[00:00:00] What if the reason people aren't responding isn't your offer, but the way you're asking. Hey friends, welcome back to the Selling Your Expertise podcast. We are gonna have fun today. So lemme tell you about this client of mine and you know that I never reveal my sources. I would never call my clients out on the carpet, but I do want you to know that this story is based on true events.

So I wanna give you some backstory. She's a 39-year-old business coach with one kid in middle school who's in a soccer league. So, hello. I know what that looks like. That means lots of away games, lots of laundry, lots of extra, extra, extra. Even tonight we had another soccer event that was totally unrelated to soccer, but important because it was a part of the soccer team.

So she's got one kid in middle school, a husband who travels all the time for work. She does also, which you would think would be helpful, but she has two sisters that lived [00:01:00] only a few streets away. Now you probably know that my in-laws live 10 feet away. We live in a city. It's a lovely thing. it's lovely.

Should I say 90% of the time. So with this client, we get along right away because we had a lot of the same scenarios. She had a very busy household. She had nieces and nephews running through there. She had lots of, I'm just stopping by for a minute, interruptions. So, I mean, she was definitely juggling school, dropoffs running her business, and she only had one very part-time virtual assistant.

She was low on time and needed simple. Structured systems so that she could publish, so she could connect, so that she could close clients regularly. Are you nodding your head? Do you know why we hung out? This is what I do. So she'd left her corporate. Role in vis dev for a global consulting firm that shall not be mentioned, but it sounds like mosh Mencher.

Um, if you know, you know, and, [00:02:00] and, she's brilliant. She's brilliant. But, and the real kicker was when her mom was diagnosed with a chronic illness, she needed more flexibility. So she and her two sisters were all rotating. Doctor's office visits and they needed to be there with the mom. You know, it's just, there's so much emotion and, and, and turmoil going on.

But that was the kicker. She's like, I cannot. Cannot continue to work at the speed and pace that this company has me working. And it was for nothing. Like she didn't feel like she had a mission. She, she wanted to build something for herself that gave her more flexibility with her family, but she also wanted it to mean something.

She wanted to be a part of something bigger. She wanted to build her local community. She wanted to lift her community up. She saw businesses all around her. Going outta business because they just didn't have the right guidance. So she knew what to do with the resources she had, but she didn't know what to do without those big corporate resources, you know what I'm saying?[00:03:00]

So she was waffling a little bit and, and honestly unsure of where to prioritize her. Limited precious time. And that's. Where she needed, she needed guidance and obviously if you've been hanging out with me for a length of time, you know that that's what I do. So she found me after hearing me speak at a virtual summit, which I love doing.

I love getting together with people that are on a mission. Talking about the things that are coming, talking about the best practices, I absolutely love virtual summits. So thank you. If you're listening and you've had me as a guest, or if you are planning one and you're looking for a guest, I would love to talk about all the things that you hear me talk about here on the podcast.

So she told me that she was standing at her kitchen table folding laundry. Uh, I can relate while watching the replays of the summit. If you know how summits work, you get them free for a certain length of time, and then, then you have to pay for the replay. So she's sitting there as, as how many of us do, right?

[00:04:00] Multitasking, layering what we're doing, and she's like, I heard you talk and I knew that I needed you to help me simplify my sales. So she stopped doing what Shey was doing and. Got on my email list, that was my call to action, and she applied to work with me. It was amazing. So during our first call, we mapped out a clear plan that would give her content because one of her challenges was she got so busy and so wrapped up, she didn't have creative time to publish.

So her business was becoming completely invisible. So this plan would give her great content while also giving her a reason to reach out to her network and reconnect. I mean, she had. A lot of really great colleagues, and even if they weren't gonna be her ideal client, they knew people who would. So in short, it was one of my Spotlight interview series maps that we were building out.

If you're familiar with my Spotlight interview series, I still record and host them, [00:05:00] and it's just a great way to publish reconnect. And also have a reason to continue the conversation, without a discovery call. So it's a really good thing. So she was gonna have her own Spotlight interview series and feature local business owners in her community over the course of a 30 day period.

So she was gonna interview people, space them out, and after each interview, not only would she have content. Great content that was gonna be shared around to her ideal clients, but she also had a better understanding of the guest. So they could have been a local business owner that she might have known in some way, but she didn't know the whole picture.

