← Courage & Clarity
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Steph Crowder
Hey, real quick, before we dive in, I've got a really exciting announcement. My mastermind, which is a year long and it's called Sold Out Group Programs, is officially open for enrollment right now. You can go to stephcrowder.com SOGP to read all of the details and get your application in. If you've been wanting consistent, repeatable sales, you're tired of winging it and wondering when your next clients are coming and where they're going to come from. And, and if you like the sound of weekly coaching with me, deep feedback on your sales assets and a proven system that actually works for me and my clients in 2025, now is the time to apply. This is a limited capacity experience and we sell out every round. So again, go to Steph Crowder.com so GP and hit apply. All right, let's get into the episode. Welcome to the Courage and Clarity podcast. I'm your host, Steph Crowder. I'm a former sales training director who's helped thousands of entrepreneurs earn a living doing something they love over the past 10 years. On your journey, you'll need the courage to be bold, to take risks, and to do what looks crazy on paper. You'll also need the clarity, the brass tacks, simple strategies that actually work. And on this podcast, we deliver both in equal measurements. Oh, and by the way, we've got absolutely no time for bs, gross marketing tactics or get rich quick schemes. Just sustainable business strategies for good humans with big dreams. If that sounds like you, you're in the right place. Let's go. Hello. Hello, welcome. Today, let's talk about lukewarm sales and why it's likely that if you feel like you are having lukewarm sales, that is you're just not getting the sales that you want. Maybe it used to be better and now it's plateaued. I've been talking to a lot of people who have that experience. Or you just never yet have had the experience of getting all of the sales that you want. It's very, very tempting to believe that there's something deeply wrong, maybe with your offer or your marketing, your messaging. Those things could possibly be true, but what is actually more likely is that you are just skipping steps. I want to start with that as a question to get curious about. It's like, what if there's not actually anything wrong with you? If you don't have all the clients you want in your group program, or really any offer you don't have all the clients you want, you might be thinking something's wrong with my offer, something's wrong with me. Something is wrong with how I'm positioning this. It's just not the right container. Like, we go to so many different possibilities of what might be going wrong. And I want to ask you this question. What if it's actually just that you're skipping some necessary steps in the sales process? This should be really good news if you think about it, right? What if all of the right pieces are actually in place and nothing has really gone wrong? It's just that there were a number of steps that you needed to take in order for the right number of people and the right kind of people to. To see your offer. And we just didn't take all of those steps. Like, what if that's the primary problem? So if your offer isn't selling out, you probably are skipping some steps. We're going to talk about that today. And I want you to know that this is not just you. In fact, I did this recently. Okay. I have been in sales for 15 years. I think at this point. Yes. Oh my God, it's been 15 years. That sales has been my career in one way or another. And even I skipped some steps recently. So I'm going to tell you a story about this and contrast it against what can happen when you don't skip all the steps, when you slow down and you actually do the steps of a repeatable sales process that you can rely on and not take the temptation, the tempting shortcut of trying to skip steps. Because maybe you perceive it's a lot of work or maybe you perceive it's not necessary. We're going to talk about how not skipping steps may be the hidden key or the missing, like, piece of the formula, the missing ingredient in your recipe, in your sales recipe to help you get past the plateau that you've been experiencing, no matter what level you're at. Okay, so let's talk about this story I have of when I recently skipped steps in my sales process. Okay? So if you've been hanging out with me for a while, you know that I teach a five week roadmap for selling out your group program. You. You can use it to sell out any offer. Actually, I have people using it to sell out one on one and services. We talk a lot about group programs because of the sold out group programs Mastermind, which is open for enrollment right now through July 2nd. There's still time to apply. Have a conversation with me if any of this is interesting to you, but I teach this five week sales process, this five week roadmap. And if you wanna learn more about it, at least at the time of this recording, you can actually go to stephcrowder.com s o g p and you can take the, you can watch the replay. The replay is still available. You can take the training there and learn all about my five week roadmap that I'm going to be touching on here as I tell you this story of when I skipped steps. Okay, so that's Steph crowder.com SOGP that's also where you can go if you want to apply, have a conversation with me. We can have a next step sales call and figure out if this could be the right room for you. So when I, for years now, I've had this five week roadmap that I call Buzz Blitz. And when we do a buzz blitz, it is designed