You Need to Get Comfortable Selling WPCP: 139
This episode is sponsored by my new web host, LiquidWeb
It’s time we had a heart to heart.
About Selling.
And why you need to Get Comfortable Selling.
In the past month or so I’ve come across this topic via conversations with people or through social media conversations (particularly in Facebook groups).
We need to start looking at the real issues with online marketing and why business do or don’t succeed… because for some reason this seems to be as mysterious as the Bermuda triangle.
When in fact, it’s SIMPLE.
(notice I didn’t say easy).
The bottom line is that we (I’m certainly not exempt from this) over-complicate things and get bored doing the things that we can’t see immediate results from.
Let’s start with Getting Bored
The easiest way to do this is to give you some examples.
I was thinking about all of the different people I’ve worked with over the years (for websites) and nothing was more frustrating than seeing people get caught up in the peripherals. The things on the outside/edge of their business that really don’t matter or make the slightest bit of difference to the bottom line.
Do your logo and colors matter? Sure. But not enough to tweak 287 times.
The same is true for your products and services.
I lost track of how many people spent hours and hours agonizing over the most niggly of crap but never spent the time to hit ‘publish’ on one single blog post.
Yep, you heard me correctly.
They’d spend all this time (and money) on a website they never officially ‘launched’ to the world.
They sat waiting for things to happen (their idea of ‘work’ was paying to have a website created).
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about.
Years ago (this was probably 5 years ago?) I had a client that I was building a website for. She was working with an internet marketing coach who was telling her what she needed in terms of things on her site and tools she needed to buy. This coach told her to invest in Infusionsoft (which she did) and to put together her ‘packages’ for her programs and what she was going to sell.
So far, so good, right?
WRONG.
First, the coach had zero traffic strategy for getting traffic to her own website. She was still using the ‘uncategorized’ category in WordPress and had ZERO… I mean ZERO SEO going on in her site.
Let me ask you a question.
What good is an email list or packages to sell if no-one sees what you’re doing?!?! (or knows you exist).
Six months after we were finished working together there was still ZERO new content or anything happening on her site. Nothing new had been written. She didn’t have a paid traffic strategy so she was getting zero sign-ups. Of course she was still investing in the ‘coach’ and other high-ticket programs, people, and events.
You can buy all the courses you want.
Have at it.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Unless you’re going to start rolling up your sleeves and implementing, nothing is going to happen.” quote=”Unless you’re going to start rolling up your sleeves and implementing, nothing is going to happen.” theme=”style6″]But unless you start rolling up your sleeves and implementing, nothing is going to happen.
Other than a big credit card bill and stress.
Stress will rear it’s ugly head in all kinds of ways. You’ll doubt yourself, feel resentment that other people seem to be ‘making it’ and here you are working all these hours but can’t get ahead of it (or you do start making more money but your expenses increase right along with your profit).
It’s time to focus folks.
I get it, no one wants to hear that they have to stay focused.
That they need to show up and do the work.
MAKE something. CREATE something.
Then get eyeballs on it. Share it, email about it, ask for feedback.
My preaching on this topic comes from my own painful experience of not sharing, promoting and selling sooner.
This really isn’t rocket science.
[divider top=”no” divider_color=”#95aa4d” size=”1″ margin=”40″][divider top=”no” size=”2″ margin=”30″][/divider]Over-Complicating Things
So apparently it’s conference season.
Funnel Hacking Live just wrapped up a week or two ago (ClickFunnels annual event) and this week Digital Marketer’s annual Traffic and Conversion summit (T&C) wrapped up.
I’ve been to both events in the past (well, T&C was only for a minute, it was on the tail end of a mastermind event and I was fried and wanted to go home, so I left. I had enough in my brain already without adding new tactics) and even though I bought tickets to the second Funnel Hacking Live event (which was 2016) at the first one (the very first Funnel Hacking Live event was in 2015), I didn’t go.
