1
00:00:00,160 --> 00:00:03,920
Do you ever feel like you're constantly trying to convince people to buy?

2
00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:07,760
Like you're always explaining, justifying, or pushing a

3
00:00:07,760 --> 00:00:11,240
little harder than you'd like? Today I want to talk about why that's

4
00:00:11,240 --> 00:00:14,880
happening, why it's exhausting, and why it usually means that you're spending too

5
00:00:14,880 --> 00:00:17,280
much time selling to the wrong people.

6
00:00:19,600 --> 00:00:23,440
Welcome to the Resilient Retail Game Plan. I'm Kathryn Eardley, and in the

7
00:00:23,440 --> 00:00:27,120
next few minutes, you're about to get powerful real-world retail strategies

8
00:00:27,440 --> 00:00:31,240
from insights shared both from my guests and myself, backed up

9
00:00:31,240 --> 00:00:35,080
by my 25 years in the retail industry. Keep listening to learn

10
00:00:35,080 --> 00:00:38,880
how to grow a thriving, profitable product business. Let's jump

11
00:00:38,880 --> 00:00:40,240
in with this latest episode.

12
00:00:42,720 --> 00:00:46,240
I'd like to start with an analogy, if you will.

13
00:00:46,400 --> 00:00:49,600
So imagine that you decide you're going to host a party.

14
00:00:50,080 --> 00:00:53,840
You really want this party to be a success. You want it to be

15
00:00:53,840 --> 00:00:57,480
as fun as possible, and you want to have lots of people at your

16
00:00:57,480 --> 00:01:01,330
party. So you stand outside the venue and as people walk

17
00:01:01,330 --> 00:01:04,770
past, you say to them, come on in, come on in. We are having this

18
00:01:04,770 --> 00:01:07,930
great party in here. You really want to join this. You don't wanna miss out.

19
00:01:07,930 --> 00:01:11,770
And so they come into the party, but then you don't go in.

20
00:01:11,770 --> 00:01:15,610
You just stand outside all night and you're trying to get more and more people

21
00:01:15,610 --> 00:01:19,210
to come in through the door instead of coming

22
00:01:19,210 --> 00:01:23,010
into the venue and actually talking to the people that you've invited in and making

23
00:01:23,010 --> 00:01:26,480
sure that they're having a good time. And making sure that the

24
00:01:26,480 --> 00:01:30,200
party's really a success. And businesses can be like that too.

25
00:01:30,600 --> 00:01:34,400
The majority of time when I talk to people about their businesses, if

26
00:01:34,400 --> 00:01:37,600
I ask them what they want, what they want more of, they will often say

27
00:01:37,600 --> 00:01:41,040
to me, I want to grow my audience. I want to grow my online

28
00:01:41,040 --> 00:01:44,600
presence, or I want to grow my customer base.

29
00:01:45,000 --> 00:01:48,480
I want to get more eyes on the business. They say things like that. And

30
00:01:48,480 --> 00:01:52,320
that is really effectively the equivalent of wanting to get more

31
00:01:52,320 --> 00:01:56,110
people into your party. But what people often don't realize

32
00:01:56,110 --> 00:01:59,870
is that it can be exhausting to constantly

33
00:01:59,870 --> 00:02:03,510
be looking for new people, people who've never heard of your

34
00:02:03,510 --> 00:02:07,350
business before, because that's the bit where you have to do a lot of explaining.

35
00:02:07,350 --> 00:02:10,950
If somebody has never seen your business before, then you have to

36
00:02:10,950 --> 00:02:14,510
explain who you are, what you do, why your products are amazing,

37
00:02:15,070 --> 00:02:18,590
and you have to win their trust. Imagine if

38
00:02:18,750 --> 00:02:22,390
you are selling at a Christmas market, for

39
00:02:22,390 --> 00:02:26,170
example, imagine the difference in the experience. If you've got

40
00:02:26,170 --> 00:02:30,010
somebody who walks up to your stand, which I'm sure happens all the time, walks

41
00:02:30,010 --> 00:02:33,850
up to your stall, and you're having to explain to them everything about who you

42
00:02:33,850 --> 00:02:37,650
are, what you do, why the products are great, versus somebody who bought

