How to book way more sales calls (without feeling gross about it 💁🏼‍♀️)

Summary

Podcast Summary: Shiny New Clients! Episode: How to Book Way More Sales Calls (Without Feeling Gross About It 💁🏼‍♀️)
Host: Jenna Warriner
Release Date: November 18, 2024

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Introduction

In this episode of Shiny New Clients!, host Jenna Warriner delves into effective strategies for booking more sales calls without the discomfort often associated with traditional sales tactics. Aimed at service-based business owners—from coaches and stylists to wedding planners—Jenna provides actionable insights to help listeners fill their calendars with ideal clients using authentic and value-driven approaches.

Understanding the Sales Call Dilemma

Jenna begins by acknowledging the common struggle among service-based entrepreneurs: the internal conflict between the desire to grow their business and the aversion to aggressive sales tactics. She highlights the typical structure of sales calls, whether termed as discovery calls or free consultations, emphasizing the underlying pressure to close deals.

Quote:
"If you want to book more sales calls and if you want to enjoy those sales calls more and quite possibly close on more of them, then there's one question you need to ask yourself that chances are you may not have asked yourself yet."
— Jenna Warriner [01:26]

The Critical Question: What's in it for the Lead?

Jenna introduces a pivotal question that shifts the focus from the business owner to the potential client: "What does your lead gain from the sales call?" She stresses that understanding and prioritizing the client's benefits can transform the sales process from a transactional interaction into a mutually valuable experience.

Quote:
"What does your lead get out of being on this call with me? What can I give them? How can I make this reciprocal?"
— Jenna Warriner [07:19]

The Roadmap Approach

Illustrating her point, Jenna shares a real-life example from her Magic Marketing Machine Plus program with her client, Alyssa Beets, a sleep consultant for adults. Jenna details how positioning the sales call as a "roadmap" session can provide immediate value to the lead, making it easier to secure attendance without the stigma of a hard sell.

Quote:
"You want a hundred clients. And I would be like, yeah, let me tell you the exact strategy I would use if I was in your shoes. Why don't we jump on a call, I'm going to give you my roadmap to 100 clients."
— Jenna Warriner [05:43]

Alternative Strategies for Booking Sales Calls

Expanding beyond the roadmap tactic, Jenna discusses other creative methods to entice potential clients to book sales calls:

1. Pick My Brain Calls: Offering a Q&A format where leads can ask questions and receive free support, fostering a sense of mutual exchange.
2. Problem-Solving Workshops: Addressing a specific concern the lead has during the call, providing actionable steps and showcasing expertise.
3. Genuine Curiosity: Approaching sales conversations with sincere interest in the lead's needs, which can reduce the "ickiness" often associated with sales calls.

Quote:
"You can also be honest and truly ask questions and truly figure out what the person needs and if you can provide it to them."
— Jenna Warriner [09:00]

The Q&A Approach and Mutual Exchange

Jenna shares insights from her own sales experiences, including how being genuine and transparent about her ability to help can build trust and lead to long-term client relationships. She emphasizes that not every lead will be a perfect fit, and that's perfectly acceptable.

Quote:
"With simple mindset shifts like that, simple approach shifts like that, you can take the ickiness out of this environment, out of this conversation, because you truly are seeing if you have the answer to their needs or their wants."
— Jenna Warriner [08:00]

Takeaways and Final Advice

Jenna wraps up the episode by encouraging listeners to experiment with different approaches to booking sales calls. She highlights the importance of offering genuine value, being creative in how calls are presented, and maintaining authenticity throughout the sales process.

• Focus on Client Benefits: Always consider what the lead gains from the call.
• Be Creative: Explore various formats like roadmaps, Q&As, or problem-solving sessions.
• Maintain Authenticity: Approach each conversation with genuine curiosity and honesty.

Quote:
"It's a completely different way of looking at it for some people. I really hope this works for you. I'M excited for you to try it."
— Jenna Warriner [10:00]

Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Jenna Warriner [01:26]:
  "What does your lead gain from the sales call itself?"

• Jenna Warriner [03:36]:
  "If you close on half the sales calls you sit on, right? So if you go to 10, you usually get five clients."

