Struggling to convert followers into paying customers? Discover the proven 3-step system to build a profitable online sales funnel that attracts high-quality leads and turns them into raving fans and loyal customers. Learn how to finally monetize your audience and scale your business to new heights in this episode!
Struggling to convert followers into paying customers? Discover the proven 3-step system to build a profitable online sales funnel that attracts high-quality leads and turns them into raving fans and loyal customers. Learn how to finally monetize your audience and scale your business to new heights in this episode!
What is up, familia? Welcome back to another episode of the Business Lounge Podcast. I'm your host, kimberly Annamanis, and I'm so excited to dive into today's topic because it's a good one. It's something that we really need to master as entrepreneurs, as small business owners, as creators, and it's the lifeblood of our business, right? We need a solid sales system, and today I'm going to be sharing a cool story from one of our clients who's in the product-based space. But even if you don't sell physical products, if you sell courses or coaching or services, or maybe you have a totally awesome SaaS business, this is going to be extremely helpful, because I'm going to walk you through the three steps of creating a solid, profitable online sales system so that you're attracting leads and sales quality leads and sales and turning your followers into buyers, into clients and into customers. So let's dive right in.
Speaker 2:
Welcome to the Business Lounge podcast, where each week we unpack the hottest online marketing and business strategies so you can grow your business increase your bottom line and make a bigger impact. And now here's your host, Kimberly Ann Jimenez.
Speaker 1:
I hope that you're having an amazing week. I really truly do. It has been a minute since we've been here on the podcast and there's just been a lot happening behind the scenes that we're really excited to share with you soon. But these internal projects have been keeping me a little bit tied up and so we have decided to hire on a podcast manager here soon who's going to be really helping us stay consistent with the pod, make sure that we have incredible content for you guys, and we also hired a few other helping hands in the business so that I can be a little bit more available for creating this amazing content. Because we love you guys and even though the podcast is a very small thing, a very small part of what we do in the business, it's always something that I love doing and I love sharing with you, so we're really excited about that. Of course, we're super busy inside the business lounge, as always, serving our members and releasing new features, and we're developing new products like boot camps and awesome coaching programs. But it's been crazy. It's been a pretty busy season for me and I just want to make sure that we're still connected because I love you guys so much. You send me the most lovely messages, and it's very interesting when we don't post super consistently. You guys are always messaging me like, hey, when's the next episode going to come out, and I so appreciate you. I really, truly do. That means the world to me, so I wanted to tell you a little bit about this whole idea of sales systems and why you should even care about it, and this is something that I am very, very passionate about.
Speaker 1:
Profitability over popularity is our mantra here in the company, and Chris and I if you don't know who Chris is he's been on the show many, many times. He's soon going to be co-hosting this podcast with me, thank goodness, because I definitely need some help and he's just so brilliant at it. But, interestingly, the episodes where he's been featured on we've had the most amount of views not views, downloads and so I found that very interesting. You guys seem to like him a lot, which is awesome because, well, we lead the business launch together, so it makes sense that he would be part of this podcast more often, so I'm really excited about that. But we're both really passionate about this concept of profitability, about making money, about using content and using online marketing and doing all the fun things when it comes to social media, but leveraging that to grow a business, leveraging that to profit, to actually make a difference in people's lives and to make an impact.
Speaker 1:
So we need to first address some of the limiting beliefs that we have seen in the industry grow kind of out of control, to be honest, kind of like I never thought that I would reach a place where people are coming to us and they don't know how to build a sales system or they don't think it's important, or they're really spending a lot of time in the wrong places, not prioritizing things like an email list or even knowing how to get started there. So we've seen this like interesting development in the market the last probably five to seven years where back when we started the business lounge, a lot of people kind of already knew the basics of selling online. Right, they were growing a business, they were building their email list, they understood kind of what a lead magnet meant and they were sending emails consistently, and so they just wanted to scale that and level that up and grow what they were already doing. And now the market has grown and expanded so much and please do not interpret this If you don't know what a lead magnet is or you don't have a sales system set up, or you don't know what a funnel is. Totally okay, Okay, zero shame here. We're all here to learn.
