Struggling to sell to your audience? Here are some places you might be going wrong (Part 1)

Most business owners assume that if they're not selling enough then it must be a marketing issue and that they just need to get in front of more people. But most of the time, this isn't the case. In part one on this topic, I'm sharing two key areas that will impact how well you're able to sell—your offer suite and your sales process.

– How ensuring that your audience has a variety of different ways to work with you will increase their lifetime value to your business (but also not confuse them with too many options either!).
– Why solving the same problem with all of your different offers will limit the lifetime value of your audience.
– Why using one offer to solve all of your audience's problems can be overwhelming for you—and for them.
– The 4 key sales process mistakes that will limit your sales.

 

 
Today is part one of a two-part blog because this is going to be a long one, and would be way too overwhelming if we have it all in one read. So today I'm sharing part one of the areas you might be going wrong with selling to your audience.

When I thought about this, I thought there are really five key areas that impact how well you are able to sell to your audience, your offers suite. So the things that you actually sell as a business, your sales process, your messaging, your marketing and your mindset. But the problem is when you're struggling to make sales, most business owners assume that it's a marketing issue, that if they can just get their offers in front of more people, then they will sell more.

And most of the time, this isn't the case because you can reach thousands of people, but if your sales process isn't any good, or your offers suite isn't right, or your messaging isn't aligned, then you won't make sales. 

So in this blog, we're looking at the offer suite and the sales process areas and how you might go wrong there. And then part two next week, I'll share where you might be going wrong with your messaging, marketing, and mindset and how those might be affecting your sales. So let's kick it off. 

 

Key mistakes with your offer suite that limit your sales. 

 

Mistake #1: Your audience doesn't have enough different ways to work with you.

Different people have different budgets. They have different ways they like working together, different problems and different needs. So you need to create different offers for them. You can't really expect to pigeonhole everybody into just one way of working with you because otherwise, they will go to a competitor instead.

And sometimes this is a good thing. If you don't want to work with people one on one and they only value working with somebody in a one-on-one format, great, let them go to a competitor. But thinking about the people that you do want to work with, how else can you serve them? And what about once they have finished working with you, is there something they can keep working with you with?

Or before they are ready to sign up for your main offer, is there something they can do with you before then to set them up to be ready for that main offer, that signature offer? How can you help them over their lifetime with you as a client rather than just once?

 

Mistake #2: Your audience has too many different ways to work with you and you're letting them pick and choose Netflix-style.

I see this happen a lot with digital product creators. They'll go and create a bunch of courses or mini-courses or e-books on a whole range of different topics and then they'll wonder why they're not selling as well as they would. Now creating an entire library of offers can be pretty confusing to your potential clients, they feel a little bit overwhelmed.

Potential clients also often don't know what the solution is to their problem. They are coming to you. They're looking to you to guide them and to tell them what will solve it. And if they're not sure what the right solution is, they won't buy or they will buy the wrong solution.

 

Mistake #3: Solving the same problem in all of your different offers. 

For example, let's say that you are a website designer. You work one on one designing clients' websites. You have an online course teaching people how to DIY their website design and you sell templates for ready-made website designs. Those are all solving the exact same problem. And yes, the benefit to this is that you can help people to achieve the same outcome in different ways. They can still have that beautiful website and some people will have the budget for one-on-one and others won't.

But chances are, it's going to be a very long time before somebody comes back to you and buys from you again because if your offers are any good, then they're not going to need a new website for a little while still. And if a client comes to you to solve one problem and you have nothing to offer them after they have solved that one problem, then you're limiting that potential lifetime value from that client.

When you strategically design your offer suite, you're taking your clients on a journey. You're solving more than one problem for them and so they come back to you again and again and again because they know that you have the solution to the problems they are experiencing.

 

Mistake #4: Trying to solve all of your audience's problems in one massive offer. 

This is like the signature course that tries to solve basically everything in one offer or the signature service where you're trying to deliver everything and it's overwhelming for you.

