Ask Rezzz

First let me say that if you are still working your full-time job or have less than 2 years under your belt as a business owner, this may not be the ideal opportunity for you to try and sell strategy.

Simply because you don't have that experience yet. No doubt you have the skills, but to differentiate yourself as a consultant rather than a developer or designer comes with a proven track record of success.

I'm not saying that you can't sell strategy, in fact, I would suggest selling discovery phases which are strategy sessions of a different sort.

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What I'm saying is that if you want to be a consultant selling strategy to a client, you have to be positioned as an expert in a particular space, understand the hurdles on the track and how to get over them, and most importantly, you have to be sure of certain outcomes of the project.

With that caveat out of the way, let's dive into how to sell strategy

1. Understand the problem

An absolute must to selling strategy is a full understanding of the problem. This means that you have to be able to notice a lead that has this particular problem and then have the solution to that problem.

The most important piece of this is to then connect all the dots in between. You do this by walking through the problem, then the process with milestones attached and then what the dream is on the other side.

2. Your process

The process you use here is important. It needs to illustrate progress to the end goal. The dream of what the client has at the end of the project.

Imagine building a house and as the days and months go by and you don't see the blueprints, plans, permits, foundation being poured, walls going up and so on, you'd no doubt be disappointed.

By explaining during the sales process what the process of getting to the solution will be, you help the client visualize their journey through the strategy and then getting to that implementation.

Illustrating your process will establish that you've been down this road before. Allowing your client to feel that they made the right decision.

3. What's next?

Whether or not you are doing the implementation, that's what will come from your strategy sessions.

To be honest, doing the implementation yourself will further establish you as an expert. You'll simply be able to speak to obstacles that may come up, and you'll be able to fully understand what the next steps in the dream are.

This is the best opportunity to hand off the deliverable as a proposal/contract to your client. Obviously, you've gone through and walked them on every step of the process of the service that is to be implemented, what better person for the job than you, right?

If the strategy and deliverable were outstanding, you should have no problem in closing the deal for the next phase of that project which is the implementation.

Are you providing a solution that allows a potential client to work with you at a lower risk?

Custom work is often times a big ask. It's a big investment for someone to not just pay, but also to spend time on.

Here's why I like having a smaller, more productized option.

• Reduces the risk for the lead
• Reduces the risk for you
• Allows both you and the client to get quick results

This especially works nicely if you are just starting out.
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Are you thinking...

What this solution could be, starts by listening and observing opportunities.

During a sales conversation simply ask the lead "What would be a quick win for you?"

As you start to hear answers, watch for a pattern. What sort of quick wins are you hearing?

Write them down.

In Ask Rezzz A233 I share with you 3 other questions that you can explore in order to start building out a productized service

In this episode: 

• Who will buy my productized service?
• How to do market research for a productized service
• Land that first client
• Are you going to give this a try

There are many more steps in this process, but I wanted to spark some inspiration and direction for you to take if this is something you are considering.

I want to thank Sara Dunn for asking this question. In her video, she on her YouTube Channel she talks about how she's setting goals for the year over 12-week periods based on the 12-Week Year.

This year, I created themes for myself and the business. The reasoning behind this is simple. If I have a project, decision, or question where I'm suddenly faced with the option to go one way or another, the theme will highlight the right choice.

I've created each theme based on who I want to be and the purpose and value of the business.

I've created 3 themes for the year and they are "intentional community", "commitment to my marriage," and "ship new products".

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Let me address the middle one since that is the easiest.

There is nothing wrong with our marriage at all, in fact we have our second child on the way at the time of this recording in Feb.

When I say commitment to my marriage I mean doing the little things and enjoying time with my wife as a couple. Any parent knows that with a little one, or even 2 little ones, time together just the two of us becomes harder and harder to come by.

I don't want to lose that identity and what made us, "us".

Doing some of the little things together. Like grabbing an hour here and there whether that's going out on a date night, staying in and watching a movie, or grabbing a quick cup of tea together in the morning.

Intentional community is about creating a close-knit community of like-minded business owners who are real, genuine, and want to create a business that's designed around their lives.

There are so many products and programs out there that are a bit dime-a-dozen. Where they promote to you over and over and over again and then when you buy, you are left wondering where everyone went. I've been subject to them and I know you have too.

I don't want that for anyone that comes across me or my business. If you download something free like the client onboarding sequence or get 1-on-1 business coaching you will get an experience that is a bit unique and I will genuinely care about your results.

The final one, ship new products, is pretty self-explanatory. Though it aligns with "intentional community" theme. By learning a bit about everyone that comes into my world and listening to their wants, needs, and desires, I want to be able to easily create products to help you succeed.

Now when I'm faced with any sort of difficult decision, I can't go wrong if the choice aligns with any of the themes.

I'm trying this for the first time this year, because like Sara mentioned in her video. Often when setting goals for the year, by June some of those goals are not relevant anymore.

No matter what happens, these themes will be relevant because these are things I value.

The features of what the application has are exactly what I need for myself and clients.

Yes, I have some [e-commerce clients](https://rezzz.com/services) who may fit better with Drip as their platform, but I have other clients who are non-profits, service-based businesses, coach, and other individuals who are selling only a handful of products that ConvertKit is a perfect fit for.

