174. One Ridiculously Simple Strategy To Increase Sales Before The End of the Year

It’s no secret that you wear a lot of hats running a business, and if you’re anything like most online business owners, the majority of your time is spent on content creation, admin and other behind the scenes work.

But how can you expect to make money in your business if you spend the majority of your time on things that aren’t directly tied to sales or designed to make sales down the road (and the road keeps getting longer)?

In today’s episode, I’ll share with you my ridiculously simple strategy that’s going to help you generate more sales. So if you are not quite on track with where you want to be this year or are looking for a cash boost, this episode will be the fire to get you moving.

Episode Highlights:

• The four traps that keep business owners stuck with sales
• My go-to strategy to generate sales
• The tough love, real talk advice you didn’t realize you needed to end the year
• Plus tips you can do to time audit yourself + your goals and start taking action

 EPISODE  SHOW NOTES👇

https://heathersager.com/episode174/

📣 WORK WITH HEATHER  → https://heathersager.com/

📧  Get the Hint of Heather NEWSLETTER → https://heathersager.com/newsletter

Connect on Social:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theheathersager/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heathermsager/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/HeatherSager

SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW

If this episode hit home, I'd be so grateful if you took a second to subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps more people find the show.  Thanks for tuning in to the Hint of Hustle podcast! See you next week!

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

2:06  

Well, hey, friend, welcome back to another episode. If you are not quite on track with where you want to be with revenue in your business and or you just want to generate more revenue in general, this episode is for you. That's what we're gonna get into today. It's just this very simple, I mean, ridiculously simple strategy that's going to help you in a really big way. No, it is not another tactic. No, I'm not going to tell you to send DMs or all these other weird things. It's a very, very simple thing that you're going to laugh and be like, yep, I should do more of that and thanks for the reminder, Heather. 

2:43  

But first, where this topic came from, so we're fresh off of the Boujee Biz Retreat which I've talked about a bit before, but I figured, you know, I should probably do a whole episode debriefing our first ever Speaker Co live event. I'm sure, I think it would be interesting. Let me know, send me a direct message on Instagram if you want to know more about that slash what questions you have. That's a lot of entrepreneurs that would love to host live events and that's one of our main things at the Speaker Co. We want to host more live conferences, live retreats, live events, and it was just my gosh, it was so fun to be with people with like physically in a room. It was actually pretty funny. So fun fact, most people don't realize because they see me on camera. I'm really tall. I'm 5'10", so my, I forgot what it was like where people who only know me online media in person. They're like, holy cow, you are way tall and then laughing. Emily, my business partner, she's like 5'2" so there's a pretty big difference between us when we stand up and so that was that was just fun. Anyways, I'm just sharing with you lots of random things. 

It's fun to be in person. It's fun to be with people and be able to have meaningful, small talk. I'm not a person who really loves small talk because I don't like, I don't know, I don't like random BS small talk. I want to have real conversations and the cool part about being back in person with people was you could just connect and have real conversation. You didn't have to like just get right to the point you could just be which was really nice for this introvert. That's a very weird thing to say out loud of how nice that was but it was so fun to host a live event. I would love to know what you would love to know if you have questions around that. Let's talk about that over on Instagram. Send me a direct message because I really would love to know and do a full debrief if that would be helpful for you. 

4:33  

But today's conversation came back, so one of the things that was really surprising about the event I heard this from quite a few guests is they know Emily and I as presentation people, speaking people, really weird to say that but y'all know me for the fact that I teach public speaking, speaking coach for online entrepreneurs and  I laugh all the time because y'all the speaking thing is the specialty that I went into after 15 years of business and marketing. Those are my expertise was business and marketing and sales and the speaking thing was just what I got really good at. So I just laugh all the time because I don't know if you experienced this too, do you ever have this resistance of having people put you in a box in terms of what your title is or what your niche is, when you're like, oh, it's so much more. Me too, like, we all have a variety of that. But I bring this up, because what was really surprising for a lot of the people who came to the conference was, we really got into business strategy. 

We talked about building a business that you love and one that doesn't consume all of your time, but also is highly profitable and those were conversations we had. And one of the things that I had taught in one of my workshops was specifically of helping entrepreneurs know where to put your focus because as business owners, I want you to think about this. You wear a lot of hats in business, especially this online business thing, because of the low barrier to entry, maybe a little fancy here with my business language, because it's a low barrier to entry, meaning that there's no capital costs to get started online business. You don't have to go out and buy a building and you don't have to do a lease. You don't have to go through specialized certifications. There's not a lot of these upfront investments that you have to do. All you need is, well I mean, technically, internet connection, access to a computer, and you can get started online. You can do something as simple as having a free Zoom account and that's how you host your coaching or training. Starting a YouTube channel is free. You can have lower cost options for having an email list, hosting your courses, technically, you could put it on a Google Drive like we can get scrappy. 

