Promote Yourself to CEO | Small Business Strategy for Women Entrepreneurs
If you're fed up with the non-stop solopreneur grind… I'm so glad you've found The Promote Yourself to CEO Show!
Each week, join host Racheal Cook MBA for candid conversations about stepping into your role as CEO of your business, the hard lessons learned along the way, and practical, profitable strategies to grow a sustainable business without the hustle and burnout.
Listen in to the latest show and connect with Racheal at http://www.theceocollective.com or on Instagram @racheal.cook to continue the conversation!
Promote Yourself to CEO | Small Business Strategy for Women Entrepreneurs
Why Your Old Sales Strategy Might Not Be Working
We’ve just seen a golden age for people wanting to start their own small business. The 10 to 15 year period from the 2008 recession to COVID-19 was a bull market that saw improved and more affordable technology available for small business owners. As a result, small businesses exploded into existence, particularly for women entrepreneurs.
But the economy is cyclical, and there comes a time when the bull market slows down. In the last few years, we’ve seen that lots of businesses had to adapt or get shut down during the pandemic lockdowns. We’re watching inflation cause expenses to skyrocket. And your customers and clients are feeling the impact.
The economy is uncertain right now, and perhaps your sales are slowing down as a result. People might be telling you that they need a little more time to budget for your signature offer, or they’re less willing to commit to a long-term program and higher dollar amounts. So your sales process will have to change.
Today kicks off a new series all about how the sales process is changing. In this episode of Promote Yourself to CEO, you’ll learn about what to do if your sales strategy is no longer producing the results you want right now. I’ll teach you how to prevent your business from slowing down so much that it threatens to shut down.
On this episode of Promote Yourself to CEO:
9:11 - There’s been a big change in B2B vs. consumer-facing sales strategies over the last few years. What is it?
13:29 - Adding in a personal touch somewhere to your sales process will improve your overall results. I reveal how I do it.
17:14 - Here’s another high-touch tactic I do that you can add to your marketing.
19:45 - People want to know who they’re giving money to, so are you making your company’s values explicitly clear?
27:40 - How can you make your business relevant to clients and customers right now? It’s all about meeting them where they are.
34:48 - One last thing to think about that will help you so much as a small business owner.
Mentioned in Why Your Old Sales Strategy Might Not Be Working
Imagine you're walking into my office, settling down for a small mastermind day of six other women entrepreneurs. You grab your cup of coffee, settle in on the big pink sofa, or the squishy chairs, and the first question on your mind for your hot seat is, “Racheal, why is it that the launch I ran in the fall and was our best launch ever, produced zero clients when we ran it again at the beginning of the year?”
Oh my gosh, y'all, this was a major topic of conversation during my most recent mastermind day and CEO Retreat I was hosting for my clients because small businesses are the first ones to feel the impact of an uncertain or slowing down economy. What worked even just a few months ago might not work right now. Let's talk about it today, how to make sure that you continue making sales even when things are changing all around you.
Are you ready to grow from stressed-out solopreneur to competent CEO? You're in the right place. I'm your host, Racheal Cook, and I've spent more than 15 years helping women entrepreneurs sustainably scale their businesses. If you're serious about building a sustainable business, it's time to put the strategy, systems, and support in place to make it happen. Join me each week for candid conversations about stepping into your role as CEO, the hard lessons learned along the way, and practical profitable strategies to grow a sustainable business without the hustle and burnout.
Hey there, CEOs. I'm really feeling passionate about this series all about how sales is changing right now, as of the time I'm recording this, and what you need to think about if you're going to navigate the next few months or years in your business. Because whenever there is a recession, a downturn in the economy, this is where it really becomes make-it or break-it. This is the time when a lot of people are going to close down their businesses, they're going to opt-out, they're going to say, “Things are changing too hard, too fast. I can't keep up with it.”
There's also a massive opportunity for people to step in, people who are paying attention to what is happening, and they are very resilient, very quickly able to adapt and adjust to the current climate. I want you to be the one who's adapting and adjusting. I want you to be the one who's living through this. Honestly, when I look over the history of what has been happening in my own business, I've been in business now for 15 years, I started my business in 2008 during the last recession and those years were really challenging in a lot of ways, but also it was a massive opportunity.
It was a massive opportunity because that period where I was starting my business, 2008 to 2010 was a period where a lot of things were shifting, suddenly, things that people could not have dreamed of being available for small business owners were available for small business owners. Technology was getting faster and better. The tools were getting easier to use and less expensive. The barrier to entry for a small business in the last 15 years has dropped dramatically.
You have to remember it used to take people tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars to start a small business in decades past. But suddenly, in 15 years, we've seen that pretty much anybody can go out there and start a business with very little startup or seed capital. It could literally just be finding something you can do for people and raising your hand and saying, “Hey, I can do this for you,” and start getting paid almost immediately. It has been a wild ride to see this.
But what has happened more recently is from 2010 to about 2020, and I mean pre-March 2020, we had a solid 10-year bull market where things were just growing. The economy was good, the economy was booming. Technology was just transforming the way that business is done and transforming the way that small businesses could operate. Tools that used to only be available in enterprise like big, big business tools now were suddenly becoming available for small solopreneurs, micro business owners, owner-operated businesses, businesses with small teams.
Just to give you an idea of what I mean, now everybody knows how to use a platform like Zoom. But when I was getting started, GoTo Meeting was only available for corporate and it was hundreds and hundreds of dollars to get access to it. I pay $15 a month for Zoom. The barrier to entry for small business has dropped dramatically. The tools that we have have made it easier for us to get more accomplished and get more visible in the world, and social media has grown right alongside this. We have seen so many amazing changes.
This has been like a golden age for people wanting to get into small business, people wanting to start their own thing, take their experience and expertise, and have the ability to go out and get clients really easily without it being limited to just who happens to live in their town. That has been a game-changer. It has been an explosion in small business and an explosion in women entrepreneurs.
But the last few years, we have been in uncertain times. We have been in uncertain times four years now. Honestly, there's been this exhausting cycle of the pandemic and then the government stepping in and helping a lot of small businesses, the SBA stepping in and making loans available. Then, all of this has been a great way to keep things going but there's only so long they can keep things going at the rate that they were trying to. Now here we are. Expenses are going up. Inflation is rising. People are really impacted by the economy right now.
The economy is starting to slow and going from 2008 the beginning of the last recession to 2023, that's 15 years. That is a long time between these down markets. If you follow the economy at all, you know that this is a cycle. This is just part of what happens. It's not going to be something that should scare you. This is just a natural part of honestly, the capitalist system.
There's going to be bull markets where things are growing, where there's a lot of money flowing in the economy, and then there's going to be bear markets where things are slowing down, things are adjusting, and there are so many different factors that go into it that I'm not doing an economics class today.
But how does it impact us right now is if you were in business for yourself between 2010 and 2020 and things were growing really quickly, you are now seeing that sales are slowing down, more than likely, you're seeing sales are slowing down, more than likely, you're having sales calls where people are really wanting to work with you but they're saying, “Well, I've got to wait a little bit longer or I need to budget for it right now.”
