Hello, everyone. Tracie here, your resident business, rebel, and your listening to digital Hello, everyone. Tracie here, your resident business, rebel, and your listening to Digital Business Your Way podcast. The show that lets true stories and insider secrets of online entrepreneur life unfold. Our business world is growing and as an online business coach and digital product creator, I believe you didn't become an entrepreneur to grin and bear your way through business. So I'll be your guide. As we drop in on coaching calls, have intimate sit downs with online personalities. You love. And discuss ideas, opportunities and strategies circulating our online world. So pop in your earbuds, tap, follow, and join me as I demystify. This thing called business. Hello, hello and welcome to Digital Business Your Way. I'm Tracie, your resident business Rebel here to walk you through, well, something that might shift how you sell hopefully forever. Um, today we're digging into what, what I call and what I mean, maybe you've heard it called this before, but the timeline of trust, because let's be real for a bit. Um, it's easy to get stuck in, in a loop when it comes to selling, right? Why didn't they buy this? What's wrong with my offer? Is it my price? Is it my copy? You know, what, what's, what's happening? Do I not have enough of an audience? What's my reach? Should I be, you know, doing more re should I be doing ads? Should I be in this community? What, but, but, but, but, right. Always looking for what's wrong. Always trying to figure out what that next thing is to fix, fix, fix. But what if the answer isn't about what you're doing wrong, but when you're doing it? Okay, so let's start with a truth that will hopefully feel like, well, a big old exhale. Not everyone who finds you is ready to buy from you. Yeah, breathe that one out. It is not a failure. It's human behavior. Human behavior that we do not control. Even with all the algorithms, the bots, the ais, all the things that are curating feeds and customizing experiences, and doing all the things in the backend. Humans are ready when humans are ready. Yeah. Today I'm gonna walk you through the phases of the timeline of trust and how to create sales strategies that honor where the audience is right instead of, you know, where we wish they are. 'cause. When we start with the audience first, the money follows, right? And time really, I mean, it, it disappears because we don't focus on that part. We're focusing on the humans. We're focusing on the experimentation and the fun and the parts that we enjoy. So the rest of it just kind of. Falls by the wayside. It's something that when you're in the middle of it, it's, it's really hard to grasp, but once you experience it, it's like, oh my gosh. Yes. And this is so much better. Okay, so let's dive into this part. It's phase one. They find you AKA good old awareness. Yeah. This is where someone enters your world for the first time. Right. They see your reels. They hear you on a podcast. They download a freebie. They're in a bundle you participated in, or a summit, or they saw your name on someone else's email. This is that first date energy phase. They're browsing, curious, sniffing around. They're not here to commit. They're here to see what you're about, but here's a problem. Too many entrepreneurs expect people to jump straight to marriage in this phase, right? That's why we often talk about that whole coffee date kind of energy. They find you on a Tuesday and you're like, here's my 5K program, one in, and they ghost. But then you're left feeling like it's a rejection, but that's not really a rejection, is it? That's just that reality of coming on too strong and being like, whoa, what just happened? And you do the same thing. cause at this point, your new person is doing one thing. They're just deciding if you feel safe, is it safe to be in that space? And I want you to hear me when I say this. Browsing is not bad behavior. It's normal buyer behavior and really look at you because you do it as well. So expect that from the people that are looking to buy from you. Right? People are allowed to take their time. They need to take their time. Yeah. Yeah. Would you buy skincare from someone that you just followed like five minutes ago? Unless it was, you know, one that you were actively looking to go and get no. Right? Would you hire a coach based on one single thing that you just saw? No. Not if it was the very first time you'd ever heard of its existence versus whenever you are seeking that thing out and then you find the one right. It's a different point. It's like, oh, I'm walking through, remember those old school things called malls when we were kids? And you know, you're walking through one and you see a kiosk on your right and then you see all these shops on the left, and you're looking through windows, and you're going into the doors and you're looking to see what all these different things are. And you probably look at a few different things and you touch some different fabric before you ever even go into the dressing room to try something on, let alone before you actually buy it. Right? So what do we do here? Well, for us, the sellers, we show up and we let them see us and we give generously, but with boundaries. We don't try to fast track the trust despite the courses that tell you to, and the books and the podcasts and all the things that tell you to, there's a natural way to do it and there's a forced way to do it. So I'm talking about this forced way, the false way, okay. This is where visibility strategies come into play is the natural way, right? The freebies. Thoughtful collaborations, SEOs, podcasts, guesting, showing up consistently in spaces where your people hang out. Awareness is a spark, not the sale. It's where the trust gets that spark, that initiation, that beginning, not where it's solidified yet, right? So may have that phase two. They listen to you. AKA alignment. So once someone sticks around, they start paying more attention. This is the phase where your emails, your podcasts, your Instagram captions, they really start to land. They get that click, right? They're listening now. They're lurking. They're watching how you move, and you might not even know it. It's where your audience is doing the silent work of deciding who you are to them. So I want you to jot this down or tattoo it on your brain. They're deciding if I'm a teacher, a leader, or a salesperson, I show them I'm all three and I don't need to convince anyone. Yeah, you're multidimensional and you get to show up in the role that you need to be in your business as you need to be It. This is the trust window. The moment where someone goes from, oh, she's so smart to, I trust her, to help me, to actually get me where I'm trying to be, to help me build that faith and get me through this challenge. This is where so many people break the trust. By doing one of two things, overselling, where you start pushing for a buy before the trust is actually solidified, right before it's strong enough to hold the offer or underselling where you back off entirely thinking that you have to earn more and that you're not good enough yet in all of those other pieces. So let's get a different option, that sacred third option. So instead of selling, let's focus on building belief. 