6:38  

Think about this in the context of starting businesses, building an online business, it's a pretty low barrier to entry. And when you think about online businesses, whether you sell digital courses, or you're a coach, or you're doing consulting, or you're thinking about what you're going to monetize, the reality is when you have this kind of business, you do a lot of it on your own because it doesn't require other people and in that doing it on your own, you start collecting a lot of jobs. You are the customer service person, you are the marketer, you are the social media person, you are the pseudo web designer. You wear all of these hats, and one of the questions I posed to the Boujee Biz Retreat which is we're going to do a little mini version in my workshop today is where are you spending your time? Where you're spending your time and the tasks that you're working on, do they correlate with revenue? And I know this is so stupidly simple, but I can't tell you how many of the clients that I work with privately and so many of the business owners that are inside our group coaching programs, when we have conversations around money, I can't tell you how many entrepreneurs have this. They know they need to make money but there is this underlining feeling that there's all these things that have to happen first, meaning, we gotta get the email list up. We got to create the freebie, we got to write the welcome sequence, now we got to fix up our website, and oh, we have to have a social media strategy. And ooh, I gotta have a pre launch strategy and I got to nurture people, oop but now, the email thing is really hard in order to create content so I'm going to start a podcast but now I have to figure out how to write show notes. And oh, my gosh, you know how to create an audiogram and then I gotta do an audiogram. But oh, I should probably put it on Pinterest too so I need to figure out should I do it myself, should I take a course, should get a Pinterest manager. And you see here in all of one breath, I just listed 70,000 million things, It is so easy to all of a sudden be doing all of these things, and I can't tell you how many business owners specifically in this online space are piling up all of these activities before they've ever generated a single dollar. And if that's you, I'm not saying this to make you feel bad or call you ou but I'm going to call your attention to one thing. And that is, are you spending your time on things in hopes to set yourself up to make money? Or are you spending your time on things that are really fear and ego creeping in because you're trying to control the outcome of making money. 

7:16  

And let me say that a little bit, get a little bit differently. One of the things that I taught at the Boujee Biz Retreat is that we all as business owners and just as learners and people in general. As we're building something and chasing goals, we always fall into these traps. They're always the same traps. I mean, I did not invent these but I did put names on them. This is my, I'm gonna teach a little framework here for a moment. This is something that I've been talking about for years. And it was these traps are things that I worked through of common objections or resistant points that I saw just in my trainings over time and with business owners that I've worked with. I noticed these common trends of where people would get stuck and it was typically they got stuck because of a combination of fear and ego that would take over. There weren't data, it wasn't the plan, it wasn't the things. It was really these ego plays that tears us which is why so many people focus so much on mindset. It's why mindset is a big piece. Let me just drill down into what the four are for you to help you put the picture on this. 

10:11  

When you're chasing any goal, or you're going through growth, or you're learning, you're retraining your brain with new neural pathways and you're learning new things, and in that learning that learning is uncomfortable so your safety zone comes in and tells you like, Oh, it's just too hard. Don't do that and these traps happen. Trap number one is the planning trap, where we default in the mode that if I can control things by planning out everything perfectly, the more perfectly it's planned, the more that I have the details and the more I anticipate all the scenarios, the more I have the plan, then the outcome will be better. If I have the perfect marketing plan, then people will start buying my program. If I had the perfect marketing plan, then I wouldn't have to waste so much time if I had this great plan for my launch and I have this plan for launching my website like plan, plan, plan, plan, plan. Raise your hand, if you're a planner. My hand is real high. I love to plan. Heck, I plan out everything. I have a preset planning checklist for packing. I have a preset planning checklist every week we go, or every year we go to Central Oregon. I have the plan on there down to the types of meals we're having every night because I don't want to argue or have to like coordinate every year,which family is bringing what. Plan I plan, plan, plan plan because I want to have a better experience. 

