show notes from this episode for that exclusive Black Friday offer and as always, you get all of the latest goodies from my team at heathersager.com. 

56:37  

Alright, friend, enjoy the next few weeks as we recast some of the best the best episodes of the show plus some interviews that I’ve done including next week, me live coaching on the art of online business podcast. We’re going to recast it here and I will see you back in the new year for some fresh new recordings, much love to your, friend.