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I can easily geek out about many things that I like about ConvertKit and some of the ideas that I have, which I dive in head first in this episode

Most certainly I'll be diving into more discoveries and how I'm solving interesting problems as I continue to flex the ConvertKit muscle and boundaries.

If you have any specific questions about my move, ConvertKit, or your business and how ConvertKit may or may not work for you, I'd be happy to chat.

I'll share with you some of what I like and what I'd love to see:

• UI Features
• API + Support
• Feel valued as a customer
• Cleaning up the house
• Handling various integrations
• How I think about and categorize integrations
• ConvertKit excels at
• Sequences and managing those emails within
• Segments
• THE #1 thing...folks get the emails

Over the years, I've been known to specialize in a few different platforms, Ruby on Rails, PHP, WordPress, WooCommerce (and a few other plugins), and Drip. Anytime I switch from one to the next, I get asked a lot of questions.

"Why did you switch?"

"What happened with X that made the decision for you?"

"Did you switch because of Y?"

For myself and my clients, I try and look at platforms as a tool.

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This is part 1 where I share with you:

• Why I started with Drip
• My reaction when Drip sold to Leadpages
• My thoughts at a personal level
• My thoughts at a professional level
• What the tipping point was

In the next episode, I'll share with you why ConvertKit was the easy choice, what I like about it, what I'd love to see, and some things to be aware of.

I was talking with my new neighbor over the summer about cutting the grass since he saw me out there cutting the grass with my brand new battery powered mower. He shared this with me.

Now whether that's the fault of my neighbor or the landscaper, in the end, the landscaper is sending the wrong message here.

Before it gets to 14 months, let's see if we can nip this in the bud as quickly as possible, shall we?

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Benefit of the doubt

This is obvious for some, yet not so much for others. When a client is late once it's often not malicious or with bad intentions. It's often more like they saw the notification and it slipped their minds.

Or if you are taking recurring payments through a credit card and the card fails, it's often due to the card being expired.

The point I'm trying to convey is that you want to remove your emotion from the equation when it happens for the first time. Come at it with the perspective that it is likely a mistake and can easily be remedied with a simple email asking them for the payment.

What to do when a late payment is more than a mistake

If the same client happens to do it again or more than usual, then a more in-depth conversation needs to happen.

Paul Jarvis, author of Company of One, when he was on [Live In The Feast](https://rezzz.com/podcast/paul-jarvis-on-keeping-things-simple-freelancing-and-being-a-business-owner/) shared a time when he had a client stiff him of close to $30,000.

The mistake was that he continued to do the work, thinking that he would get paid eventually.

He shared a great point on the show when he said, "what I was saying to my client was that it's ok to not pay me because the work gets done anyway."

You want to have your clients respect the payment structure of your business and the contract of the project.

If they miss a payment, work stops. End of story.

Simply tell your client either in a phone conversation or email that since payment has not been received, the work will be suspended.

Also in that conversation, you want to share the consequences of this. Could mean a missed launch date, marketing plans, or something else.

If time continues to pass without resolution, say for a couple of weeks, the conversation should transition from a payment conversation to an end of project conversation.

Explain what that would look like and how if/when the project became a priority again how they could ramp the project back up with you.

Over the decade of being in business myself, I've never had it go this far, but have heard of cases where this happens so you'll want to cover your bases.

A client relationship is two-sided. You agreed to provide a service in exchange for being compensated. Don't let time slip away on being compensated because that is sending your client the wrong message.

Bottom line is that you don't. You can't convince anyone of anything if they don't have an open mind about it.

To be honest, it's actually better for you to refer the project off than to spend the energy working at someone who has already decided not to work with you.

With that being said, sales are all about helping someone make a decision.

If you are looking for someone to do something that they don't really want to do (and that's to spend money), you need to find a legit reason that is big enough for them to do so.

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Get someone to do something they don't want to

This means you have to understand what the motivation is of that person. In my experience businesses are motivated really on the basis of 2 big reasons. Both are related.

They want to get more money. Or they want to save time (which translates into getting more money eventually through profits).

The tricky part of this comes in when you want to discern if someone is basing their decision off of emotion or logic.

The reason it's tricky is that their buying decision will be because it's both emotional and logical.

I'm always talking about how you should learn to trust your "gut" and tha if something doesn't feel right, than steer clear right? Well that's even more true with someone buying from you.

They need to feel that the purchase is the right decision before anything else, even if it's the logical choice to make.

For example, ever have an argument with your brother or sister or good friend where you know you are right. Facts of a night out or story growing up. You both start arguing back and forth it's so heated that all logic goes out the window. It doesn't even matter if you are saying that the sky is blue because they feel that it's red.

You can't convince them otherwise, because their emotions are dictating their thinking at this point.

So you have to start by getting their emotional side of the brain to buy-in before all else.

Get their emotions on your side

You can do this through empathizing with them.

You can do this by sharing a similar experience another client of yours had where you helped them.

Another way to do this is by asking a question. In the book by Phil M. Jones, Exactly What to Say he offers to use "How would you feel if...?" as a prefix to a future scenario.

"How would you feel if you got 100 more customers?"

"How would you feel if your website was 2 seconds faster?"

"How would you feel if your competitor outranked you and you lost a good portion of your organic traffic?"

That last one is one that I actually asked an existing client of mine a few months ago because that was a trend that was happening with them. They signed on a new engagement to perform a site performance and overhaul.

