Sell Better: Part 1, Make Your Offer Clear.
Be Brilliant In Your Business Podcast, Episode 83
The way to make clear offers is to think the way your client thinks.
Today I am kicking off a two-part series. This week and next week we are going to talk about selling, how to sell better, and more specifically why people are not buying from you now. These are very important things to get in mind and help you to be better at selling.
Because the better we become at selling, the easier it is to make money. And there are two reasons that your offer isn’t selling right now.
What you’re selling isn’t crystal clear.
It’s not compelling them to take action now.
This week, we’re digging into the first reason: clarity. Make sure to join us next week for part two when we talk about creating compelling offers.
In This Episode:
[01:06] We are going to talk about selling, how to sell better, and more specifically why people are not buying from you now.
[01:46] There are two reasons that people are not buying from you now.
[02:02] Every problem and opportunity in your business always comes down to your thoughts! Except for when you are designing your offer.
[02:48] When creating an offer it is not about you. It is always about your client’s thoughts. You really want to get into the mind of your client.
[03:04] The two reasons your clients are not buying from you now are you offer is not clear enough and/or it is not compelling to them. Today we are going to talk about the first reason, the clarity of your offer.
[03:33] To clarify: Your offer is the thing that you’re selling to the client.
[04:36] You want your client to have the thought, “I need this!” That is the only thought that will result in them scheduling a call with you, or buying what you are selling.
[05:19] Our brains are primed to say no to anything that is new. An unclear offer is an automatic no.
[08:01] Direct and specific language is always better in your offers. You won’t sound aggressive, I promise.
[11:52] Don’t overcomplicate your offer. What is your client’s problem? What’s the simplest way you could help them solve it?
[13:08] Every moment that your client is waiting because they “aren’t sure” if this is for them, they are losing time and missing the opportunity of having what they really want.
[13:45] Most business owners start with the most complex offer. They add all the bells and whistles to make it sound more valuable. Do the opposite. Start with the simplest solution, then consider if they need extra stuff.
[13:59] Finally, you need to actually make offers. A lot of people assume they are selling when they’re not. They expect people to know how to buy from them just because they show up on social media every day, or just because they went to a networking event. But none of that is selling.
The more you can get out of your head and into your client’s head the clearer your offers will become.
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Transcript
You are listening to Be Brilliant in your Business, the podcast for busy business owners to take charge of your time and energy to create meaning and momentum in your life. I'm your host, Linsi Brownson, certified coach and seasoned entrepreneur, and I know what it takes to run a thriving small business that works for your life. Join me for an honest look into the minds of small business owners as I share with you stories, coaching and solutions to the biggest problems that keep people from realizing their dreams. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to welcome new listeners. I'm so glad you're here. And I look forward to being part of your brilliant business. Be sure to hit the subscribe button because we've got new episodes for you each week.
Are you ready? Let's go.
Hey, hey Mavericks. Welcome to the show. Today, I'm kicking off a two part series. We are going to talk about selling, and how to sell better. And more specifically, why people aren't buying from you now.
These are very important things for you to know and keep in mind to make you better at sales. Because that's what we all want, right?
We want to be better at sales so that making money is easier. It's the biggest part of running a business. How do you make money? How often do you make it? How hard is it to make, we want to make it easy.
So here's the thing, there's two reasons that people are not buying from you. I'm going to tell you both of them right now, just a moment. And we're going to cover the first one today, we're going to dig into that deeper.
So here's what I want you to know, before we dig into that. Everything in your business, every problem and every opportunity in your business always comes down to your thoughts, except for when you are designing your offer.
When it comes to creating an amazing offer, your thoughts are not relevant. Now, this doesn't mean that you shouldn't understand your thoughts about making offers and about the offer itself. Because your thoughts are going to determine your actions. Mainly, your thoughts are going to determine whether you're making offers or making excuses.
But beyond that, actually creating the offer that you're going to sell. It's not about you, it's not about your thoughts. It is always about your clients thoughts. So this is where we want to really start to get into the mind of your client.
So the two things, the two reasons that your clients are not buying from you now are that 1) Your offer is not clear enough, and/or 2) Your offer is not compelling to them.
So today, we're going to dig into the clarity around your offer. And then next week, make sure you tune in for that too. We're going to talk about creating compelling offers. And when your offer is not compelling enough, why that's happening.
So let's make sure that we're on the same page about what an offer is. The offer is the thing that you're selling to the client. It doesn't necessarily mean a paid thing. In fact, most of the time as service providers, what we are selling initially is a free call, or a consultation, or discovery call, whatever you call that, right?
This is what your client needs to buy first, in order for you to get started with them. So the offer is simply the thing that turns them from looking into taking action. And when your client sees your offer, receives your offer, they're going to have thoughts about it.
And what I want you to consider when you're designing your offer is that the only thought that works for them is the thought “I need this,” or “I need this immediately!” I always think about this with food (of course) and I'm like “that needs to be in my mouth immediately!” I get very dramatic about it.
