3 tips for improving profitability in your sales process

Today I want to address something that is not directly related to websites, but it is part of your sales process and it is part of the profitability of your business. We're going to be going over three tips for improving profitability in your sales process.

I have been in business for seven plus years at this point, and I have changed my sales process quite a few times. So I'm gonna walk you through what I have done recently that has made a huge impact on how profitable my business is.

Insights into my services and offers

[00:00:46] The first thing I want you to know is that my services are now VIP days. So I offer a One-Day Website and a One-Day Sales Page Design VIP days. And those are both four- figure offers. I've slowly increased the price of those over time. And most of my clients come from referrals, or they've heard me on a podcast with somebody they trust. I want you to have this information, because if you are in a totally different space in your business, this episode can still be useful for you, but you might not see the impact on your profitability as quickly as I did.

Market where your clients are spending time

[00:01:31] Here's what we are gonna start with. The first thing is I want you to concentrate your marketing on where your clients are. This might sound funny, right? It's not part of the sales process. Marketing is not part of like my actual sales process, but it really is.

[00:01:49] I was talking to a client the other day on a sales call. We were discussing the new business that she is launching. And she loves it. She's very excited about it. She works with high-achieving business women and business owners who are ready to say goodbye to all the doubts and they want to practice radical self-compassion. Here is what she told me, "I have gone to so many coaching websites and they all have these popups with PDF downloads to get people onto your email list. And I have a full inbox. I don't want any more PDF downloads."

[00:02:29] I told her your audience doesn't want them either. And that is true for pretty much any high ticket service provider. It's not as much of a numbers game for us as it is for course, providers who are teaching most marketing strategies. So if you have a course, especially a low ticket one, say a $47 course, and you wanna make six by six figures off of that, you have to have a ton of people buying every month to hit those revenue goals. Which means you need to have even more people, 10 times more people or more on your email list, on your Instagram. So you have got to be out there marketing to the masses so that just a fraction of those people will convert into students who buy your low ticket.

[00:03:25] But that's not what we're selling here. We're selling high ticket services. We are selling one-on-one connections with big transformations, and that is a totally different way to market because we have to market to people through one-on-one relationships, both with the people who are becoming our clients and the people who are referring those clients to.

[00:03:53] Almost everybody I know in this space gets most of their clients from referrals. And while you may think, "oh, but I, I wanna be able to get clients from my email list or social media." If you have enough clients coming in and they're the right fit, stick with referral marketing, stick with where your right fit, ready to say, yes, clients are coming from and concentrate your marketing efforts there. Don't spend time creating PDFs and opt-ins and complicated funnels and $47 products if your audience is not interested in learning from you in that way.

[00:04:31] Spend your time marketing on platforms like LinkedIn if you are working with business owners. Engage with your referral partners. Build those relationships in the DMS and the messages engage with people where they are at, so that when they are ready to work with you, you are always top of mind. It's easy for them to reach out.

[00:05:00] And that might take a longer time than a $47 product. It might take, you know, a little bit more nurturing and getting to know you., but it's worth it because they convert into a higher ticket service. So even if you are spending the same amount of time marketing as those course creators are, you could be bringing in more money with just one person. You don't have to fill an email list with thousands of people because you don't need thousands of people to meet your income goals.

[00:05:37] So that's the first thing I want you to look at when you're thinking about profitability in your sales process: where are you marketing? Where are you spending your time and is that piece really going to be profitable for you?

Increase your profitability and client experience through automations

[00:05:49] The second piece of what is going to make you more profitable is to use automations. We all know if you listen to this podcast, I am a fan of Dubsado. But any way that you can automate your sales and onboarding process is going to help your bottom line in your business. For two reasons, one, it saves you time, which saves you money. And two, because your clients are going to very quickly be able to move through that process. They're not going to drop off in the signup process.

[00:06:27] How can you think about automations? I've got a couple of podcast episodes going into very specific steps of the automation process, so you can listen to those.

[00:06:38] But what I always like to do is have one automation when somebody applies to work with me, that starts off with an email that goes out as soon as they hit the application button that says, you know, "thank you for applying. I'll review your application and get back to you within 48 hours." That way they're hearing from me, but I'm still giving myself the space to take time, to review their application and make sure that we could potentially be a good fit.

[00:07:06] The second email in that series will either invite them to a call to chat just a little bit more about their ideas, the process, answer any questions that they have. Or it will let them know that my VIP day process might not be the best fit, but here are some other options that might be, um, a strategy session with me, or it might be a different designer depending on what it is that they're looking for. So those emails are automated. I do take time to review the application, but I don't have to rewrite anything in that journey.

[00:07:44] The second part of the process that is automated is when somebody signs up for a sales call, they get emails as reminders. And I have customized those emails to address some of the common objections that I see. One of those is always about how much pre-work there is, how they're going to write the content and copy for their website. So I address that in that reminder email, letting them know that they will get guides and questionnaires to help them through that entire process.

