🌀 24 Ways to Make More Sales in 2024

Amelia Hruby [00:00:00]:

Welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients. Hello. Hello. Hello. Welcome to Off the Grid. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby. I am the founder of Softer Sounds. And on this here podcast, I am your fellow traveler in this journey of doing business with no or minimal social media presence.

Amelia Hruby [00:00:44]:

Here on this show, we talk about creative marketing practices that help you grow your business with radical generosity and energetic sovereignty, and we do that with a lot of no nonsense gentle guidance. Today, we are going to bring all of that goodness to everybody's least favorite thing to talk about: sales. Why, my friends? Well, because if we want our business to make money, then we have to make some sales, and becoming good at sales is a crucial skill for any business owner who wants to be in business for the long term. I'm not saying we have to become that stereotypical sleazy car salesman. Not that there's anything wrong with being a car salesman. I'm not saying that we have to take on unethical coercive sales practices. Not at all. I think at the core, sales is about Inviting people into our work and giving them the resources to make an informed decision about if they would like to work with us.

Amelia Hruby [00:01:49]:

Along the way, we can have a whole lot of fun. Doesn't have to be cut and dry. The sales process can bring so much empathy, inspiration, and joy to our conversations with customers and clients. And at the end of the day, hopefully, a little more money into our bank accounts. So that's what we're here to talk about today, my friends, 24 ways to make more sales without social media.

Amelia Hruby [00:02:15]:

I already took us into that conversation, but I'm gonna pull us back out for a real quick announcement, which is that if you do not yet have the Leaving Social Media Toolkit, I would like to invite you to head to the show notes, click the link, type in your email address and get it in your inbox immediately. Why? Well, it does include three fantastic tools, my five step plan for leaving any social platform, my list of 100 ways to share your work without social media, but most Importantly for this episode, it also includes the Creative Marketing Ideas database. That is a database that I have created to help you keep track of all the ways that you're thinking about sharing your work and then create a strategy for doing seasonal marketing experiments that help you grow your business.

Amelia Hruby [00:03:03]:

Today's episode of 24 ways to make more sales in 2024 is gonna give you a lot of ideas for things you can put in that database. So before we dive in, you're gonna want to have the toolkit, have the database, get all the goods so that you're ready to go. So if you don't have the toolkit yet, maybe press pause, maybe go get it right now and then rejoin us because we are diving on in, my friend, to our 24 ways to make more sales without social media.

Amelia Hruby [00:03:36]:

So I've already shared this at the top of the episode, but I find that when I talk about sales, the wonderful, amazing creatives, artists, and small business owners I work with tend to, like, literally try to run away and hide from the conversation. Like, sometimes I'm on a call and I start talking about sales strategy with someone and I can just see them, like, back up from the screen, slouched down in their chair. I'm, like, waiting for them to, like, pull their blanket over their head and, like, close the computer and go away forever. Right? So I feel like talking about sales is not something that a lot of people wanna do. But, again, as I said at the beginning, if we want to have a sustainable business that we can run for the long term, sales skills are a really important part of that.

Amelia Hruby [00:04:24]:

And I also think it's important here to differentiate between marketing and sales. So in the past two episodes of this series, our first episode on 24 ways to boost your visibility and our second episode on 24 ways to nurture your business community. In those episodes, I was really talking about marketing. Marketing is how we grow our audience and build trust with our community. Remember those concentric circles I talked about? You have the audience and the outside, the people who are just getting familiar with your work, the community on the inside, which is full of people who are engaged with your work, and then at the center, we have the clients and customers. Sales skills are what take us from community to client or customer. They cross that bridge of the financial transaction where the money is spent and paid and received. So that is the work that we're doing in sales.