It's probably going to take forever to create and deliver. It's overwhelming for them and they're probably not going to make it to the finish line because of this overwhelm. So it's not going to get them the results that they really want. Now, there's a really important distinction to make here between giving your ideal clients the ability to pick and choose the solutions but a better approach is solving smaller, more specific problems in each offer.

 

Mistake #5: Trying to solve too many unrelated, different problems. 

This gets really confusing for you and for your potential buyers, and you tend to end up with a lot of different ideal clients leading people to question, who is this actually for? Is this actually for me? And then they go and find somebody who is for them. And it doesn't lead to your clients coming back to you because even though you have different offers that they can work with you with, they don't have half of the problems. Half of those problems that you solve are not something they are even dealing with.

So instead, they'll then go to somebody else who does solve the problem that they have. The other problem with this is it can take your free content in too many different directions as well. 

So those are the five main ones that I noticed with offer suites that are limiting your sales. 

 

Key mistakes with your sales process that are limiting your sales. 

So once somebody is in your audience, what is the journey you are taking them on to buying from you? Because somebody doesn't just land on your Instagram page and then buy from you. That's very unlikely. Once they follow you on Instagram or they join your email list, what is the journey that they are going on? That strategic journey where you are nurturing them to buying from you and your sales process might be a live launch.

It might be an evergreen funnel. It might be a discovery call. It might be some other journey altogether. 

 

Mistake #1: Not having a sales process at all. 

And this is probably the most common one. For example, if you have an online course or an ebook on your website that is sitting in your online shop, and all you are doing to try and sell it is giving people the call to action to go and check it out.

Or if you have a services page and you're like, Oh, go and look at my services page for ways that you can work with me. That's not a sales process. There is no real bridge between where they are hearing about your course or your services, such as social media or Facebook ads or emails and the sales page. There's no bridge between that. There's no journey. 

 

Mistake #2: Not adequately bridging the magician's gap in your sales process. 

Right now your ideal client is somewhere they are at this place where they are at right now and there is a place where you need them to be, to be ready to buy your particular offer.

And this magician's gap is going to vary depending from the offer to offer, but there's going to be a whole bunch of things that they need to understand and believe about the problem your offer solves, about the solution that is in your offer.

So bridging that gap in your sales process means educating them on what they need to know about the problem they are experiencing or the solution your offer delivers. It means delivering a whole bunch of mindset shifts about how they see themselves so that they are now ready to take that action and achieve that transformation or solve that problem.

 

Mistake #3: Not having some kind of deadline for your audience or your potential buyers to make a decision.

This is not about pressuring somebody to buy but it's rather it's to overcome our natural tendency to procrastinate doing something that feels uncomfortable or different. We might say that we want to change but then when the alarm goes off at 6am, it's much more comfortable to keep doing what we've already been doing every single day and hit the snooze button, right? 

When it comes to actually changing, and doing this new desired behaviour, we will naturally put it off. We will also put off things that feel painful, like spending money.

So having a deadline isn't about this high-pressure sales tactic. It's about saying, Hey, now you get to choose. You need to make a decision. Is this what you really want or is it what you don't want? And it's okay if it's not, but the main thing that is that you are intentionally making a decision rather than just continually kicking the can down the road.

 

Mistake #4: Not giving your audience everything they need to make the right decision for their situation. 

They are naturally going to have hesitations and questions about your offer. They're thinking, will this work for me? Is this going to be relevant to my situation? And then we want to make sure, do they have an avenue to get these questions answered? Do they feel safe to ask these questions? So make sure you show your audience you are open to answering these questions. 

And then also get really clear, what are all of the things that your ideal client needs to know about your offer, about themselves, about the problem they are struggling with, about the solution your offer delivers, about the transformation that they will have at the end.

What do they need to know about all of these things to be ready to buy? And then that becomes your cart open emails, your sales page, your webinar, your social posts. Right? It's not about hype because you can have the most hype in your launch. You can be getting people really excited about your offer, but if they still have these questions, then they're not going to buy.

So we really need to preempt these hesitations and these questions as much as possible and cart open emails are a great place to answer these. 

 

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