You might even see people who are hesitant to sign on for longer-term programs, especially if you are a coach or a consultant, if you had something where people are going to work with you for 6 months, 12 months, you might be seeing fewer people wanting to commit for long periods of time and higher dollar amounts, what do we do?
What do we do right now when the first instinct of the general public when the economy gets a little uncertain, when there's so much in the news going on, the first thing the public is going to do is slow down their spending? They're going to slow down their discretionary spending, which impacts small businesses tremendously.
That means if you work with small businesses and entrepreneurs, you're going to see that impact too. Because if the general public is slowing down their spending, and you're working with the small businesses that are serving them, you're the next hit. This is all connected, these things are all connected and you have to be aware of what's going on in order to know how to adapt and adjust accordingly.
If you feel frustrated right now that your sales processes aren't working, maybe you've been launching your products, programs, and services in one way and you're not seeing them work anymore, maybe you had evergreen sales systems in place and you're just not seeing them work anymore, maybe you have higher ticket services and offers and you're seeing people are slowing down how quickly they'll buy them, then let's talk about what you might need to think about right now in order to continue bringing sales in the door.
We talked about the economy is different. We talked about people are generally getting a little tighter on their wallets right now. The other thing that is happening right now that I think we have to be aware of is a lot of the strategies that worked very well, especially in I would say the last probably five years, there has been this huge push towards automation, towards evergreen sales strategies, basically making a process that your potential client can go through without having to interact with you at all.
This is a major thing we need to think about. Because while all of these automated sales processes and leveraged marketing strategies have been an amazing way to just rapidly expand your reach, rapidly serve more people, we are seeing that the pendulum is swinging, the pendulum is swinging because people are more discerning now than ever before. They're taking longer to make their decisions.
They're more familiar with how these sales strategies work, especially if you're working with small businesses and entrepreneurs like I am, they've seen webinars, they've seen the evergreen funnels, they've seen the launches, they've seen all those strategies, so you have to be thinking about what are you really doing that's different that is helping people understand why you are the person they should come work with.
If you aren't working with businesses or entrepreneurs, you're working with the general public, you're just working with regular people, they may have already started to see these more high-tech, more leveraged, more automated practices that they may not have. This is where there's a huge difference between if you're a consumer-facing business versus a B2B business. The consumer-facing businesses, we are seeing right now people are more comfortable with technology than ever before, especially in the last few years they've had to be.
It's so interesting that five years ago, one of the biggest challenges for consumer-facing businesses for a lot of my clients who are working with the public, they were like, “We're trying to run this group coaching program and people aren't comfortable logging into our Zoom or people aren't used to learning online,” that game has changed. People are used to it now. Everybody has signed up for something online, especially in 2020. They all learned what Zoom is. Now Zoom is a verb, people know what that means.
On the consumer-facing side, we are seeing a more technologically comfortable client, but now that they've become more technologically comfortable, they're also just getting bombarded by so many offers from so many different people. You're going to have to stand out if you are in a very saturated market, if you're one of a lot of people doing a similar type of work. What comes to mind first is I have a lot of people who are in the health and wellness space who work with me, who are nutritionists, health coaches, or functional doctors, and there are a lot of people out there who are looking for that kind of support.
But as they become more comfortable with technology, they're signing up for a lot of email lists, they're signing up for a lot of free things, how are you going to stand out and have people actually want to work with you? Same with B2B. Everybody has seen the online launch cycle, everybody has seen webinars, challenges, and video series. Everybody's seen it. People are more familiar with these strategies so they're no longer impressed by them. Now the pendulum is swinging back to connection. It's going from high-tech to high-touch.
It doesn't mean that you need to leave those strategies but it does mean you need to layer in high-touch. This is one of the hugest things I'm seeing right now. Now this has been a part of my sales strategy for a very long time. But I want to give you some high-touch things that you can layer into your sales process. We still want to use the tools and technology that make it seamless that help people navigate our sales process as much as possible.
If you happen to be a service provider, you want to have a process where people can go to your website, book a consultation, or book a session for more information, book a session to learn more about your process. From the time that they book until they have that call until the follow up where you're delivering the proposal or inviting them to take the next step, you can use a lot of tools and technology to make that easier. You can use a scheduling tool, you can use automated emails, you can send them video content or other types of content to help them along that buying process.
The fact that they're talking with you automatically layers in the high-touch piece but for a lot of people, having these sales calls has been something they've been shying away from because of the high-tech, because of the high automation. I'm going to encourage everyone to start getting back on calls with people. I think this is one of the biggest things that surprises people when they come to chat with us about The CEO Collective is I'm the one that takes the calls.
I can't tell you how many times they book a call to chat with me about The Collective at this point, they've already gone through an application process, so we know about their business, we think that we can support them, and this is really just a chance for them to get a few more questions answered and make sure this is a perfect next step, and when they see me on the other side of the camera, they're always like, “Oh, I didn't think it was going to be you. I thought it was going to be someone on your team.”
This is something that a lot of us can do. Honestly, I think this is where we are going to see a massive difference in sales is you providing that personal touch. Because yes, you can have canned responses, yes, you can have a support team, yes, you can hire a sales team, but if you add in a personal touch somewhere in the sales process, it is going to improve your overall results because you are likely the person that they connected with along the front end of their journey when they're out there getting into your content, finding your podcast, reading your blog post, or being on your newsletter like they've been connecting with you. You want to think about how you can continue to be part of that connective tissue as you're going through the sales process.
We do this through making calls available. Now not everybody jumps on a call, some people join our program without ever talking to me, but I make it a part of our sales process. Once our application is approved, the next step is we send them a few emails inviting them to get all the details about the program. They can either hit reply and email us directly their questions or they can jump on a call with me. They have a window where they can join us and we make sure they know we are here to answer their questions.
Often even when they hit reply to ask questions, one of my favorite things to do is to actually make a Loom video. If you don't use Loom, it's one of my favorite extensions. You can quickly record a video reply back so people know it's me. They know it's me giving them a personal response. I think that goes such a long way. Bringing some personalization back into your sales process I think is going to help you tremendously, tremendously.
I want to move up in the sales process here. That's answering questions, doing sales calls. This needs to move further into your marketing as well. A couple of other more high-touch things I've been doing in my marketing that I think anyone, like steal a strategy, please, absolutely, one thing I love doing is getting in the DMs with people. This is something that I feel like, again, the automation has gone a little bit too far. Everybody has a social media manager so no one knows if it’s actually you or not in your DMs.
If someone starts a conversation with me or they tag me, I'm always asking y'all to take a screenshot of the podcast, tag me, and share your insights and ahas, I have so many conversations starting in my DMs and about once a day, I'll go through them and I'll message back. One of my favorite ways to message back is to do a quick voice memo back in the Instagram DMs or the Facebook DMs because then they know it's me, it's not my team or my assistant who does our social media.