So you want your client to be having the thought “I need this” because it's the only thought that is going to result in them scheduling a call with you, or buying what you're selling. Any other thought is going to result in them taking no action or taking a different action.
Even the thoughts that I would call the maybe thoughts like “Oh, that's interesting,” or “what a cool idea.” They seem like they're sort of leaning in the right direction, those actually don't result in them taking action. They don't result in them saying yes, because what happens is that we make decisions in a split second. And our brains are primed to say no, over and over and over again to anything that's new, up until the pain is so high. And the solution is so clear that we can't help but make a different decision. This is just how we are wired. This is our selling uphill battle. It's fine. We just work with it. Right?
So when we have a thought in the moment, like, Oh, that's a cool idea. We have this idea that we will flag it and come back to it later. But if we don't take action forward in that moment, the chances of us changing our mind from the know that we're deciding now to a yes, later on, are diminishing. minute by minute, it's so easy, people get distracted, they move on, they come up with lots of reasons that it's not what they need right now, right? There's a million reasons to say no, there's only one reason to say yes.
So this is why it's so important to have a crystal clear offer where the person either in that moment says, This is what I need, or this is not what I need, and they get to move on, you help people make that distinction and make that decision in the moment. So one way that you might be making your offer less than clear is with the language that you're using. So using clever or cute marketing speak, things like Portman toes, where you're putting two words together to make it one word, I love using that in conversation or just for fun. But marketing speak is okay for marketing. It's not good for selling. And also when you use fluffy language, or very generalized terms, that don't mean anything to anyone. It's not words that your clients say, and it's not thoughts that they think.
So for example, if you're talking about, oh, I help people thrive with money, or I'll help you get your power back. Or I'll help you find freedom with food or live a more authentic life. All of those things are very broad, they're very vague, and they don't actually tell you what results you're going to get. Or what it means for your life to even have it right. So if you did thrive with money, for example, what would that actually look like? What are you helping people do? Why do they want it? What result that they create? And what would it mean, in their lives, you've got to get really direct and really specific when you're making offers so that people understand what is this actually going to do with selling language or with the language that you want to use in your offers?
Direct is always better, you want to err on the side of obvious, which is so interesting, because it's really counter to everything that we hear about marketing, marketing is all about painting these big pictures and selling people, the moon and getting them interested in any way possible. And that I think is where the biggest disconnect is beat for business owners, between marketing and selling. Because we just don't understand that these are not the same thing. Right. So the confusion here is really understandable. Because everybody seems to think that they're selling all the time, when actually what they're doing is just marketing.
In marketing, you're just trying to get people's attention. This makes me think of like, if you've ever been to a county fair, and there's the convention center, or the swap meet, or whatever it is that happens inside. But if you remember all the way back to those county fairs, where we used to complain about being around strangers, and being in big crowds of people not having any idea that someday would all be taken away, we'd actually kind of miss it. But anyway, you would walk through this marketplace in the fare, and everybody's yelling at you from their stance from their booths just trying to get you to look their way so that they can then entice you to come a little bit closer and they can show you their demonstration and they can tell you why you need to buy this and why this will change your life. Right.
So marketing tactics are just to get your attention. They're just going to be weird outlandish, sometimes offensive ways to To get you to change from looking forward, moving ahead to actually paying attention to them for a moment. But as soon as you do that, as soon as they as they've hooked you, and this little way, they have a split second, to get really specific and tell you exactly what to do next, they're like, Hey, come here, right, they're gonna bring you a little bit closer, so that they can then move into their pitch and sell you on whatever it is that you definitely need to have, right.
So whatever it is that you're doing for marketing, what you're doing to get eyes on you. And hopefully, if you're doing this in a genuine way, you are talking to the right people, you're talking about things that they actually care about and are interested in, you're listening to them and getting feedback from how people respond and how they engage with you to help you shape both your marketing and the offers that you're making. But you've got to understand that they're two different things. So you're not selling just because you're marketing and you're selling needs to be very clear and very direct.
So the next reason that your offer may not be clear enough is because you're over complicating it, you're offering too many things too many value adds too many bonuses, you're trying to solve too many problems at the same time. And the reason we do this is because we often mistake value with stuff. We think that the way to add value is to add more stuff to our offer. And I have a great client example of this in next week's episode about compelling offers. So stay tuned for that. But when it comes to having clarity around your offer, I want you to think about your clients problem, what they're willing to pay to have you help them solve. And what would be your simplest way to do that the easiest possible fastest possible way that you could solve this problem for them.
Now, I want you to consider that everything you add to your offer over and above that simple way, is just going to make it harder for them. It's going to make it harder for them to make a decision in the first place because over complicating your offer, adding all these extra things. Now they have to think now they have to start doing math in their head and deciding like, Oh, do I really have the time to spend on this. If we're going to cover this and this and that thing over there. That sounds really hard. That sounds like a lot of work.