When I read *Exactly What to Say* a couple of weeks ago and saw this example in the book, a light bulb went off in my head because it's something that I've seen work time and time again in my own sales conversations.

When you understand the motivation and emotion that a client has around the problem they are faced with and can create that scenario for them, the more likely you are going to get someone to sign.

All too often a client will ask you for something that you are skeptical about.

They are convinced that it will work for whatever you are trying to accomplish, but you have some doubts.

Your doubts come from 2 places. The first is your experience and the second is from your ego.

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Your ego may be in the way

Let me tackle the ego part first. By ego, I mean that little voice inside you that is telling you that you, not the client, knows best.

Paying attention to your ego is a practice in becoming more self-aware. Self-awareness is critical to being professional and being a respected freelancer.

Now you may be saying that you have doubts because you don't know enough about the request to get it done.

Or that you are resistant because it's taking your focus away from what you need to be doing that's already agreed upon.

Either way, you want to recognize, you want to be self-aware, that your bias is playing a small part in the reason you are skeptical. It's not wrong to have this happen, but you want to realize that this exists so that you can best address the request with the client.

Your experience is often correct

The first part of that skepticism comes from your experience. You are hired because of your skills, but more so because you have an expertise.

The client's request may be something that is warranted for the project. It could also be scope creep as well.

It's your job to suss this out properly and professionally.

All of these responses, or any in the same vein, will show the client that you have their best interests and the success of the project in mind.

When you give this little bit of pushback, you'll not only show that you are a professional, but you are standing out from the countless number of other hands-for-hire out there.

The surprising thing here is that by doing so, the next time instead of the client stating that something needs to happen, it'll come in the form of a question because you've represented yourself as a consultant on top of the skillset you have.

In episode 233 you learned about how to make a productized service. It makes sense that the next question is how do you sell it.

To be perfectly honest, knowing how to sell the productized service really should come before you make it, and here's why.

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When you have a productized service, it's super focused and solves a big enough pain that someone has.

That someone has already raised their hand and shared why it's important enough to solve their problem.

When you are working on custom projects and then finding out that you happen to be doing a similar thing on almost every project that gets your clients an immediate win they want. Well, the service essentially has been sold because it's in demand.

I think it'll help to illustrate by example. I have a productized service that migrates people from Drip to ConvertKit.

How I came to create that was a need from my own clients who wanted to reduce their monthly costs as their list grew but weren't using all the advanced features that Drip offers.

So like how I explained in A233 - How do I make a productized server? people already were hiring me for that service and other services like on-site personalization based on email subscriber data because I'm listed in both expert directories.

I had built out this process and it was something to leverage for new clients and gave them a quick win. A big bonus that the quick win helps their bottom line costs.

Yes, it's not something that is going to have someone come back to me to do, but it created a simple way to start to work with me for my larger services at a lower risk.

They see how it is working with me and it's at a much lower risk to get a result than to start with my monthly service.

Why would someone buy it?

Understanding the reasons why someone would want the service is ultimately how you sell it.

What is the pain or frustration that the buyer is looking to solve?

What is the quickest and most simple path to getting that pain or frustration turned around?

Keying in on those elements is how you sell it.

You don't even need to go about advertising it like crazy either. Send out a tweet, a post, or at most set up a landing page.

In that share you put in the frustration point and a call-to-action.

In my case recently, Drip increased its prices pretty dramatically and so I tweeted out "Frustrated with Drip's price increase and looking to lower costs by going to ConvertKit? DM me and let's chat"

I did that maybe a few times in a 2 or 3 week period and it got retweeted. I had about 50 people DM me about it. Of those 50, 10 become legit leads, and 4 took me up on the service.

For something that took me a few seconds to write as a tweet, not a bad return.

All because I already knew why the buyer would make the purchase.

Asking yourself "Why would someone buy this?" doesn't mean that they will.

What you want is someone to say "Can I buy this because I have this problem?"

How are those goals, those habits for your business working out for 2019?

Are you still focused on them or has the reality of 2019 and life, in general, pushed them aside and you are no longer as focused as you were 4 weeks ago, now that it's Feb 1?

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Before I share with you some ways to make your business habits stick, I want to share with you something that happened to me the other day that rarely happens when I read a book and that's an immediate impact.

One of my big things for 2019 is to become a reader. As someone who much rather watch the movie than read the book, this isn't easy. As someone who's read the Cliff Notes and Monarch Notes all through high school and college, this isn't easy.

As a father though, I want to read more so that my kids see me reading and not sitting in front of a screen all the time.

As a husband, my wife loves to read and it would be cool to read the same book and have a discussion about it.

As a business owner, reading and learning from others and being able to form my own ideas from things that I read will help me grow and help the business grow.

The first book I read this year was Atomic Habits by James Clear. Outstanding book for so many reasons which I'll explain 2 here in a minute. The reason I read this book first was because I actually wanted to read it to help understand the why and how of better habits not just for myself, but so that I could help create better habits for my children too.

What I didn't expect to happen was exactly what happened on Sunday, January 27th.

I went downstairs around 6:30 am put on the kettle to boil water for my coffee, check my Twitter feed from the night before, then made my cup of coffee and pulled out my wife's Kindle and started reading.

I was up at 6:30am on a Sunday because I was sick and my sinuses were hurting so bad that I couldn't lay down anymore and quite honestly, it hurt to even move my eyes. I even said to myself coming down the stairs that I'm going to skip reading this morning.