43
00:02:37,650 --> 00:02:40,770
from you last year, they come back to the stall and they say, oh my

44
00:02:40,770 --> 00:02:44,130
goodness, you're back this year. I'm so excited. Right, I'm going to buy 10 of

45
00:02:44,130 --> 00:02:47,810
your candles or your jewellery this year because I know how great

46
00:02:47,810 --> 00:02:51,450
it is. And that's really the difference between a new customer and

47
00:02:51,450 --> 00:02:55,210
a returning customer. So one of the fastest ways to burn

48
00:02:55,210 --> 00:02:58,970
out as a small business owner is to be only talking

49
00:02:58,970 --> 00:03:02,610
to the new people, only standing outside the venue, trying to get people to come

50
00:03:02,610 --> 00:03:05,970
in and not going inside the venue and making sure the

51
00:03:05,970 --> 00:03:09,610
party's really happening inside, or otherwise known

52
00:03:09,610 --> 00:03:13,370
as talking to your warmest customer. And it can be

53
00:03:13,850 --> 00:03:17,450
a really exhausting feeling because the hardest thing to do

54
00:03:17,770 --> 00:03:20,730
is to make people who've never heard of your business

55
00:03:21,690 --> 00:03:25,250
want to buy from you, whereas when people have bought from you, they're much more

56
00:03:25,250 --> 00:03:28,530
likely to buy. So one of my favourite phrases is nobody's more likely to buy

57
00:03:28,530 --> 00:03:31,930
from you than someone who's already bought from you. So most

58
00:03:31,930 --> 00:03:35,210
retailers overspend their energy, time, and effort on their cold

59
00:03:35,210 --> 00:03:36,010
audiences.

60
00:03:39,210 --> 00:03:43,010
If we think about the concept of a sales funnel, or a

61
00:03:43,010 --> 00:03:46,650
customer journey is another way of thinking about it, we go from

62
00:03:46,810 --> 00:03:50,410
cold, which is people who've never heard of you, to red

63
00:03:50,410 --> 00:03:53,930
hot, which is people who've bought from you previously would be

64
00:03:53,930 --> 00:03:57,690
primed to buy from you again. And the customer goes

65
00:03:58,010 --> 00:04:01,530
through this journey. So if you think about the fact there are

66
00:04:02,170 --> 00:04:05,850
over 8 billion people in this world, the vast majority of them

67
00:04:05,850 --> 00:04:09,010
have never heard of your business. So the first thing that you have to do

68
00:04:09,010 --> 00:04:12,690
is you have to make those people who have never heard of you before, you

69
00:04:12,690 --> 00:04:15,610
have to make them aware of you. So they go from the unaware to the

70
00:04:15,610 --> 00:04:19,270
aware stage. Then you have to move them down other stages

71
00:04:19,510 --> 00:04:23,270
to the point at which they purchase from you. So they become a buyer.

72
00:04:23,590 --> 00:04:27,430
And at that point, you have moved them all the way from someone who's

73
00:04:27,430 --> 00:04:30,870
never heard about your business, all the way to somebody who not only has heard

74
00:04:30,870 --> 00:04:34,710
about your business, but liked it enough, trusted it enough to purchase from it.

75
00:04:35,190 --> 00:04:38,710
Those are the group of people that often get ignored by

76
00:04:38,870 --> 00:04:42,680
the small business owners because what they're thinking in their head is, right, I

77
00:04:42,680 --> 00:04:46,240
need more sales. I need more people coming in. And

78
00:04:46,240 --> 00:04:50,000
yes, of course, every small business needs a stream of

79
00:04:50,320 --> 00:04:54,000
fresh customers coming in, new people taking a look at the business,

80
00:04:54,080 --> 00:04:57,840
new people having interest in it. But if you spend all of

81
00:04:57,840 --> 00:05:01,440
your time and effort talking to those people, then

82
00:05:01,520 --> 00:05:04,960
you will very quickly burn out compared to

83
00:05:05,520 --> 00:05:08,720
the people who are already with you, who you can communicate with.