11:27  

But what we have to be aware of is as entrepreneurs more chasing goals is the plan, plan, plan, plan plan, really just us trying to control the outcome. I want me to put a pin in that. We're going to come back to it. The second trap that I see goes hand in hand and that is the perfection trap. This really is about us controlling the outcome but it comes from a really good place. As entrepreneurs, specifically the ones that I work with and I would imagine you fall into this category. Entrepreneurs that have great experience in their careers, maybe you had a prior career where you were an executive, or a director, or you manage people or you were really specialized in your field or maybe that you had a therapy practice or in accounting firm or maybe you're a lawyer and all of these things. You have professional experience but you're pivoting to this online space. What I noticed so often is with experts who pivot in the online space. Experts really view quality work to the highest regard. And one of the things that we hate, I'm gonna say we because I'm in this category. We hate it when we see people delivering crappy work online or have very little experience and they're showing up and teaching really basic concepts without a lot of backing. And we're like, oh, so what happens is, we know that our quality of work, we want it to be high, we know that we want our ideal clients working with quality professionals with real experience so what happens is we fall into the perfection trap, where we try to perfect every piece of content or we try to perfect how things look or we try to perfect the outline of the thing that we're talking about, or the video or whatever it is, anything that you build, you want it to be perfect and substitute, we want it to be high quality.

13:08  

 What that really is coming in is again, that ego play of what we're really trying to showcase to other people online or potential prospects is we, it's our ego showing that we don't want to be put in a bucket with the people that don't actually know what they're doing, but happened to be really good marketers. That's a freaking thing so that perfection trap creeps in because of for perfection trap starts getting us to focus on things that take our attention away from actually helping the people we want to help. I'm gonna put a pin on that and come back to it. The third trap that I see entrepreneurs fall in all of the frickin time and this happens, even non entrepreneurs, this happens in any kind of class that I've ever taught in my life. If you've ever had a student tell you, I already know that. That's so basic or just kind of glazed over when you're teaching really fundamental information that you know is basic, but you also know they skip over. This is something that we all do as entrepreneurs is there's a trap that we fall into called the I already know trap, where we easily discount basic information or our foundational things, because we happen to already know that we've learned them we even do them but our ego comes in and says we already know those things so not the reasons why we're not getting what we want. Those are like, we discount them because our ego is like no, no. You already know things. You are legit but what happens is when we discount them. We lose a real opportunity here because here's the beautiful part, my friend, Building a business is really about doing the simple, basic things really well. It's actually when we overcomplicate them that our businesses start not really working out because we've created so much complexity, we're spreading our energy and attention so thin, we can't do anything well. 

14:50  

One of my favorite quotes it goes back to the original Will Rogers says just because it's common sense, doesn't mean it's always common practice. Just because it's common sense, it doesn't mean that it's common practice, and that means that those basic things that are so common sensical you and I both know that those are the things that move the needle forward. It's what we teach to our audiences. But for some reason, when other people are teaching us those basic things, we fall into the I already know trap. So you can see here where ego comes in, and it's this idea that we want to be in control as entrepreneur. We know we are the forward thought leader, the innovator, the idea person, so when somebody threatens that or pulls our control away or we're put in a position where we don't know, even though we know we don't know things our ego fits in. Okay, that's the third trap. I put a pin it up, we're gonna come back. 

15:38  

The fourth trap that happens and this happens so much, especially in this online world we're living in with Instagram feeds and Tiktoks and everybody is showing you all of their best work, it's the comparison trap. And the comparison trap comes in because we start ranking ourselves and our lack of output or a lack of results, or lack of quality, or lack of beauty, or a lack of whatever all these things, we compare them to other people and we tend to compare them to people who really exacerbate the the difference between where our insecurities are. So if we're really feeling frustrated around how we look on camera, you better bet we're noticing all the people who tend to look ridiculously beautiful on camera, or if we're really insecure about our lack of confidence or lack of articulation, we are zoning in on the people that are super confident. If we're really feeling our launches are really awkward or launches are failing, we really zero into the people that seemed to be one of these really big launches. You notice we're drawn to the opposite, we're drawn to the thing that it shows the counterbalance of our insecurity. And what I want you thinking about is notice that because what you're noticing might be a clue to where you actually need to pay attention and yourself. So I'll say that again, what you're noticing and others where you're feeling envy or jealousy, those are actually cues for you to say, okay, what is this saying about me around somewhere I need to focus and work on. So for example, like I said before, if you're like man, they always look so pretty on camera and then you turn around and look and realize that you're not taking a shower every single day or washing your hair and you're not getting camera ready even though you could. You need to ask the question, do you want to be camera ready? Take a shower. And it doesn't mean you have to do your makeup all pretty, you don't have to look like one of the Instagram or Tiktok makeup artists people. But what I find oftentimes I'll use that one as example for me, I actually went down this rabbit hole last year, where I was like, oh, man, I never looked that good on camera and then I paused, that's the stupid thought I ever had. I don't look good right now on camera because I'm like wearing a messy bun and literally haven't showered for three days. Real, legit thing. So you see how that contrast happens is when we really are feeling envious or judgey around other person, look at the look at a callback to yourself. And it almost can become comical because you realize, oh, I'm actually not even trying. And you can then say is it important, then you can try? You also can bring in the conversation with comparison around is what I'm comparing actually apples to apples. For example, if you're comparing yourself like your launches to Amy Porterfield launch, I mean frickin A like, are you setting yourself up for success if you're trying to model your launch after Amy Porterfield? I mean, do you have hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of people on your email list? Do you have multiple million downloads of your podcast? No, like let's set you up for success to actually compare like benchmark your business on somebody who actually has a similar business than you. 

