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Courage & Clarity
161: [Part 4] The Conversion Problem - Great at What You Do, But Hate Selling (3 Gaps Series)
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Foreign 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 measure. 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 friends. Welcome back to my four part series called the three Gaps that are keeping you from being sold out. This is the fourth and final installation of this miniseries and we are tackling the conversion problem. So real quick, if you happen to be starting with this episode, do go back to part one. These are all really short. I'm keeping these episodes short on purpose and just kind of bingeable. But I would say that the pieces kind of build on each other. So I would listen to those episodes first. If you've heard those, we are going to go ahead and dig into the conversion problem. Now. I find that for a lot of you, the conversion problem pops up when you identify as being someone who's great at what you do, but you hate selling or you low key hate selling or you don't love selling. It's just not your favorite thing to do in your business. You'd much rather be working with your clients and enjoying that part of the business. Right? So what we're going to focus on here is fixing your conversion problem so you don't have the high emotion and the negative emotion towards actually closing new business. And I really want to help you reclaim selling as service. So many of you love working with your clients because you love being of service in the world. You love feeling like you're benefiting the world. You love feeling like you're making an impact. And the reason you don't like selling if you're somebody who identifies as not liking selling, is because you're telling yourself that you're not serving people when you're selling. It's a very simple switch to start to see that when you authentically and with integrity walk people through a consultative sales process, which we're going to talk about, that it's doing them a huge service because it's helping them say yes to fixing their problem when they're ready. And in fact, by not selling, you're actually doing people a disservice when you have a solution that they are absolutely clamoring for and all they need from you is to be able to connect the dots on how to your, your offer is going to address their problem and help them get where they want to go. That's all selling really is and helping people find the confidence and feel the security and like, understand why the offer that you have is going to be the right next step for them. And so inside the sold out group programs Mastermind, this is really my coaching container. Like this is really the whole point of sold out group programs is to help hardwire confident and repeatable conversions. I would say all of our strategies and all of our frameworks and all the coaching and everything we do inside of SOGP is really aimed at helping people get better at selling at the end of the day and staying sold out year round. Okay. And in order to do that, we have to understand what makes, what makes conversions happen. How do we get good at converting and then how do we turn it into a repeatable conversion system that, that you can rely on and you can feel confident in. So if you have a conversion problem, here's how it might be showing up. You know, your offer works like you have proof of concept, you've helped people, you have evidence like you know that you're onto something. But when it's time to sell, you are probably encountering some issues. You freeze, you might soften the pitch, you might retreat. You might kind of just like, yeah, soft, soft cta, a soft call to action. You might skirt around it. You might kind of walk away from a sales interaction knowing that you did not fully do what needed to be done in order to complete the sales process. That is a conversion problem. Also a conversion problem. How you can tell that this is really your problem is you probably are getting inquiries, you're getting interested parties. You maybe even have people booking sales calls if that's an opportunity. You have people filling out some kind of interest form on your website. You have people responding and saying, how do I work with you? How do I hire you? They are showing you that they are interested on some level, but you have trouble getting them to progress past that point. They aren't taking that final step in buying and your conversions are lower than you'd like. This might look like, for example, if you do sales calls or you consult calls, discovery calls, whatever you like to call them. And you know, out of every 10 discovery calls that you do, five of them, eight of them, seven of them are coming back and saying, hey, actually, I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna be. Be moving forward. Or maybe they just ghost you entirely or they, you know, they otherwise decide that they're not going to buy. That's how you know that this is your problem. And so in this episode, we are going to talk about how you can address this and exactly how you can begin to troubleshoot your conversion problems. So there's three things I want to go over with you when it comes to if you know, like, yes, I've got to get better at converting. I really want to close more of these sales. I want to feel like, you know, it really is possible to be closing and darn near 100% of your open inquiries and the people who are reaching out your sales calls, whatever your process looks like, I want you to feel like more often than not, by a long shot, more often than not, you are hearing yes, number one is switching up the energy of how you're selling there. This is definitely the biggest one. There are so many ways and reasons why attacking this piece is going to create a ripple effect in the entire sales process that you have. You need to move from selling in a way that feels like you're trying to convince, okay? If you feel like you have to convince people, that's going to be an icky energy for you and it's going to be why you dread it. You know, none of us want to feel like we're in begging, desperate energy. We don't want to feel pushy and we don't want to feel self promotional. The answer to that, here's where people get it wrong. The answer is not to sell less. Okay? Lots of you will think like, I don't want to feel like that. So let me just soften my selling or let me sell less or let me sell in a more subtle way. That is not the answer. Because while that might make you feel better temporarily, it doesn't solve your sales problems. What is going to solve your sales problems is to learn how to sell like