[00:08:19] The other one that goes out right before the call is just a reminder that this is how long the call is. This is what we're going to do. Um, if you have specific questions, let me know, but you can go back and find a lot of those answers on my sales page. So I just want them to recognize that I see them. We're setting, you know, the expectations for the call and then we'll be ready to go.

[00:08:48] My next automation in the sales process is if they tell me they are ready to become a client, then I set up a proposal in Dubsado. It's actually already pre-done. And all I have to do is just double check it, change a couple things on the email to reflect their business, and it goes out.

[00:09:08] And that proposal includes information about the process. Um, it includes the contact, the invoice. And then once that invoice is paid, it sends them a scheduler to schedule their VIP day if we haven't done that on the call. So all of that happens with me just having to change two sentences in an email and hit send, and everything else follows, which makes it really simple for my clients because they can do everything step by step. They don't have to wait for other emails. They don't have to wait for me to reach out to send the next.

[00:09:42] And I see emails come into my phone because of this process. And this is a new piece of my process that say, you know, they look reviewed your proposal. They signed the contract, they paid the invoice. It's all done. It takes like five minutes. And that is a huge increase in profitability for me, because I am no longer chasing down clients to say, "Hey, did, what did you think of the proposal I sent you? Do, you know, you still have to pay this invoice, even though you paid the contract, are you ready to schedule?"

[00:10:14] I'm not chasing them down and it's already predesigned. So I am saving a ton of time. What I used to do was create a proposal in Adobe InDesign. And then I would have to create the contract, create the invoice. It's all done for me.

Design your sales calls to stay on track and focus on getting an answer

[00:10:32] The final automation that I have in the sales process is really the onboarding section. So once they've paid that invoice, they've scheduled their date, they get the onboarding information, which is those questionnaires, all the guides that they get, they get their client portal access.

[00:10:47] So that's not part of the sales process, but it helps me make more sales because when they go to talk to other people about working with me, they can say this was so easy. It was so smooth. Everything was organized. It came really quickly. I didn't have to wait or wonder what was going on. So even though that's not part of selling to that particular client, it is part of the sales process in that it gives my client a really good experience.

[00:11:17] When you think about automations helping your profitability, it helps, like I said, in two ways, it saves you time and it helps your clients move through that process faster so you get money into the bank.

[00:11:30] The third tip for improving profitability is to know your process and the common objections that come up so that you can keep your sales calls on track. Here's what I mean, I used to get on sales calls and people would just wanna pick my brain about questions. They might have been thinking about working with me, but maybe they are a website designer and they just wanna know what I do, or they have some questions and they think they can DIY they just need a little bit of help.

[00:12:00] I have really honed in on my sales call process lately to focus on: we're going to learn a little bit about my, the, the other person and their business and kind of what they're looking for. I'm gonna walk them through my process and why I do what I do. I'm going to answer any questions that they have about that process. And then we are going to decide, do we wanna work together? What are the next steps? That's it. That's all that's included.

[00:12:32] There is not much of a chance for them to try to slide in and ask, "well, what do you think I should do on my headline on my page", and then bounce out of the call and never reach out because they got their question answered.

[00:12:46] And it's okay to do that because it is set in the expectation when we're having this call, that it is a sales call. We are talking specifically to learn if we want to work. I set that expectation on the sales page, when they sign up for the call, in the emails that go out, it's all very clear that we are on this call to just make sure we're a good fit. I'm happy to answer questions about the process or, you know why my process is different from somebody else's or specific pieces.

[00:13:22] A lot of people ask about the support period. Or what kind of support happens after the VIP day. I'm happy to answer those questions for them, but I'm not going to answer design specific questions because that's not what this is for. And if that's what they're interested in, I have another option for them.

[00:13:42] So what I want you to remember when it comes to sales calls is to set the expectation that you will be selling. So that that is very clear from the beginning. And then just stick to that path. Keep it pretty short. I like to keep mine at 20 minutes and I build in a 10 minute buffer in case it goes over. But that way we're not getting lost in all of these, pick my brain questions or people who aren't a right fit and ready to make a decision right away.

[00:14:13] And I have seen my sales calls convert at almost a hundred percent since I have started doing this process because I'm really only getting on calls with people who pretty much already know they wanna work with me. They just have a couple last minute details and they wanna have some face to face time to make sure our personalities mesh, I'm a real person, that kind of thing.

Increase your profitability in the sales process so you can focus on serving your clients

[00:14:34] So three tips for improving profitability in your sales process: concentrate on your marketing, where your clients actually. Use automations to save yourself time and to get your clients onboarded faster. And know your process and keep your sales calls on track so that you can really get the most out of the time that you are spending in the sales process and then go into actually delivering on that service so you can serve your clients in the best way possible.