18:25  

So we need to start bringing logic to the party because the emotional piece, that ego and fear really plays us. So coming back to these traps, the planning trap, the perfection trap, the I already know trap and the comparison trap. What that does is it points our focus to things that are going to make us feel like we're in control, things that we're going to make us feel secure and confident and important. And you know what those things are, they're all activities that we can quote unquote, control. So writing show notes, curating graphics on social, digging around with writing emails, like all of these things, which sure are a piece of the equation but you notice all of those are safe tactics that don't go out and make you money out of the gate. These are what we would call the indirect revenue, driving activities. These are all the things that sure, we can justify and say they are important and sure, and there are degrees that all of these things collectively, adequately are important. 

19:27  

But the thing is, if you are not happy with the amount of money you're making in your business, you got to ask the question is how could you simplify things and go out and make money? When's the last time you talked about your offer with your audience? When was the last time you made an offer to your audience? And if you're thinking like, but I'm not ready yet, like, I'm not in launch mode. Can you just come up with something and email your audience like hey, I'm going to open up three spots on my calendar next week for X, Y and Z and describe it. Don't describe you get an hour with me on the phone, that's not selling. You need to think about what the benefit is. How could they use the hour on the phone with you? But here's the thing, are you creating more complexities in it, the need to be? And I'm not saying redo your business model. Please hear me loud and clear. I'm not telling you to, like, go out and burn down your business and rebuild. 

20:18  

But I'm asking you, if you are, let's say you're building a group coaching program, or you're building a digital course and you've been in build mode for a long time and you're waiting to make money. What could you do now to make money faster? And it doesn't have to be some hoopla around running a big workshop, you could do that. That's a great way to make money. But could you go out to your list? Could you go to your contacts and say, hey, I'm going to open up some consulting on my calendar. Could you go back and followup with the people who had a sales call with you three months ago, six months ago, 12 months ago and didn't move forward? Then instead of tucking your tail between your legs and be like, they hated meeting, bye, maybe it wasn't the right time. Can you approach it and just check in with them and see how they're doing? Could you throw in a bonus, or is there a new, more relevant thing that you can bring to them to circle back and see if it's a fit? 

21:07  

If you want to make money, you have to ask for the sale. And I get that it can be uncomfortable but all you're doing is presenting more opportunities for you to help your ideal customer with the problems they already have, get the transformation they already want. I'm gonna say that again, making a sale isn't about you pushing something on people, it's helping them solve the problems they already have, and getting the transformations they already want. So coming back to my very simple strategy to generate more revenue. It's a very simple strategy, a very common sense, and yes, I already know you know this strategy but as I mentioned before, my favorite quote, just because it's common sense doesn't mean it's always practice. Dang it. That's not the quote, just because it's common sense doesn't mean it's always common practice, that is a hard thing to say. 

