Leah Gervais: These are the five biggest reasons. You probably are not signing as many clients as you want. So for those of you that are here live, I would love to hear from you. What type of work do you do? Are you a coach? Are you consultant? Are you a graphic designer? Are you an artist? And do you sign clients and do you want to sign high ticket clients? Let me know in the comments and we can talk about how some of these might be specifically affective to you.

So let’s go ahead and dive in. So the first reason that you might not be signing as many clients as you want is because you are not correctly leveraging the 80:20 rule of them. So this was something that I learned early on in my business and it has paid off. And so this could be a really excellent time for you to learn it. If it’s not something that you’re applying right now, you have probably heard the 80 20 rule in different parts of life. Actually don’t even know what type of thing it actually originated with. 

So any of you do let me know then. Yeah. But if you do know, then let me know. But here’s where it comes into handy with getting clients oftentimes early on in business, people feel like they need to be creating content as much as possible. Feel like they need to be posting on Instagram, writing emails, writing blog posts, creating videos. And to some extent you do need to hustle to get content created and to get yourself out there. That is true. However, especially in the beginning, if no one knows what your content is or no one sees it, it doesn’t matter how great it is. They aren’t going to know about it. And therefore they’re not going to buy from you. So implementing the 80 20 rule with creation versus marketing is going to be a game changer with, for you.

If you spend four times as long, um, marketing a piece of content, as you do creating it, then it is going to get you so much further and you’ll be so much more visible. And visibility is honestly the main theme of every single one of the points I’m talking about here because far too often, it honestly saddens me. Clients will come to me, they’ll join scale your side hustle. And they say, they’ll say, I just need to spend the next week or month, you know, perfecting my program, or I need to do a bunch of market research and call all these people because for whatever reason, people aren’t buying and I am all for market research, I think it’s important to know that people actually want what you have, but to the extent that it’s allowing you to spend more time behind the scenes working. And I say that in quotes, because we all know that this is often the time where you just drive yourself crazy, that I don’t agree with.

It’s far more important for you to get yourself out there and get yourself visible and really be able to start making proper assumptions and conclusions about your business based on how many people are actually seeing it, having a hundred Instagram followers, having a thousand Instagram followers and not yet making a sale in a matter of months does not tell me that your offer isn’t good. That tells me you need to get more out there. That is not really what this is about. You know, you really have to stand out there in the saturated online market.

So let’s take kind of two different examples. I already know I’m going to go over my time limit, but let’s take two different examples. Just with this point. Let’s say that you spend an hour writing a beautiful long form, Instagram post. It’s kind of like a, you know, you really spend time thinking about it. It’s really moving. It has kind of all the important points of really persuasive content. You have a hook at the beginning, you relate to your ideal client’s pain points. You talk about how this relates to your own story. And then you share how you either have helped yourself through that, or you’ve helped other people through that. It’s beautifully written. And then let’s say you spend maybe another hour or, you know, even another half an hour editing the photo that you want with it. Maybe you use Photoshop or Lightroom, or even just your iPhone.

You have to scroll through to find it, let alone. I’m assuming that you already even took it, right? So altogether this process of actually creating a good Instagram post could take you at least an hour, if not more. And so if you have a few hundred or even a few thousand followers on Instagram and you put all your eggs into that quote basket of that post, and then it doesn’t work, or it doesn’t convert, it can feel really deflating. And this is really dangerous. This is why the 80 20 rule is so important because when we don’t get aggressively visible and things don’t happen, we don’t realize that we need to get more visible. We think something’s wrong with us. And so this is when I see clients say things like, you know, people will come to me and they’ll be like, I don’t, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.

Maybe I’m not cut out for this. Maybe I can’t do this. Did I really sign up for this? And it’s like, Oh my gosh, no, you are making this mean something about yourself. That it doesn’t. And this is, this is why mindset work is so important, but it’s a very slippery slope. So instead, what do I encourage you to do? Use that beautiful piece of content and literally put it out there, market it spend four times as long marketing it, as you did creating it. What does that look like? Well, it could mean that you copy and paste the copy into an email and you send the email out to your entire email list. It also could mean that you create a pin on Pinterest and you pin your Instagram post. Yes, you can pin Instagram post. It could also mean that you take the copy and the image and you put it up as a blog post.