84
00:05:09,270 --> 00:05:13,070
And persuade to buy again. And of course they'll want to buy again because your

85
00:05:13,070 --> 00:05:16,910
products are fabulous. You've got great customer service. Overall,

86
00:05:16,910 --> 00:05:20,350
buying from you is a wonderful experience. So of course they're going to want to

87
00:05:20,350 --> 00:05:24,150
repeat it. And it's much, much easier to get somebody to move

88
00:05:24,150 --> 00:05:27,790
from being a buyer to a repeat buyer, for example, than it

89
00:05:27,790 --> 00:05:31,110
is to get someone who has never ever heard of you

90
00:05:31,350 --> 00:05:34,870
to become a buyer. It's a much shorter process.

91
00:05:35,510 --> 00:05:39,110
It's like pushing against an open door, as opposed to

92
00:05:39,110 --> 00:05:42,950
really trying to go through this whole process of

93
00:05:42,950 --> 00:05:46,670
convincing somebody. Now, of course, we've all met

94
00:05:46,670 --> 00:05:50,350
customers who just appear out of nowhere and are immediately ready to

95
00:05:50,350 --> 00:05:53,030
buy, but they are the minority.

96
00:06:00,390 --> 00:06:03,950
Now, of course, we've all met customers who just appear out of

97
00:06:03,950 --> 00:06:07,750
nowhere and are immediately ready to buy. But they are the

98
00:06:07,750 --> 00:06:11,430
minority. So in terms of what that might look

99
00:06:11,430 --> 00:06:15,070
like inside a small business, if somebody is doing this,

100
00:06:15,070 --> 00:06:18,630
if somebody is spending too much time trying to talk to their cold traffic and

101
00:06:18,630 --> 00:06:22,350
not enough time talking to their warm, then it might look something like this.

102
00:06:24,030 --> 00:06:27,310
You are spending time on social media. You are

103
00:06:27,390 --> 00:06:31,070
spending time, effort thinking about the kind of content that would draw people

104
00:06:31,070 --> 00:06:34,760
in. And yet you are not having

105
00:06:35,240 --> 00:06:38,840
conversations or not trying to start conversations in your stories

106
00:06:39,000 --> 00:06:42,680
with people who are already following you. And you might even

107
00:06:42,680 --> 00:06:46,400
have a list of people, maybe it's not the huge list, but it's some

108
00:06:46,400 --> 00:06:50,240
people on an email list who've previously purchased from you, who've opted

109
00:06:50,240 --> 00:06:54,040
in to hear from you, and you're never ever emailing them. For example,

110
00:06:54,840 --> 00:06:58,630
it could be that people buy from you one time. And you

111
00:06:58,630 --> 00:07:02,390
never go back and talk to them about what they might like to buy next.

112
00:07:03,030 --> 00:07:06,830
It might be people who are coming to

113
00:07:06,830 --> 00:07:10,310
your website, but you're not spending enough time actually thinking about

114
00:07:10,710 --> 00:07:14,230
or examining the conversion rate of your website to see if

115
00:07:14,390 --> 00:07:18,110
you're giving those people enough information to actually help

116
00:07:18,110 --> 00:07:21,670
them buy. Instead, what you're thinking about is

117
00:07:21,670 --> 00:07:25,460
solely, okay, well, how do I get my message out in front of

118
00:07:25,460 --> 00:07:28,900
more people. And I've even seen it where people have put a significant amount of

119
00:07:28,900 --> 00:07:32,540
money into paid advertising to reach more cold traffic

120
00:07:32,780 --> 00:07:36,460
and to bring people into them instead of looking at their

121
00:07:36,460 --> 00:07:40,220
warmest part of their audience and actually optimising that, selling to that

122
00:07:40,220 --> 00:07:43,940
part of the audience before they spend any money going out to try

123
00:07:43,940 --> 00:07:47,460
and get more new people. And it all works together in a very

124
00:07:47,460 --> 00:07:51,180
symbiotic relationship. So for example, if somebody is spending

125
00:07:51,180 --> 00:07:55,020
money on paid advertising, one of the things that I'm always really keen to

126
00:07:55,020 --> 00:07:58,780
explore with them is, are they maximizing all of the other touchpoints

127
00:07:59,060 --> 00:08:02,660
in their business? Are they, for example, really happy with

128
00:08:02,820 --> 00:08:06,460
their email marketing, making sure that's fully optimized so that

129
00:08:06,460 --> 00:08:10,220
anybody that they are paying to acquire, they know that they are actually going

130
00:08:10,220 --> 00:08:14,060
to be nurturing, talking to those people correctly all the way through, as opposed

131
00:08:14,060 --> 00:08:17,660
to just bringing people in as cold traffic and then selling to them once and

132
00:08:17,660 --> 00:08:18,180
that's it.