They help me with so much in making sure that social media is happening but then I can go in and add this layer of personalization, this layer of personal touch. It's amazing. It's amazing what happens when people realize that I'm actually here to connect with them, to learn about them, and to learn about their business.
Think about how you can add more of those touchpoints in. It could be in the DMs, it could be having an actual conversation with people. It could be I've had sales processes recently, I'm very much paying attention to how people interact with my business.
If you are on my email list and I see that you have clicked through everything, if you have clicked through all the things and you're going through an email series that we have, and I see that you checked out a sales page, you're probably going to get an email from me inviting you to come book a call. Some of this is automation. I have an automation in place where if someone clicks the sales page, a few hours later, they might get an email inviting them to book a call. We call it our little bird email.
If you're in The Collective, you know exactly which one we're talking about. But the fact that I'm, again, providing another high-touch point makes such a huge difference. I want you to be thinking about how are you going to add in more high-touch elements to your sales process. That is going to be a game changer for so many small businesses.
Another thing I want to talk about when it comes to sales, especially right now, is people are very much paying attention to who they're investing their money with. Again, they're more discerning than ever before. People are voting with our dollars which means people want to work with businesses that align with their values. People want to work with small businesses that align with their values, and they're more likely to spend money with you if you are vocal about those values, if you are very clear and explicit about those values.
We have taken this to heart. I mean this is something I've had our amazing diversity, equity, and inclusion coach, Erica Courdae on the podcast about. She's a mentor inside of The CEO Collective bringing that expertise to all of our small business owners. But in working with her, one of the biggest things that I really understood is that when it comes to small businesses, there's been a lot of people who feel like they're sharing their values, but they're not explicitly saying, “This is what we stand for. This is what we believe,” and it's coming to the forefront more and more and more.
I think the big fear here is if you stand up and say, there was just a school shooting literally a couple of days ago, and I happen to know a family who attended that school, I'm not going to get too emotional about it, but this is something I'm going to vocally talk about, and I do, I share resources, I talk about it on social media.
I'm encouraging people to go out there and call the government representatives, call their representatives, call their senators, call their state representatives and state senators. This needs to happen in every state and every government level to put some common sense gun control in place and stop sacrificing children.
There are people who are hesitant to even say that because they're worried about the backlash from people who maybe don't agree with them. I think this is where you've got to decide what is most important to you. I'm not saying you have to tackle every single issue that's important to you. But people want to know where you stand. That is an issue that I am very passionate about because I have children in school.
There are other issues that I'm very passionate about when I think about the space I'm creating, and this is so important, if you're trying to create a more diverse space, it starts with you. It starts with you saying, “I'm going to actually do the work I need to do so that I can safely hold space for all types of women, for BIPOC women, for Black women, Asian women, Latino women, Indigenous women, LGBTQ+ women, or anyone who identifies as a woman, like how am I creating a safe space for that?
It's not just a one-time post. It's actively talking about how am I doing this work? How am I unpacking my own internalized White supremacy? How am I dissolving and reckoning with the patriarchy? How am I doing this work so that I can really showcase how the values work in this company and in this business? We have our values listed on our website, we just changed up our Instagram strategy, and we have our values listed very clearly like, “This is what we believe. This is who we serve,” we're making it crystal clear.
We're making it crystal clear who we are here to support and what we stand for. I'm not going to go on much longer here. I don't want it to sound ranty but I feel like this is something we all need to do even more. It's so important if you are curating spaces where people want to feel seen and heard, because as women, visibility is often a scary space. Visibility has traditionally been a place where we are not safe, and visibility, including being a business owner, being a leader in your community, those are traditionally unsafe spaces for women, especially minority women, especially LGBTQIA+ women.
Historically, we have not been safe in those spaces. How are we articulating to our communities how we're going to support them, how we're going to represent them, how we're going to fight for them and align our values so that collectively, we can make a bigger difference? This is something that is very easy to just be performative. You have to really do the work here. It can't be throwing a bunch of values word salad out on your website. You have to do the internal work, you have to face and reckon with, unpack any harm you might have caused, and learn how to do better.
You have to deeply invest in this in all areas of your business. This is not about slapping something on your business to say, “I support them.” This is not about just the equivalent of pinkwashing your business to say, “I support this cause,” it's truly how are you fully integrating that through everything. Because people know if you're full of it, they know if you're full of crap and they will see right through it whenever all of us see performative values instead of truly deeply ingrained explicit values that are part of your whole business.
Now's the time to stand up and to talk about what you believe, talk about who you support, and talk about issues you care about. People are more likely to buy from businesses that align with their values. Yes, we all have different values. Yes, we all have different causes we care about. Yes, we all have different platforms we're building so this is a deeply personal conversation, but also it's an important one.
I grew up with a generation of entrepreneurs who were very much like it's not personal, it's business. That's not true anymore. That's just not true anymore. People will do business with you if they are aligned and if they feel like you're doing something that is against their value system, they're going to stop spending money with you. You need to be cultivating a community of shared values. Think about what are the most important ones you're going to bring together. What are the most important ones you're going to talk about?
You don't have to be stressed about putting this out there and try to talk about every single little issue on the planet. That is not possible. It will detract you from your message. But you do need to be willing to stand up for what you believe and have conversations about it and show people that you're not just in this for the money.
I think that's what it really all comes down to when it comes to sharing your values, sharing with people that there's a bigger mission behind your business, behind your own personal self-interest. This is how you're going to further that mission by talking about your values and bringing together people, bringing together a community around those shared values. People are more likely to join in on working with you and they understand what you stand for. It could be a super big issue. It could be smaller things but talk about it and talk about your values because I do think it makes a huge difference.
The final thing I want to say when it comes for the sales aren't working the way they used to is now is when you might have to adapt and adjust your offers a little bit in order to make your business relevant right now to your clients.
Right now, if your clients are getting more discerning, they're looking at people's values, they're looking at who they're investing their money with, they're looking at “Do I really need this or not? Is this truly going to help me get where I want to go?” they're reading more details, they're really doing their due diligence on who they're investing money with, which they should absolutely, everybody should be doing this level of due diligence, but right now, when people are not spending as freely when they're being more discerning, it may mean that you need to think about how you can diversify your offers while remaining true to your core business.
This is where it might seem contradictory to what I might have said in the past, I still believe that your business should have and most smart businesses aren't trying to build like a million offers, each offer you put out into your business needs its own marketing system, sales system, delivery system, it has operations and people responsible for keeping that offer going. If you have too many offers, you're exponentially complicating your business. You really are.
But how can you make it easier for people to just get started with you? This is something I've been thinking about a lot and I'm seeing a lot of really interesting options. I don't think if you are a premium high-level service provider, you should suddenly just completely switch over and be like, “Okay, I'm going to go from done-for-you services to courses.” Terrible idea, completely different audiences, completely different markets. You're going to basically be starting over honestly.