So what gives? Why did I read?

Create a habit for the type of person or business you want to be

What James talks about in the book is to relate your habits to the type of person you want to be. Notice earlier that I said that I want to become a reader. Not that I want to read more.

Well, I created a system of habits in the morning that stack upon each other that form identity-based habits.

Once I pour my cup of coffee in the morning, it's become automatic in a sense that I sit and read my book until that first cup is done.

I've created this environment in the morning that sets up and leads me to the act of reading.

I read in the morning, because for me, any other time and reading tends to put me to sleep.

I use the cup of coffee as a timer of sorts so that I don't feel obligated to read a chapter or number of pages or some other thing that could vary.

It's a set of cues and pieces of the environment that have allowed me to become a reader because each and every day since January 1, I've read.

Habit stacking

Surprising to me also is this idea of habit stacking. The cup of coffee, morning time, and even what I do after I read are all tiny elements, tiny habits that I've created that surround the idea of me becoming a reader that's allowed me to become one.

What I do each and every day after I read is go make another cup of coffee and then mark it down in my bullet journal that I read today.

The simple act of accountability of tracking that progress allows me to have the small win, the satisfaction of another day that put me on track to becoming a reader.

I'm floored simply because of the small changes I've made to my habits. So much so that I'm beginning to look at my business in the very same way. In fact, as I look at my business with these eyes, I've already done a few things over the years to be the business I want.

What do you want your business to be?

What do you want your identity to be?

What sort of small, impactful habits can you create to become that identity?

How can you create an environment so that it guides your good habits and forces you to avoid the bad ones?

Want clients to respect you?

Are you looking for your clients to respect your time away from business hours?

Your cue or environment factor: Then shut off your email notifications after business hours. Don't look at email first thing in the morning. Give it 2 hours before you look at it.

Quick win: Go ahead and mark it off on your calendar that you did that.

Want clients to pay you what you want?

Set the price and don't waiver from it.

Your cue or environment factor: If you start to have a conversation with someone that budget is going to be an issue, then change the conversation from you being their vendor into a referral for someone else.

Quick win: Celebrate passing on that project because it's not what is right for you. Go ahead and mark it off on your calendar.

Do you want to get out from sub-contracting and managing your own clients?

Your cue or environment factor: Immediately after lunch, go have a conversation today, whether that's email or a phone call, with potential clients

Quick win: Go ahead and mark it off on your calendar.

I don't know about you, but I'm constantly bombarded with ideas on making this, and creating that. Thinking that the product will help diversify my revenue and make my business more stable.

I'm not wrong. And I don't say that because I'm arrogant. I say that be it is a fact.

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Not everyone wants to create a product, I don't. I'm not looking to build a software product. I'm not looking to create some physical thing to sell.

What I enjoy is creating a solution, building services, publishing content that help others solve a problem.

To me, what I want is a productized service.

Creating a productized service is creating a menu for potential clients to order off of.

It doesn't even have to be something that's complex and automated. But it needs to be profitable for you.

## What does everyone hire you for?

Simply start with what people hire you for in the first place. If you are a designer, what is the one thing that you do for each and every single client. Same goes for developers.

Do you perform audits? Do you do brand identities? Do you setup coding environments?

What do repeat customers hire you for?

This is what I call "chronic pain points". Are your clients seasonal and always come back to you for something at the same time each year? Do you have to design social media assets for new content? Are you building iterations of software for new features?

After you work through these things, look at the lists. Pick out ones that have a similar theme.

You want these things to be small enough to achieve quick wins for your clients.

They also need be delivered quickly and profitably.

Since they are small and you may be doing a number of them, make sure that you can enjoy doing them as well.

How have you helped brand new clients get over nervousness and apprehension?

This is key, because ultimately the goal of a productize service is to make it simple and easy to work with you. By reducing the number of choices a lead has and creating an easy option, you make the decision for them.

Building a website or designing a brand that has an investment of $20,000 and 3 months of time is scary for some businesses who have never been down that road before.

However, delivering brand style guide that may take you a few weeks and $5,000 to do is easier to digest.

Then once they see that deliverable and how the relationship was successful with this engagement, the client is now more comfortable with you to move forward with the much larger project.

Yes, productizing a service is not easy. But if you think of it like creating a menu for your business so that leads can order from, it'll create that diversity you are looking for.

A little bonus tip...you don't even need to tell anyone that you do this either. Especially when starting out. Use is as a tool in your sales conversations. If budget or time is an issue for the lead, then offer your productize service to them.

If they seem like someone you may not want to work with but like what their business is about, offer them your productize service.

Use is as a tool to try them out, just as they would use it to try you out too.

Last week you learned [how to review your sales process]([https://rezzz.com/ask/how-to-review-your-sales-process/](https://rezzz.com/ask/how-to-review-your-sales-process/)), just as important as that is, so to you should be reviewing each and every project that comes through your business.

Ever feel like you finished a project and felt like the weight of the world lifted up off your shoulders. Suddenly you have this sense of relief that is so strong you wonder how you got sucked into that mess in the first place?

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It's so easy to get sucked into the excitement of a brand new project. Being able to see an opportunity and hear about how you can solve someone else's problem simply from your skillset is the high we all get at the beginning.