It doesn’t have to be all SEO optimized. We’d like it to, but the idea is just to get yourself out there, then create a pin for that blog post. You see what I mean? You also could do a live, like I’m doing now, talking about that specific topic. You could create a reel on that specific topic. You could post that post in other Facebook groups. You could add it to stumble upon. And I want to be careful here because the goal here is not for everyone to walk away and feel like, Oh my God, I have to add a million things to my plate. Pick a few, you know, pick a few avenues that you know are manageable and then you can stay consistent with and spend the whole dang week marketing that piece of content. You know, if you create two or three good pieces of content and market it and market it and repurpose it and keep putting it out there versus trying to do something every single day, just on Instagram, you will have so much more success.

So that is tip number one is make sure you’re using the 80: 20 rule where you are spending 20% of your time creating and the other 80% marketing. 

Okay. Reason number two, why you are not getting as many clients as you want is again, a visibility issue. And this is about overly relying on Instagram. I don’t know why I’ve seen this so much lately, but it seems to be a pattern with a lot of my newer clients coming in through scale your side hustle. They have really relied on Instagram as a way to get clients. And they wonder I’m posting every day. You know, I’ll ask them like, okay, what do you currently do to get clients? And they’ll show me their Instagram, or they’ll say, well, I keep posting on Instagram. And I keep saying this on Instagram. And it’s like, well, what else are you doing?

Here’s the fundamental shift that I encourage you to embrace. If you think of a basic business funnel that all businesses have at the top, it’s very wide. The top of the funnel is about getting people interested. The middle of the funnel is about letting them know why once they’re interested, what is so great about you? Why they should trust you. What makes you different? You know, you can think about this with Lulu lemon, right? They are, they, when they blew up, they wanted to get everyone interested in what they do. Then the kind of middle part of their funnel is there. They have very, very good branding. You can walk into their stores. It’s very consistent. You know what to expect. They have really great sales associates. It’s really fun to shop there. It’s very well laid out. It’s not cluttered, you know, and they really make women feel beautiful and powerful in that and strong.

So once you find out about them, the work they know, the work isn’t done, it’s not like you find out about them. And then you buy from them, it’s you find out about them. And then they need to warm you up and show why they’re better than any other athletic company. And then you buy this middle of the funnel is also known as a nurturing area. This is where you’re getting that kind of know like, and trust to be built. That is what Instagram is great for. I think, um, I think that so many people rely on Instagram for the top. They rely on Instagram as a way for people to find out about them as a way for people to, um, first get to know them as a way for people to stumble upon them as a way for people to get in their world.

And you’re putting way too much pressure on an app on your phone. Um, and you have to ask yourself like if Instagram disappeared tomorrow, which the algorithm can change at any moment, could you go out into the real world and talk about your business and get clients just to seamlessly. There might be a little bit of a growing pain, but do you see what I mean? Relying on Instagram to be the main way you have brand awareness is shortsighted and it’s robbing you of all the other places you could get your brand to be grown. It is a very good nurture because it is a way for people once they found out about you to get to know you more, to look at your posts, to look at how you write, to watch you on video, to see if they like you, all of that kind of stuff.

So what does this look like for me in practice? Or what do I recommend it could look like for you in practice? Well, first things first is really be honest with how much you’re relying on Instagram, and then try to think about three ways that you can have that top of funnel open that are [inaudible]. You can have Instagram being one of them, but it can’t be the only one. So the way I usually do this is I use a bunch of different, uh, marketing tools to get people on my email list. My email list is the most important part of the funnel for me, for sure, because, and I encourage you to adopt that same mindset, because like we said, Instagram can disappear at any moment. You own your email list. So I am often, uh, advertising lives that I do. I do a lot of webinars.