The minute people say, “I'm going to let go of my services or I'm going to let go my one-on-one coaching. I'm going to start a course,” I'm like, “Hold on, pause. Very, very different than what you have been doing and chances are the people who are already in front of you aren't interested in that.” Always start with your clients in mind. Go to your clients, go to your community, and figure out what are the challenges they're having, and how can you meet them where they are.
For some people, this may look like if you've been running a longer-term program, let's say you have a 12-month program, maybe you offer a 3-month version of it so they can commit to a shorter timeframe instead of having to commit for the whole year. For a lot of people, that could just ease the feeling of “I'm making this huge commitment and I don't know if it's going to be for me,” that could be an option. How can you make it easier for them to commit at different levels with the same core offer that you already have?
Having people commit at different levels could also mean you take out a component of your core offer and make that accessible. What's the first thing that they need to learn when working with you? We did this here at The CEO Collective. If you go to our website, theceocollective.com, you'll see we made our Marketing Strategy Intensive available. This is a training we did inside of our year-long program and I wanted to make it available because it's such a powerful training that can completely change the game for how so many small business owners look at their marketing, sales, and customer experience strategy.
That didn't make something extra work for us because I was already doing it inside of The CEO Collective. But it was a great foundational step for a lot of people who wanted a taste of “Well, how does Racheal's frameworks work and does this make sense for my business, much lower price point, much easier way to access how we work?” but it feeds into our core offer. Same thing with the CEO Retreat. If you wanted a taste of our 90 Day Planning process, you don't have to join us for a full year in The Collective, you can attend a single CEO Retreat.
It's part of our bigger offer, but by making it a standalone component, it's lowered the barrier to entry for a lot of people, lower commitment, lower financial investment, and they still really are getting 100% of the value of that particular element of The Collective. How can you pull something out or make something easier for people to have access to?
This is very different from doing something completely opposite. If you're a service provider, courses are a whole nother ballgame. If you sell an offer for $5,000 or $10,000 and you're now going to go create a course that's under $1,000, you are going to need to get in front of so many people. The marketing is completely different.
I'm just really cautioning people against this because there's a lot of bad advice out there right now, do not try to create a whole different thing that isn't going in the direction of what you already do. But chances are you can take something out of your signature offer, your signature program, your signature service and make it a standalone thing. I have another example here. My friend, Stacey Harris, who is my podcast producer, also we did a whole episode about this, she did something similar for her business. She's a service provider.
One of the best parts about working with Stacey with her agency Uncommonly More is once a quarter, we sit down and map out all of our podcast episodes. It's like a strategy intensive to look at all the content for the next quarter. She's so good at seeing, aligning what you're selling with what your podcast is going to be about, and looking at the overall content gaps that we need to fill. She pulled that out and said, “You know what, not everybody's ready for me to step in and commit to a whole year of my company or ongoing.”
Geez, I've been with Stacey for, I want to say like eight years, a long time. I'm not going anywhere, Stacey. But for people who are new podcasters who want her eyes on their content and their strategy, now they can just get a Strategy Intensive. They don't have to do the whole commitment for full podcast production, which is another great way to make working with you accessible without detracting from your core offer.
It actually feeds into your core offer. If you're going to do a lower ticket offer, I really want you to think about how is this fitting in with my core offer? How does it make it easy for people to get started with me and then move into my core offer? But please don't start making a bunch of low-ticket offers that don't fit in because the stress you're going to put yourself through is not going to be worth it, I promise. It all needs to fit into your overall business ecosystem.
On the opposite side of this is to think about how you could offer even more support to people. A lot of small businesses, as you're growing, we start to build out things that are more leveraged, we start to build out programs, we start to build out offers where we aren't as involved in the delivery because we've wrapped up all of our intellectual property, all of our framework, all of our content into a format that people can navigate without us.
But one thing, again, coming full circle back to the high-touch, if people are having a hard time getting through your material, how can you make it easier for them to get what they need out of it? Could you layer on an option where they could buy some additional one-on-one sessions with you? Could you layer on an option where your team could just fully implement that thing for them? Again, this is about following along. This is the same journey, the same outcome.
You're not changing much about your offer except for now you're more hands-on in helping them implement, now you're providing an extra layer of accountability, or now you're just stepping in and saying, “Hey, my team will actually dig in and do it with you or for you.” These are the things that are going to help so many small businesses get through the uncertain period right now is thinking more creatively about how you can make your offer more accessible, how you can help people get started, and how you can continue to help people get results.
Not everybody is going to be personally or financially impacted by what's going on right now, to be honest. I think the fear is that everybody is suddenly pinching pennies. That is just not the case. Don't assume because you have a few people who are being more discerning or who are being slower to purchase things that it means everybody is going to be, it just means you might want to consider how you can make your core offers work even better for you and for your clients.
We're going to talk about this more for sure in the next few episodes and Stacey's doing a whole episode with me about clients for life. I'm not going to spoil that one right now. But I want to bring it back to recap because I'm about to jump on a Q&A call with my Collective members. What we've always done, what we've been doing, what's worked even six months ago isn't necessarily working now.
We are seeing people being more discerning. We are seeing people doing their due diligence, really taking their time to make buying decisions. Especially for higher-ticket products, programs, and services so we need to adapt and adjust accordingly. The biggest thing you can start doing as you're adapting and adjusting accordingly is thinking through your client journey. Are there areas where you can add in some more high-touch, where you can connect with them on a more personal level so that you can guide them through the sales process and really let them know you're here?
You're not just looking at them as another transaction in your Stripe account. You're actually caring and connecting with them, etc. High-touch applies to every part of the process too. You should be sprinkling in some connection in your marketing, your sales process, and especially your delivery process. If your customer experience doesn't include some high-touch, now's the time to add it, friends, because now is when you really see which clients are loyal and which ones aren't attached or connected to you in that way.
High-touch, high-touch, high-touch. The more you can sprinkle it in, the better. This is a time to stand up and share what your values are. Again, you don't have to be advocating for every single issue under the sun, but there are likely some values that directly impact the people you're working with. They want to know that they're doing business with small businesses that care and that are actively trying to make a difference in the world.
How is your mission aligning with your values and how are you doing that just not internally with your own personal journey, your own personal deep work? How are you doing that with your business? Are you doing that in your community? Talk about it, be about it, make it explicitly clear because that is going to drive a lot of people's results. If they don't know this about you, they don't know what you stand for. They're looking to support people and businesses that they do you know what they stand for.
Let's see, the last piece I was bringing back is how can you take your core offer and think about, on the front end of your core offer, is there a component you can take out to make more accessible, whether it is a lower investment, a shorter timeframe, something that get people started in your journey, but then keeps them going through with your core offer, not random things that are completely outside of it? Make sure you're thinking about alignment. Make sure you're thinking about your client journey through all of your offers.
Is there something on the front end you can do that will get them ready or that will give them a piece of your signature offer? Then on the back end of that, is there a way you can offer even more support? Whether that's adding an additional one-on-one, additional coaching, some done-for-you service? Is there something else you can do to continue working with people?