Amelia Hruby [00:05:20]:

Marketing is so much about visibility and trust building and getting to know people and letting them get to know you and educating them and all sorts of things that happen in our marketing, but sales is about helping people decide to purchase. So that's what we're gonna be talking about in this episode. At this stage, we're not in the realm of visibility or relationship building anymore. We're really at the point of decision making. And, again, working on your sales skills does not mean becoming that sort of, like, sleazy, unethical, coercive salesperson archetype. Let's just, like, let that go. Instead, how can we be, like, the wonder women of the sales world? Right? I don't know what you want your sales archetype to be, But we need to let go of that cultural stereotype of the sleazy salesman and step into a different relationship to sales. How can we be that sovereign salesperson that is in love with what we're selling, wants to tell the world about it, and help people fall in love with it too.

Amelia Hruby [00:06:27]:

Right? Like, how can we change the emotions we bring to sales from that sort of like, "I convince them. I gotta exploit myself. I gotta manipulate them." How can we let all of that go and instead bring an energy of, "Wow. I created this thing, and it provides so much value to the world. And I'm really excited to talk to these people about it and to help them see how it can help them and make a decision that's in alignment with all of our values." Right? We gotta make that shift. If we want growing thriving businesses, we have to embrace sales.

Amelia Hruby [00:07:00]:

So luckily for you, I love sales. I love being on sales calls. I love talking to people about the work that I do. I love helping them see if it's right for them or not. I'm thrilled when it is right for them, and I don't take it personally when it's not because that's all a part of the sales process. Again, it's a discernment process. It's a decision making process. It is not a manipulative coercive process.

Amelia Hruby [00:07:25]:

So now that I've said that six different ways to get you on board with making more sales, let's dive in to this list of 24 ways to make more sales in 2024. Okay. So let's kick off our list of 24 ways to make more sales. Some of the things on this list are very practical. A few of them are energetic. Most of them will work for a product or a service based business that is B2B or B2C, online or IRL. I tried to be really expansive with this list. And similar to the first episode in this series where we started our list with a couple of ways to prepare ourselves for more visibility before we did all the visibility boosting actions, in this list, we're gonna start with four ways to get ourselves ready for more sales before we go into those strategies for making more sales.

Amelia Hruby [00:08:20]:

You ready to go? Number one. Here's the thing that I always tell people who are struggling to sell things. I tell them, you should go read The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer. That book single handedly prepared me to do the Kickstarter campaigns that funded my very first podcast. It was such a compelling and supportive read that helped me unpack all of my insecurities that I couldn't sell things or ask for support. And I think that when people are afraid of sales, it often has to do with being unsure or insecure about the value that we provide and with the fear of hearing no and with the fear of failure, of trying to sell something and no one buying it. This book helped me with all of that, helped me break through those blocks, helped me write new narratives, so I always recommend it. The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer. It will embolden you to share and ask for what you need and make more sales. That's where we're starting off.

Amelia Hruby [00:09:28]:

Okay. Number two way to prepare yourself to make more sales in 2024, do your money work. More sales often means more money. And with this one, I'm asking, are you emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually ready to make more money? Earlier this season, I shared my journey of overcoming under earning and how it took me years to break through this cycle of under earning. You can head back to that episode to hear more about my process and the money work that I did. Or if you just want, like, a quick hit of it here, I will link my list of my favorite money books in the show notes where you can find more support and inspiration so that you are energetically ready to make more money.

Amelia Hruby [00:10:14]:

Number three, streamline your systems. I got another question here for you, my friend, which is, is it easy to buy something from you? Do you have a simple streamlined invoicing, payment processing, receipt delivering system in place to handle more sales? There is nothing worse than when a client or customer says, "Yes, I wanna buy that thing," and you say, "Okay, here's your six step process to the point where you can make a payment." Right? Like, we need our sales processes to be streamlined and simple. So if you are focused on making more sales this year, some of the preparatory work that you'll wanna do is to streamline those systems.

Amelia Hruby [00:10:55]:

And number four, our last preparation step for making more sales is to spruce up your website or physical space. Wherever you sell things, whether it's online or our IRL, how can we get it spruced up clean, easy, ready to go? First impressions are very important for sales. So how does your IRL or virtual space look? It doesn't have to be fancy, but it should be clear, easy to navigate and have some personality. So I'm not saying you need to go move into the newest building in the city and do a full rebuild of your shop. I'm not saying you need to invest thousands of dollars in a new website. I encourage you to start with what you already have, start with where you are. But as we're thinking about making more sales, I want you to think about wherever people are landing when they first meet you. Is it ready to invite them to buy something? That's our fouth thing for preparing to make more sales in 2024. Now let's go into 20 ways to actually make those sales.