Same reason.
I was fried. Last year was a long year for me and I did a lot of re-evaluating in my personal life and my business.
I actually like going to events. I love learning new things and love the energy of connecting with other people. But the timing has to be right.
I’m getting so much more mileage out of mastering what I already know how to do (and have plenty to keep me busy) that I know in order to reach my goals I need to stay focused.
You guys have followed me with content and email marketing. You know I do it consistently and that I’m a big fan (because it works).
Do I do other things? Absolutely, but I do them for the right reasons.
I see soooo many people get caught up in the things for the wrong reasons. Things such as:
- Complicated funnels
- Upsells / down sells
- Social media tactics
- Facebook advertising
- Jumping into ecommerce
- JV partnerships
- Affiliate marketing
- Podcasting
- Video marketing
This is just to name a few.
None of these things in and of themselves are wrong, but pick something and do it well.
Do it consistently.
Master that before getting into the more complicated step.
Here’s another example I can give you.
I recently did a post on how to create a quiz in WordPress with the Thrive Quiz Builder. The post has 6 videos and is a step-by-step guide on creating a quiz for lead generation.
Once you start creating your quiz you’ll see that you can get pretty involved in something called ‘branching’. Branching allows you to create new paths based on your quiz takers answers. So if your question has 3 answers you can create 3 new paths with separate questions specific to those answers (see how quickly this can get complicated?).
In this post, the suggestion I gave was to create a SIMPLE quiz and get it converting.
Worry about branching later (if at all).
When Gordan and I started talking about creating LeadSurveys this was a HUGE factor for me. It had to be simple to use while getting quality results.
I’ve seen another tool on the market (I’m not going to give out the name) that has a WAY higher price tag and looks ridiculously involved. It reminds me of Infusionsoft (er, Confusionsoft, which btw, Russell Brunson and his team actually had t-shirts created that say “We’re not #Confusionsoft and he wore them at their last event).
I don’t remember the terminology that tool used, but as soon as I saw it I thought ‘this is ridiculous’.
Most people don’t have a basic opt-in funnel up that converts well.
KEEP IT SIMPLE.
Don’t worry about whether or not you have an upsell on your product… get your product /course up for sale.
THEN worry about the upsell.
Remember, ever business needs only three things:
- Offers
- Leads
- Sales
Content (which I clearly believe in), social media, networking, marketing…. all of that effort should support your offers by getting you leads and sales (broken record much?).
I did this recenlty with my Content Strategy Beta Workshop.
I kept it simple.
I kept it small, made the offer (emailed all of two times) and ran a live 4 week course where I created it as I went. It was very hands on (I ended up doing two calls with each individual), but I got massive feedback (invaluable) and am drilling down deeper for next time. I’m going to run that again at the end of the month as one more ‘beta’ round and then it’s going to be a signature course.
What did I use to create the course?
Google Docs, Demio webinar platform, a private Facebook Group and Kajabi (I already had an account).
I kept it simple.
Now that I’ve done it, I’m breaking each week into smaller videos (week one has 8 modules in it, shorter videos, resources are easier to find, etc.).
And anyone who has done the beta course gets lifetime access (this course will just get better and better).
I didn’t spend months creating crazy modules, plans, downloads, etc. I outlined the course, knew how I wanted to approach it, which tools I would use as part of my recommendations and jumped in.
If you’re honest about what you’re doing people are fine with it. In fact, I think people being part of the ‘ground floor’ so to speak is appealing. They get more one-on-one attention than they would in a normal course.
BUT…. guess what?
I still had to make the offer.
I had to let people know I had something for sale.
I’ve been building my audience and connecting with people for NINE years now (it doesn’t take this long… it took me a while to fully step into this brand, but that’s for another episode).
Stop Over-Complicating things.
Take the time to connect with people.
Find out what their problems are.
Make things to solve their problems.
Offer them for sale.
