You are listening to the Scaling of Freedom podcast, and if you are an online coach or course creator, you are in the right place. I'm your host, Christina Bernhard. I'm an ads agency owner that gets an inside look every day on what's working and what doesn't. In the online coaching space. I'm here to share with you what we see works in our agency as well as what we see happening and changing in the industry. Stay tuned to uplevel your coaching business to have the freedom you want. Let's get started. Welcome to episode 178. I'm going to address a very simple question, which is, do I have to keep doing sales calls for my coaching program? So this is something that I've seen over and over again where the goal is often to get off of sales calls. Um, so I want to talk about, you know, whether this is necessary. Like do you need to get, have sales calls? Can you just have the offer up and people just be able to directly purchase? Um, you know, is it creating a barrier? What are the, what are the pros to it? Um, especially whenever it's really time consuming, right? And it's also something that creates a lot of obligations on your calendar. So I can see why sales calls are not very attractive, ideal to a lot of people. Um, so I wanna go over when sales calls are a good idea, reasons to use them. And then I also wanna touch on any time, like there are reasons that you should stop doing sales calls and also go over some sales calls solutions if you don't want to do sales calls. So the first thing is, let's address it. Are sales calls a good idea? When are they a good idea? So I always recommend doing sales calls for quite a few reasons that I'm gonna go over in this episode. But the first thing is that I want to address is that you really want to use sales calls for, um, any high ticket program, uh, or also at any level, and in most cases,<laugh>. So in most cases, I'm going to recommend that you use sales calls. We see a lot of success with sales calls in the agency, but there are also other reasons to use sales calls. So the first thing is that you get better at one of the best skills that you could have as a business owner, right? There's no better skill that you could have as a business owner than to be able to sell what you sell. So having that as a skill is something that is worth practicing, even though it does, you know, cloud up your calendar hopefully, right? Um, you are getting lots of sales, sales calls, um, it's a good reason to go ahead and go through with those and just kind of deal with that. Uh, initially at least there are other solutions that you can have, um, that we can put together for that. But, um, having that skill and just getting better and better at it, really, really valuable. Um, because you can also translate a lot of that that you're learning in your emails and your sales copy on your sales page and your ad messaging, all of those different things. Also, even if you just go, you know, live on Instagram or something like that, just being able to, um, translate these conversations into your messaging is going to be huge. Um, so you can also have that into some evergreen content. You also get to have live conversations with your audience and your potential clients. So this is really, really great for market research. It is possible to get on sales calls and not actually get a ton of value, uh, out of market research if you're not being intentional. So we do wanna make sure that with your sales calls, you are asking specific questions that are relevant to the sales call, um, and important to be able to, you know, get through and figure out if they are right for your offer, but also so that you can actually have market research. And it's something that you can, you know, keep track of over time and have a bank of people's answers so that you can pull from that and understand your ideal client on a whole nother level. Especially when it comes to objections. We want to know where they're at, what they're thinking, and you know, is your messaging actually being very clear enough where when people get on the sales calls, they understand what your offer is, they understand who it's for, they understand its value, or, you know, what are the gaps that you're experiencing on those sales calls that you can actually address in your content before they get on a call? That's just going to make closing those sales so much easier and faster, um, and more likely that they might have already, like you might have already closed the sale before they get on the call. That's ideal, right? Um, and then also another very obvious reason is that they have a higher conversion rate than just the sales page. So with the sales page, you're gonna have like single digit percentages typically if you have a higher ticket program. Um, but whenever you get on calls, you can have like somewhere between like 20 and 50%. Um, so the average I would say is probably 30 to 40%. So having that is going to be huge. Um, that's going to make a huge difference, especially if you're running ads and you have that volume going through there, you're gonna have a way higher conversion rate, and you're just simply typically going to make more money if you have a high ticket program, um, getting people on sales calls, but also even if you don't initially make more money, which I mean you typically will. Um, but even if you didn't, you will over time because you're having these conversations with people, you are getting those different objections and you are understanding them. And if you're intentional asking the right questions so that you can actually translate that into your copy again. So that's just going to make your entire sales process and your funnel and all of those things even more optimized and dialed in so that you can have those higher conversion rates. So even if you did want to pull out the calls and have them just purchase right away, having a period of time where you are doing as many sales calls as possible so that you can dial all that in, that's just over time going to make you more money because all of that is going to be that much more optimized and convert that much higher. So let's talk about reasons to stop using sales calls, because I know that there are, are, you know, there's some legitimate reasons to actually not do them anymore. Um, so one is that your schedule is just simply too full