Speaker 1:
But really it just came as a shock to us, because we were used to people being very hyper-niched down in this online marketing space and especially after COVID, it just kind of exploded right. So we have so many online businesses so many businesses in general not online ones, just businesses in general coming online and marketing online and starting to adapt and adopt these really awesome marketing tools that were used to you know, or used to be only things that very niched online marketers were doing. So I just love it. I think it's so cool to see businesses come in the space and do some interesting things, but really, as that started to happen, we also saw that a lot of the messaging from influencers right, influencers they typically profit directly from their content, and a lot of influencers were influencing business owners and entrepreneurs, and so a lot of business owners and entrepreneurs were just modeling what influencers were doing, and so they thought, okay, like I need to just explode my growth on Facebook, or explode my growth on TikTok, or just crush it on Instagram and then hopefully I get big enough that I will be able to have enough leads and hopefully those leads will convert into clients magically.
Speaker 1:
Right, like, I don't have a plan to do that, I don't know how to do that. I'm just like hoping and praying that that will be the case, and we always love to talk about how hope marketing is not a strategy. Right, hoping that something will happen is a recipe for disaster, really, and so what tends to happen after that is that entrepreneurs just tend to get so burned out with the content game, with the social media growth game, because, of course, duh right, they're building a business, so they're having to fulfill orders and decide on packaging and design new products and develop systems and lead a team and, you know, be the accountant and the bookkeeper and wear like a million different hats that influencers don't need to do. So, of course, influencers are creating incredible TikToks and amazing Instagram reels and you know all the latest content on YouTube with a million different angles and making it look so incredible and they're so good at what they do that oftentimes business owners start like comparing themselves to influencers and then that leads into this like rabbit hole of burnout comparison, negatives, negatives and just feeling blah about what you're doing, just feeling unworthy, like you can never compete and never compare. And the good news, right? The good news that I'm here to tell you is that you don't need to compare, you don't need to compete and you certainly do not need to be the best content creator in order to be one of the best marketers, the best business owners, the best entrepreneurs online. And so, as influencers and content creators keep upping the ante with their incredible production value and funny, interesting, entertaining, engaging content, business owners definitely feel the pressure, right, they feel the pressure to keep up and I've definitely experienced that myself many times. You know, I will watch a video from someone like Peter McKinnon and be like, oh my gosh. And a few years ago I had to make this mindset tweak. I had to make this mindset shift and realize like wow, peter McKinnon is incredible. I don't have to be the Peter McKinnon of my industry in order to win. Like it's awesome that he's doing that and I so admire his work and I think it's phenomenal and I enjoy it. But I don't need to reach that level of perfection and, just you know, spend the 25, 30 hours per video that is required for me to actually win on YouTube for me to market my business effectively and attract ideal clients and make sales and help more people grow their online businesses and their marketing systems, and so that was a big and important mindset shift that I'm going to encourage and actually challenge you to start making.
Speaker 1:
You do not need to be an influencer. Influencers win in very different ways than entrepreneurs do, and this is not me dissing influencers. I think that there's been a collective pushback from the market, and rightfully so. There's been a lot of mistakes that influencers have made in terms of positioning and the way that they you know maybe product reviews or recommendations, and that's a whole nother topic for another day but the reality is, if you're an influencer, you own that right. You own it and you crush it, and that's great.
Speaker 1:
I follow many influencers and I find their content the ones that I resonate with extremely valuable, but that's a totally different game than being an online entrepreneur. It gets confusing because we're sharing the internet space, right, and so we think that that's like the bar and how we need to actually connect ourselves. And it's not. You show up as an entrepreneur and the purpose behind that, the purpose behind entrepreneurship, is solving a problem Like we solve a problem. We solve a problem. We create a product, a program, a service that solves an audience's specific problem, and so I just want to encourage you to own it and to not be ashamed of playing your game of being a business owner and showing up as an entrepreneur and selling your stuff online, and doing so unapologetically.
Speaker 1:
Of course, there's a strategy behind it. I'm not saying you need to be salesy every single day, but, shoot, influencers are tagging and linking a million different products Not all of them, right, not all of them, but a lot of the ones I follow a million different products every single day that they recommend. And so there's this weird thing that happens with entrepreneurs where, like, they're afraid to sell what they offer, and it's just so bizarre. And listen, listen, if that's you, I get it. I was like that too. It was like this icky, weird feeling around selling that I just couldn't get away from, and so I just want to empower you. I want to empower you to start shifting the way that you think about selling and start realizing that you have to, number one, fund the mission. You just have to fund the mission. You have to realize that your purpose requires profits. It just does, and there's nothing weird or scammy or salesy about offering something with integrity to the people that need that solution the most.