Amelia Hruby [00:12:00]:

So number five on this list, make a sales calendar and set sales goals. Intention is everything, my friend, and I find that too many business owners actually treat sales really haphazardly. And honestly, that works for some people. I'm not here to judge you. If you are achieving your sales goals by just selling whatever you want whenever you want, go for it. It's working for you. I don't need to interrupt that system. That kind of is a system. No system is your system. I embrace that.

Amelia Hruby [00:12:29]:

But if you are listening to this episode because you want to make more sales in 2024, I would encourage you to make a sales calendar and set sales goals. It will also help if you set a revenue goal and so that way you can look and see "If I sell everything on this calendar and I meet all my goals, will I meet my revenue goal?" Because sometimes I also talk to business owners who are like, "I wanna make $100,000 year, and I'm gonna sell my $50 course five times." And I'm like, "Alright, my friend. Let's do some fun math. If you wanna make $100,000 from that $50 course, you need to sell 2,000 courses. And if you're gonna launch it four times, you need to sell 500 of them per launch. Right? Is that possible with your audience size?" That's gonna take us back into our episode on growing your audience. So, again, make a sales calendar, set sales goals, set those intentions, and do a little checking to make sure that what you intend to do and the goal that you hope to achieve are aligned.

Amelia Hruby [00:13:34]:

Number six, offer a promotion exclusively for your community to try and convert them from community members to clients or customers. As business owners, we're super used to this strategy, offer a promotion. Your promotion could be a discount, it could be a free gift, it could be a bonus session, It could be a free playlist. There's tons of ideas here. This is definitely a way to boost sales that I see people using all the time. And as I offer it, I do wanna share three caveats perhaps. So one caveat is that I don't think you should be doing promotions all the time. To me, if something is always on sale, then your pricing is probably not where it might need to be.

Amelia Hruby [00:14:18]:

I know that it can be popular in sales psychology to have something be kind of permanently discounted. But to me, that always feels like it's going a little bit in the manipulative direction. It doesn't have that sovereign relationship to, like, the price is the price. And sometimes perhaps I choose to offer a promotion where it costs less. But I think that as we think about promotions, I don't think we should be doing promotions all the time. And I think that our pricing needs to be a big part of the decision making around promotions. And finally, the thirdrd caveat is just that promotions can be tricky for service providers. I got some great advice from a business coach I worked with, shout out to Maggie Gentry, when I wanted to offer a promotion or discount on editing packages, and she very gently suggested that that might make me resent when people got the discount because they weren't paying the full rate on work that was, like, ongoing, challenging, and 1-on-1. So I think that promotions for service providers, I would recommend doing promotions to offer a bonus of some type, not a discount on your services.

Amelia Hruby [00:15:28]:

Okay. Let's get back to our list. Number seven, if you would like to boost sales this year, circle back to previous clients and customers and ask if they'd like to hire you or purchase from you again. I cannot overstate how valuable this is. If you would like to make more sales, start with the people who have already bought something from you. This could mean that you go through your client roster from last year and email everyone and say, "Hey. My books are open and I've got space for three new people." It might mean that you go through Shopify and see everyone who bought something from you over the holiday season and you say, "Hey. Thanks for being a holiday customer. Can we invite you to our spring sale and offer you a sneak peek and 20% off right now?" Getting people to purchase again is way easier than getting them to purchase the first time. So let's use this one to boost our sales with folks who already love us.

Amelia Hruby [00:16:18]:

Number eight. If you would like to boost your sales without social media, may I suggest that you raise your rates? Now this is kind of about making more money more than it's about boosting sales. But, you know, money is often what is at stake in making more sales. So I wanna encourage you to consider If you might need or want to raise your rates. When I think about raising my rates, I kind of have a few things in mind.