Okay, I hope this episode was helpful. I know I went into a lot but we are going to continue to see this happen. We are going to continue to see, as the new cycle is just getting more intense, as the world continues to just be as it is, we are going to get bombarded with all this information and we have to remember, as leaders of our business, as leaders of our community, it's up to us to stay grounded. It's up to us to really stay grounded in what we believe in, our values, and what we're here to do, and be of service first.
If you are of service first, I can almost guarantee you that the sales will happen because people see that. People see businesses, they see entrepreneurs, they see us when they know that you're here to support first, and that's your first priority. They see when we're adapting and adjusting to make sure we can continue to serve people and meet them where they're at.
If you love this episode, please let me know. Pop on over to Instagram, tag me @racheal.cook, take a screenshot, and share the episode and your biggest aha or insight. I will get it and I will definitely be happy to connect with you in the DMs. Of course, if you want to hear this whole series that we're diving into on what's happening in the world of sales, make sure you are subscribed to the show on Apple Podcasts or anywhere else you get podcasts because this is going to be the topic of conversation all month long.
Imagine you're walking into my office, settling down for a small mastermind day of six other women entrepreneurs. You grab your cup of coffee, settle in on the big pink sofa, or the squishy chairs, and the first question on your mind for your hot seat is, “Racheal, why is it that the launch I ran in the fall and was our best launch ever, produced zero clients when we ran it again at the beginning of the year?”
Oh my gosh, y'all, this was a major topic of conversation during my most recent mastermind day and CEO Retreat I was hosting for my clients because small businesses are the first ones to feel the impact of an uncertain or slowing down economy. What worked even just a few months ago might not work right now. Let's talk about it today, how to make sure that you continue making sales even when things are changing all around you.
Are you ready to grow from stressed-out solopreneur to competent CEO? You're in the right place. I'm your host, Racheal Cook, and I've spent more than 15 years helping women entrepreneurs sustainably scale their businesses. If you're serious about building a sustainable business, it's time to put the strategy, systems, and support in place to make it happen. Join me each week for candid conversations about stepping into your role as CEO, the hard lessons learned along the way, and practical profitable strategies to grow a sustainable business without the hustle and burnout.
Hey there, CEOs. I'm really feeling passionate about this series all about how sales is changing right now, as of the time I'm recording this, and what you need to think about if you're going to navigate the next few months or years in your business. Because whenever there is a recession, a downturn in the economy, this is where it really becomes make-it or break-it. This is the time when a lot of people are going to close down their businesses, they're going to opt-out, they're going to say, “Things are changing too hard, too fast. I can't keep up with it.”
There's also a massive opportunity for people to step in, people who are paying attention to what is happening, and they are very resilient, very quickly able to adapt and adjust to the current climate. I want you to be the one who's adapting and adjusting. I want you to be the one who's living through this. Honestly, when I look over the history of what has been happening in my own business, I've been in business now for 15 years, I started my business in 2008 during the last recession and those years were really challenging in a lot of ways, but also it was a massive opportunity.
It was a massive opportunity because that period where I was starting my business, 2008 to 2010 was a period where a lot of things were shifting, suddenly, things that people could not have dreamed of being available for small business owners were available for small business owners. Technology was getting faster and better. The tools were getting easier to use and less expensive. The barrier to entry for a small business in the last 15 years has dropped dramatically.
You have to remember it used to take people tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars to start a small business in decades past. But suddenly, in 15 years, we've seen that pretty much anybody can go out there and start a business with very little startup or seed capital. It could literally just be finding something you can do for people and raising your hand and saying, “Hey, I can do this for you,” and start getting paid almost immediately. It has been a wild ride to see this.
But what has happened more recently is from 2010 to about 2020, and I mean pre-March 2020, we had a solid 10-year bull market where things were just growing. The economy was good, the economy was booming. Technology was just transforming the way that business is done and transforming the way that small businesses could operate. Tools that used to only be available in enterprise like big, big business tools now were suddenly becoming available for small solopreneurs, micro business owners, owner-operated businesses, businesses with small teams.
Just to give you an idea of what I mean, now everybody knows how to use a platform like Zoom. But when I was getting started, GoTo Meeting was only available for corporate and it was hundreds and hundreds of dollars to get access to it. I pay $15 a month for Zoom. The barrier to entry for small business has dropped dramatically. The tools that we have have made it easier for us to get more accomplished and get more visible in the world, and social media has grown right alongside this. We have seen so many amazing changes.
This has been like a golden age for people wanting to get into small business, people wanting to start their own thing, take their experience and expertise, and have the ability to go out and get clients really easily without it being limited to just who happens to live in their town. That has been a game-changer. It has been an explosion in small business and an explosion in women entrepreneurs.
But the last few years, we have been in uncertain times. We have been in uncertain times four years now. Honestly, there's been this exhausting cycle of the pandemic and then the government stepping in and helping a lot of small businesses, the SBA stepping in and making loans available. Then, all of this has been a great way to keep things going but there's only so long they can keep things going at the rate that they were trying to. Now here we are. Expenses are going up. Inflation is rising. People are really impacted by the economy right now.
The economy is starting to slow and going from 2008 the beginning of the last recession to 2023, that's 15 years. That is a long time between these down markets. If you follow the economy at all, you know that this is a cycle. This is just part of what happens. It's not going to be something that should scare you. This is just a natural part of honestly, the capitalist system.
There's going to be bull markets where things are growing, where there's a lot of money flowing in the economy, and then there's going to be bear markets where things are slowing down, things are adjusting, and there are so many different factors that go into it that I'm not doing an economics class today.
But how does it impact us right now is if you were in business for yourself between 2010 and 2020 and things were growing really quickly, you are now seeing that sales are slowing down, more than likely, you're seeing sales are slowing down, more than likely, you're having sales calls where people are really wanting to work with you but they're saying, “Well, I've got to wait a little bit longer or I need to budget for it right now.”
You might even see people who are hesitant to sign on for longer-term programs, especially if you are a coach or a consultant, if you had something where people are going to work with you for 6 months, 12 months, you might be seeing fewer people wanting to commit for long periods of time and higher dollar amounts, what do we do?
What do we do right now when the first instinct of the general public when the economy gets a little uncertain, when there's so much in the news going on, the first thing the public is going to do is slow down their spending? They're going to slow down their discretionary spending, which impacts small businesses tremendously.
That means if you work with small businesses and entrepreneurs, you're going to see that impact too. Because if the general public is slowing down their spending, and you're working with the small businesses that are serving them, you're the next hit. This is all connected, these things are all connected and you have to be aware of what's going on in order to know how to adapt and adjust accordingly.
If you feel frustrated right now that your sales processes aren't working, maybe you've been launching your products, programs, and services in one way and you're not seeing them work anymore, maybe you had evergreen sales systems in place and you're just not seeing them work anymore, maybe you have higher ticket services and offers and you're seeing people are slowing down how quickly they'll buy them, then let's talk about what you might need to think about right now in order to continue bringing sales in the door.
