The Sales Opportunities You’re Missing Out On

Almost every time I’m working with a client, I come across a blindspot and at least one area for improvement when it comes to how they’re generating income. Whether it’s a missing link in their tech stack, or they’re simply not effectively communicating the solutions they offer, either way, they’re leaving cash on the table. When you’re working hard on your marketing strategy, building up an audience and creating that like, know, trust factor, the last thing you want is to be doing all that hard work, only to be missing out on conversions and sales.

While you’re working actively on your marketing and creating awareness to guide people through your pipeline, in the background, you want to ensure you have a seamless sales experience built out that is optimised and always passively working for you.

Most of us have busy schedules, so I recommend every quarter blocking out a day specifically to go through your sales funnels, your social media, email marketing, everything you name it, to see where there are potential gaps and opportunities for more money to be made.

I wanted to share some low hanging fruit opportunities, of how you can bump up sales, and also areas that can be reviewed and refined to ensure they’re optimised to bringing in more cash.

YOU DON’T UPSELL

Regardless of what you offer in your product suite, you always want to include an upsell as soon someone is making a purchase. As an example, if someone goes to purchase a digital product or service, you want to offer an add on, like a one a one call or a worksheet or template that is available at a special price, should they add it to cart with their original purchase. For instance, if you’re selling a pilates membership, you could offer a one on one consult or pre-recorded pilates basics masterclass as an add-on to the membership they’re about to join.

The upsell essentially looks like a customer going to make a purchase, and upon checking out, a pop up prompts them to a limited time offer to accompany their purchase. The objective is to increase the value of each purchase order.

The strategy behind this is capturing them right at that moment when they are ready to purchase so they are more likely to add a low-cost upsell. With this approach, you also want to ensure that the upsell is low-tier, typically less than $100 so you remove any purchasing friction. It should also be an upsell that directly correlates to the original purchase, something that compliments and is a valuable add-on.

YOU DON’T DOWNSELL

Upsells are perfect as an add-on when someone is truly ready for your offer. But what about when they’re not? When their budget doesn’t quite stretch that far or they’re on the fence on whether they want to work with you? This is where the down sell comes in. This strategy is often used when you’re selling a more high ticket offer through a DM or a sales call, instead of simply closing the conversation there, you want to offer them a downgrade option

As an example, you may offer a signature 3 month container to work with you one on one. After having a sales call, either you or the client may realise this isn’t quite the right stage for them yet, so offering the more affordable group coaching program would be a great option. It meets them right where they are now, they still get a similar experience and a taste of the results they can expect from working with you, while offering getting this at a lower price point.

The objective with down selling is to get them in your sales pipeline, so it’s important to have a product suite that caters for the different stages your audience may be at. Once you have wowed them there with the downsell, they can always ascend to the next tier when they are ready and have gained further like and trust from what you.

YOU SIMPLY DON’T SELL ENOUGH

It’s not uncommon to feel uncomfortable with selling or to be conscious of being too pushy and salesy and turning people off. There is also such a thing as not selling enough. Some people are complete naturals when it comes to plugging themselves and their services, but for others, it can feel like a real challenge. The art of selling comes down to practice, so the more you practice selling, not only will you refine and improve your strategy but it will also become second nature to openly talk in a conversational way about what you offer.

Take inventory of your content platforms, how often are you promoting what you offer?

It’s important to keep in mind people need repetition. For you and your business to be front of mind and to develop trust with you, they need to be used to seeing you multiple times, because this repetition and consistency leads to trust.

Get comfortable with sharing what you offer several times per week.

Dont just limit this to social media, think about conversations you have where you’re meeting new people, do you mention how you work? Are you able to organically self promote? You can absolutely do this in a way thats casual and conversational, while still informing people about what you do. You just never know who could be your next customer.

You can also get really creative in the way in which you sell, sharing testimonials and a link to sign up to a free consult, can feel less like a direct sale but is still promoting what you do. A free trial to your membership, although it isn’t a sale, and isn’t specifically selling the membership, is still getting them through the top of your sales funnel.

There are also seasons to selling, maybe you have a particular waitlist available or a new service has launched, of course these are the times where you can share daily and where people are accustomed to that cadence in sales posts. With the caveat that once over, the pace will slow down and be peppered through out other content.

And also a final note when sharing sales on socials. Social media is fast moving, due to algorithms we know people aren’t seeing everything, but also they don’t retain everything, remember this when you feel like you’re being too salesly.

YOUR TECH STACK ISN’T OPTIMISED

You would be surprised the amount of times either a tech stack isn’t fully optimised or one of the elements in the sequence stops working. Going through your process as a customer to test everything works out as it should, is a non-negotiable. Better yet, have someone go through the process themselves (without you readily nearby) and have them provide feedback. Was there anything they weren’t sure of or didn’t understand? Did a particular link not work? You can also one up this, and get them to record it via loom.com, so you can visually see how they go through everything on their screen and isolate potential blindspots. This is incredibly valuable in flagging any challenges in the purchasing funnel that you may not have thought of.

I also mentioned going through everything in the intro on a quarterly basis, because although tech is super helpful in automating processes, it isn’t perfect and elements can stop working. You can update one minor link, which has a ripple effect and can end up affecting other moving parts later down the pipeline.

On this note, I always recommend the sales process being as minimal steps as possible. You want to minimise the friction in inputting their payment details so keeping as little pages and clicks as possible when this is being built out is essential.

YOU’RE NOT CLEAR ON THE SOLUTION YOU PROVIDE & WHY YOU DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY

When people first come into contact with you, you need to communicate very quickly in the first minute or so, what you do, how you do it differently and the solutions you provide.

I want to give you an example, I’ve come across luxury coaches in the past, who are charging sizeable amounts to work with them, yet when I land on their website and the experience is anything but. The results and value are unclear, the website is clunky, I’m not entirely sure what they do different that is different, and neither their imagery or or copy speaks premium.

Tap into emotional psychology and get clear on how you want your audience to feel and how they would feel after working with you.

Jot down a 3-5 keywords that represent what you offer and going through your marketing collateral to see if it matches, if it doesn’t you can tweak it to align better. This looks like using descriptive emotive words like: community, bold, vivacious, direct, connection, etc. and then going through your content to cross reference that these are the emotions and impression your content generates.

In terms of your solution, the takeaways someone gets from working with you, is the transformation you offer clear?

As a visual person, I often like to think of this as Venn diagram, which can also be used to represent what you offer. Below shows you an example of how this can be used.

Some prompts that can help you to clarify the solutions you offer:

• Where is someone before working with you? What are their current struggles?

• What would the transformation feel like after working with you?

• What is different or unique about your process?

In a day and age where people are people are time poor and you only have a a small window to capture interest, you want to remove any confusion on what is that offer and why you do it differently. The internet has made almost everyone accessible so communicating your key point of difference is crucial.

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