Amelia Hruby [00:16:43]:

One is, what is the market rate for this, and where am I at in relationship to that? Now I don't think we have to do what other people are doing. I definitely don't think we should be underselling ourselves if the market rate is driving a price down, but I do think it's important to have some awareness about what things cost in your industry. The second thing that I like to think about is what are my clients telling me about my pricing and what does it seem like they can afford. So I noticed last fall that a lot of my clients were cutting back on episodes or were thinking about taking longer breaks of their show. A lot of them were talking to me about having less money to invest in their podcast. So this is not a time that I am going to raise my rates because I already know that I'm kind of reached a threshold where people are happy to invest in the work we're doing together, but they don't have a lot more to give. And that's okay. I wanna support my clients. I have that information.

Amelia Hruby [00:17:39]:

When I think about raising my rates, I also think about If I feel well compensated for the work that I do. Because the fastest path to burnout is to feel under paid and undervalued in your work. And so if you are consistently resentful of your clients, annoyed that you have to work for them, it may be that your rates are too low. And sometimes when this happens to me, like, raising rates becomes nonnegotiable because I have to fix that relationship. So those are just a few of my thoughts on raising rates. We could probably do a whole podcast episode on that in the future. If you'd like that, shoot me an email and let me know.

Amelia Hruby [00:18:16]:

Our number nine way to make more sales without social media is to do customer research and implement your findings. So here's some questions you can consider. How do buyers in your industry tend to behave? If you've been in business for a while, what have been your busiest times of year and least busiest times of year. Are there months that are always low in revenue or high in sales? If you haven't been in business for a while, who are some people who run businesses you admire and want to emulate? What are their prices like? When do they offer promotions? Can you implement some of those strategies in your work in your business? I'm not saying copy them. I'm just saying pay attention to what your customers they're doing and to what businesses you admire are doing and implement those findings in your business. Too often, we say to ourselves, "I wanna make more sales this year or I wanna make more revenue this year." And we don't actually look back at what happened last year to help us build the strategy for the year ahead. So do that research in your own business, in your industry, and let that guide you forward.

Amelia Hruby [00:19:20]:

Okay. Number 10. This is our first mindset shift of the list and it's a bit tongue in cheek, so be prepared. But our number 10 way to make more sales is to embrace ego death. I don't mean you literally have to kill off your ego, but what I do mean is that your business is not all about what you have to offer, it is also very much about what your customer or client needs. So here I gently ask you, are you too attached to your vision? Where can you open up to what your community Is asking for or desiring. Sometimes our sales are low because we are really operating in our own zone and we're making offerings and we're doing stuff that seems cool to us, but we're never really looking to what our community is asking us for or what they need at that point in time.

Amelia Hruby [00:20:16]:

Business has to be a beautiful venture of being in service such that the things that we're creating from our inner vision also meet up with the things that the people that we wanna serve need. I talked about this a lot in my episode, are you an artist or a business owner? So if you wanna think through this more, you can head there. But if you wanna make more sales in the year ahead, if you wanna make more sales without social media, I invite you to embrace a little ego death, let go of your vision for a moment and just take a new perspective. Like, what would your business look like if it was all about your client or customer? Doesn't mean you have to do all of that, but just, like, do the thought experiment and then see what you can implement from there.

Amelia Hruby [00:21:02]:

Okay. Number 11. Speaking of taking our ego out of things, number 11 is survey people who didn't purchase something. So this can be tough. I know a lot of us, like, if we do a sales call or we send an email and we don't make the sale, if someone says no I mean, for me, personally, I just, like, wanna hide and, like, maybe never talk to them again because I'm embarrassed. Like, that that's the emotional state I go in. I'll be really honest. But I think it's actually way more helpful to follow-up and ask why they didn't buy. And what they tell you might change how you do something in the future. So maybe, you know, you send out a sales email to a 100 people and only three people buy something. And you're like, "Damn. I wonder why those 97 people didn't buy." You don't have to wonder. You can ask them. So maybe you ask them and 90 people say the price was too high. And you're like, "Oh, well, gotta work on my pricing." Or maybe 10 people say this was really great, but it's the wrong time of year for me. You know? And you're like, "Okay, cool. I can do this at another time of year and it might go better." That's the sort of information we get when we let go of any of those negative feelings that come up when someone doesn't buy, and we ask them and open ourselves to that feedback.

