the bossbabe podcast - 304. What To Do If Your Business Is Struggling + Not Making Sales Right Now

Episode Date: July 11, 2023

If you’re struggling with sales + feeling confused about where to focus your efforts, this episode is for you. Natalie is breaking down the exact steps to take + tactics to put in place to ensure you thrive in any economy and have a really strong sales machine working for you 24/7/365. From your offer + messaging to the assets you are creating, we get micro so you can diagnose what’s slowing down your sales and get in action asap to fix it.  HIGHLIGHTS How to identify the biggest things blocking your sales flow + what to do about it to get back into momentum ASAP A sales strategy that allows you to hit your big goals while still having it feel light + FUN in the process  What to do if your tried + true messaging angles aren’t working right now The marketing assets you NEED to be creating + why more isn’t better How to make record breaking sales in any economy without the stress - lessons learned from wrapping an $800k launch in June!  LINKS Learn exactly how to dial in your offer so you can make more sales - https://go.bossbabe.com/sold-out-offer  Learn the simple, proven framework for growing your audience + making money on social media – bossbabe.com/influence FOLLOW bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie

A Boss Babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself. Confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Welcome back to the Bossway Podcast. I'm Natalie Ellis, your host for this episode. And in this episode, we're going to talk all about sales and selling, especially in this economy. So I feel like I have to make this podcast episode because I've been hearing from so many people, friends, you know, people in our communities saying, I feel like making sales is impossible right now. The economy's changed. It's

different. You know, they're just finding very difficult, whether it's engagement on social media is tanking or they're just not seeing people convert. I'm hearing it a lot. And I feel like this is a topic we need to address because if you are not making sales in your business, the level of stress that will come from that is incredible. And not to mention, you know, running your business comes with so many costs. And if you're relying on this for your income, you simply cannot afford to let your sales dry up. So it feels like this is a really, really important emergency episode that we need to get out there. So let's talk about it, okay?

Things that I'm hearing is, it's just impossible to make sales right now. No one is buying right now. The economy has changed. I'm worried about my business. Let's talk about the elephant in the room. So for a lot of entrepreneurs, especially the ones selling courses, coaching, consulting,

you know, things online, digital entrepreneurs, 2020 was a huge year for those businesses. And I think a lot of people thought that it wouldn't be. I think when COVID hit, myself included, we all kind of went into panic mode. What does this mean for me? Is anyone going to be buying? You know, there was uproar across social media many times in 2020. And it kind of felt like, do I sell? Do I not sell? What do I do in this situation? But when COVID hit, more people had time on their hands. They were sitting at home, you know, stimulus checks were put out there. A huge wave of people got ready to quit their jobs

in favor of starting a business or maybe learning skills that they've been putting off learning for a really long time. So people were ready to invest in themselves. So online businesses were growing and business owners were working their socks off. I think, you know, initially that hustle hustle came from business owners being really worried about will my business actually survive this? I need to do everything in my power to make sure my business survives this. Two, then their business may be completely taking off and they couldn't slow down because they'd committed to so many different things, right? You might have found yourself just on this treadmill,

this hamster wheel that was not slowing down anytime soon. And so fast forward to 2023, it's crazy that three years have passed since then. And I'll even speak for myself, you know, that was the biggest year that Boss Babes ever had. 2020, the growth we experienced was huge. And a lot of it was by accident because I remember thinking, okay, how can I support the business owners in my community? I remember stopping everything and writing a big ebook that one week that things were really chaotic. And I put it out there for free and I just kept giving as much value as I could. And that turned in so many sales for us. And we weren't really

even thinking it would be a big year of growth. So I know a lot of people have felt like that. So fast forward to 2023, it may have felt like, or it may feel like everything has slowed down or for some of you, it's completely even stopped. And so I want to just dig into this a little bit more because what I'm actually realizing is for a lot of entrepreneurs who feel like this, there's a couple of things that are very present. They are burned out, therefore they're not really selling. They're burned out, therefore they're not really selling. They have come out of what was a crazy time in our lifetime, a crazy time in the external world, and likely a crazy time in the external world and likely a crazy time in their career and all of that eventually catches up with you. All of that eventually will start to shake you and wake you up and say okay it's time to rest and it's very challenging when you're in that kind of place

to even think about doing launches and selling. So that's the first place that I want to start is I'm really curious with you. Is it that people aren't buying from you or are you just too exhausted right now to even be selling? And maybe you associate selling with exhaustion. Maybe the idea of a big launch makes you feel completely sick to your stomach. Maybe you just feel like you need to take a breather before getting things ramped up again. If this is you, then I have a few tips, a few things that I think will help. But I think the first thing is to just acknowledge whatever the problem is. And even if you're like, you know what, I am selling, I'm throwing everything I've got at my email list, my social, but things aren't resonating. There's a couple of things we can dive into around that too, because things have changed