to warm up your leads. It is designed to help people get all of the information that they need to not just understand your offer, but to actually feel excited about your offer and to make a move. A lot of you are talking to me and saying it feels quiet out there and people aren't responding in the way that they used to, right? When you do a full five week Buzz Blitz, which is really being highly visible across all of your various channels and platforms, suddenly people are talking to you where maybe they weren't before, right? So we talk about Buzz Blitz. It's something I've been teaching for years. It's. I upgraded it this year in 2025 to really help it pack a punch for what's going on in the industry in the marketplace right now. And a couple months ago, this is how I use my own process. I drink my own Kool Aid when I am launching my offers. I use buz. And recently I had a thought and I'm curious if maybe you've had this thought as well. I thought to myself, I have this mastermind, right? And I was like, I don't know if I need to do a full buzz blitz. Like that feels kind of extra. Do I really need to go all out? Do I really need to have the sales event? Do I really need to send all of these emails? Do I really need to be showing up on Instagram? Do I really need to ramp up my podcast production? Like maybe I, this is my thoughts is maybe I have people. I probably have people. I'd been adding people to my list recently. I was like, I probably have people out there that I could just like send a few emails and they'll join, right? I was like, what if I just did Like a, a mini launch. Have you ever been tempted to do like a mini launch? I was like, maybe I'll just do like a 10 email series, right? There's gotta be people out there on my list that I could scoop up with less effort. Like, come on. Right? Again, I think my thought was like, I don't need to do the whole song and dance. Like, I don't need to spend all of this time and all this energy. Like, let me just put some emails out there and see what happens, right? What ended up happening was I ended up with one tenth of the results that, that I thought would be possible. One tenth. I think we can all probably agree that by pretty much any rubric and any definition, that's kind of a failure, right? Kind of a flop. And as I look and I want to compare that against the experience that I'm having now. This was really recent. This was like a month or two ago maybe. I, I want to say it was like April, right? Here we are in just about July. And I sent out these emails and I did this mini launch and I had one person take me up on it. Right now where I'm sitting today, I am going to sell out this round of my mastermind. And it's just a couple months later. What do you think I've changed? Do you think I've changed my offer around? Do you think I changed my price? Do you think I redid my sales page? Do you think I changed my marketing at all? No, I have not changed any of that. The only thing I changed is I stopped skipping steps, right? I was like, okay, we did an experiment that didn't work. This is why we do the full process. It's like, have y' all ever. I am not a very good baker. Believe me, I'm a pretty decent cook. But baking, I find baking to be another art entirely. Have you ever skipped like the baking soda or the baking powder? Which one is it? I don't know. Both of them seem important in their own context. If you ever skip and it's, it'll. It'll be like a half a teaspoon. And if you skip that, you get like flat cookies. And if you're thinking to yourself, like, I'm out of baking soda or baking powder, it's probably not that big of a deal, right? Like, I mean, just bake them anyway and then your cookies are like totally off, right? It's that way in baking. Is it really that far fetched to think that your sales could be the same way? It's like you put some of the ingredients in a bowl. I put some of the ingredients in a bowl and then I baked it. And I was surprised when I didn't get a good product. Right. Oops. I'm making sure Instagram's not cutting me off here. Okay, I think I'm back. Okay. Sorry. My timer for the day went off. Hopefully that didn't interrupt things too significantly. Okay. And so when you think of it that way, I think it really does start to make sense. Like when I walked away from that little failed experiment, my first thought was, this is why we don't skip steps. This is why we actually do need a full, full sales process. And I think, you know, if we think about why we do that, I think from a psychological perspective, it makes total sense. It's really uncomfortable taking up a lot of space. I mean, I'm uncomfortable on this Instagram Live right now. I'm recording a podcast too, if you're listening to it in podcast format. But like, I'm going live on Instagram, it's nerve wracking. It's uncomfortable. I'd rather be sitting on the couch half the time. Right. So it's uncomfortable taking up a lot of space. There's the discomfort and then there's also the fear. The fear of being annoying, the fear of being too much. Do I really need to be so out there? Right. Do I really need to, like, you're doing too much, like, you're trying too hard. It's so cringy, Right? So there's that fear of overdoing it that keeps us from doing our full process, from going all out and leaving it all out there. I think we also overestimate how warm our leads really are. So you think to yourself, well, they join my list. Like, you know, they only need to see the offer a couple times or they listen to my podcast. Like, they don't need to receive eleventy billion emails about it when the