Just like getting drunk though, this high clouds judgment. It also clouds your awareness of subtle signals that are indicators that maybe this project isn't a right fit for your business.

It actually hinders our instincts to "know better" especially from past experiences.

You want to hone those instincts and make them so strong that the high only happens after your instincts, your gut, tells you it's ok.

Questions to ask after a project is over

Once a project is over, you should sit down for 15-30 minutes and digest everything.

Ask yourself 5 questions.

1. How do I feel now that the project is completed?
2. Did this work help me reach my goals?
3. What problems did I face that I didn't anticipate?
4. How did my estimates (on budget, time, expectations) compare to the actuals?
5. Did something happen in the midst of the project that I should've seen coming but didn't?

Once you answered these questions, reflect on the answers and pull up your initial project brief/application that you had the client fill out and see if there are any correlations to be made.

This is the "Hindsight Exercise".

You now are standing in the future of what that application came to be. You know how well or bad the project went. Within the application, you want to look for indications in what that client filled out so that you can then go ahead and look for in your next lead.

Again whether it's good or bad. 

This is where you are honing your instincts, your gut. You are allowing time for you to pick up on indicators of both good and bad earlier on in your sales so that you can have more success with your projects.

As a business owner, as a salesperson, which if you are freelancing I hate to break the news here, but you are in sales, you need to close the open loops in the decision making for your leads and clients.

We don’t have control over the decision-making process anyone has, but we can lead them to that decision.

We can create a path to that decision that makes it easy for them to make a choice.

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You do a great job of getting people interested in you, yet in the final moment of helping them decide, you fall down.

You fall down because you leave the decision making solely on their shoulders.

This final moment is the tough part. It’s the part where I struggled with too. But it’s the part that needs to be mastered in order for you to have a sustainable business.

## Remove choices and create easy options

In sales, it’s your job to put the lead on the path to solving their problem. This is the mindset you need to be in so that  [you overcome objections in sales](https://rezzz.com/ask/overcome-objections-in-sales/).

When you remove choices and create easy options for a lead, they are more likely to buy from you.

Your goal should be to create a statement that presents a choice to them.

I was on a FB Live talking about follow-up and I said “There are 2 types of businesses online, ones who become freebie folks and ones who actually sell and make money.”

And now I wasn’t selling anything, but in the midst of the conversation, it framed everyone there watching, including the host, where they sat.

It made perfect sense for them to go ahead and see what they needed to do or take action on based from this live stream at that time.

By removing all the choices on how to do a follow-up sequence, how many emails, what tools to use, when to send them, and so on, I positioned the simple action of just doing a follow-up sequence against making money or not.

As service-based businesses, you and I have so many things that we know we can do for a lead to help them out.

The leads know they need the help, they just aren’t sure of the right choice or the right decision to make.

By painting a picture of who they are today and where they want to be with a simple action for them to take, you remove all the choices and give them the easy option to choose.

I was asked a question on a Twitter chat I was a part of that said “A few of us are clearly uncomfortable with the idea of seeming like a nuisance. Have you received a negative response to multiple follow-ups?”

Following up with someone after they’ve expressed interest in you is not being a nuisance or annoying or bothersome. Unless you are emailing them every day with “Just checking in.”

If you have an email that sounds like “Hey Pete, I was thinking about your project a little bit more and came across this article that talks specifically about that one thing. Here’s the link if you have a few minutes to check it out. If not, the big takeaways were…Hope you find it useful. Best, Jason”

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For whatever reason, most people, as service-based businesses, get all messed up in the head the closer someone gets to becoming a client.

Anytime they see an email address, they ask “can we add them to our email list?”

Yet, as it gets closer and closer to the sale, they start to shy away from it.

It’s very much a mindset that you put yourself into. One that in the beginning of starting my business, once I realized that it was just business and that if they thought me sending them an email that’s helpful is annoying, then we ultimately weren’t a good fit to work together.

Imagine you walk into a store, let’s say a car dealership. As you walk in you immediately go towards the car that you are interested in. You open the door, sit in the driver’s seat to see how it feels. You hop into the back to see how much legroom there is. And you come to the point where you want to get some more information.

So you seek out a salesperson. She comes over and you ask some questions about options, colors, if they have it in stock and she answers all of your questions and then takes you on a test drive.

As you walk back into the dealership you realize that you are completely alone. Even the salesperson, who was right behind you coming through the door is gone.

Now what? You’re ready to sit down and go over financing. 

You are literally standing there ready to buy and wondering what’s next.

Now I ask you “what’s annoying now?”

That’s what it can seem like for your leads. They opt-in to your lead magnet or fill out your contact form, maybe have a few back and forth emails with you, and even get on the phone with you and get to the proposal stage.

After you hang up on the call, it’s radio silence from you. The lead is wondering what happened? Seemed like things were working out, but they may be wondering what’s next. Even with the proposal in hand, they may have some questions still. In fact, there’s a good chance they do.

Here’s the thing, people, humans, are embarrassed to ask questions. They don’t want to look as if they don’t know something and even more so, during a negotiation period where they have your proposal in hand, they certainly don’t want to appear that they are at a disadvantage.

You can leave it up to them to reach out, that’s all well and fine. But what if they have a question, that your very next email in your follow-up sequence answers it?

How would that make the lead feel?

They probably feel like you fully understand them. That you can help them with their project and where they want to go.

What if they had some questions about your process, further than what you explained on your site?