Amelia Hruby [00:22:12]:

Hey, friends. Interrupting today's episode with a quick message from one of our pod sponsors. We're huge fans of email lists around here at Off the Grid, but, of course, starting a list has its own challenges. You've probably heard advice like be consistent, send an email every week, don't be too salesy, but also don't forget to sell. Striking the perfect balance can be really confusing and this confusion might even stop you from building your list at all which is something that I definitely don't wanna see happen. That's why a friend of the pod and seasoned copywriter, Nicole Cloutier, created a guide just for Off the Grid listeners. It's all about how to turn any writing prompt into content that gets people signing up for your courses, purchasing your products, and replying to your marketing emails with things like, "This is so relatable, I'm so glad you shared that", or maybe even, "I can't wait to work with you." Head to the show notes for the link to grab this amazing free resource today. And because Nicole is an Off the Grid listener herself and knows that we love practical tools around here. She even made the guide an editable Notion template and there's an audio version for all you multitaskers out there.

Amelia Hruby [00:23:27]:

Plus, once you sign up, you'll get a new prompt every single week, so you'll never run out of things to say to your audience. I don't know about you, but I think this sounds absolutely amazing and has had me running to my inbox. You too can grab the guide at nicolecopy.com/offthegrid.

Amelia Hruby [00:23:43]:

Okay. Number 12 way to make more sales without social media is to try out the three second rule. So there's research from trade shows that says that you have three seconds at a trade show to convince people to step into your booth and not just pass you by. So I'm wondering what if you brought this lens to your website or your shop? So the question for you here is can someone understand what you're selling in three seconds or less? If I land on your website right now and I say one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi and I exit it, would I be able to tell you what you do and what you sell? Just posing the question. Not saying you have to do a whole redesign, just saying it's worth thinking about if you are interested in making more sales this year.

Amelia Hruby [00:24:34]:

Number 13, create clear calls to action or CTAs as it's abbreviated. So this is similar to our last one on the three second rule, but are you asking people to do something when they land on your website or come into your store? First of all, do you have a CTA? Are you asking them to do something? And then what is your CTA? What are you asking people to do? And you may think, "Well, I want them to buy something for me. That's what I want them to do. It's my business. Please buy something." Right? That might be obvious to you, but often that's not actually the first step. What they actually might need to do first is get on your email list or submit an inquiry form.

Amelia Hruby [00:25:17]:

If you're in a growth phase, the thing you may want them to do the most is get your lead magnet. I think that we will all make more sales if we create clearer CTAs and we make them more prominent and more present on our websites or in our physical space. So let's use a IRL example. If you own an independent bookstore and a customer comes in, it's one thing to say, feel free to peruse. Right? What did you want them to do? You want them to look around. But what if you said, "Let me know if I can recommend a great book that you'll want to buy for yourself or a friend." That's a totally different energy. Right? You've offered yourself up as this recommendation engine.

Amelia Hruby [00:25:58]:

Or maybe the first thing you say is "Make sure to check out our sales table in the back. We've got books for 40% off back there and there's a lot of great ones." Those are three really different asks, three really different calls to action That are going to kind of create three different experiences for those customers. So this is a way that we can train our retail staff or update our website to be more clear and to ask people to do the things we really want them to do.

Amelia Hruby [00:26:29]:

Number 14 on our list of 24 ways to make more sales is radical generosity. Embody radical generosity. In my business and my spiritual practice, I have found that the more I give, the more I receive. So every year, I make sure that when I make my sort of plan for the year, marketing strategy for the quarter or a year ahead, I make sure that I include a few ways that I will be sharing my work freely.