reality is there's a lot. I mean, I am constantly amazed. I will get on a sales call with somebody and they will be like, really? It's very clear to me that they didn't necessarily even read my sales page. Right. Like some people do. But we are estimating that people are way warmer just because they're on your list, just because they're listening to your podcast. We are assuming that they don't need as much education around your transformation and what you do and who it's for and all the benefits. Like nine out of 10 times, people are way under doing it, under doing It. When it comes to telling stories about your transformation, highlighting clients, showcasing testimonials like, we are so, like, we. We're tempted to think that we're overdoing it, when seriously, nine out of ten times, you could be doing more. And I don't say that to shame you and to say, like, work harder and hustle harder. It's not that at all. It's just that we are so conditioned. I will go ahead and say, especially as women, if you're a woman watching this or listening to this, we're like, be quiet, sit down. Don't take up too much space. That's not safe. Right? And so there's this overestimation of how warm people really are. You know, if they wanted it, wouldn't they buy it? No. No. They don't even know that. They, like, they don't even understand what it is that you're putting out there. And that leads me into the next thing, which is we assume people are paying so much more attention than they actually are. You assume that people are paying attention because you sent a few emails. You assume that they saw it already because they came to the webinar. You assume that they know about your thing because they follow you on Instagram. I assure you, they have no idea that it's even happening. Right? So it's like you did a mini launch. You just sent a couple emails. You just talked about it a few times, and you're having the thought, you know, they saw it and they. They didn't care. I'm here to tell you that they probably didn't even see it. And if they did see it, they didn't get a chance to fully consider it before the tea kettle went off or the doorbell rang. Right? We are really assuming that when we send a couple of emails that anybody was really paying attention when we need to turn the volume up so much. Which leads me to the last point, which is you might feel silly repeating yourself, right? You might feel like. Like. I'm going to be honest with you all, because we're all friends here, right? I'm on day. What is this, like, seven out of nine of my enrollment period for my mastermind? I feel like I have repeated myself so many times, right? I feel like I have said the same things. I feel like I've told the stories. I mean, yes, of course, but that's because I'm sitting in this seat and my buyers are not watching absolutely everything I do. I want you to have the thought. Repetition is essential. Repetition is essential. Essential. A lot of us are scared of being repetitive. Repetitive makes money. Okay? Repetitive. Create. Create sales. There is really fascinating marketing data out there about this that people need to hear something like that. They need to hear the same message something like 88 times. 88 times. They need to hear the same message in order to be prepared to even start a conversation with you. Right? So instead of being like, oh, I feel, I just like feel like I'm repeating myself. It's like, what if we could have the thought? Repetition is part of the sales process. Repetition is essential for people to even clock that they need to be thinking about this. We have to stop making repetition a problem. There is a huge cost of skipping steps. When you skip steps, you will get fewer sales. Right? And I experienced that firsthand. You know, I just told you the story of how I ended up with a tenth of the results by not doing my full process. 1/10. Right. And you might be thinking like, I had the thought, well, this is going to be easier. Like I'm not going to have to put in as much work. Like I might as well try. But at the end of the day, a mini launch and like half doing it and kind of sending some emails actually ends up, if not taking as much time, it definitely takes as much mental cost from you because then you have to go into a spiral when it doesn't work. And you're going to spend all the time preparing to send your emails. And then when they don't work, you're going to have to have an existential crisis about what you're going to do next. And so it actually ends up being a lot more costly than you think. I know it's very, very tempting to be like, let me just throw this out there, let me just try this. But when it doesn't hit, that will rattle your confidence more than going all out ever will. I think that's really interesting to think about. We think that like maybe doing a toned down version of a launch will be easier on your nervous system or a toned down version of a launch will fit better in your schedule or just be better for you overall. I'm here to tell you that toning yourself down is killing your confidence. Toning yourself down is shattering your self concept. Okay, it's so counterintuitive. I understand it's so counterintuitive. But there is no better exercise that you will do for your own, for your own confidence and for your sales both at the same time than by going big and bold and doing every single step in your process. The process doesn't have to be complicated. The process can be simple. The process can be laid out right in front of you. It's exactly what we do in sold out group programs. We tell you exactly what to do day by