And so during the interview she was, in essence, given the opportunity to ask questions she might not normally have asked if they just went out for a coffee and it was so good. The other part of that was she got to see other ways she could help them. So then we mapped out what she would do to thank them.

Always thank people. That's what I was raised going around [00:06:00] saying, and even, you know, handwriting notes and never go to a house empty handed. Who else can relate? I remember my mom giving me like jarred, she had jarred pickles and this like. She had embroidered on this beautiful hand towel. Beautiful, I would say now, but she gave it to me to bring to my friend's house because I was going over there to play, and I thought it was the weirdest thing ever.

But now I'm like, that is good stuff. That's good Merch, homemade pickles and a hand towel. Ooh, la la. Speaking my love language now. But as a 7-year-old, I thought I was like, my mom is cuckoo, but. That is part of my Spotlight interview series process is to thank them. So we mapped out the plan. For her to reconnect, for her to do the interviews that gave her content and a reason to reach out and reconnect with her network.

She would offer each of them a business assessment, something she typically sold separately for $250. And based on what they shared with her, she would [00:07:00] be positioned to make an offer to work with her to help them bridge the gaps in their business. So again, she had very limited time, so we mapped all this out on her very tight calendar.

And she had been collecting business cards at local networking meetings for. Years. Now, if you've read my book, you know that I always say there's no statute of limitations on relationships. So she was ready to go back. She had the plan to email a hundred people to be able to invite them to fill out a form.

To be featured. Now, them being reached out to via her Gmail is one thing, but them being on her official broadcast email list, well, that's where the form came in. We needed a reason to have them take affirmative action so that they could. Legally be put onto her broadcast email list so that she could continue the communication with them over and over without.

And if they didn't take her up [00:08:00] on the invite, uh, or go through with it or didn't qualify, or one of the other myriad of reasons. So the other part is when they filled out the form, they also were sent through an email sequence that led all the applicants to the paid assessment. So if they weren't selected to be featured, she was still able to continue to communicate with them via the monthly newsletter.

And if they were accepted to be interviewed, they would have already seen the value of the gift that she had planned to thank them with the business assessment. And that would increase their enthusiasm to accept it. So we had this all mapped out in a timeline. We had the names, we had the plan, we had the questions.

But then she asked me the golden question. She asked, how much information should I ask from them in this first form? And here's the thing she was really asking. If I make this too complicated, will people even bother? Right? So [00:09:00] hope you're laughing along with me because maybe you've been there too. You create a form, an offer, a calendar, a sales page, and then you start piling on every question, every detail, every what if before you know it, you've built a brick wall between your clients or potential clients, and they have to climb over it to get to a yes.

So here is the truth. The simpler you make it, the more people will respond. So you like that? I don't really have good sound effects, but I hope you enjoyed that, that part of it. So when I looked at her form, she had 15 questions, totally valid questions, but. I told her, let's just start with three or maybe four, and so name, website, email, phone number, basics, and then an optional kind of dropdown menu of a co of uh, what their specialty was.

If they wanted to choose something specific. [00:10:00] Once they're in though. Then you can ask them more questions. See, like that's the thing is they're already invested in the process now, so the shift here is this. You don't have to ask. For everything upfront. Your goal is to get the first Yes. Even if it's an unpaid Yes.

Initially. In her case, and I mean, this is the same thing for freebies or you know, anything you give. If a free workshop, a free masterclass, just come and get closer so that we can talk more and we can discern together if anything beyond this point is a good idea. So the first moment of engagement. I just want you to remember this.

It's the doorway to a deeper relationship. It's not the whole relationship. And so here is your action step for this week if you can relate to this client's story, her life that surrounds her business, the reason she started her business, the plan that we mapped out for her. If you [00:11:00] can see yourself doing that, here is your.

Action step. Look at whatever you're putting in front of people right now. Maybe it's a consultation form or a calendar link or that sales page for your one-on-one program. And I want you to ask yourself, how can I make this simpler? What's the first step I need to move the relationship forward? Because when you reduce friction, you increase responses.

All right. That's it for today. Keep it simple. Get that first. Yes, and I will see you@askmecoach.com.