I have this podcast, for instance, which this, by the way, spoiler alert for those of you watching live. This is for my podcasts. I do live videos all the time. And I run Facebook ads for my email list. And I have quite an aggressive Pinterest strategy. You don’t need all of those, but I would recommend having two or three at the top that are one can include Instagram, but not, it cannot be the only one. Then what I do once I get people on that email list, I encourage them in almost every email for the beginning few times that they get an email from me to follow me on Instagram, because that way they can get to know me more on Instagram and they can kind of see the behind the scenes of my life. I’m very transparent on Instagram. I’m not into the whole curation thing.

Those of you who follow me, probably know that. And I like it that way. I mean, it’s an app on the phone like these, you know, this, this stress around this perfect way to use Instagram is so energy sucking, I believe. And I also believe it misses the point, because if you are building a business and a legacy, you need to not focus on your Instagram strategy, you need to focus on your message strategy, your legacy strategy. Like what do people actually feel when they’re around you? What do they actually do because of what you share? You know what I mean? So, anyway, that’s all to say, use Instagram as a nurture, use it as sometimes a lead generation, but don’t limit yourself to it because it is literally just an app on the phone. It is not going to build your legacy for you. 

Okay, now, next thing hi, you guys. I love seeing so many of you join. Let me know if this is helping you. I haven’t seen any comments from you guys, but I love seeing all of your waves.

The third reason that you might not be getting as many clients as you want is because you are selling your logistics and you’re not selling your actual result or transformation. So a lot of times when I have new clients, this is another thing I see from them. They’ll come and they’ll show me their, their sales page, or they will show me their last Instagram post, where they talked about what they’re offering and I’ll look at it. And it will say, I have now the opportunity for you to work with me for this many weeks, with this many phone calls and this many emails, and this is all that you get.

And we have to remember that people aren’t going to pay for communications.People aren’t going to pay for an email people. Aren’t going to pay for a zoom call. People pay for a result in every single situation. If you know, you can think of, if you, if you go to the doctor, you break your leg and you have surgery. And after the fact they’re telling you, okay, you need to go to physical therapy. It doesn’t matter to you. If they see say, you need to go every day, you need to go every other day, you need to go for three months. You need to go for three weeks. Need to do it for an hour. Like you just want to walk again, right? That’s the bottom line. And so whatever they tell you is going to be kind of like white noise, or you just accepted for the bottom line.

The result that they’re helping you get, which is that you will have a healed leg. I really have to stop using this broken leg analogy. I feel like I’ve been using it a lot, and I’m afraid I’m going to manifest a broken leg in my whole life, but I just think it’s a powerful illustration. Because sometimes it can feel so airy fairy. 

If you do something that isn’t as seemingly urgent, but the concept still applies because our brain works the same way. If you want a result and you want something to change, that is what you will pay for it. That is what you’ll do the work for you aren’t really as concerned with what the work is. 

So the next time you send a sales email, the next time you post on Instagram, what you’re selling the next time you go edit your sales page and encourage you to really look at this with an honest eye and ask is the most clear, most evident, most obvious part of what I’m selling, how people will feel, what they’ll have, what will be different about their life after the fact, what is the transformation that is what gets people to pay every single time.

They want to either get out of their current pain point or they want to experience the pleasure point you offer. They don’t give anything about a zoom call. You know what I mean? And so it’s not that you’re not valuable. It’s not that your time. Isn’t valuable. It’s not any of that. It’s just from an understanding basic human psychology and what makes people take action? It’s those types of things, because we have access to all of those types of communications. 

We actually are inundated with that access right now. We’re kind of flooded with it. There’s too much of it. So we have to kind of cut through the noise and really help people get straight to what could be different about their life. If they work with you. In other words, it will, yeah. You need to sell the result slash transformation, not the logistics.

Okay. Reason number four, why you might not be getting as many clients as you desire is that you are simply not selling. So I mentioned in the last example that we have clients come to me and they’ll show me their Instagram and they’ll show me what they’re selling or they’ll show me their last sales email. But I actually more often have clients come to me wondering why they’re not getting clients. 

