Ep. 7.5: Asking for the Sale Without Anxiety Pt. II
Okay, so that was the first half of the part, and I was already at 12 and a half minutes when I was recording this. So this is almost certainly going to be a two-parter. And that's okay because sales is kind of a big beast.
And there are a lot of different components that we overthink and ways to approach your sales. This process has to make sense for you.
Making Offers Irresistible (for YOU)
My business friend Casey Eade, is @caseyconnects on Instagram and Threads. I will link if you want to view some of their work. But they said something on Threads, and like they always tend to do, they verbalized something that was kind of vaguely already in my head, but I think that I never heard it out loud said in the way that I'm like, "Oh, this makes sense. I also agree with this.”
The one that I'm going to talk about today with this is a lot of folks in the online entrepreneur space, especially those that are helping people craft offers, use the word irresistible, like create an irresistible offer.
Casey rightfully called this term out because if you're like me and you're equity-led, you are anti-capitalist. And the very minimum, just like, hey, we want to be ethical about this. We want folks to make responsible decisions, not feel helpless to resist the allure of our flashy titles and our marketing when making sales. We want folks to have weighed their options and feel confident that this is the right decision for them based on shared values and trust that our approach is a good fit for what they're trying to achieve or where they want to go.
But in thinking about their post, I thought about a reframe for myself.
What if instead of trying to make an offer irresistible to clients, I structured an offer that makes it irresistible to me as the service provider to talk about? Because sales breeds so much anxiety and overthinking, you know, for me and for other people, how can I find ways that make it enjoyable and fun to talk about what I do?
I'm not the best person to talk about offers. But I'll talk a little bit about this because sometimes this is what we're overthinking, and we may need to address some blocks that are offer or operations specific that maybe are making us not want to talk about our offer or, you know, or make sales on it:
Are you being realistic with your capacity?
Are you undercharging and you're feeling resentful of folks because of what you're being asked to do?
Have you felt like maybe you've been pushed into doing work that you are good at, but you're maybe not thrilled about doing, you know, AKA your zone of excellence.
This was me with monthly social media management. I could do it, but I really preferred working in the more meatier content like email sequences, web pages and the flagship content so that folks had that solid foundation for their social media and their other nurture content could lead to I'm not the authoritative person like I already said on this subject, so I'm going to look into adding resources in the show notes for this if this is something that you do want to explore.
Some books that come to mind for this are like The Big Leap, Worth Every Penny, and I'll try to come up with a couple of resources that will help you.
So, for example, this audio series, it really felt like a natural way for me to talk about and segue into a done with you offer. Framing it around, overthinking around my own mental health stuff, my own low capacity stuff, and then using my own framework to structure the series. This makes this enjoyable for me to like the point that I am considering doing more than one season or finding ways to add to this because I don't feel like I'm really like selling.
I'm just sharing, “Hey, this is how my brain works. This is what I've learned, and this is what I've noticed with clients about the best way to get results in marketing without sacrificing our well-being and while sticking to our values.” If you are neurodivergent, I try to frame sales as, “Hey, this is the cool rock I found on my walk. Do you want it or not?”
Structuring Marketing & Sales for Diverse Decision Makers: Being Ethical with Scarcity & Urgency
If we're prioritizing client autonomy, that means we also have to give folks an easy out to say not right now while still engaging in our content ecosystem. Going back to earlier, that could be a community, that could be networking hours. It could be lower commitment offers, like maybe a paid template. It could be directing them to a podcast or your email list.
We all make decisions differently, and it took a lot for me not to take that personally if someone ended up working with someone else or told me no, or they'll think about it. In my own decision-making process for courses, coaches, and service providers, I take months, sometimes years, before I'm ready to commit to working with someone you know.
As you build out your sales process, I recommend incorporating different methods of different for different types of decision makers and start off by thinking about your own and how you make decisions. A not right now may come back way later, and that's okay.
But also, you know, as a procrastinator, I need last-minute reminder emails for things because I forget I intend to do the thing, I intend to buy the thing, and then I forget, and then the time has passed me by. Can often be done to an extreme where people are emailing you like every hour before a cart closes, and that gets annoying. But some of us do appreciate those last-minute reminder emails.
So if you are doing something time-sensitive, that can be helpful. Speaking of deadlines, I want to tackle the matter of scarcity and urgency. We all have probably seen them used in gross ways like cutoff dates for self-paced courses or only so many of a digital product. It's just to pressure you into saying yes right in that moment.
Or the math doesn't quite work out when someone said, oh, there's only X amount of spots left. And you're like, was that what you said a week ago? And you're saying something different now. Interesting.
Because of people who do it grossly, we forget that there are legitimate reasons to be upfront about scarcity or having a deadline in place for your offer. Like if you are doing an event, the venue needs a headcount by a certain day. That is something that is beyond your control. You need to RSVP, you need to buy your ticket before this time so I can get that information to like catering or the venue or whoever it is in a group cohort where everyone is starting at the same time.
You may only be able to give that level of like attention and specialization to maybe only six or seven people at a time or other factors.
I had worked with someone, and we'll talk about her in a later episode, but I worked with someone because they were about to go on maternity leave. So like, I didn't know when they would be able to come back, if they would, that offer would come back again and they were upfront about that. So then I decided, hey, I've been wanting to do this. I've been waiting on it until I thought I was ready. They're on, they're about to go on maternity leave. That is a true deadline. You know, like that's, that's okay to just be upfront about that.
You know, if you're like me you know, you have to look after your own capacity. You can only do so many projects at once. You don't want to over-commit yourself, and then everybody is stressed out again. Going back to how sales helps folks make a decision, this is information, not manipulation.
You are just being like, "Hey, this is how, this is what's going on. This is when we're all going to start, or whatever those other factors are that require some sort of scarcity or urgency that is built in. Just don't go back on what you said, right? Be as transparent as possible.
I also just urge folks, do not go so far the other way that folks feel blindsided, that when they want to work with you, you no longer have room, or you've run out of capacity, or that like hey, 2025's price that you had shared is no longer 2026's price.
ACTION STEP
So for this action step today, it'll be twofold yet again. The first part is: “What will your “not right now” option be?
Those who want to kind of, you want to keep in contact and have them stay in your content ecosystem. I know that some folks have social media, so that is an option. But I would also have you consider what an option would be that doesn't require you to have that constant content creation and have you show up online all of the time.
The second part of the call to action, or the action step, I should say, is to think about your offer. You know, is there still some work that you are aligned to do within your capacity and with, you know, where you're at currently.
But think about the legitimate constraints or deadlines that are inherent to your current offer, and what information would help folks make that right decision for themselves at the right time, and kind of start to frame it in that way, and think about that information that would be helpful to share with them.