a consultant. Okay? And. And when you learn to sell like a consultant, people feel the energy of peace, curiosity, like great questions. And this very much. Let's figure this out together. Let me guide you through an empowering process versus an energy of pressure. High pressure, high stakes, convincing, desperate, all of those energies that I know you don't want to be in. And so the way that you learn to sell like a consultant is you have to learn how to listen, you have to learn how to reflect, and you have to learn. This is my personal favorite, I think, is the art of the assumptive close. So you're probably not surprised to hear me say that the best salespeople are the best listeners. I've shared this on the podcast. Before that, when I was a director of sales training, the best salespeople that we had, the million multimillion dollar closers were not always the most boisterous, the most outgo, the biggest schmoozers. I mean, I'll be honest, sometimes they were, and that can work. But a lot of times it was like the quiet ones who were absolutely lethal in their sales process. They were listening more than they talked. They were asking the right questions, they were connecting the dots, they were curious on the phone. And that put them in such a great position to do the next step, which was to reflect back the needs of the client, which made that person say, oh, my gosh, like, this person understands me. I totally feel like this offer that they have for me is going to be the answer based on what I need right now. So if you focus and change to that alone, you're gonna feel so much better in your sales process. And then when you add on to that this idea of the assumptive close, here's a big one that people miss. And it's one of my favorite things to teach, because when you learn how to do an assumptive close, but that really means is you are leading people through your sales process. The analogy that I often give to my clients for this is I want you to picture a time that you've been in a big city. Maybe you live in a big city or you've just visited one and. Or you don't even have to have lived in a big city. Just any time that you got into an Uber. Okay. Or a taxi. And especially with Uber, we all have been in the situation where, like, two very contrasting situations. One, the Uber driver clearly knows the city like the back of their hand. You, you know, plug in, like, where you want to go. Especially, like, maybe even before Uber when it was like, ta. Like for those. I'm dating myself and aging myself now. But back in the day before we had smartphones with Google Maps, you would tell somebody, get this, y'. All. We would have to tell the driver where you wanted to go. You'd be like, I want to go to the airport. And they'd be like, great, got it. Or I want to go to these cross streets in Chicago. And they'd be like, great, got it. And you would sit back and you'd be like, oh, this is a cabbie who has been doing this for a million years. And they know where they're going. I can just chill, close my eyes, look out the window, do whatever. Compare that to a situation we've all been, I think we've all been in this one where the driver clearly does not know where they're going and they start to ask you, like, what roads do you think I should take or which way do I prefer? You prefer that I go and I. And you're sitting there being like, dude, I don't know. That's what I'm paying you for. Like, just get me there, right? Like I'm paying you to get me there. Just get me there. And I don't know about you, but in that situation, I'm sitting on the edge of my seat, I maybe like, if I had a phone, I'm pulling up my phone and trying to like map the bat. Like suddenly I'm feeling like I have to backseat drive, right? This is what you're doing. When you're not using assumptive closing methods. Your client, your prospect wants you to get them to the destination. Nobody wants to get on a call with you and be like, okay, so who's leading here? It's like in a dance, like when you know someone's leading in like a tango. Who's leading? Is it you? Is it me? Your prospect can't relax and trust you. It does not create trust when you are not leading. It creates so much trust not only in your sales process, but also how you're going to show up in your offer if you give them the vibe. Just like that taxi cab driver who knows the city when you're able to give them the vibe, hey, sit back, relax. Here's exactly what we're doing on this call. Here's how my sales process works, here's your next steps, and here's everything that we're going to do. Let's dig into it. It you can literally watch somebody's shoulders relax on a zoom call. If, for example, if you're doing a sales call and you inside of sold out group programs with my five part sales call process, which my clients have told me is like the number one money making framework that I teach, maybe even more, I don't know. Buzz Blitz has made people a lot, a lot of money. But my sales call process is right up there. You can, when you learn how to frame the call and you give your prospect the map of exactly how the process is going to work. And you say it out loud, verbally, and you get their agreement. You will watch their shoulders relax and they're like, that sounds great. Let's get started. Okay. So when you start to lead your sales calls through a process like this and you start to show up like a leader and like a consultant, there is nothing convincing, nothing pushy. You will actually, dare I say, start to look forward to something like a sales call or a webinar. Sales webinar. Whatever process you're going to use, you will start to look forward to it. When you make this switch of moving from an energy of pressure to peace and confidence, absolutely huge. Number two is related, which is learning how to follow up like a leader. Okay. The sale, for many, in many cases, the sale can be in the follow up. Ideally, when we do our process correctly, we may not even need to do much following up, which is great. But every once in a while we do want to, you know, like that follow up really is going to be the thing that closes the deal. And one thing that I see with a lot of my clients is they don't have a good system for following up. They're kind of making it up as they go along or maybe doing it sometimes, other times not so much. Or they're thinking to themselves, well, if they really wanted it, they would just, you know, my prospect would just make the next move versus having an actual system and an actual framework for following up inside of sold out group programs. I have a framework called for the. For this that we call the cap method. Get it? It's like capping your conversation where