'cause belief is the part that has to be there above all. Help them see what's possible, reflect back their patterns, share client shifts. Normalize that confusion and show them that you get it. Show them that you get it right. This is where you get to share that. You go through these things and this is how you got through it. Do self-coaching. Talk about that bit of vulnerability. Share the conversations that you've just had, you know, with anonymity, but the kind of things that you just talked about that week. Right. The way my coach says, she says, be your own best client and then show up that way and let other people see you being that way. Yeah, that's what I call micro activation. It's when someone starts to shift their mindset because of your content. When your voice becomes a grounding presence, when they start to believe change is possible. Because you showed up. That's when activation happens. Then we get to walk through that threshold into phase three. They say, yes, a k, a activation. This is the moment when someone moves from thinking to taking action from maybe to, yeah, let's go. But here's the key. This moment is not created by urgency or gimmicks. Because again, that goes back to breaking it. That's those overselling pieces when people thought, oh gosh, I was here, but no, this was like an earthquake. The floor's cracking underneath me. Let's get out. This is unsafe, right? Instead, it's created by alignment, which I know it's a word that can be a bit overused in our space, but let's say this again, the best sales don't come from pressure. They come from timing that matches the trust of the audience. Yeah. So appropriate urgency can work, like limited spaces, exclusivity, those kinds of pieces, right? But the question is, does it align with how you want to sell and the feeling that you want in your community? Okay. Because it's not about selling from fear. It's never about selling from shame, and we don't get anybody into that scarcity space, right? We're not faking things. We're inviting. We create our community. Every single time we show up, we are giving people. A taste of what it's like to work with us. So do you want to leave them with feelings of scarcity, shame, and fear with heck that that's how it is to work with you? Or do you want them to feel like they're stepping into a new calibration? They're getting invitations that they're going into boldness and into freedom, right? So you calibrate your calls to action to match where someone is on that trust timeline. You do those at all the stages. So if someone is still in phase one, they're in that awareness, you offer them a free resource or invite them to an email list. If they're in alignment phase two, then you show them how your offer connects to what they've already been thinking about. Right? And if it's the phase three, that activation, then you hold the door open and you'd say, I'd love to walk with you. Here's what walking with you looks like, so you have something available to people at every single phase, right? That's why you build all of these pieces and there's a constant flow and influx. These things don't stop and start, but they happen simultaneously because people are coming to you at all levels all the time, right? It's not an isolation. If you don't want the pressure clients, you want prepared clients. Clients who say yes because they could feel the truth in the way that like I've showed up before the offer was ever even pitched. Right? So is that how you want people to feel? Do you want people. Who said yes because they could feel your truth in the way that you showed up before the offer was ever even pitched. You know, that's what I hope people feel from listening to the podcast. That's why you're hearing my voice all the time, right? So if you've ever like sold stuff and you thought, oh my God, where, where are the buyers? I want you to ask this. What phase of trust are the people in? Who were you trying to talk to? What group was it and where were they at, and was it the right phase of offer for the right phase of trust? Because you've gotta meet people where they are. Sometimes your people are still browsing, sometimes they're still listening, sometimes they're still testing the water. It's your job to connect the dots. It's your job to show up to support them where they are, and then that's how the rest follows with ease. You walk them through the timeline. That's the maturity of business. So if you're nodding along and you want more of where this came from, invite me to hang out with you in your, in your inbox. Is every week I send out a newsletter. It's part strategy, it's part behind the scenes, and of course, it's part sales myth busting, but it's all designed to help you work in a way that actually fits you. You can get the list at Tracie patterson.com/connect, and you can join the trust timeline for real. It's where all the good stuff happens, even some free quarterly coaching calls. Until next time. Be well and have some fun. Thank you for joining me here on Digital Business Your Way. Be sure to check out the show notes for all the links mentioned today. And while you're there, I'd love for you to rate and review the show. And if you have a topic or question you want me to answer, I want to hear it. Head to Tracie Patterson dot com slash AMA and ask me anything about business. If I don't know it, I'm bringing up with one of my guests. And until next week, be well and have some fun.