By Johnny and Yusef
When you’re making sales calls, you should never:
- twist someone’s nipples to make a sale
- try too hard to sell to someone who is lukewarm
Here’s why.
The problem with impulse purchases
At the point of sale, if you need to:
- use lots of pain-based marketing to convince someone to buy
- drag them over the line to make a sale
That's not going to stop once they buy from you.
What it will do is bring difficult clients onto your programme.
We understand why it can be tempting to take this sales approach.
Maybe you’re not making many sales. And when you're new to online coaching, it can feel like you should settle for anyone.
Lots of people starting out struggle with a lack of:
- volume
- opportunities for sales
- leads
- enquiries
If you’re posting on social media to get those leads and sign-ups as a new online coach, sometimes you start to see diminished returns after some initial success.
Maybe you’re finding that you have to become more and more forceful with your marketing messages and sales tactics that you use.
But here’s what happens if you sell to someone when they’re in a heightened emotional state:
They’re buying from you based on excitement around the result you can help them get.
They’ve bought from you on impulse.
People who buy things on impulse end up making purchases they’ll regret later.
And you’ll end up with more clients who ask for their money back.
You end up in a situation where your clients are cancelling shortly after the point of sale.
The only way to fix this is to get more volume through the front end of your business.
Remember that the less willing someone is to buy something from you, the less willing they will be to engage with the programme.
And this will lead to you producing worse results for that person.
What ‘fitness gurus’ teach (and what’s wrong with it)
You’ll come across plenty of business mentors who tell you to use:
- pain-based marketing
- aggressive sales tactics
Why?
Maybe they don't see the ethical problem with this approach.
Or they know the price is too high… And know that being emotionally manipulative is their best bet for making a sale.
Their own testimonials might be pretty good.
But it produces problems down the line for the coach who has to deliver to clients.
Another issue is that the offer might not be a good fit for the person you’re selling to.
However good your marketing is, if the price of your service is way above the market average you'll have to use some pretty manipulative techniques to close sales.
Because if someone’s spent ten times the average price for a service, they’ve not made that decision based on logic.
It’s usually because:
- you’ve made promises you can’t keep
- you’re playing on their fear that they’ll never reach the desired outcome without your help
What can you do instead?
So, how do you grow a business if you aren’t receiving many enquiries or making many sales?
If you charge an amount of money that people are ok with paying long-term, they’re more likely to want to keep paying it.
And you can keep people coming through the front end while you grow your client numbers on the back end.
But how do you attract clients in the first place?
You need a combination of these things:
#1: Message
Have a message that stands out. If you're marketing to a specific person, your message should make them stop scrolling and want to click through.
#2: System
Your system should sell your service to a specific person. And it should do this in a specific way, using a specific mechanism or method.
#3: Product
Your product should be able to handle 30, 50, 100 or even 200 people.
#4: Advertising
If you’ve identified exactly who you’re selling to, your advertising should target the exact clients your product can help. And thousands of people who fit your niche will see your message… which should tell them exactly how you can help with with a specific problem.
You can then scale the advertising as it starts to work.
What you can do next
We’ve got a free, step-by-step guide on how you can put all of this into practice. It also allows you to take a behind-the-scenes look at our business processes and systems at Propane.
If you’d like to know more about how we work at Propane and how we might be able to help you grow your online business, you can also speak to a member of the team.