Now your second follow-up email explains in further detail what it is like working with you?

Now they are feeling pretty great I would assume. They get their questions answered and you are exhibiting that you’ve been doing this for a while and understand, yet anticipate what the lead is thinking.

They are in your sales pipeline. They are on your list. If you are “annoying” them, they can click that link at the bottom of the emails and unsubscribe.

But I’ve never had that happen once because they’ve obviously taken some time to want to learn more about what I can do for them. If we had a call, then it’s even more apparent that they want more from me.

At that point, I’m really trying to add more value to help them make a better buying decision.

At the very least, if you feel that you are bugging someone, remember this. There’s the unsubscribe link at the bottom of every email going from your ConvertKit account, your MailChimp account, your Aweber account, whatever platform you use.

So if you have a sequence setup, you don’t even have to worry about the sending, it’s done for you.

Above all else, if a lead responds negatively to you providing them a follow-up sequence that’s helpful, answers questions, and positions you as an expert in your field, then are they going to respect your experience and expertise during the project? I’d bet not. Better to find that out now, rather than later.

Let’s assume for the sake of brevity that you are segmenting your list at least to the point of people who have bought and haven’t bought from you.

If you are like me, you are tag happy, they want to track everything someone on their list does and so they tag everything.

This is great, but if you don’t do anything with the information, it’s just clutter in your CRM or email marketing platform.

There really are 2 things to focus in on when you are segmenting your email list.

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Intent

The first is intent.

Why do people buy from you? What problems are they trying to solve?

Intent is essentially the buyer’s goal. It’s what they want to achieve when they buy from you.

Someone’s intent is all the benefits that are important to them that they will get from you, your solution or product.

It’s their motivation behind the purchase decision.

For example, you want to buy a big screen TV because the big game is on and you are having a party.

The intent here is you want everyone to see the game, and maybe impress your friends a little too.

That’s the motivation behind the purchase of a big screen TV.

Another example, and maybe a bit more relevant is a non-profit wants to redesign their website so that they get more signups for their fundraiser.

The intent here is that the non-profit needs signups to get more donations so that they can fuel their mission.

The motivation behind the purchase of a redesign is that it will result in more signups.

How you obtain this intent is either through asking them and recording that as a tag.

Or the more efficient way of getting that intent is by asking someone who just bought from you what they hope to achieve from their purchase.

Then you can take that information and turn that around into headlines on your website, maybe even case studies or articles too.

Interest

The second segment to focus on is interest.

This is harder to do, but when carefully planned out is powerful. Because interests is where you are able to really hone in on the language so that you can craft a proper buying journey for them.

Interest is a big area to cover because it has a wide range of possibilities. It’s actually where most get stuck in the weeds about, which in a minute I’ll share how you can avoid that.

For the sake of choosing the easy road first, demographics is a part of interests.

In the case above with the TV, the one making the decision obviously likes sports, has expendable income, and even has a time crunch to make a purchase.

In the case of the non-profit, well, that’s the first demographic. The age of their existing site and the number of signups they have for their fundraiser are also demographic data points.

Simply because they need a redesign doesn’t mean that they will convert into signups. You are the professional understand all the parameters that go into that conversion. Traffic, word-of-mouth, social, etc are all factors they don’t know about. If those are all good then moving a signup button around on the site make work. However, if there isn’t enough of that, a redesign may not even help. Maybe a paid ad campaign would be better for them.

The more difficult but intentional road to travel is creating opportunities for a potential buyer to engage with you that illustrate interest.

For example, if you’re like me, then you prefer video and audio content on the web over reading a 15,000-word article.

You can find this out by having various types of content that talk about the same thing. One type is video, another is a podcast and the other is the long form article.

This is an interest segment that allows you to give specific content types to them, but also know that if you are selling a book, they may be more interested in the audio book rather than the hard cover book.

How to start finding a subscriber’s interest

This segment is where most get into the weeds a bit because figuring out all the specific data points of interest is hard to do. So instead you tag everything and everyone.

If you are tagging everyone, then I suggest that you look at all those tags. See how many of your customers are in a particular tag.

Are you seeing a pattern of particular articles, videos, resources, lead magnets? If so, that’s where you start.

Those tags are telling you the story of your customers, that you’ll want to tell leads the same story.

Are you sitting there thinking that you suck at sales?

Maybe you say to yourself “I’m not confident in my selling skills.”

Are you feeling like you are doing all the things in sales that the best salespeople are telling you to do?

LinkedIn outreach, using tools for followup, even your [business coach](https://rezzz.com/coach/) aren’t 100%.

You have the mechanics of everything in place, but still feel like you aren’t able to hit the stride or get enough clients to fill that pipeline.

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I have just one question for you.

## Are you reviewing your sales process?

Do you listen to the recorded sales calls?

Are you listening more than talking?

Who’s asking more questions, you or the lead?

Are you reading between the lines of what the lead is telling you?

Do you have a spot on your calendar every single month to review your sales process?

It’s so important to be able to listen back on a sales call to hear how you sound to the lead.

Get over the fact of hearing your own voice and put yourself in the shoes of the lead. Ask yourself, as the lead, if you would buy from this person.

Listening to, reading transcriptions of the calls if you need to, is so important to be doing, especially early on or if you are trying something new.

Here’s why this is important.