All the stuff that you would have to overcome those objections probably anyway, you're now giving it to them on a silver platter giving them 10 extra reasons to not make a decision and to not take action, right, it means that it makes it harder for them to get started. Which means that they continue to get farther away from the result that they want. Every moment that your client is waiting, because they can't figure out if this is the right thing for them. Or they can't decide if they are ready to do this. Every moment that that happens. They are losing time. They're losing the opportunity of having what they really want. Why on earth? Would you do that to your client, when you know that you can help them with it.
So I'm not saying that you won't give extra stuff or that you have to do this the simplest way only, but I want you to really think about what it means to add in that extra stuff. Is it really giving them a better outcome? Or is it just making it more confusing and harder for them to buy from you. And the last reason that your offer may not be clear enough is because you're not actually making any offers. Right? You're not selling anything. This is by far the most common problem for small business owners. So again, it's because we have this idea that marketing is the same as selling, and we're thinking, Okay, well I mark it all the time. I'm on social media every day. People know what I'm all about. They know what I do, they'll just show up when they're ready, right? Which is not the same thing as actually telling someone, I can help you with this specific problem that you're having. Do you want my help? Right?
I see this a lot with networking, or coffee dates, or casual business encounters, where you go and meet up with somebody, and maybe you kind of generally talk about what it is that you do and again, you expect people to get it and sometimes people do Get it. But really think about this. If you meet someone at an event, and then you go out on a casual networking coffee date, and if they're not a potential client for you, what you're hoping to do is make an impression on them so that they can refer you to someone else. But unless in that moment, as you're talking about these general things that you do, right, because you're trying not to be salesy, you're trying to casually drop in that you happen to do these things. If you don't have someone in mind at that moment that they think you could help, and then you take that conversation further right, then they're going to walk away with this very vague, very general sense of what you might be all about. And if you don't continue to foster that relationship, y'all are both going to forget about each other. And then when the time comes, that somebody in their circle actually does have a problem, it's not a great chance that they're really going to think of you and feel confident and referring you to this person that they know. And, in order for that to work truly, is for you to give them a specific problem that you solve and say, if you ever come across this person who has this problem, and is in this phase of their life, right? I'm the person that you want to call and you want to really get their buy in on that and make sure that they are clear on it. And that they get to ask you the questions so that they've got the information to actually send you out to someone in the future, right?
If you don't do it in that moment. If your offer to them as a referral option is not clear in that moment. They're just never going to connect those dots later on. They'll never think about it. Or I shouldn't say never, it's not very common that this happens. Sometimes it does. I've gotten referrals from someone that I met a year ago. And who even knows what I told them at that point, right? I wasn't clear on my offer back then. And it's somehow come back to me, right. So it's not a can't happen. But that's not the position that you want to be in. If you're going to spend your time and energy going on networking dates, or having casual business encounters, you want to at least have a clear position on what you're all about and what it is that you could offer to them, or a potential referral that they would send to you. So that's if you are networking for referrals. If this person you're meeting is a potential client, and they're spilling their guts to you about the problem that they have, and you don't tell them that you can help them because you're afraid of sounding salesy, then they don't get their problem solved. Same thing, or you are shoulder to cry on. And then you inspire them to go and find someone who's actually willing to help them solve their problem and to make the offer for them. Meanwhile, you become their new friend, right?
But real friends don't stand by and let their friends suffer when they are the expert at solving their friends problems. Right. Okay, so the theme of today is making clear offers. And the way that you make clear offers is to think the way that your client thinks, what does this person need to know, in order for them to have the thought, I need this right now and need this immediately, say it dramatically in your head like I do. And the more that you can get out of your own head and into their head, the clearer your offers will become.
This is challenging to do for yourself. I don't think any of us can ever fully get outside of our own heads. Right? Which is why it's so helpful to be able to get a true outside perspective. So do this work for yourself. Take it as far as you can, right. But then, especially in this area of positioning and selling ourselves. It's just so challenging to understand to see what other people see, because you're just too close to it. Right?
So last week, I invited you to come and work with me for a limited time in a special two part coaching session where we are going to dial in your offer and your marketing so that you're selling what you want to who you want, you know exactly what to do to make money through the holidays, maybe take some time off and hit the ground running and 2021 without the doubt without the confusion without the wait and see what's going to happen in the world. Lots of business owners are going to be starting 2021 that way, I don't want that for you. What I'm actually going to do is look at all the things that are going on in your business that impact this that impact the office. That you're making and the marketing that you've got. And we're going to do what I call a business audit. So I'm actually going to tell you, from a business consultant perspective and your potential clients perspective, what is compelling about your offer, what makes sense, what is not clear what is not compelling, we're gonna look at all of it and be really, really honest, because it's so important to me that you have this dialed in, it makes your business so much easier.
If this is what you need. You've got to jump on the bandwagon right now, this is a limited time offer. So if you're listening to this in real time, go and sign up at linsibrownson.com/gameplan. And if you're listening to this later on, sorry, Charlie. I'm sure I'll have something else up my sleeve at that point, but you're going to miss out on this particular offer.
So if you're hearing this, and you want help getting this set up, sign up at linsibrownson.com/gameplan. All right, you guys, I will see you next week for part two of the sell better series. We're going to talk about creating compelling offers. Talk to you soon.