Amelia Hruby [00:26:59]:

So Off the Grid podcast is one of those ways. Right? This show takes me a ton of time and love and energy and effort to make, but I share it with you freely. For you, your radical generosity may show up in your business by donating part of your revenue, by creating a free resource page on your site, by volunteering your expertise a few hours a quarter. It could also be creating a little gift that goes out with all your sales or to all your new clients. Your pricing can also be a part of radical generosity. I learned a lot about this practice from Sarah Gottesdiener, and I did an episode in season one on radical generosity. So head back to that, if you wanna think more about this one. But I think that there's a lot to be said for the energy we bring to our business and if we can really be generous at the root of our business, I find that people often want to invest in us, want to purchase things from us, want to be a part of that ecosystem.

Amelia Hruby [00:27:59]:

Number 15, create packages and tiers. For service based businesses, I always recommend offering three tiers of your service. This is a common sales strategy. Three tiers, people will most often buy the middle one. From the middle, you wanna have the thing you can upsell to or downsell to from that starting point. So if you don't have three tiers of your service, consider creating that. I think it will help boost your sales. Whether you're a service or a product based business, you could also offer packages to bundle things together and incentivize raising the overall purchase price. So that could be a package of healing sessions. That could be a package of the coolest candles that you sell. That could be a package of gifts for the girlies, whatever it may be. Create packages and tiers is a great strategy for boosting your sales.

Amelia Hruby [00:28:49]:

Number 16, offer easy upsells. So if you're in retail, you know the power of the cute little things at the register. If you have a shop, I recommend putting cute little things at your register. And if you don't, if you have an online business, I recommend thinking about how can you bring that energy to your purchasing experience? So could you offer, like, a bonus session? Like, "Oh, when customers book, I offer a $50 30 minute session for you. This is the only time you can get it." It's just a part of this, like, starting out package. Here's the easy upsell. That to me is the equivalent of, like, the really cool hair clip that I probably bought a million times at the register because it was so cute. Right? I have one literally, next to my computer right now, it is a shrimp. I love it. So make easy upsells that excite your clients and make your customers want to spend more at that moment of purchasing.

Amelia Hruby [00:29:45]:

Number 17, utilize referrals, testimonials and reviews. When people have bought something from you, you want to be gathering testimonials about how much they loved working from you, reviews of the thing they purchased, or referrals to other people they think would like to work with you. When people share those, it boosts your visibility going back to that first step of growing your audience. And then when you put them on your sales pages, it also boosts your sales by raising your credibility and offering that social proof. Right? Especially when we're purchasing goods online, so often, we can't get a sense of the tactileness of them. Right? Like, we don't know if the clothes are gonna fit. We don't know how big the thing is. Mean, how many of us had ordered something online and it arrived and it was either, like, 10% of the size you thought it was gonna be or, like, a 1,000% of the size you thought it was gonna be, right? So social proof helps alleviate those concerns and will help boost your sales.

Amelia Hruby [00:30:49]:

Number 18. This is another mindset one. I kinda talked about it in the very beginning of the episode, but our number 18 way to make more sales is to fall in love with your offerings or products. Sometimes I encounter business owners who I am not convinced they even like what they are selling. Like, I walk into a store and the person looks, like, so annoyed and bored to be there. Or I hop on a sales call and, like, they can't explain the packages to me. If you don't love it, why am I gonna want to buy it? And I don't say that to, like, criticize other people. Honestly, sometimes I encounter this on myself. Like, if I'm really burned out, I can't do sales calls because I actually don't want that person to buy anything because if they buy something, I have to do more work and I can't do more work. Right? Like, I can't sell when I'm burned out. It's not a good energy for me and it's not a good energy to bring to my business. So I think that a great step In your journey of making more sales is to fall in love with your offerings and products, to bring that enthusiasm, that joy, that love to the sales experience.