day, week by week in your five week Buzz Blitz roadmap. So you can take. If you're not sure what you should be doing in that time or you think you could be doing it better, let us help you take away some of that mystery. But rest assured, when you go through the full exercise, that is how you're going to get to the next level. Not even talking about sales results. I mean, that's part of it. But mentally and acting like the CEO that you want to be, stepping into your sold out identity, there is no way but to go big and bold. You've got to get on board with getting big and bold. When your body and your nervous system and your brain just tell you, just take up, just take up a little bit less space, okay, so you're getting fewer results. When we skip steps in our process, we also end up with muddier messaging. When you skip steps, you, you don't have the opportunity to tell the full story. All of the different angles, all of the different tidbits and pieces of your messaging, it'll end up being muddier because you're only doing a little bit, right? We're not giving people the full clarity around what it is, who you help, who it's for, what the transformation looks like. So it actually ends up being really muddy and oftentimes very vague. I would also say it creates mixed signals to your audience. Right? When we're skipping steps in our process. For example, I might see an email from you about your offer, but then I go on your Instagram. Since we're here, I'm recording this on Instagram as well as my podcast. And then I go on your Instagram and I don't see it anywhere on your profile and I don't see it anywhere in your bio and I don't see any posts about it, right? And I'm like, oh, maybe she's not that excited about this offer. Maybe it's not. Like when I read your email, I was like, oh, this looks really cool. This could be for me. I go over to your Instagram, I don't see anything about it. I'm like, now I'm having thoughts. Now I'm like, does she really think it's amazing like you? Here's, here's the other thing. For your offer, for my, all of our offers, you have to Be the number one fan of your offer. How many of us are trying to sell stuff and we are not our own number one fan? If you need coaching on this, get coaching on this, right? You have to be. If you're uncomfortable shouting it from the rooftops and being obsessed with your own offer, how can you ever expect someone to give you their hard earned money to for what you're offering? You have to be like, this is the bee's knees and I can't wait to tell everybody about it. And if you come to any of my platforms, you tune into any of my podcasts, you open emails from me, I am shouting it from the rooftops that this is the room that you want to be in. If you're trying to create this result, think about that. Think about what a mixed signal that is. I think that's so powerful to consider. It's like, is she like, I want her to be as all in. More all in than I'm about to be. And we have to show people that we are a hundred percent dialed in. Okay. And then this last thing I want to share about this, about the cost of skipping steps, is letting your audience off the hook is really interesting to think about, right? So you will have people. I'm experiencing this right now with my enrollment period. You will have people in your sales process who really want to feel good saying, yes. They're almost there. They'll even say this if you listen. They'll be like, I'm. I really want to do it. But. There's like a but. There's like a hesitation. I really want to do it. And then maybe they'll say their but out loud or maybe they won't but. What's going on in their head is they're like, I re. Here's the end of that sentence. I really want to be able to do it. And I need you to show me that it's safe for me to say yes. I need you to show me that I'm going to be able to create the result that you're talking about with your program. I need to feel in belief. I need to feel sure that if I spend my money, it's not going to be a waste. And when we only send three emails, five emails, 10 emails, and we don't do anything else, it lets people off the hook. They're like, well, that looks cool. But. But the but takes over, right? The the but wins out. They're like, but I'll wait for the next one, but maybe this is always available. But like, there's just. And they may not even be able to put their finger on it, but because your energy is lukewarm, their response is lukewarm. Whoa. Think about that. Because your energy is lukewarm, their response is lukewarm. We're all. This is like blowing my own mind, right? It's like we're all wondering why. Why are they quiet? Where are they? Why aren't they coming? Why are they so mad? Is. And it's like, if you really get honest with yourself, are you a 10 out of 10 on the energy? Are you just asking them to be are you a 10 out of 10? Yes. Or are you just asking them to be a 10 out of 10? Yes. Are they lukewarm or did you go lukewarm first? Honest question. Honest question for us to think about again, not to shame yourself, not to kick yourself, not to berate yourself, but so that you can say, oh, oh, I see what I need to fix. I need to stop skipping steps. I need to go all in on my sales process. Right? You. When you only do pieces of the process, you only get a fraction of the results. That's my. That is my headline banner for this episode that I'm doing. For this Instagram live that I'm doing. You only did pieces of the process, so you only got a fraction of the results. When you got a fraction of the results, your offer wasn't broken. Your messaging didn't suck. You don't