and you physically can't, that's a great reason to stop using them. If you, if the demand is so high that people just want the program, um, you know, you can do that. I, I personally, I would still keep doing some of them, um, just so that you can have those higher conversion rates, but also so that you can, um, again, that market research is just going to be huge for the long term game. So if you're able to do that, um, that's going to be great. Um, so let's talk about some solutions though. If you still want to do sales calls or you think, you know, okay, fine, I'll, I'll still do them, but I am having the situation where my schedule is too full. Um, even if you don't have, you know, like your every waking moment is booked up with a sales call, maybe you really only have certain times of your schedule that you want to be on calls and you don't want to actually expand it beyond that, that's, that's okay too, that's considered booked for you. So let's talk about what you can do in those scenarios. So the first thing is hire a sales team. So that is one thing that you can do. Now this can be tricky because depending on your experience with whoever you hire, because there are lots of people out there that do this, and some of them can really feel like not the best fit. So the people that we work with at the agency, we work with coaches who are really authentic and a lot of them do just such amazing work, and they're very much not the like, bro marketing, like salesy, like people, like, that's just not usually typically their personal brands, and it's very intimate and it's just not that kind of environment. Um, and so a lot of the times, a lot of sales teams don't seem to be a good fit. So I see a lot of my clients struggle with this sometimes. Um, but there are sales team out there that are really good. They're not like gonna be sleazy or try and push your people or, you know, make your people feel uncomfortable and things like that. So you do have to do some vetting because, you know, there are some like people that have, you know, there are some companies that have a team of like hardcore like salespeople, um, and they might do some pushing to try and get those sales. Um, and if that feels good to you, that's fine, but, um, most of my clients that does not feel good to them and we don't want our audience to feel like they're being pressured or they're trying to, like someone's trying to convince them or anything like that. We're genuinely just trying to see if the offer is right and if it's a good fit, right? So there are sales teams that, um, in companies that do do that, um, that they are like more authentic and they are trained to just see if there's that fit. But, um, another thing that you can do is hire specific sales people. Um, so maybe not an agency or something like that, or a company that does that, specializes in them, but actually hiring like one sales call like person. And another really common thing that I see is people hiring from within their programs, depending on what you do, um, in, within their programs, like different graduates and stuff like that, and who, people who are starting out, maybe they're like if you're a business coach or something, like they're, you know, um, starting their own business coaching business and they want to do some work on the side for extra money. Um, and they are super aligned with you and your programs and what you offer and how you teach and like all those things. And so they know your ideal client. I've actually seen that work out really commonly, um, which I would kind of surprised by because you would think that, you know, if you're like a health coach or something that you wouldn't find someone in your programs that would be interested in like being a salesperson. But, um, I see it a lot. So that's also a place that's worth looking just because those people are so aligned and they, they know, they understand you and like all of the variables there. So that's a place that you could look and that's one thing that you could do is just have one person, you know, depending on what this load looks like and all of that, um, have one person that is super aligned with you, take the calls for you and you, um, feel good about their ability to close those calls. Um, but do it in a, in an authentic way where you're not pressuring people or making people feel uncomfortable on these calls. Um, another thing that you can do is you can kind of do a hybrid of sales calls and like directly purchase. So you can have a book, a call option, but not everywhere. So you can introduce it later in an email sequence or you can put it in the OR and, or you can put it in towards the bottom of a sales page. So if people want to book a call with you because they need just more help to figure out if the offer is right for them, you can offer that to them. But you can also have the option where people are just purchasing right away. So this is a really good thing to do if you do have that high demand, but you do want to have conversations with people who are maybe on the fence just for that conversion, but also so that you can have those conversations with people who are not completely sold just off of the sales page alone in your content alone. So that is what I have for you. I hope that this is helpful in figuring out whether you should do sales calls or not. So my conclusion from this is do them as much and as long as you can, um, just because they are so, so valuable and it's just really good all around and it's really good for the long term as well. Um, so, you know, I went over when sales calls are a good idea, um, reasons to use them and why I'm a fan of them and why I see them work in the agency. Um, also reasons to not use sales call is if you are in that situation. Um, and different solutions for those situations as well where you can still get some of the benefits of having sales calls without having a full schedule of people on your calendar. So I hope that you found this helpful. I will see you guys next. Thank you for listening to the Scaling to Freedom podcast. If you are a seven figure coach looking for ads management with an agency that partners with you to get your work out into the world and amplify your impact, see if we are a good fit by applying for a spot in our agency@christinabernhard.com slash apply. Find the link in our show notes.