Speaker 1:
So if we think about, you know, our favorite restaurants or our favorite coffee shops or our favorite lines of athletic wear, I have a ton of brands that I love and that I buy things from and I never feel like, oh my gosh. You know, I wish they didn't exist and didn't sell me things like no, I want, you know, the awesome leggings that are going to be ultra comfortable to do yoga in, and I'm like, thank you, thank you for designing leggings for semi curvy girls. This is very, very helpful. You know, I love being able to have a Garmin watch that tracks my biometrics so I can get a notification when I'm too stressed out that I need to pace myself and rest a little bit and breathe. I appreciate that. I'm not upset that Garmin is trying to sell me things, and so, for us, we have to just change our mindset and change our perspective around the way that we sell and how we enter the online marketplace and position ourselves, so that people know that we're business owners, people know that we're entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1:
I cannot tell you how many times, actually, I have been just totally mesmerized by someone's content and been like sell me something, please sell me something, like I want to buy something from you, and being disappointed that you know they only had affiliate links or they never developed their own product. And I just think that there is so much opportunity for us, as entrepreneurs, to take um territory, really to just be like hey, this is who we are, we're business owners, we're small business owners or entrepreneurs, and we're doing our thing, we're serving people, we're making an impact and we're doing so with integrity. Okay, so lots of preamble there, I know, but I just wanted to touch on a little bit of the mindset before we dive into the practical application, because I think both of them are really, really important, and so I wanted to read you a testimonial from Holly, one of our amazing members. She participated in our latest bootcamp on creating a selling system, and this is not a pitch for the bootcamp, but I did want to share her experience because I thought it was so fantastic.
Speaker 1:
I tend to see and I want to highlight this because Holly is a product based entrepreneur she sells the most incredible products, and I didn't get her permission to share her testimonial, but later on I will probably highlight her and her business because she has incredible products that I want to share with you guys, but essentially she is again that business, uh, you know person who sells physical products, and oftentimes I see this crazy mindset block from e-com entrepreneurs or product-based entrepreneurs. They think all the resources, all the marketing like the lead magnets and the you know things like your sales page all of that is just for coaches and consultants, and that could not be further away from the truth. Listen, chris and I have sold every different modality that you can think of. We have run a service based businesses, we have ran local based service based businesses, we have run local product based businesses, we have ran online course and digital product businesses. So we've applied the same principles to all those different types of businesses and you can do the same, and this is what Holly did. She was so, so, incredibly smart, and so she said the bonus coaching week was invaluable. This is just something that we're offering as a beta after our folks go through our virtual boot camp, which is so much fun.
Speaker 1:
I'll tell you about that later, but she says it helped me to take action, the action that I needed to get my funnel in place. I was able to get feedback and help super quickly from Kim, chris and Brian, and I fixed a couple issues I didn't even know existed, with Kim and Brian's help. Thank goodness I had the funnel in place because I was able to gain a bunch of new subscribers during the following two weekends. At an in-person event and after a customer shared a product in a Facebook group, we had 30 orders come in over three days, most within the first 48 hours. Many people opted in for marketing or signed up for my discount lead magnet. I've gained almost a hundred subscribers in the past three weeks, in the past three weeks, which is amazing. And this is coming from someone who didn't really have a clear path to profit. So this is why it's so important, guys, to have an actual sales system. This is how this works. This is how we put it all together.
Speaker 1:
Most people are marketing on social media and they think that that's kind of like you know how you get exposure and it's word of mouth kind of thing, and we just post content or maybe we share behind the scenes of our product. Maybe we link it right If we are a little brave and we're actually selling things, and that's it right. That's where it ends. It's just like I just market on social media. I can't tell you the million reasons for why you should not be doing that, and I'm not telling you as like shame or condemnation. I'm saying this because I want you to succeed. I want you to be prepared and empowered, no matter what.
Speaker 1:
We have seen the shifts in social media. We have seen how unreliable platforms can be and, at the end of the day, social media is a fantastic way to penetrate a market and get exposure, but you don't own that relationship. You don't own the relationship with your customer. At any point in time, social media platforms can say, oh, you're booted out. You know that's it. Like we changed our terms of service and you have violated them without even knowing, and you're out. Right, we don't want that. We want to start building our email list or our text list or both ideally so that we're capturing leads.