and the way in which people are buying is a little bit different. So let's first dive into reframing the correlation between selling and stress. There might be a few reasons that you think selling has to mean more stress. Selling more, more stress. If you are putting too much pressure and expectation on the outcome, it already comes with this huge energetic weight. If you're putting too much pressure on needing to hit certain goals for it to feel worth it for you, or for it to compare to the numbers you might have hit in 2020,

it's going to feel really heavy. So I want to just ask you, what if you allowed it to be fun and fit into your content seamlessly? What if you didn't need to smash those goals with every promotion? What if you were just playing with ideas for getting your offer out there? Because reframing and having this mindset that selling actually serves your ideal clients, it boosts your business, and it makes your load lighter as a business owner could be a game changer. Because you might be looking at that upcoming launch just thinking, I'm exhausted. Maybe it's, you know, I don't have as much

childcare right now, or I just, I need to rest, but I also need to pay my bills. Selling can actually feel really light and fun if you let it. The second thing that I want to talk about is creating marketing assets versus one-offs. And what I mean by this is, do you often find yourself on the content and marketing hamster wheel? So always feeling like you need to create more, more, more. This may be because you're spending way too much time creating one-off pieces of content and promos versus creating actual marketing assets that you'll do once, you'll put them out there and they'll continue to work for you. So an example of a one-off is an Instagram story promoting your offer. It's going to take you a bunch of time to get right and then it disappears after 24 hours.

All of that work gone after 24 hours. Whereas an example of a marketing asset is creating an email sequence that everyone drops into once they opt into your email list. You do it once, you refine it and it can run for years. Some of mine have been running for six years now and when you approach the creation of a marketing asset, you'll probably feel a lot more motivated to do it and do it well because you know that it's going to work for you for years to come versus I'm going to put it out there. What if no one engages? What if no one's interested and no one buys and it's a waste of my time? Whereas an asset is something that you actually put a time and energy into that continues to, you know, bring cash in for you over and over and over again. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know I've been singing their praises lately because

they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity, which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business you know. Get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe

listeners a 30-day free trial. Go to kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's kajabi.com slash boss babe. The third thing I would encourage is to think about refining your offer. So if your offer just feels so hard to sell, if you feel like you need to be doing backbends and flips just to get someone to buy, you might have a couple of issues that will need to be resolved if you want to start taking the stress out of selling. The first is your offer and the second is your sales plan. Because the truth is, if you have a great offer and a way of it being seen by the right people, you are making sales no matter what's going on in the external economy. Let me just say that again. If you have a great offer and a way of

it being seen by the right people, you are making sales no matter what is going on in the external economy. And I say that with experience. I just closed up over $800,000 launch and that was very recent. And that was in a time when people are saying, you know, people aren't buying. And I really want you to think about, is your offer really connecting with the people that it needs to be connecting to? If you've sold it before and you've had a lot of traction before in product market fit, maybe it's that people just aren't seeing it, the right people aren't seeing it. So in that sense, you need to be dialing in your sales plan and getting more traffic. If it's your offer, maybe you haven't sold a ton of it before, or you feel like it's a little bit dated or it needs support. Really thinking through

the key components of that. Is it priced right? Is it titled correctly? Is it demonstrating what it needs to? Is the transformation clear? Is it easy to buy? All of the different elements of crafting an offer. And if you are feeling really stuck with this, I would also say we have a workshop called the sold out offer workshop. I delivered it at the beginning of 2023 and it's incredible. It was two hours when I delivered it live and I've actually made it evergreen. If you want to jump into that, it's just over a hundred dollars. It's a super easy investment, but on there, I will help you refine your offer and your sales plans that you know what you're selling and how you're selling it. So I'll put the link below in the show notes if you want to dive into that. And then another thing that I want you to think about

is your messaging. Is your messaging really connecting with your ideal clients? If you've been using the same messaging since 2020, things might have changed. The situation that your clients find themselves in might be completely different. It probably is completely different. And your messaging has to be resonating. Your messaging has to be speaking to your ideal clients and telling them, hey, I understand the problem that you're having, and this is how my product is gonna solve it, right? You really wanna be thinking about doing that. And although your funnels and overall assets

don't need to continue to change, your messaging often does. I call the messaging the gift wrap on top of your offer or the gift wrap on top of your funnel because it's the kind of thing that you can always tweak and change and it can be, you know, made relevant for so long. That entire funnel can keep running for so long. Like I said, some of mine have been running for six years. You can keep those running.