suck. All that happened was you only did pieces of the process. I hope that that creates a lot of hope and optimism because it means we can fix it with the right roadmap. Right? You need a full process. You need to learn to trust your process. I learned this the hard way. I mean, damn, y' all. I wrote the book on this. I wrote the roadmap, and I still didn't follow the map. So sometimes this happens. But for me, my takeaway was never again. I'm not skipping steps. You need the full process. Every step is there. Every piece is there for a reason. I'm going to touch quickly on what should be included. What should be included in your sales process. Okay. Consistent emails, consistent email marketing, consistent visibility via email. Not just one email, not just two emails, not just 10 emails. Consistent emails for a period of time. Weeks. Okay, five weeks, if we're being specific here, to really warm people up and take them through your whole process and really get them excited about what you're doing. Okay. That's the first thing. The second thing is a sales event. We're going to Have a. You need to have a full sales event now. I didn't do this when I did this mini launch. I didn't have a webinar. I didn't have an open house. I didn't have anything like that. I just was like, hey, read this email and I expect you to buy from me. And was wondering why it didn't work. Okay. Personal outreach and knowing how to do personal invitations, Reaching out to previous clients, reaching out to people that you think would be a big, a good fit this should be. And telling them why, like being specific with them about, hey, here's why I thought of you. We have templates for this inside of the Mastermind and they are worth their weight in gold because it'll help you start to be more proactive in your sales process instead of sitting back and hoping that they find you. You need to have clear messaging with multiple touch points. You need to have multiple different angles that are hitting on the various pieces that they need to hear about to believe the transformation is possible. And this one's really, really, really big. You need to have a process for following through until the last, last, last minute, until that cart closes, until that deadline hits. Too many people that I talk to are quitting on it early. And I get it. We get tired, we feel over it. We want to be done. I. One of the top mistakes is quitting on it early. Your brain says maybe I should stop. This is embarrassing. This isn't going to work. I'm just going to cancel it. Okay. But you will be amazed at what happens when you learn how to keep up that energy all the way until that very last second. Okay, here's the thing. I've written this whole thing out for you. I've created the entire five week roadmap. The calendar, the templates, the plan. It is all waiting for you inside of the sold out group programs. Mastermind. Seriously, we have it all over 55 email templates backed by sales psychology that you could start installing in your business literally today. Okay, we're not getting started in the Mastermind officially until July 28th, but when you come and join us, you get bonus access to my curriculum. That includes Buzz Blitz. You get to start listening to my coaching replays. You get to start immersing yourself in this stuff for the entire month of July until we officially get started. Your year begins on July 28th. Okay. So you never have to skip steps again. That's the amazing news. You will have the whole process laid out for you. You'll have the coaching to go with it not only the strategic coaching, like, I will read your emails and I will tell you how to make them better. I will help you create your sales event. I will help you with your messaging angles, will make it really solid for you. But on top of that, you need to get your brain coached. You need to get your head supported through the twists and turns, the ups and downs. You're going to want to quit. That's normal. I want to quit right now. Can I just be honest? Of course. It's part of it. It's like I was just telling a friend of mine, it's like when you're running a marathon, you know, you always hear from people, I haven't ran a marathon. My husband has. But like, when you run a marathon, I have been running and my brain is like, I want to stop, I want to walk, I want to stop. I want to be done. It's all normal. And you can get the proper coaching needed to be able to continue to not quit on yourself early. And that is all. A huge part of what we do is inside of the mastermind. So, my friends, we are closing for enrollment on Wednesday, July 2nd. Just a couple of days left here. I have a few slots left on my calendar for sales calls on Tuesday and Wednesday, you can go to Steph crowder.com so GP, pop in that application. It seriously takes two minutes. I'll get in touch with you with an invitation to talk with me one on one. We'll just talk about your business. I mean, honestly, it's part coaching. We'll talk about what I see as the gaps where I think you should be focusing to optimize and what your next steps look like so that you can just make a really informed choice about whether joining us is the right step for you or maybe something different. That's what the call is there for to help you decide. I hope this has been helpful for you to think about the dangers of skipping steps. And if you haven't been making the sales you want, you just skipped a step. That's all. No drama required. It's 100% fixable. And I think that's the best news of all. My friends, I am wishing you the courage and the clarity to go after what you love.