• Jenna Warriner [05:43]:
  "Why don't we jump on a call, I'm going to give you my roadmap to 100 clients."

• Jenna Warriner [07:19]:
  "What can I make this reciprocal? How can I sell them on the call itself and then let the call itself sell them on my service."

• Jenna Warriner [09:00]:
  "You can also be honest and truly ask questions and truly figure out what the person needs and if you can provide it to them."

• Jenna Warriner [10:00]:
  "I really hope this works for you. I'M excited for you to try it."

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Conclusion

Jenna Warriner's insightful episode offers a refreshing take on the often daunting task of booking sales calls. By shifting the focus to the client's benefits and adopting authentic, value-driven strategies, service-based business owners can enhance their sales process, build stronger client relationships, and ultimately grow their businesses with ease and confidence.

For more resources and to connect with Alyssa Beets, Jenna provides links in the show notes, encouraging listeners to take actionable steps towards implementing these strategies in their own businesses.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to Shiny New Clients, the marketing podcast that helps you attract shiny new clients to your business. We'll talk about social media, what makes people buy, how to go viral, and marketing psychology all in 20 minutes or less. Whether you're a coach, a stylist or.

[B]

A wedding planner, if you've got a.

[A]

Service based business to sell, this is the show you need to fill your calendar. I'm Jenna Warner, your new marketing coach and this is Shiny New new clients.

[B]

Want to book more sales calls? If you have a service based business, chances are you have experienced being on the sales end of a sales call. Now, these might look different for everyone. Maybe you call it a sales call or a discovery call or a free initial consultation, but in the back of your head you know that you are talking to this lead to try and close them. You're talking to this lead to try and sell them something. And if you're like a lot of the business owners, owners that I work with, that can be a big old head game. Because on this call you are thinking about what you want out of it, right? You are thinking about, even if it's just a tiny little bit, dollar signs. But you're a good person. You don't want to look at someone and see dollar signs. You want to look at them and see a personality. You want to see a human.

[A]

And.

[B]

But then at the same time, you have a business, you have a business to run and then you need to make sales and you need to pay rent and oh my goodness, it goes and it goes and it goes. If you want to book more sales calls and if you want to enjoy those sales calls more and quite possibly close on more of them, then there's one question you need to ask yourself that chances are you may not have asked yourself yet. That question is what does your lead get out of the sales call? What does your lead gain from this experience? I don't mean what did they gain by working with you? That's not what I'm talking about. What did they gain from the actual call itself? Have you ever asked yourself that? Have you ever thought about it that way? I'm going to play a clip for you in just a second. I have permission to share it. It's taken out of my private community when I was speaking in a group setting with some of my business owner clients. So if you're unfamiliar, I have a program called Magic Marketing Machine. This is for service providers who want to get more clients from Instagram. Run your Instagram in 15 minutes a day, feel good and authentic. About the way that you sell, hone your messaging, figure out copywriting, make amazing reels, get more views, all of that good stuff. Marketing on the Instagram, that's magic marketing machine. And then I also have magic marketing machine plus, which is all of that plus support. So this is where this call is taken from. It's a magic marketing machine plus call where one of my clients, Alyssa Beets, who is a sleep consultant for adults, came in and she was wondering about how to book more sales calls. And I asked her if I could take this clip out and share it with you here on the podcast so I could really deep dive it with you and elaborate and help you get more sales calls too. Alyssa's pitch is she teaches women how to calm their busy brain so they can get seven plus hours of sleep each night and have the energy to do the things that they love. So that's a little bit of context for this next clip. Enjoy.

[A]

If you know that you close on half the sales calls you sit on. Right. So you go to 10, you usually get five clients. Great. You have a 50% conversion on your sales calls, which means if you want five clients, you need to book 10 sales calls easy. Right. So then your job doesn't become closing people from your posts. Your job doesn't become trying to convince people to buy from your content. All you need to do is get them onto sales calls because you know you can close if you're sitting across from them and they're the right candidate. Right, Right. So if we can give them a reason why they benefit from being on this call, like you said, maybe it's not a sales call, maybe it has some other benefit and they have a takeaway. Then it's way easier for you to get people on this free experience for them. And then it becomes a sales call and you close from there.