We talked about the economy is different. We talked about people are generally getting a little tighter on their wallets right now. The other thing that is happening right now that I think we have to be aware of is a lot of the strategies that worked very well, especially in I would say the last probably five years, there has been this huge push towards automation, towards evergreen sales strategies, basically making a process that your potential client can go through without having to interact with you at all.
This is a major thing we need to think about. Because while all of these automated sales processes and leveraged marketing strategies have been an amazing way to just rapidly expand your reach, rapidly serve more people, we are seeing that the pendulum is swinging, the pendulum is swinging because people are more discerning now than ever before. They're taking longer to make their decisions.
They're more familiar with how these sales strategies work, especially if you're working with small businesses and entrepreneurs like I am, they've seen webinars, they've seen the evergreen funnels, they've seen the launches, they've seen all those strategies, so you have to be thinking about what are you really doing that's different that is helping people understand why you are the person they should come work with.
If you aren't working with businesses or entrepreneurs, you're working with the general public, you're just working with regular people, they may have already started to see these more high-tech, more leveraged, more automated practices that they may not have. This is where there's a huge difference between if you're a consumer-facing business versus a B2B business. The consumer-facing businesses, we are seeing right now people are more comfortable with technology than ever before, especially in the last few years they've had to be.
It's so interesting that five years ago, one of the biggest challenges for consumer-facing businesses for a lot of my clients who are working with the public, they were like, “We're trying to run this group coaching program and people aren't comfortable logging into our Zoom or people aren't used to learning online,” that game has changed. People are used to it now. Everybody has signed up for something online, especially in 2020. They all learned what Zoom is. Now Zoom is a verb, people know what that means.
On the consumer-facing side, we are seeing a more technologically comfortable client, but now that they've become more technologically comfortable, they're also just getting bombarded by so many offers from so many different people. You're going to have to stand out if you are in a very saturated market, if you're one of a lot of people doing a similar type of work. What comes to mind first is I have a lot of people who are in the health and wellness space who work with me, who are nutritionists, health coaches, or functional doctors, and there are a lot of people out there who are looking for that kind of support.
But as they become more comfortable with technology, they're signing up for a lot of email lists, they're signing up for a lot of free things, how are you going to stand out and have people actually want to work with you? Same with B2B. Everybody has seen the online launch cycle, everybody has seen webinars, challenges, and video series. Everybody's seen it. People are more familiar with these strategies so they're no longer impressed by them. Now the pendulum is swinging back to connection. It's going from high-tech to high-touch.
It doesn't mean that you need to leave those strategies but it does mean you need to layer in high-touch. This is one of the hugest things I'm seeing right now. Now this has been a part of my sales strategy for a very long time. But I want to give you some high-touch things that you can layer into your sales process. We still want to use the tools and technology that make it seamless that help people navigate our sales process as much as possible.
If you happen to be a service provider, you want to have a process where people can go to your website, book a consultation, or book a session for more information, book a session to learn more about your process. From the time that they book until they have that call until the follow up where you're delivering the proposal or inviting them to take the next step, you can use a lot of tools and technology to make that easier. You can use a scheduling tool, you can use automated emails, you can send them video content or other types of content to help them along that buying process.
The fact that they're talking with you automatically layers in the high-touch piece but for a lot of people, having these sales calls has been something they've been shying away from because of the high-tech, because of the high automation. I'm going to encourage everyone to start getting back on calls with people. I think this is one of the biggest things that surprises people when they come to chat with us about The CEO Collective is I'm the one that takes the calls.
I can't tell you how many times they book a call to chat with me about The Collective at this point, they've already gone through an application process, so we know about their business, we think that we can support them, and this is really just a chance for them to get a few more questions answered and make sure this is a perfect next step, and when they see me on the other side of the camera, they're always like, “Oh, I didn't think it was going to be you. I thought it was going to be someone on your team.”
This is something that a lot of us can do. Honestly, I think this is where we are going to see a massive difference in sales is you providing that personal touch. Because yes, you can have canned responses, yes, you can have a support team, yes, you can hire a sales team, but if you add in a personal touch somewhere in the sales process, it is going to improve your overall results because you are likely the person that they connected with along the front end of their journey when they're out there getting into your content, finding your podcast, reading your blog post, or being on your newsletter like they've been connecting with you. You want to think about how you can continue to be part of that connective tissue as you're going through the sales process.
We do this through making calls available. Now not everybody jumps on a call, some people join our program without ever talking to me, but I make it a part of our sales process. Once our application is approved, the next step is we send them a few emails inviting them to get all the details about the program. They can either hit reply and email us directly their questions or they can jump on a call with me. They have a window where they can join us and we make sure they know we are here to answer their questions.
Often even when they hit reply to ask questions, one of my favorite things to do is to actually make a Loom video. If you don't use Loom, it's one of my favorite extensions. You can quickly record a video reply back so people know it's me. They know it's me giving them a personal response. I think that goes such a long way. Bringing some personalization back into your sales process I think is going to help you tremendously, tremendously.
I want to move up in the sales process here. That's answering questions, doing sales calls. This needs to move further into your marketing as well. A couple of other more high-touch things I've been doing in my marketing that I think anyone, like steal a strategy, please, absolutely, one thing I love doing is getting in the DMs with people. This is something that I feel like, again, the automation has gone a little bit too far. Everybody has a social media manager so no one knows if it’s actually you or not in your DMs.
If someone starts a conversation with me or they tag me, I'm always asking y'all to take a screenshot of the podcast, tag me, and share your insights and ahas, I have so many conversations starting in my DMs and about once a day, I'll go through them and I'll message back. One of my favorite ways to message back is to do a quick voice memo back in the Instagram DMs or the Facebook DMs because then they know it's me, it's not my team or my assistant who does our social media.
They help me with so much in making sure that social media is happening but then I can go in and add this layer of personalization, this layer of personal touch. It's amazing. It's amazing what happens when people realize that I'm actually here to connect with them, to learn about them, and to learn about their business.
Think about how you can add more of those touchpoints in. It could be in the DMs, it could be having an actual conversation with people. It could be I've had sales processes recently, I'm very much paying attention to how people interact with my business.
If you are on my email list and I see that you have clicked through everything, if you have clicked through all the things and you're going through an email series that we have, and I see that you checked out a sales page, you're probably going to get an email from me inviting you to come book a call. Some of this is automation. I have an automation in place where if someone clicks the sales page, a few hours later, they might get an email inviting them to book a call. We call it our little bird email.
If you're in The Collective, you know exactly which one we're talking about. But the fact that I'm, again, providing another high-touch point makes such a huge difference. I want you to be thinking about how are you going to add in more high-touch elements to your sales process. That is going to be a game changer for so many small businesses.