And if I look at their last night, Instagram posts, or I ask them, when they last sent a sales email, nothing in it actually explicitly says what they do, what they offer or how they can help people. Now, I’m not saying you need to be constantly turning out what you do when you do. Here’s how you buy. Here’s how you buy. Um, those of you who follow me know that I don’t do that with every single post, but we have a very clear sales strategy.

We do a few times a year. We do launches where we have doors closed and then doors open doors open and the doors close. So while we’re not selling those, I don’t have every post in mind be about what, about how you can sign up with me. But we do have almost everything. I do explain what I do, what clients expect when they work with me, the kind of results I get from what I do and the kind of results that they get, what I do in the least. 

You need that. But ideally, especially if you are, um, having the goal right now of signing one-on-one clients, that’s the other thing is I only take this year. I’m only taking three one-on-one clients all year. I think that’s the current plan all year. So if you were interested in one of those spots, you can DM me.

But, um, if you are in a phase in a, in a stage where one-on-one clients is your main business model, you have to talk about it consistently. And it stuns me how often people don’t sell. If you feel weird about selling, I cannot encourage you enough to join my service-based sales program. It is truly transformational, both from your own mindset perspective, as well as from a pure marketing standpoint, how to sell from a place of service so that none of that fear comes up. None of that sleaziness comes up. 

None of that comes off and you’re really just doing it in a way that feels good to you. And it feels actually even better to your client because they want what you offer and what you have. So make sure that you actually sell that is such an important point. And you can just go look at your, um, you know, your Instagram and ask yourself when’s the last time I sold, go look at your emails.

When’s the last time you gave people the opportunity to buy from you from an email. And we don’t have to overthink this. You guys, I mean, yes. I think that is valuable, like in-depth sales strategies. Aren’t important. Long-term again, what I teach in service-based sales, but I encourage all of you listening to this right now. If you have an Instagram account, if you have an email list, get off of this. When I’m done, I have one more tip after this, when I’m done and just put a poll up on your Instagram story, say, I have a few spots available to work with me, whatever the truth is for you right now, and whatever you do have the capacity to do, ask people on a poll. 

Are you interested in yes or no? And reach out to the people that are interested. You don’t have to wait until everything’s in place. You don’t have to wait until you have, you know, everything perfectly lined out. You don’t have to wait until next month. You literally can do this today. Um, and you can just send an email. Are you, is anyone like I have a few spots open in my health coaching and my spirituality practice in my, um, whatever the case is, you know, that is like just email me back and then we can talk about it.

It really can be that simple. Okay.

So the final thing, let me see, okay. This actually a great chance, cause I kind of sped up you guys. I have 10 more minutes. So if any of you have questions on any of this, please let me know. Now I’m going to take a sip of water before the last one and then read some of your thoughts.

Annie- I’m obsessed with Abby and now obsessed with you. These are all amazing points would love to chat more. Thank you so much. Yeah. Go ahead and DM me or, um, or email us or anything like that. We’d love to hear from you, but this would be the don’t know. Abby is my director of operations and she’s also my beloved sister. She’s amazing. So awesome. Super helpful. Thank you. You are so welcome. I’m so glad. All right. We have a mindset and growth coach here. A licensed aesthetician. Love that. All right. I’m sure these are somewhat applicable.

All right. Let me know if you guys have any questions. I’ll go ahead and dive into the next one. So the final reason you might not be getting as many clients as you want, or especially ticket clients that you want is because you are not getting on at sales calls. So there’s a staggering statistic that I don’t know off the top of my head about the percentage of sales that fall through via email versus that fall through on the phone. 

And it is dramatically lower and less likely to fall through on the phone. Why is this? Well again, peeling back, all of the marketing. I hope you guys can see my style here. I talk a lot about marketing techniques. I’m saying that in quotes, like I talk about Instagram, I talk about email, but everything that I teach and everything that I do and everything that we strategize from is all from s very boiled down understanding of sales psychology, which once again is what we teach in service-based sales.