[C]

Yes. How do you do that?

[A]

Yeah. So you got options. That's why I asked, what did they get? Because you told me what you get. I understand what you get. It's very valid. But then we want to go, okay, well, what do they get? Sometimes people will use these, like a roadmap call. If you have like a. When people work with me, they go through three phases that gets them to their outcome. Then you can say, come sit with me on a sleepy time, sleepy time, eight hours a night roadmap call. And I'm going to tell you exactly how to get there. And then essentially, it's the framework of a webinar. It's the framework of like your high level framework, and everybody ends up having the same roadmap. Or you could say, come on a call, tell me your biggest sleep qualm, and I'll give you some actionable tips right there on the call to solve it. And I'll let you know what it might be like if we work together. And if I think that my system would work for you so they get a takeaway. Or it could be like a. I don't know, you offer, like a pick my brain. Just offer them something that they're going to benefit from. Because if we want anyone to do something, we need to give them a reason why. What's in it for them?

[C]

I like the first option. Can you just say that again?

[A]

Yeah. So, for instance, on my webinar that you watch to get in this program, there's a formula which is like, essentially my roadmap, right? It's only algorithm systematized. So all of this takes you less time and then produce profits. So I would say in dms, Alyssa, how many clients do you want to get this year? And you would say, how many do you want, Alyssa?

[C]

I have no clue. I'm very new to it.

[A]

Great. You want a hundred clients. And I would be like, yeah, let me tell you the exact strategy I would use if I was in your shoes. Why don't we jump on a call, I'm going to give you my roadmap to 100 clients. And we would get on. And I would say, here are the three things you need to learn how the algorithm works that would look like this. You need to use systems that would look like this. And then we need to produce profits. And then you need to book 200 sales calls at a 50% conversion rate to book a hundred clients. How does that sound? And you're. And they would be like, great, cool. There's your free roadmap. Now, do you mind if I tell you a little bit about working with me and how I can help you put that into action?

[C]

I love that. Yes.

[B]

Great.

[C]

That is super helpful.

[A]

So. And again, we all get to play with these. You can have any reason why someone's going to jump on a call with you, right? And you get to, like, experiment. And the attitude that I prefer is not hiding that it's a sales call, just you're just presenting it differently.

[B]

It's.

[A]

You're going to get something out of it. And then also, if you're open to it, I'll tell you about working with me. And then some people will go really hard on this, and they'll Say if you book before the end of this call, you save $7,000. I hate that tactic.

[B]

If you love it, you can use it.

[A]

But some sort of, like, bonus for booking sooner or some sort of accommodation or whatever can also help.

[C]

I really like that, because what I'm trying to get across to women is that it's not just menopause. Your doctor doesn't know much and that there is a solution. But I just feel like with the roadmap, it's like, let me just tell you, and then you can decide if this is the right. If you want to take those steps. And I really like that.

[A]

Great. I would say that would be a fun place for you to put some energy and try and book five people to come talk to you while you feel out your roadmap. Like, jump right into it and play. Perfect. Thank you. You're welcome.

[B]

Hi, it's me again. In that clip, Alyssa asked me to explain the roadmap option, but there are other options too, so let me tell you about them. The options that I blew by at the beginning there. Also, just so you know my current situation, I am in Amsterdam recording this episode for you from under my duvet. It's about 116 degrees down here. I'm on a trip. But I just really wanted to get this episode out to you. Anyway, that's some. That's. That's the visual for you. I'm not, like, with my cute mic in my cute office like a real fancy entrepreneur. I am under a duvet to help muffle the sound of this hotel room.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I used to do a lot of sales calls because I have a social media management agency. So I would do a sales call for every client who came through the door. And how I would approach it, which I feel like it might be very helpful to you to know, is with genuine curiosity, genuine curiosity of the business owner sitting across from me, what they'd experienced, what they needed. Because of that genuine curiosity, I would figure out if I could actually help them. Because if I went in with genuine curiosity and they told me what they needed, I would very quickly know if I could help them or if I couldn't. So with simple mindset shifts like that, simple approach shifts like that, you can take the ickiness out of this environment, out of this conversation, because you truly are seeing if you have the answer to their needs or their wants. If you're a hairstylist and someone comes to you and they want a perm, and you've never done a perm before, well, you're probably going to recommend your friend down the street who's great at perms, right? It's just not something you can facilitate. If someone comes to you and they want to balayage and you're excellent at that, then it's an easy sell quote, unquote. But you can also look at it like you can easily help them. Actually, pretty frequently. If I wasn't feeling very confident, I would tell people on sales calls that I wasn't sure if I was the one for them. One time, my husband, who had been sitting across from me, like quietly, we.