## You think you sound good

When you are in conversation with someone, your brain in processing feedback and forming your next words as the words are coming out of your mouth.

When you listen back, you’ll hear all the “ums” and “ahs” and “you knows”. You’ll hear things that you don’t hear during the midst of the conversation.

You also hear spots in where you may stumble or misheard the question and wonder to yourself “what was I thinking?!?”

Once you hear these things, you can’t un-hear them and so you’ll be a little more conscious of them in the next one. Which in turn improves your sales communication.

## It’s not always all about you

If you don’t get a lead to close, ask why.

There’s a good chance they will never tell you. Or tell you something that really isn’t all that helpful.

But understanding the reason behind why someone chose not to move forward allows for you to adjust your process and sales conversation.

For example, if you keep hearing pushback on pricing, ask for the budget early on. If it’s timeline based, ask for the lead when they would like this done by earlier.

Another could be that they don’t like something about the process of working with you. Which then you may want to think about putting a nice write up about that on your website.

All these objections aren’t saying that you are wrong in any way. It’s simply saying that their expectations and needs differ. That’s all.

Putting in place a way to allow them to tell you a reason for not moving forward, saves you and future leads time. 

But it’s important because it creates space so that those leads that are a better fit have your attention, time, and focus.

Since Feb 26 in 2008, I’ve built my business without selling on Twitter.

I have no qualms about saying that Twitter is my home away from home.

Without Twitter, I’m not sure where I’d be right now to be honest.

I can attribute the growth of my business, my network of friends and colleagues, my clients, and you listening to this episode right now to the effort and engagement of my Twitter account.

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But Twitter is never the first place that I go to thinking about sales.

Engage

This is the very first tip here. Engage on Twitter!

Twitter is the biggest cocktail party on the planet. People making small talk, making introductions, complaining, connecting with people with would’ve never done so 15 years ago.

There’s really no place online like it.

I’ve been down the rabbit hold of blasting my followers with links, resources, and a plethora of other tweets fully automated and guess what happened?

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing. Sure I would get a like or a new follower here and there. Aside from that, the actual natural engagement there is where the magic happens.

I shut off all my automation back in October of 2017 and everything, and I mean everything got better.

People started seeing my tweets more, the natural occurrence of thoughts and helpful shares became liked and retweeted more and more.

If someone likes or retweets or just mentions you on Twitter, you better thank them.

Don’t worry about getting the likes, worry about how you can reply to those that likes.

Sales Bot

You’ve heard me talk before about my Sales Bot. It’s what I’ve built my business on when first starting out and still use to this very day.

Here’s the deal and why this is important.

There are [about 8300 tweets every single second](http://www.internetlivestats.com/one-second/#tweets-band). That’s fast!

A tweet has an average lifespan of [18 minutes](https://moz.com/blog/when-is-my-tweets-prime-of-life), which means that you have to be on top of things when they happen.

People complain all the time on Twitter with mentions of brands and/or people.

If you work with a certain platform, company, brand, or even person, and know that you can help solve problems that their customers have, it’s best to set up an alert for yourself than to spend your whole day on Twitter.

You’ve got work to do.

If you want my walk-through on setting up your own Sales Bot, jump onto my mailing list.

Patience

Be in it for the long game. Take it from me, I’ve tried experiments on all sorts of platforms including Periscope, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Beme, Blab, and so many others.

Nothing works quick, you have to be patient and play the long game.

Relationships, that’s what it’s about. The success of a relationship isn’t what happens in the first week or month.

It’s the years that are built up from the ground of that relationship that defines the success.

Twitter is about relationships first and foremost and if you aren’t in it for that, then no tips or tricks or strategies on Twitter will work for you.

This is where there’s a mismatch between the value that you have for the work and the value that the client sees in the work.

As the professional, you need to close this gap through education and focus.

The education is on the potential of the return on investment. That return on investment is focused on the success of the project.

Focus on the success of the project

The first thing you need to do is ask your client “what does success look like 6 or 12 months time?”

Here’s why this is important.

It takes the focus away from you and what you are charging the client for the work and onto what they are looking to get from the project.

Because that’s why they are talking to you in the first place, right? They didn’t come to you because they want to spend money with someone. They want their own problem solved.

So if they answer with something like “we want to have 1000 new signups to our email list” or “we would like to have 100 new customers” or “we want to show up on the first page of Google for a specific keyword”, all these things translate to the bottom line, the value they are putting on the project.

That bottom line is now out in the open for you to either follow up with another question that asks them what that value of a customer is, or if you can go ahead and do some quick math based on your knowledge of the business and how much they make from their customers, you can position the project price to that value.

A client needs to be educated by you before they buy from you

The education piece comes into play during the follow-up.

When you talk budget, you should be talking about very early on in the process. If you are doing so and still getting this objection, that means the client hasn’t had the proper education on the value of their problem.

This is where most freelancers and consultants fail. They fail at delivering a followup sequence that is valuable and defaults to waiting a few days and then sending an email that says “just wanted to check in and see if you have any questions.”

The reason this is the default is the fear that you don’t want to bug or bother them. The only way you will bother them is with that lame followup email. Because that followup has no value to them at all!

If you were to fire off some links or resources that pertain to their problem and the solution you are proposing to them, then how could that be bothering to them.

You are simply sending them what they want.

In fact, 80% of sales require 5 follow-ups after the first meeting. How many are you doing?