If you want to take that program, we can enroll you at the early bird price right now. So DM me and once you understand the psychology, it transcends Instagram. It transcends different platforms. It literally transcends any trendy thing that comes and goes. Now, you know, now I think there’s like this thing called club farm or clubhouse or whatever the case may be. And I don’t know, maybe I guess I never want to say never that I would join it, but I really think that it’s misguided to think that the next big thing is what’s going to make you sales understanding sales is what’s going to make you sales on any platform. And so this final tip here that you need to get on sales calls comes from a very key understanding in sales psychology, which is that people have to understand, or they have to have some reason to buy now.

So if you’ve done any sales training, you maybe have heard people say, add urgency, add urgency. And you, as someone selling something can always add urgency. You can say that there’s a 10% discount. If someone buys within 72 hours, you can run flash sales. You can add bonuses. If people make a decision within a certain timeframe. 

And I love all of that. I use those in my own business as well. I think it’s really important and empowering for you to create a clear container with your potential client on when they need to make the decision by. So I don’t think it’s helpful for you or your client to leave the window. Open-ended all of that said, those are sort of, um, I guess I want to say like a second tier urgency strategies, because the best urgency will always be authentic urgency from your client.

In other words, when you get on the phone and they tell you why they are interested in what you do, why they’re thinking about having health coaching, be part of their life or relationship coaching or mindset coaching, or for me, I have a program scale, your side hustle. Some of you may know it’s I think the best program out there for side hustlers. And if you know, someone is able to share, for example, I want to start a side hustle. 

Okay. Let’s take two examples. If they email me and they say, I want to start a side hustle, I can say, okay, great. I have this program, scalar side hustle. The doors are open. Hopefully you join that’s that I don’t really have any further authentic way to connect with them on why they should join, because I only have the information they emailed me, whereas I’m able to get with them on the phone and really talk this through.

I can actually understand why they should join Scale your side hustle. Now, whether that’s because they absolutely hate their boss or because they’ve actually loved working from home during COVID and they don’t want to go back to their nine to five, or maybe they want to start their family. And they want to be able to work from home with their child, or maybe they want to travel more. And they are so sick of being chained to a desk, or maybe they literally are getting, you know, breakouts because of the horrible air quality and the overall air condition cubicle. They are so stuck at being in you guys sound passionate about this. I like and have been through so many of these things and starting my own business and quitting my nine to five job is the best decision I’ve ever made. Still years later, I’m obsessed with it.

And so when I can understand and that it’s such a better connection for both of us, for me to say, you know, I can help you do that. I can help you do that. Um, this is what scale your side hustle does. And in four months you will be able to know how to do that. You will be able to know how to get clients, all of that kind of thing. This is really what you want. Then we can show you, you had to do that. 

There’s no sleaziness behind this because they’re the ones that told me. I don’t feel any weirdness around selling that way because they told me they wanted this. It’s not me selling it to them. And you know, likewise, if we get on the phone and they say, well, I want to start a side hustle, but, um, I’m really busy right now. And in a year, I think I’ll have more time. 

I mean, I don’t really love that excuse because I think times are most valuable asset. But my point is, if you’re on the phone and there’s some authentic reason why this isn’t a good fit for them right now, then you both can walk away feeling good about it and you don’t have to feel sleazy and they don’t have to feel sold to. But if you get on the phone and there’s a very clear reason that they should join, they probably actually just want someone to believe in them and to tell them that like, they know how to do this and they can teach them how.

And they really appreciate that too. Over email, you know, it’s so hard because you aren’t in that person’s situation, you don’t understand why they’re even interested in this and they might not even understand if you can help them. So get on the phone. I cannot encourage you enough to advertise your sales calls as if they are something valuable, as valuable as something you’re selling, make them really good, make it so that no matter what, people walk away with more information, which they should. 

And that is what you can talk about so much on your social media and in your emails and wherever else you are advertising, because that is where you create the authentic connection. That’s where sales no longer feel sleazy. And once again, this is something we extensively teach in service-based sales. We go through a whole module on the sales call process and everything else like that.