[A]

Have a shared office.

[B]

And after the sales calls, he was like, why do you keep telling people not to work with you? And funnily enough, often even if I expressed that I was unsure if I could help them, people would book with me anyway. And, you know, that's awesome because I could help them more often than not. It was just that I was a little bit lacking confidence in that situation, which I'm sure you can probably relate to that I actually told people I wasn't confident I could help them, who ended up staying with me for years. And I managed their social media for years. But I felt better in that situation telling them the complete truth. And that's how I've always approached sales conversations. So don't feel like you need to be aggressive or you need to use masculine sales tactics or be really pushy, like you can take it from me. You can also be honest and truly ask questions and truly figure out what the person needs and if you can provide it to them. Another way that you could approach sales calls, or whatever you want to call them, is a pick my brain calls. What if you offer pick my brain calls, they can ask questions and then get free support from you. So you can feel like it's a mutual exchange and then you can help them through that, illuminate what they need and where you fit into that, and you can make them an offer. What if you said to your leads, come in and you can ask me some questions and then I will give you some support and tell you how I can help you further through my paid offers. I actually just had some experiences on sales calls with some fellas in corporate settings. And I've been on a lot of sales calls with independent service providers, but I had not been on as many calls with folks who work in a corporate setting, so they don't really care if you stay or not. And how they handled it was they would give you basically 45 minutes free. You could ask all your questions they were incredible, incredibly generous. Just for context, I did this with a fancy accountant and a fancy lawyer, and they were so generous with their time, and they answered all of my questions. And then it was a very clear layup into, are we right to work together or are we not right to work together? I never felt like they were using sales tactics on me. And I know sales tactics, so I'm pretty attuned to that. Like, I. I spot them pretty quickly and often call people out on them, which I'm sure is pretty unpleasant for the people sitting across from me. But in these, it was really just a quick Q and A. Pick my brain. We had a very clear time limit. At one point, a guy said, hey, we still have four minutes. Is there anything else I can help you with? He was watching the clock. He had his boundaries around it. And then I got to choose if I felt like it was a good fit and what I did next. So a Q and A is another option. The other idea I just briefly mentioned in that conversation with Alyssa is that your leads could come to you with their biggest qualm, and you could solve that qualm and then lead into what else you can offer them. So maybe if there's one specific problem they have and you can fix that problem for them on a call, they can get a few action steps toward a solution. You can, like, workshop that with them. Then they see what you're all about, and you can offer them in that moment to come work with you further if they have other problems that need solving too. Not all of these might apply to your business, but you can be creative with these, right? You really just need to ask yourself, what does someone else get out of being on this call with me? What can I give them? How can I make this reciprocal? How can I sell them on the call itself and then let the call itself sell them on my service? If you are going to try this tactic, you're going to give it a whirl. Please come DM me on Instagram. Let's chat about it. I would love to hear what you come up with, because you really do get to be creative. You get to invent this yourself, right? You get to try new things and see what gets people talking to you. And then it's just such a relief to only have to think about getting people onto this call, where they gain from it, instead of having to try and sell people directly from your content. It's a completely different way of looking at it for some people. I really hope this works for you. I'M excited for you to try it. I'm excited for you to try new things. I will link all of Alyssa's information in the show notes in case you're looking for a sleep coach right now. Thank you so much, Alyssa, for letting me share this moment from our private call in Magic marketing machine. And with that, I'll see you in the next one.