21:59  

But just hear me out and get present with yourself. Over the last seven days, when you think about the things you've worked on in your business, what percentage of them have been you actually asking for the sale? What percentage of those things are you actually talking to people that could be your ideal client? When was the last time you had conversations with your client on the phone? If you're unhappy with the amount of money you're generating right now in your business, I'm gonna ask you a really hard question. Is it because you were dead set on using the scalable marketing strategies that the big names are teaching you? And you're just waiting for that strategy to pay off? Or friend, are you getting scrappy? And I know you hustling a little bit, and a lot of people think hustle is a bad word. I think hustle, you need a hustle when necessary. I think you need a little bit of hustle in your business if you want to make things work and it's the thing that nobody's talking about. It doesn't mean to go burn like all the hours and all the day working all the time but if you want to make money, you got to work for it, my friend. 'you need to ask for it. You need to start highlighting some strategies instead of just waiting for the launches to work and waiting for things to flow your way, go out and make some sales. And I know I say that you're like, but it's so hard. If you keep saying it's hard, it's going to be hard. You tough love Sager coach coming in. If you keep saying that it's hard, but you can't find your people, but it's not working, it's not that easy, Heather. I just, I don't have anything to sell, Heather. All I'm hearing from you and I'm so sorry and I say this with love and if you can't do it, this is not the show for you. Friend, I'm going to tell you right now, if those are the immediate thoughts are coming to your mind, is it possible that that is why you're not making sales? 

23:41  

I'm going to link to an episode on on in the show notes here that I talked about the quality of the questions that you ask and this is where you get to do a little self coaching right here. If you are not generating the money you want and you're saying statements, like it's not that easy. I can't find my people, It's just too hard. selling is uncomfortable, all of those are closed statements. Go back to my episode where I help you reframe those into exploratory questions that produce ideas because here's the thing, friend. I know I just came down pretty hard on you telling you stop making the friggin excuses but let me tell you this, your brain is so frickin genius. You are one of the most creative, innovative, courageous people in your area, in your network. And I know this because you've raised your hand to say I want to be an entrepreneur which means inherently you were creative and you were brave. Give your brain and your yourself the chance to prove that right. Start asking better questions of yourself. How could I generate money this week? What would need to happen in order for me to make an offer? What actually do we need to have in place for this to happen now for me? Those are different questions. Those are exploratory questions that when you start answering them, you open up possibilities. You see how this works where you direct your thinking is directing your results or lack thereof. And if you're not happy with the money you're making in your business, start getting real with, where am I focusing my time, where am I focusing my thoughts?

25:13  

 And I know this episode got a little rah rah, coachy, tough love fluffy fluff here but these are the kinds of conversations that are going to make the biggest impact in your business. So with that, I'm gonna invite you to do a little self exploration today. With that, I'm gonna invite you to really time audit yourself and you don't have to go, don't go into planning trap and go into this whole, like big time study thing. If you want to do that, you sure can. But I really just want you to look at calendar and get present and say, where have I been spending my time? Where have I been spending my thoughts? And if you're not where you want to be, could you invite yourself to take a different step? Start with that step of a brainstorm of asking better questions around how could you ask for a sale now this week. It doesn't have to be overly complicated. And I know, it's not as simple as like as it could be as simple. As I said, there's probably other scenarios that might prevent you from doing this. But what would it look like for you to brainstorm for a moment and say, but what if there was a solution? But what if you could? But what if there was a person? But what if you could DM someone? What if you knew someone? start asking those exploratory questions and friend, hustle behind it because y'all if you want to make money, you're the only person who can do it. Nobody else can go out and make money for you. You can't outsource it, contrary to some what some people say they do. They're gonna build you a funnel, they're gonna deliver you 87 qualified leads every month. Friend, you and I both know that the person who's going to generate revenue in your business, it starts with you. And I believe that you can do it and I want to give you a lot encouragement. You have what? Eight weeks, 10 weeks left in the year. We got time you got two months until if you're taking time off for the holidays.You got two months, friend. You can do a lot. We are not done with 2022 yet. So let this be your moment to stand up, look at your goal from the year see where I'm at and let this be the time that you start taking action and get something moving and please come tell me what that thing is. If something when this episode little fire under your ass if you're like yes, Heather, this is the coaching that I needed more people. I need to hear this. Can you send me a direct message on Instagram? Post this episode, share it in your Instagram Stories, add it to your favorite podcast of 2022 list. Help us get this message in front of more people because, friend, I'm imagining that you're similar to the people that you hang out with, that you have more entrepreneurial women, that you hang out with that need to be more bold in asking for what they want and asking for the sale and talking about how great they are and telling people how they can help them, use this episode to declare to your community that you're going to start being more courageous and how you're showing up and be a model for them to do the same. All right for and I hope this episode was the tough love and the positive encouragement that you need today to take the next action. I want you to pick a lot of money in your business. I want you to feel good in the process. And most importantly, I want you to make an impact in the world. And I hope this episode helped you take a little step closer and doing just that. Alright, I'll see you on the next episode.