Amelia Hruby [00:31:59]:

Number 19. Try creating an offering at a very different engagement level or price point. So if you do one-on-one work, try offering a course. If you only sell courses, try offering one-on-one work. If everything you sell costs more than $1,000, Try selling something for $100. If everything you sell costs less than $100, try selling something for $500 or more. The logic here is that there are likely people in your community who think your work costs too much or too little. And, yes, some of them think it costs too little. So convert those people to customers or clients by changing up your pricing strategy. Have fun. Make it an experiment. See if it makes you more sales or more money when you try it out.

Amelia Hruby [00:32:45]:

Okay, folks. We are rounding this out and headed to number 20. This is a really good one. These next two are both kinda like three part things, so stick with me as I teach you something that's really gonna help you make more sales. Number 20 is learn this three part sales formula for creating sales content. Here's how I like to create sales content, whether it is a podcast, it is an email, it is a webinar, this is how I do it in three parts. Part one is explaining the idea or problem. Most offerings start by resolving a problem. That problem could be I need to make more money in my business and I don't know how. That problem could be I need to send an email to a 150 people three times a month. How do I do that? That problem could be, I need a really cute pink purse to go with this dress. Where can I find that? That problem could be, I wanna make a podcast, but I can't edit it myself. Can I get someone else to do that? Right? There are all sorts of problems, but we're starting with that problem or that idea.

Amelia Hruby [00:33:51]:

Part two is give them the juiciest bit. I see too many people go from, like, the problem to the framework or something, And it becomes a little dry. Like, you start teaching. You go from the problem to teaching. Gosh. I do this all the time. This is what I do on this podcast. Sorry, guys. Not a good sales strategy. But if we're doing sales content, we wanna go from the problem to, like, the juiciest thing. Right? So this is something I do in a roundabout way on Off the Grid which is, like, the problem is I want a thriving business. Like, how do I get my business to thrive? But the juiciest bit is, like, without social media. Right? That's what everyone shows up for. We need all of this other marketing and sales stuff, but I stick with the without social media because that's the thing that, like, really just, like, pulls at it. So, like, yes. That's it.

Amelia Hruby [00:34:41]:

And then part three is tell them why your offering or product is the solution. So, again, we started with part one, the problem, part two, the juiciest bit, part three, why your thing is the answer. Yes. It takes time to learn to do that really well and to finesse it, but I really think that as you're building out content for a marketing plan around your sales strategy, like, I do this all the time, three emails, three podcast episodes, problem, juicy bet, sell the offering over and over and over again. You can really recycle this three part sales formula. So that's number 20.

Amelia Hruby [00:35:17]:

Number 21, learn this three step plan for your sales calls. So I'm gonna give you the three steps that I go through on every sales call that I do for Softer Sounds. First, I say hello, do all the niceties, compliment their outfit, tell them my cat's name, etcetera, etcetera. Then step one is to ask them to share more about themselves and the support they need. If someone has landed on a sales call with me, I know it's because they need some support and I wanna hear about that first. I don't wanna launch right into everything that I do. I wanna know exactly who they are and why they're here, so start there.

Amelia Hruby [00:35:55]:

Step two, share your services or offerings and how they address that person's exact support needs. So if you start with step one, then when you get to step two, you're not just telling them about your offerings, generically, you're personalizing. You're talking about the ones they really need and why they would support them. And then step three is answer their questions and outline next steps. Generally, I think for all of us on a sales call, we know the answer questions part, but I see far too few people be super clear and direct about what comes next. Or I've been on way too many sales calls where at the end, I'm like, "Okay, but like I wanna buy the thing like what do we do?" Right? So your job as the person selling the thing is at the end of the call to be super clear. I will send you an email by end of day today. I will send you a link to the inquiry form to fill out. I will send you an invoice. I will send you the link to exactly this project you said that you needed. Whatever it may be, just be super clear about it, say thanks and sign off. That's your three step plan for sales calls.