So if you are nervous about sales calls or if you’re like, Oh my gosh, this is so me. I’ve just been sending emails, you know, to the masses and no one’s responding and no one’s buying and like, no wonder this really could be it. You’re not getting people on the phone. Maybe you don’t know how to get people on the phone or maybe you don’t know how to convert them. Okay. So to summarize, let me read these for you guys. And then once again, this is a great time for you to ask any questions. If any of this is applying to your business or what you sell, please ask me a question. I’m here for you guys for another five minutes and, um, would love to help you also can always see me later. I try to be really active in my DM’s.

Okay. So, top five reasons you might not be signing as many clients as you want one. You’re spending too much time creating content and not enough time dispersing it, marketing it and getting it out there too. Let me just say with one stick to the 80:20 rule, create 20% of the time market. What you’ve created 80% of the time. Two, you are overly relying on Instagram, get off of it. It’s an app. I mean, be on it to nurture, but don’t let it be. The only way you’re finding clients three, you are overly selling your logistics. You’re talking about how many phone calls people get with you and how many modules and things no one cares about. And you’re not selling the actual results enough. Four you’re simply not selling. Um, you are kind of hoping that just posting on Instagram, we’ll have people magically reach out to you and offering you money being kind of blunt this morning.

Even my husband was like, you’re being kind of spicy. So don’t take any of this personally. This is just where I’m at today. And five, you’re not getting on sales calls and you are overly relying on copy through social media or through email. 

Okay? Let me know which one resonated most with the most with you guys. I have three more minutes to answer any questions. And then, um, we’ll hop off. I need to get your sales service class. Yes, it is called service-based sales. It is an excellent program. It is three months long and we can do early enrollment at a discount if you guys are interested. So you can message me about that. And I am the lead coach in that it’s a truly incredible program. I honestly think it’s the best, um, sales program out there because it’s not a class on Instagram. It’s not a class on email marketing. It’s not a program on any one specific thing it’s timeless. You know, it’s, it’s peeling back your mindset around sales, your goals around sales, standing in your confidence around how much money you want to make. You know, like that’s one of the first things we do is we have you be honest about how much money you actually want to make. And then we literally deconstruct with you how to make that happen.

Okay. Amanda. I still relate. Almost every person I’ve spoken with about my upcoming therapy group for teens has registered as opposed to when emailing about it. Oh, that’s great. Congratulations. Love that. Love this Madison. Thank you so good to see you here. Madison I feel like I’m putting out great content on my Ig. Doing all the things in my follower growth is so slow. Totally. So my advice for you in that situation is to look at your email list. Are you growing your email list and how can you set aggressive goals so that your email list starts growing? I would say at least 50 people a week, which is aggressive. Um, there’s paid ways to do it, which make it easier, but there are also freeways. If that isn’t accessible to you right now, I would do the paid. If I were you. I mean, that’s exactly what I did when they started my business and I put it on a credit card cause I didn’t have the money, but I just knew I wanted to get more visible. Um, and Instagram, if you were here for the beginning is really just about people getting to know you once they found out about you, but you can’t rely on it for the only way people get to know you because it is an app. The algorithm changes all the time. I mean, even, you know, huge influencers right now are struggling to find new a new audience. So don’t rely on that solely.

Okay. Any other questions? Thank you guys so much for coming and hanging out with me live today. I hope you’re all excited for the new year. So it’s been a very good year for me so far. I think like the theme is how, how, like how much can we get out of this life? That’s my vibe. All right, everyone.

 I’m going to have to hop off. Alright everyone. Well, I hope that this was helpful. If you listened to this on the podcast, please DM me what your favorite one was. And if you love this, you can always message me as well. And sending you all lots of love. I hope that this helps your sales this month. Just remember that you will never feel totally ready to do anything that you are meant to do. And that is, um, that’s okay. That’s how life is. That’s how it gets to be Madison. I have expanded my reach on other platforms and I’ve maintained great clients. I think working on my email list is the key. 

Exactly. Just popped in to say you’re gorgeous. Awesome. Thank you. You’re gorgeous too. All right, everyone. Happy new year. Have a great day. And I will talk to you soon.

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