Another thing I want to talk about when it comes to sales, especially right now, is people are very much paying attention to who they're investing their money with. Again, they're more discerning than ever before. People are voting with our dollars which means people want to work with businesses that align with their values. People want to work with small businesses that align with their values, and they're more likely to spend money with you if you are vocal about those values, if you are very clear and explicit about those values.
We have taken this to heart. I mean this is something I've had our amazing diversity, equity, and inclusion coach, Erica Courdae on the podcast about. She's a mentor inside of The CEO Collective bringing that expertise to all of our small business owners. But in working with her, one of the biggest things that I really understood is that when it comes to small businesses, there's been a lot of people who feel like they're sharing their values, but they're not explicitly saying, “This is what we stand for. This is what we believe,” and it's coming to the forefront more and more and more.
I think the big fear here is if you stand up and say, there was just a school shooting literally a couple of days ago, and I happen to know a family who attended that school, I'm not going to get too emotional about it, but this is something I'm going to vocally talk about, and I do, I share resources, I talk about it on social media.
I'm encouraging people to go out there and call the government representatives, call their representatives, call their senators, call their state representatives and state senators. This needs to happen in every state and every government level to put some common sense gun control in place and stop sacrificing children.
There are people who are hesitant to even say that because they're worried about the backlash from people who maybe don't agree with them. I think this is where you've got to decide what is most important to you. I'm not saying you have to tackle every single issue that's important to you. But people want to know where you stand. That is an issue that I am very passionate about because I have children in school.
There are other issues that I'm very passionate about when I think about the space I'm creating, and this is so important, if you're trying to create a more diverse space, it starts with you. It starts with you saying, “I'm going to actually do the work I need to do so that I can safely hold space for all types of women, for BIPOC women, for Black women, Asian women, Latino women, Indigenous women, LGBTQ+ women, or anyone who identifies as a woman, like how am I creating a safe space for that?
It's not just a one-time post. It's actively talking about how am I doing this work? How am I unpacking my own internalized White supremacy? How am I dissolving and reckoning with the patriarchy? How am I doing this work so that I can really showcase how the values work in this company and in this business? We have our values listed on our website, we just changed up our Instagram strategy, and we have our values listed very clearly like, “This is what we believe. This is who we serve,” we're making it crystal clear.
We're making it crystal clear who we are here to support and what we stand for. I'm not going to go on much longer here. I don't want it to sound ranty but I feel like this is something we all need to do even more. It's so important if you are curating spaces where people want to feel seen and heard, because as women, visibility is often a scary space. Visibility has traditionally been a place where we are not safe, and visibility, including being a business owner, being a leader in your community, those are traditionally unsafe spaces for women, especially minority women, especially LGBTQIA+ women.
Historically, we have not been safe in those spaces. How are we articulating to our communities how we're going to support them, how we're going to represent them, how we're going to fight for them and align our values so that collectively, we can make a bigger difference? This is something that is very easy to just be performative. You have to really do the work here. It can't be throwing a bunch of values word salad out on your website. You have to do the internal work, you have to face and reckon with, unpack any harm you might have caused, and learn how to do better.
You have to deeply invest in this in all areas of your business. This is not about slapping something on your business to say, “I support them.” This is not about just the equivalent of pinkwashing your business to say, “I support this cause,” it's truly how are you fully integrating that through everything. Because people know if you're full of it, they know if you're full of crap and they will see right through it whenever all of us see performative values instead of truly deeply ingrained explicit values that are part of your whole business.
Now's the time to stand up and to talk about what you believe, talk about who you support, and talk about issues you care about. People are more likely to buy from businesses that align with their values. Yes, we all have different values. Yes, we all have different causes we care about. Yes, we all have different platforms we're building so this is a deeply personal conversation, but also it's an important one.
I grew up with a generation of entrepreneurs who were very much like it's not personal, it's business. That's not true anymore. That's just not true anymore. People will do business with you if they are aligned and if they feel like you're doing something that is against their value system, they're going to stop spending money with you. You need to be cultivating a community of shared values. Think about what are the most important ones you're going to bring together. What are the most important ones you're going to talk about?
You don't have to be stressed about putting this out there and try to talk about every single little issue on the planet. That is not possible. It will detract you from your message. But you do need to be willing to stand up for what you believe and have conversations about it and show people that you're not just in this for the money.
I think that's what it really all comes down to when it comes to sharing your values, sharing with people that there's a bigger mission behind your business, behind your own personal self-interest. This is how you're going to further that mission by talking about your values and bringing together people, bringing together a community around those shared values. People are more likely to join in on working with you and they understand what you stand for. It could be a super big issue. It could be smaller things but talk about it and talk about your values because I do think it makes a huge difference.
The final thing I want to say when it comes for the sales aren't working the way they used to is now is when you might have to adapt and adjust your offers a little bit in order to make your business relevant right now to your clients.
Right now, if your clients are getting more discerning, they're looking at people's values, they're looking at who they're investing their money with, they're looking at “Do I really need this or not? Is this truly going to help me get where I want to go?” they're reading more details, they're really doing their due diligence on who they're investing money with, which they should absolutely, everybody should be doing this level of due diligence, but right now, when people are not spending as freely when they're being more discerning, it may mean that you need to think about how you can diversify your offers while remaining true to your core business.
This is where it might seem contradictory to what I might have said in the past, I still believe that your business should have and most smart businesses aren't trying to build like a million offers, each offer you put out into your business needs its own marketing system, sales system, delivery system, it has operations and people responsible for keeping that offer going. If you have too many offers, you're exponentially complicating your business. You really are.
But how can you make it easier for people to just get started with you? This is something I've been thinking about a lot and I'm seeing a lot of really interesting options. I don't think if you are a premium high-level service provider, you should suddenly just completely switch over and be like, “Okay, I'm going to go from done-for-you services to courses.” Terrible idea, completely different audiences, completely different markets. You're going to basically be starting over honestly.
The minute people say, “I'm going to let go of my services or I'm going to let go my one-on-one coaching. I'm going to start a course,” I'm like, “Hold on, pause. Very, very different than what you have been doing and chances are the people who are already in front of you aren't interested in that.” Always start with your clients in mind. Go to your clients, go to your community, and figure out what are the challenges they're having, and how can you meet them where they are.
For some people, this may look like if you've been running a longer-term program, let's say you have a 12-month program, maybe you offer a 3-month version of it so they can commit to a shorter timeframe instead of having to commit for the whole year. For a lot of people, that could just ease the feeling of “I'm making this huge commitment and I don't know if it's going to be for me,” that could be an option. How can you make it easier for them to commit at different levels with the same core offer that you already have?
Having people commit at different levels could also mean you take out a component of your core offer and make that accessible. What's the first thing that they need to learn when working with you? We did this here at The CEO Collective. If you go to our website, theceocollective.com, you'll see we made our Marketing Strategy Intensive available. This is a training we did inside of our year-long program and I wanted to make it available because it's such a powerful training that can completely change the game for how so many small business owners look at their marketing, sales, and customer experience strategy.