Amelia Hruby [00:36:55]:

Speaking of sales calls, this takes us to number 22. We are almost done, my friends. Number 22 way to make more sales without social media is to learn to follow-up and keep following up. So as I was prepping this episode, I was reading some research about close rates. Close rates are when you close the deal, you make the sale, the person purchases, and the rate is, like, how many times did a salesperson have to talk to someone to close the sale? So talking to them doesn't have to mean, like, being on the phone. They talk about it in terms of touch. Like how many times do you have to quote unquote touch the lead in order to convert them to a client or customer? So research shows that with one touch the close rate is 2%. So if you only have one touch with that person, 2% is your likelihood of closing the sale. After the third touch, it's 5%, which honestly is still not that much. But when you get up over five touches, it goes up to 80%. So, again, a touch can be a lot of things, a call, an email, a card, a webinar, a newsletter, a voice message, a text message.

Amelia Hruby [00:38:04]:

Those are all touches. But if you wanna close 80% of your calls, your sales, you need over five touches with that one person to be closing at that rate. So that's why I say number 22 is learn to follow-up and keep following up. If you do a sales call and you never hear from that person again, I recommend sending them some follow-up emails. Maybe you send them a quick voice message. You know, how can you keep following up? The worst that can happen is they never respond or they reply and say, "I don't wanna buy this thing." But learning to follow-up and continuing to follow-up will certainly mean you close more sales based on these statistics and that's a great way to make more sales without social media. Okay.

Amelia Hruby [00:38:46]:

Last two, my friends. Number 23. If you wanna make more sales in 2024, express gratitude for the customers you have and the sales you've made. This is another energetic or mindset one, which is I think that sometimes as business owners, we can get in the mindset of go, go, go, grow, grow, grow, more and more and more, like, onto the next. Made a sale onto the next. When we do that, we often forget to do all of the client and community nurturing work, the following up, the adding more value that expresses our gratitude and keeps customers coming back for more. So this is about having that attitude of gratitude and also doing the actions that make people feel appreciated so they want to become return customers in your business.

Amelia Hruby [00:39:34]:

And finally, number 24, as always, we're ending on a counterintuitive one. So, you know, take this with a grain of salt. Take it as you will. Take it or leave it, whatever it may be. But number 24 for me is if you wanna make more sales, get to know your community really well and then ignore all of the sales advice you hear from everyone else, myself included. This one was inspired by my dear friend and collaborator, grace allerdice, who has said on this podcast in season two, like, "I quit making sales pages because I didn't really work and this offering didn't need it and it sold great." Right? Like, grace is someone who has been in relationship with her community for years, who has really nurtured those relationships, and knows how to sell to them. The relationship is everything. And I do think that the 23 ways I shared before this will help you make more sales in perhaps most scenarios.

Amelia Hruby [00:40:36]:

But the best thing you can do is get to know your community and sell it to them the way they want to be sold to. And that's not about advice, that's about those relationships. So that is our 24 ways to make more sales without social media in 2024, my friends. Thank you so much for sticking with me. I know that there was a lot in this episode. As I've shared in the other episodes of this series, if you would like a beautiful, easy to navigate Notion dashboard that includes a list of these 24 ways to make more sales as well as our 24 ways nurture your business community and 24 ways to boost your visibility all without social media, if you want all of that plus my notes plus some bonuses, I have created that for you and all you have to do to get it is join the Interweb. If you're not familiar, the Interweb is our annual membership for small business owners, artists, freelancers, creatives, anybody who wants to share their work and make money without social media. It currently costs $129 a year, so it's very affordable.

Amelia Hruby [00:41:42]:

And no matter when you join, you will get access to this resource of all of these lists that I hope will help you grow your business, thrive in the ways that you want to, and bring your dreams to life this year or any year that you might be tuning in. As always, I am so grateful that you tuned in to this episode. Everything I mentioned is linked in the show notes. You can find it there at your convenience. I can't wait to be back in your pod feed next week. And until then, my friends, I will see you off the grid and on the Interweb.

Amelia Hruby [00:42:20]:

Thanks for listening to Off the Grid. Don't forget to grab your free Leaving Social Media Toolkit at offthegrid.fun/toolkit. This podcast is a Softer Sounds production. Our music is by Melissa Kaitlyn Carter of Making Audio Magic, and our logo is by n'Atelier Studio. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby. And until next time, I'll see you off the grid and on the Interweb.