If you're able to tweak your messaging and tweak the way that you are connecting with your ideal clients, because if you're saying the same things over and over and over and over again, and it once worked and now it's just getting crickets, my guess is things have really changed. And then finally, the last thing that I wanna share with you is making sure that you've really got the balance between growing your audience,

building your brand and selling. Often when you get into a little bit of a tailspin, when the sales aren't coming in, you can go into just full sell, sell, sell mode, and you're not nurturing, you're not delivering value. And you'll really realize that actually you are making more sales when you are nurturing your audience. And so I want you to make sure you're not neglecting that part. So growing your audience means putting out the kind of content that's gonna attract new eyes. Building your brand means nurturing that audience,

making sure that they know, like, and trust you, making sure they know what you actually do and what the next steps are. And then selling to them is just that, it's selling. It's actually putting your offer out there and saying, this is what the next steps look like with me. A lot of people don't have that balance, right? Another resource I'll share here is I've got an amazing free

training, the links below, but you can also go to bossy.com forward slash influence, where I teach what it looks like to be growing on social and monetizing right now. And this is something I talk about is getting that balance, right? Because people can either be too busy building their brand and nurturing their audience that are not really bringing new people in and they're not making sales, or it can go the complete other way around. They are trying to just hit viral all the time and bring a new audience, but they're not really taking care of the audience they've got, therefore no one's buying. So striking that balance and getting that balance right is really, really important. And so I would encourage you if you are in a place where you're not making sales and

you're starting to really struggle, take it back to basics. When you think about when your business was doing really, really well, when you were making sales, when things did feel lighter, when things did feel fun, what were you doing then that you're not doing now? Perhaps it's some of the things that I've already talked about. Maybe it's even more simple than that. Maybe you had a lot more intimate conversations with your clients and it's maybe gotten to the point now where you feel like you've outsourced so much, you step back so much, you don't understand what they're going through,

or you're not having those conversations with them. Maybe it's you aren't feeling aligned with what your offer looks like right now and you want to refine it. You want to optimize it. Maybe you just don't have a sales plan and you're waking up every day kind of hoping that someone will buy, but you haven't got a set plan.

You don't know exactly what lever you could pull to be able to bring in those sales. There are so many things you can look at that actually you could coach yourself through because there may have been a time in your business when things felt so much easier, so much better. And you can go back and realize, okay, these are the things I was doing then. And here's what's changed. Here's what I'm doing differently. And here's when I noticed my sales start to really slow down. that kind of analysis can be really powerful because we know a lot more than we think we know. As business owners, what's gotten us here is us. And, you know, we

often think we need so much advice and so much newness from, and there's so much noise around that, but often we've got the answers if we're willing to just slow down, trust ourselves and think back to what was actually working. And if you're willing to just slow down, trust ourselves and think back to what was actually working. And if you're listening to this being completely brand new and you're like, Natalie, nothing has ever worked. And I really want you to put your blinders on. I recorded an episode recently, which was the five steps I took to help me hit 1 million. And in there, I get really, really focused on talking about having that one thing and getting it working and get a momentum. And again, all of that's relevant when we're talking about making sales,

even if you're listening to all of this and you're realizing I've never actually let anything get momentum. You know, I sold something, it went really well, then I pivoted onto a new thing. I sold that, it went well, and I introduced a new thing. And you might have 40 courses sitting there in Kajabi and none of them are selling because you've just went from new to new to new. I have less than a handful of programs and ways that you can work with me and take the next step. And that's been really intentional because I don't want to overwhelm people. I want to continue making my products better and better and better. I want to refine what I'm doing and I want to continue making my products better and better and better. I want to refine what I'm doing and I want to put my energy towards making sure my funnels are amazing.

And I'm creating that content on the front end. That's going to bring in the ideal clients that I'm looking for. So I keep things really simple. And by doing that, it means that I'm not stretched. I'm not overwhelmed and I can see what brings in my sales on a repeated basis. So if you are listening to this and you are feeling like things have shifted and it's just so hard to get engagement right now, it's so hard to make sales right now, know that it is possible. Hopefully the tweaks I've shared can support you in that and bring it back to basics. Bring it back to what you were doing when things were working. Think about how you could be simplifying in order to amplify. Think about how you could be up-leveling

your mindset to feel like things aren't so overwhelming, things aren't so draining and I know this is going to change everything for you because you've had success before and if you're not feeling it right now just know this is a small point in time and it's all coming to you