there's three different kinds of messages that you want to be using in your follow up process. And the number of clients who've come back to me and been like, using that framework actually ended up being the thing, like I thought I was getting ghosted, but it brought the prospect back out into the light and they ended up moving forward. You have to learn how to follow up like a leader. Your prospect, again, it's all comes down to building TR Trust. That's another way that you're going to be able to show your prospect that you are trustworthy and that you've got their back. Not just in the sales process, but also it's. It gives a preview of what it's going to be like to work with you, whether you're a coach or a service provider or whatever the work is that you do in the world. Okay. Number three is you need to refine your rhythm and have A repeatable sales system and stop making it up as you go. Okay. If you're having conversion problems and you feel like you do it a little bit differently every time, maybe like a lot of times I'll, I'll talk to people and they'll be like, sales process, what's that? Like I'm just talking to people and kind of explaining my offer and like hoping they say yes. That's not a process. Right. You need to have a process that works for you, that has been tried and tested, that you can rely on, that has a specific cadence, that will walk people through, through from start to finish, from problem recognition all the way to feeling confident in your solution and feeling confident saying yes. And so you need to be thinking about things in this step, such as launch timing, how often should you be launching, who should be launching, when should you be launching, all of those questions as we plan out your year, and then also questions like how does nurture fit into that? Right. It's not just about launching, but what is happening in between your launches. Yes. That is actually part of your sales process. Sometimes when people come to me inside of my mastermind, they will really feel like, well, I have like selling Windows and then non selling Windows. And what I always teach them is you want to have congruency. Whether you have an open cart, you're in a launch or you're not, all of that needs to be working together to support your next launch. So your nurture is going to tie into your sales system as well. And then also thinking about direct offers. So whether you're in a launch or not, you can have direct offers that help you capture those most interested leads, the people who are inquiring. And you really want to understand how all three of these things work together. And this is really where the Buzz Blitz framework that teaches you exactly how to execute a launch will also connect to a lot of the converting strategies that we have inside of the Sold out Group Programs Mastermind. I recently created a brand new resource for this that we call the 30 day fast track inside of the Sold Out Group Programs Mastermind that is really designed to help you get better at the skill of converting your sal no matter what level you're at and get your next one to three clients in the next 30 days. And so if you are someone who really wants to get better at converting, that's a resource that can be super helpful for you as well. It's important to remember that conversion isn't just about closing. I mean, we want to be thinking about closing the sale. But beyond that, I want you to reframe converting as connection done consistently, right, Connecting with your prospect from the very start of your sales process all the way through and making sure we bring that to completion. So sold out group programs is where we make sales feel natural. That's what we do. We map your entire sales rhythm from nurture to DM to launching and we coach you until it feels like second nature. And I wanna remind you that the doors are opening for enrollment on November 3rd and if you join this round, you're gonna be with me through all of 2026. So I want you to think about 2026 being the year that you solve all three of these gaps that we've addressed in this mini series. It's a full year of support to master the art of selling out your group programs again and again until it's something that is repeatable, consistent and sustainable. Something that you can rely on. I also want to make sure to invite you, if you're listening to this in real time, to my upcoming training called double your launch. What we've talked about in this miniseries is just a preview to the deeper concepts I'm going to be teach for free. In my advanced training, I'm going to show you some of the frameworks to support each of the key problems that I've shared and I'm also going to give you real examples of how real clients have applied these teachings and applied these frameworks and fixed these exact problems. I don't know that. I've mentioned on the podcast that in my upcoming training I'm also having a double your launch client panel where four clients of mine who have more than doubled their launches are going to be coming on and answering all of your questions about how they were able to do that inside of the sold out group programs Mastermind. So the workshop is happening at noon Eastern time. It's going to go until 1 o' clock Eastern Time and then from 1 to 1:30. The clients will be there and you can ask questions. I'm going to also have questions prepared for them to share with you. But it's not, you know, I don't want this to the the concepts I'm going to teach you are going to be incredibly valuable. But it's not just about teaching. I also want you to see real life examp examples across different industries. All different industries are going to be represented on my panel and I really want you to leave feeling inspired and hopeful and feeling like this is possible for you, even if you're skeptical right now. So you can head to stephcrowder.comworkshop to check out the upcoming training and to check out the Mastermind. We are open through November 12th enrolling for this next cohort. For 2026, you can go to stephcrowder.com mastermind. That's where you can apply. You can book a sales call with me where we'll spend an entire hour together mapping out your three part plan of what I would have you tackle in 2026. We can talk about these gaps that we've covered in this mini series as well as all of the other things that are on your mind. All right, my friends, I hope you've enjoyed this mini series. I hope it was super helpful for you. These three gaps are the only things, the only things that are keeping you from being consistently sold out. I will talk to you soon, and until then, I'm wishing you the courage and the clarity to go after what you love.