133
00:08:21,620 --> 00:08:25,360
So that's really the essential that I want to leave you with is that nobody

134
00:08:25,360 --> 00:08:29,080
is easier to sell to than somebody who's already bought

135
00:08:29,080 --> 00:08:32,800
from you, because those are the people that you've already gained

136
00:08:32,800 --> 00:08:36,520
their trust, and you want to keep them moving through that sales

137
00:08:36,520 --> 00:08:40,360
process until we end up with them as a superfan. So super

138
00:08:40,360 --> 00:08:44,000
fans— there's this concept of 1,000 true fans,

139
00:08:44,320 --> 00:08:48,080
which is all about how a lot of small businesses, if they had

140
00:08:48,080 --> 00:08:51,800
1,000 people who bought everything that they ever put out,

141
00:08:51,800 --> 00:08:55,480
that was super enthusiastic about the business, that were always promoting it to their friends

142
00:08:55,480 --> 00:08:59,160
and families. If more small businesses had 1,000

143
00:08:59,160 --> 00:09:02,560
of those true fans, it would be enough to move a lot of people out

144
00:09:02,560 --> 00:09:05,800
of the small business category and more into the medium business category.

145
00:09:06,280 --> 00:09:10,000
So we think about trying to reach thousands or hundreds of thousands

146
00:09:10,000 --> 00:09:13,800
of people through our content, through our marketing, but if we're ignoring

147
00:09:13,800 --> 00:09:17,620
that warmest part of our audience, then we are seriously leaving

148
00:09:17,620 --> 00:09:20,460
a lot of money on the table and not just a lot of sales, but

149
00:09:20,460 --> 00:09:24,180
a lot of profit, because it is always more profitable to sell

150
00:09:24,180 --> 00:09:28,020
to your existing customers because you don't have to pay to talk to them.

151
00:09:28,260 --> 00:09:32,020
Whereas a lot of the time, if you're trying to reach more of a

152
00:09:32,020 --> 00:09:35,860
cold audience, you have to actually pay to talk to those people. So

153
00:09:35,860 --> 00:09:39,340
this is something that we really delve into in the Retail Sales Game Plan. That

154
00:09:39,340 --> 00:09:43,020
is my course, my 4-month course. Kicking off at the end of

155
00:09:43,020 --> 00:09:46,380
February. The waitlist is open now. You can go to resilientretailclub.com/retailsales

156
00:09:49,620 --> 00:09:53,380
and get on the waitlist. We're going to be delving into everything from

157
00:09:53,380 --> 00:09:56,780
getting planned out correctly so that your sales feel calm and

158
00:09:56,780 --> 00:10:00,300
consistent, to really delving into this idea of the

159
00:10:00,300 --> 00:10:03,780
customer journey and how to create the content that moves

160
00:10:03,860 --> 00:10:07,620
somebody from one stage to the next, and also how to build the rhythm of

161
00:10:07,620 --> 00:10:11,470
your business around this warmest part of your audience. It's all

162
00:10:11,710 --> 00:10:15,510
about working smarter, not working harder, and putting some

163
00:10:15,510 --> 00:10:19,110
of that structure and support into place so that your sales

164
00:10:19,110 --> 00:10:22,750
feel really calm and consistent. So if sales

165
00:10:22,750 --> 00:10:26,430
currently feel exhausting, it's probably not because you hate selling. It's more likely

166
00:10:26,430 --> 00:10:30,030
because you are focusing on the wrong part of the journey.

167
00:10:30,270 --> 00:10:34,120
Keep listening because next week we're talking about the crucial secret

168
00:10:34,120 --> 00:10:37,880
to sales success that most people completely avoid. See

169
00:10:37,880 --> 00:10:38,600
you next week.