That didn't make something extra work for us because I was already doing it inside of The CEO Collective. But it was a great foundational step for a lot of people who wanted a taste of “Well, how does Racheal's frameworks work and does this make sense for my business, much lower price point, much easier way to access how we work?” but it feeds into our core offer. Same thing with the CEO Retreat. If you wanted a taste of our 90 Day Planning process, you don't have to join us for a full year in The Collective, you can attend a single CEO Retreat.
It's part of our bigger offer, but by making it a standalone component, it's lowered the barrier to entry for a lot of people, lower commitment, lower financial investment, and they still really are getting 100% of the value of that particular element of The Collective. How can you pull something out or make something easier for people to have access to?
This is very different from doing something completely opposite. If you're a service provider, courses are a whole nother ballgame. If you sell an offer for $5,000 or $10,000 and you're now going to go create a course that's under $1,000, you are going to need to get in front of so many people. The marketing is completely different.
I'm just really cautioning people against this because there's a lot of bad advice out there right now, do not try to create a whole different thing that isn't going in the direction of what you already do. But chances are you can take something out of your signature offer, your signature program, your signature service and make it a standalone thing. I have another example here. My friend, Stacey Harris, who is my podcast producer, also we did a whole episode about this, she did something similar for her business. She's a service provider.
One of the best parts about working with Stacey with her agency Uncommonly More is once a quarter, we sit down and map out all of our podcast episodes. It's like a strategy intensive to look at all the content for the next quarter. She's so good at seeing, aligning what you're selling with what your podcast is going to be about, and looking at the overall content gaps that we need to fill. She pulled that out and said, “You know what, not everybody's ready for me to step in and commit to a whole year of my company or ongoing.”
Geez, I've been with Stacey for, I want to say like eight years, a long time. I'm not going anywhere, Stacey. But for people who are new podcasters who want her eyes on their content and their strategy, now they can just get a Strategy Intensive. They don't have to do the whole commitment for full podcast production, which is another great way to make working with you accessible without detracting from your core offer.
It actually feeds into your core offer. If you're going to do a lower ticket offer, I really want you to think about how is this fitting in with my core offer? How does it make it easy for people to get started with me and then move into my core offer? But please don't start making a bunch of low-ticket offers that don't fit in because the stress you're going to put yourself through is not going to be worth it, I promise. It all needs to fit into your overall business ecosystem.
On the opposite side of this is to think about how you could offer even more support to people. A lot of small businesses, as you're growing, we start to build out things that are more leveraged, we start to build out programs, we start to build out offers where we aren't as involved in the delivery because we've wrapped up all of our intellectual property, all of our framework, all of our content into a format that people can navigate without us.
But one thing, again, coming full circle back to the high-touch, if people are having a hard time getting through your material, how can you make it easier for them to get what they need out of it? Could you layer on an option where they could buy some additional one-on-one sessions with you? Could you layer on an option where your team could just fully implement that thing for them? Again, this is about following along. This is the same journey, the same outcome.
You're not changing much about your offer except for now you're more hands-on in helping them implement, now you're providing an extra layer of accountability, or now you're just stepping in and saying, “Hey, my team will actually dig in and do it with you or for you.” These are the things that are going to help so many small businesses get through the uncertain period right now is thinking more creatively about how you can make your offer more accessible, how you can help people get started, and how you can continue to help people get results.
Not everybody is going to be personally or financially impacted by what's going on right now, to be honest. I think the fear is that everybody is suddenly pinching pennies. That is just not the case. Don't assume because you have a few people who are being more discerning or who are being slower to purchase things that it means everybody is going to be, it just means you might want to consider how you can make your core offers work even better for you and for your clients.
We're going to talk about this more for sure in the next few episodes and Stacey's doing a whole episode with me about clients for life. I'm not going to spoil that one right now. But I want to bring it back to recap because I'm about to jump on a Q&A call with my Collective members. What we've always done, what we've been doing, what's worked even six months ago isn't necessarily working now.
We are seeing people being more discerning. We are seeing people doing their due diligence, really taking their time to make buying decisions. Especially for higher-ticket products, programs, and services so we need to adapt and adjust accordingly. The biggest thing you can start doing as you're adapting and adjusting accordingly is thinking through your client journey. Are there areas where you can add in some more high-touch, where you can connect with them on a more personal level so that you can guide them through the sales process and really let them know you're here?
You're not just looking at them as another transaction in your Stripe account. You're actually caring and connecting with them, etc. High-touch applies to every part of the process too. You should be sprinkling in some connection in your marketing, your sales process, and especially your delivery process. If your customer experience doesn't include some high-touch, now's the time to add it, friends, because now is when you really see which clients are loyal and which ones aren't attached or connected to you in that way.
High-touch, high-touch, high-touch. The more you can sprinkle it in, the better. This is a time to stand up and share what your values are. Again, you don't have to be advocating for every single issue under the sun, but there are likely some values that directly impact the people you're working with. They want to know that they're doing business with small businesses that care and that are actively trying to make a difference in the world.
How is your mission aligning with your values and how are you doing that just not internally with your own personal journey, your own personal deep work? How are you doing that with your business? Are you doing that in your community? Talk about it, be about it, make it explicitly clear because that is going to drive a lot of people's results. If they don't know this about you, they don't know what you stand for. They're looking to support people and businesses that they do you know what they stand for.
Let's see, the last piece I was bringing back is how can you take your core offer and think about, on the front end of your core offer, is there a component you can take out to make more accessible, whether it is a lower investment, a shorter timeframe, something that get people started in your journey, but then keeps them going through with your core offer, not random things that are completely outside of it? Make sure you're thinking about alignment. Make sure you're thinking about your client journey through all of your offers.
Is there something on the front end you can do that will get them ready or that will give them a piece of your signature offer? Then on the back end of that, is there a way you can offer even more support? Whether that's adding an additional one-on-one, additional coaching, some done-for-you service? Is there something else you can do to continue working with people?
Okay, I hope this episode was helpful. I know I went into a lot but we are going to continue to see this happen. We are going to continue to see, as the new cycle is just getting more intense, as the world continues to just be as it is, we are going to get bombarded with all this information and we have to remember, as leaders of our business, as leaders of our community, it's up to us to stay grounded. It's up to us to really stay grounded in what we believe in, our values, and what we're here to do, and be of service first.
If you are of service first, I can almost guarantee you that the sales will happen because people see that. People see businesses, they see entrepreneurs, they see us when they know that you're here to support first, and that's your first priority. They see when we're adapting and adjusting to make sure we can continue to serve people and meet them where they're at.
If you love this episode, please let me know. Pop on over to Instagram, tag me @racheal.cook, take a screenshot, and share the episode and your biggest aha or insight. I will get it and I will definitely be happy to connect with you in the DMs. Of course, if you want to hear this whole series that we're diving into on what's happening in the world of sales, make sure you are subscribed to the show on Apple Podcasts or anywhere else you get podcasts because this is going to be the topic of conversation all month long.