Speaker 1:
And the way that you do that is you change the relationship between a follower to a subscriber right To a lead to someone who says, hey, I'm interested in hearing about what you have to offer, but maybe I'm not ready to buy right now. Right To a lead to someone who says, hey, I'm interested in hearing about what you have to offer, but maybe I'm not ready to buy right now. Right, maybe I'm not ready to buy right now. Less than 1% of the people who land on your website are ready to make a purchase right then. And there they need a little bit more convincing, a little bit more trust and a little bit more relationship building, and that's where something like a lead magnet comes into place. That's where you actually get to share the relationship and build a little bit more of that know like and trust factor.
Speaker 1:
And so a lead magnet is just a freebie, right? A freemium. Some people call it a freemium, some people just call it a free download, and essentially it's anything of value that you can give your leads in exchange for their contact information, in exchange for being a part of your email list. So, like Holly, a lot of you guys who are product based businesses, you could choose to do, um, a, let's say, a gift guide. It could be a 25% discount code or any percentage discount code. It could be a checklist or a download. It could be an audio or a video tutorial. It can be anything really. It could be a class, it could be a free course. There's so many different formats, but that's not what's important. What's important is that you create something simple that you can offer that is really valuable to the people who are engaging with you on social media, so that you can move them off social media and onto your email list where you can control the relationship right. Of course, they can always opt out of your list if they don't want to hear from you again, but a very small percentage of people will do that because, hopefully, you're sending really valuable emails and you can stay in touch. So it's really important, especially if you have a product-based business, that you are consistently staying in touch with the people who might potentially buy from you.
Speaker 1:
And then the second element, right. So first element in your sales system is that lead magnet. So you want to have a really solid lead magnet. The second is that next step, which is an email sequence. So ideally, you are sending people an automated email that delivers whatever you promise them. So if you promise them a checklist or a PDF or a report or a free ebook or an audio or a course or a discount code, whatever that might be, you want to deliver that immediately via an email.
Speaker 1:
And so you want to choose an email service provider. There are so many, but we highly recommend ConvertKit or MailerLite. Those are our two favorites, and I will leave in the description a entire blog post that I wrote back in 2016,. But it's still super, super valuable about ConvertKit and why we could switch to that tool. You're going to love it. So if you're curious about like, okay, what tool do I use and how do I make that happen Email service provider, you're going to be covered. There's so many out there. So whichever one you're using awesome, just make sure that it has the ability of having that automated sequence so you can actually put a lead through a journey of becoming a customer.
Speaker 1:
And so, essentially, you want to have at least a three-part email series that's automated, and you're going to be sharing maybe some valuable content, maybe some tips, and then you want to pitch your product at the end. It's really that simple. It doesn't going to be sharing maybe some valuable content, maybe some tips, and then you want to pitch your product at the end. It's really that simple. It doesn't have to be overly complicated, but it just needs to happen automatically. So now you're essentially replicating a sales call or a sales message instead of talking to every single person individually that might download your lead magnet. Now you have a tool doing it for you and that's really cool because you can then start building your email list and sending more people right through that lead magnet, and then they're going to be receiving these sets of emails that give them more value. Maybe walk them through your lead magnet and then offer them a discount, offer them something cool.
Speaker 1:
The next step really in becoming a client or a customer and that next step can be anything right? That's where we get to the third part of this. The third part is having a sales page and, depending on the type of product, program or service that you have, you may or may not need to do this. If you're a service based provider, then you probably want to book a discovery call, and so you're just going to send them to a landing page where they can book a free discovery call, learn a little bit more about your services, and that's it right. Very simple, very straightforward. You would be so amazed.