When you follow-up, you need to provide value. There’s no reason to ask them for questions, if they have them, they will ask, don’t worry about that.

During your own education and surfing online, when you find something that betters your business in any way. Or come across an interesting article on the industry. Save it, write some quick bullet items as takeaways and fire it off in a follow up to a client.

It’s that simple really.

This is something that you can do manually or as you mature the process, build out an email sequence.

Ideally, you want to the followups to be relevant and take the client on a journey that leads to you at the end.

If you’d like more details on exactly what goes into each email or the automated sequence, Stop The Cycle is a course that Curtis McHale and myself that teaches the finer details.

So if you are getting push back on your pricing, then I hope this was helpful to you. You just may have to start reframing the focus which is the hard part that needs practice. The easy part is following up.

Maybe it’s the time of year where goals and aspirations are high, then reality sets in the fears, the hesitations, the mind games start to mess with those aspirations because over the past couple of weeks through email, through Twitter, and in some communities I’m in people seem to be asking this same question.

How do you do the work and push past the fear of getting it out there.

Things like podcasting and “going live” and just the general action of putting something into the world is scary. I won’t ignore that.

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As someone who has introverted tendencies, if I were to look back when I was in school, I certainly wouldn’t have stood in the middle of campus and started answering questions from people. Or stand at the back of the bus and give lessons on how to do the homework from the night before.

That, in fact, sounds absurd. So it got me thinking about why now? What changed?

Because I’m still very much that introverted guy. In fact, for my wedding, I had to prepare days in advance for being the center of attention for family and friends. (Let’s be honest, my beautiful bride was the center, but I would get some collateral attention).

Yet, I have stood up and spoken at meetups and WordCamp NYC, where all eyeballs were on me.

You are listening to episode 225 of my third podcast.

My wife thinks I’m nuts for preferring to spend 60-minutes answering questions from people rather than presenting a scripted slideshow.

So what changed?

There are 2 things that I can nail down that make a difference in young Jason and me today.

Mindset

The first is the mindset. And before you turn this off, I’m not going to go into the woo-woo, rah-rah stuff.

When I say mindset here, I mean that this is something I genuinely enjoy doing.

I like helping people, I mean who doesn’t.

But what I can help people with is specific things that I have done myself and have experience with.

I also enjoy being around people such as yourself.

And the final point of mindset is that I have a long game, a life’s mission of sorts for time freedom and flexibility not only for myself but for anyone else who wants that.

So when I feel nervous, or apprehension about pushing publish, I think about those things and the rest becomes mechanical.

I get out of my own way.

Smaller steps get you farther

The second item is doing things in small iterations. Break things down into smaller chunks so that the action isn’t overwhelming.

You no doubt have heard this before, so let me share a concrete example for you.

When I did my first podcast, it was with other developers and it was called WP Dev Table.

By today’s standard, it was a very unprofessional podcast. We would set on a date to record, invite another developer onto the show, and open up Google Hangouts and record. That’s it. That’s all the podcast was.

We didn’t even have a set time and date for release, in fact, in the beginning, we didn’t even have a website or show notes.

But the simple action of pressing record would put it into the world.

Then over the years with this and Live In The Feast I’ve gotten incrementally better with show notes, music, production, promotion, and so on.

The point I want you to take away from this is pretty simple.

Anytime you start to feel that self-doubt or imposter syndrome or overwhelm creep in, ask yourself…

What is the smallest action I can make right now with this piece of knowledge I know about out into the world and in front of people I like?

Then just do it.

I’ll be honest, I’m not sure why I’ve been asked this. I’m honored, but I’m not in any sort of position to give a great answer.

Simply because I’m one who studies business trends and not in that analytical type of position.

With that being said though, I’d like to share an aspect of the business that I’ve seen grow and produce amazing results, not just in my business, but other businesses as well.

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On Live In The Feast Season 4 and as I’m recording Season 5, the co-hosts who have come on the show and shared their experiences and insight have all talked about sales and marketing at a personal level.

When I say personal level, I mean that they are doing things that are unscalable like high-touch sales, like personalized videos, like one-on-one sessions.

They are doing things like creating welcome packages like what Andrew Askins, co-founder of Krit, spoke about in Episode 10.

I’ve found in my own business indications from prospects that they want a more customized, a more personalized experience.

When I think about my own buying habits, more often than not I lean in the direction towards getting a great experience more than anything else.

For example Podcast Royale, who edits and does all the production work for Live In The Feast. Can I get what they do for a lower cost, maybe?

But the experience I have when working with them. The feeling of knowing that all I need to do is record and put the files in Dropbox and the episode will cross the finish line and be published.

The back and forth conversations, feedback and advice is an experience that I’m happy to pay for.

If you are wondering why you aren’t closing more deals or maybe not getting repeat projects from a client, are you doing anything to better their experience?

I’m not saying that you need to send them away on an all expense paid vacation, but is there anything that you are doing to stand out and create a memorable moment in their minds.

This could be sending them a small gift for signing a contract with you. Maybe a wooden coaster with their logo on it. (Thank you, Agency Highway podcast).

Maybe it’s a hard copy of your onboarding sequence that you normally send via email.

Something that’s unique enough that allows you to stand out from all those just going through the motions.

I’m not going to say that it won’t cost you a small investment. Maybe even a bit of time to do. But that gesture is something that will delight them and make you memorable.