Speaker 1:
I'm willing to bet, actually, after a Doing our one-on-one coaching weeks that we just released as bonuses inside of the membership, and also talking to so many of you guys via DMs on Instagram, I'm willing to bet that about 80% of you do not have a sales system, this three-part system that's so simple but so powerful, and, instead of feeling down on yourself or feeling like you are behind or anything like that, I just want you to realize this is a very common problem, but it can be super easily fixed. This doesn't have to be complicated, and it does not need to be super challenging and it does not need to take a lot of your time. You just have to be intentional about putting the pieces in place and I would love if you did and so, speaking of profitability, sales and putting it all together for your business, I wanted to invite you to a brand new class that Chris and I have put together specifically for people like you, who may not have a solid sales system just yet, and we're going to walk you through our exact blueprint for how we actually turn content and engagement and followers into more clients and customers every single day, on autopilot and without using ads. Here, we're going to be breaking down exactly how we built three multi-million dollar companies using this exact same strategy, and the best news is, you do not need a super large following on social media to make it happen, because, again, we're business owners, not influencers, and we're going to profitabilityclasscom to sign up. It's totally free. You don't need to buy anything to get insane amounts of value just from being exposed to this concept. I think it's such an important thing. It's something that we're super, super passionate to help more business owners and entrepreneurs do, so that you can start actually funding the mission, so you can start getting more clients, more customers and, like Holly, start seeing some serious momentum in your list building and in your sales. So we're super, super excited about that. If you'd like to join us again profitabilityclasscom. And finally, I'm going to leave you with this Sales pages are one of the most important assets online.
Speaker 1:
A sales page enables you to actually have a sales conversation, just digitally, automatically, right, because you're not necessarily sitting there in front of that person every single time answering their objections or their questions. Sales page can do that for you, and we have seen sales pages convert beautifully for e-commerce entrepreneurs so physical products. We also see them convert really really well for service-based, even high-ticket clients, right, even if you sell something really really expensive. And then we've also seen them convert extremely well for course, creators and digital resource designers, people who sell digital content or digital resources. So coaches and teachers and trainers, it's so, so awesome. So if you don't know how to actually create a sales page or how to even get started, we'd love to walk you through that process inside the business lounge. We have an entire course called sales pages that convert, with a 12 step template and everything, so you can plug and play it.
Speaker 1:
But if you're not part of the membership, definitely sign up for the wait list. It's so so, so, so good. Seriously, you're going to love it. We'll have the link to the wait list below. But hey, maybe you don't want to join our membership? Totally cool. I think you should absolutely use this free. Well, it's not free, you still have to pay for it, but it's minimal investment.
Speaker 1:
Ray Edwards has an incredible book. I love this book. It's called how to Write Copy. That Sells and you can snag it off Amazon. We'll link to it here as well, on the podcast show notes and in the YouTube description, in case you have questions about that. It'll also be on our blog, which is where you can get all the links and resources that we don't have time to share with you here. So definitely always check out the blog. It's really good. I love this book. It is fantastic.
Speaker 1:
It's going to help you understand how to message your business in a way that translates online, because not a lot of times it doesn't. You know, it doesn't always translate, and this is also something that we see often with people who are trying to sell more via the internet. Right, sell more digital products. Sorry, not digital products, but sell via digital medium, meaning you know services or products that are physical or courses and they're like I just don't know how to communicate what I actually offer in a way that's valuable, cause it's so much different than just sitting down with someone, um, who you can have a conversation with and interact with and see, like, what their objections might be. So, ray Edwards fantastic resource. He kind of breaks it down in a really cool way, so highly recommend that read.
Speaker 1:
And, of course, if you enjoyed this episode, we love to hear from you. Let me know in the comments below, if you're listening to this on YouTube, what kind of business you run. Is it a product-based business? Do you have a service-based business, or do you have a course-based business or digital business? We'd love to hear from you. Let us know in the comments below, and I would also love to know which of these three elements are you going to work on? Next, are you going to create a lead magnet? Are you going to get yourself a really great email sequence, like an automated follow-up sequence, or are you going to start building a sales page so you might have these already? Tell us which one you're going to be working on and, if you do not have them, let us know which one you're going to be working on and if you do not have them, let us know which one you're going to be starting out with.
Speaker 1:
We'd love to hear from you and for those of you who are listening on the podcast, text us. Did you know we have fan mail now? It's so awesome. You literally just on your favorite podcast player, look for that little highlight link at the beginning of the episode description that says text me a question. Do you want to know, like Kim, like how do I even get started? How would this work for me? Let me know. I love hearing from you guys. You guys send me the coolest DMs and the coolest questions, and maybe we'll even answer some of those in the next episode. So I love you. I hope that you enjoyed this one and I will see you in the next one. Un beso, I'm rooting for you and don't forget that you have incredible God-given gifts that deserve to be multiplied and put on this earth for a purpose and for a reason. Don't give up. Keep moving forward with a lot of resilience. We are rooting for you all the way. Bye for now.
