Below are the show notes/summary for this episode. Please listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify for the full show! Xo, Alex

 

 

Today’s episode is all on how to sell more, which is something most people want to do. Even I want to do. I’m not where I want to be. I want to keep selling, selling, selling. So, I’m going to give you my little tips and tricks on how I’ve gotten to where I am today.

 

#1: Sales needs to be authentic.

 

There’s nothing more cringeworthy than somebody sending you a voice message in your Instagram messages. And you can just tell it’s a script and it feels icky. It feels like that immediately. I don’t know about you guys, but it makes me feel physically not well. And I can tell that they’re just reading from a script or they do this all the time or whatever. It’s like a cold sell, which I hate, by the way. I did want to kind of start by talking about things that you should stop doing.

So, if you’re doing these things, please stop. You don’t have to listen to me. But I personally don’t like them. I know many other people don’t like these tactics, but I also know that there are a lot of people who probably make a lot of money by using these tactics. I know there are probably people who teach these tactics. So, to each their own, as I always say. But these are the things that pissed me off when people try and sell to me. So, the whole like sliding into the DMs thing when I’ve never seen your face before, it’s just quite annoying. Just like the cold, “Hey, I saw you did this. Maybe it would be cool if I could do this for you.” But I’ve never seen this person before.

There’s zero authority there. And why would I trust somebody if I know absolutely nothing about them? I don’t even know if their skills are right. All I know is that they’re writing to me in my DMs. So that to me is frustrating, especially when it’s like a voice message. Again, those voice messages 90% of the time are cringe-worthy, and you can tell someone’s reading off the script. Same with like video messages. Like I don’t even know who you are and you’re reaching out? And there are the people who come into my DMS who are very specific with what they’re trying to sell me for. But then there’s this other group of people who come into my DMs, who are like, “Hey, I think that we should hop on a chat. Here’s my link. You can schedule a call with me.”

It’s like, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Why would we hop on a phone call? Why would I give up my precious time with my clients? And even when I’m not with my clients, with my friends and family, or with myself, or like walking my dog. Why would I want to talk to you about something? I have no idea what it’s about. It’s just a waste of time. That’s what it sounds like to me. So, if you sell like that, I highly suggest finding another way. Because I promise you, for me, it’s a complete turnoff. It does the opposite. You’ve completely lost me now. And I before would respond to everyone just out of kindness. But now, I’m not going to waste my time even to respond. I’m just going to delete the message and move on.

You need to be authentic when it comes to selling. And I don’t like pushing people to do things. And I understand when it comes to sales and stuff, there’s a lot that you can do to make the sale. But this is what works for me. There are always ways to make more money. But what I prefer personally is never pushing anybody to do something with me. Whether that be a custom service, whether that be a training program, whether it be a call, anything. I’m not going to sit and pressure you and try and sell you. I want people to work with me that want to work with me. Like I don’t want it to be this thing where it’s like, I pressured them into doing it. Then they have these weird expectations of how it’s going to go and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I’m just not that type of person. I will always be authentic if somebody asks me a question. I get a lot of questions, let’s say about a training. Like, “Hey, do you think the designer training would be great for me?” That’s a question. I get a lot. Sometimes I say no. Sometimes I’m like, actually, no, I don’t think it would be great for you. But when I do say yes, most of the time, obviously I’m like, yeah, I think it’d be great. And the reason why I think it’d be great is because I’m putting together a program that’s going to be insane. It’s like 40 days of live trainings. Here is a list of every single day of what we’re going to cover. It goes through business. It goes through design. It’s easy for me to sell something when I truly know that it’s going to help people because I’m not going to create products that aren’t going to help people just for some fast, fast cash whatever.

So, it’s little things like that when it comes to sales. First, you need to create something that you know is going to help people. Something that you can stand behind 200% and be confident in. For me, I’m always listening to podcasts on business and design. I’m always reading business books. I’m always trying to put more knowledge, more and more knowledge inside of this brain of mine, to keep giving you guys free value.

Because if I didn’t better myself or my craft, or educate myself on different practices, I would run out of information to give you. You have to know shit to teach it. So, I’m always trying to learn new shit. There are even some web design programs that I’m looking to learn that are different than Showit and Shopify and all the other things I’ve learned before. I’m always trying to see what’s the newest, hottest thing that’s going to help myself. I’m kind of like the Guinea pig, I suppose, when it comes to things. And then I relay the information back to you, which is why you listen to my stuff and consume my free value or come to my trainings or what have you. So, you have to be smart and be authoritative in whatever you’re delivering while being authentic. Make sure you care about your consumer before you care about the sale. Care more about the consumer, then you care about the sale, and you’ll make this sell. That’s basically what this whole podcast is about.

 

#2: Start talking about your product online.

 

You’re not going to sell more if you don’t talk more about the product. And this is something that I notice a lot. People are missing out on opportunities on Instagram stories and shit. Go on Instagram stories and talk passionately about what you just created, and I guarantee you, people will be interested, and then they’ll want to buy it. If people don’t know what you’re offering, they have no reason to purchase it.

You can’t just like throw something up on your website and hope people venture to your site and go check it out. That’s not how things work because they will not go to your website and check it out. I mean, honestly, when I am on my Instagram stories and like pitching the shit that I do, whether it’s a training or a service or what have you, I get so many more inquiries and so many more sales. And if you pair that with throwing out an email, doing some Facebook and Instagram ads, which I haven’t done yet, but I am looking into it.

But anyway, you’re building funnels here. So, talk about it on your Instagram stories. Make an Instagram post about it. Send out an email about it. Have a Facebook ad going around. So basically, people are getting hit in the fucking face with your offer. And eventually, there’ll be like, oh my God, the universe is telling me that I need to buy this person’s course. So, then they go in, and they buy it. I’ve had somebody email me and be like, “goddammit, Alex, you’re so persistent. Like I was looking at your Instagram stories. I was thinking about it. Then I got an email, and you’re so damn persistent that I just had to buy it.”

So, it’s true. It works. So, make sure you have all of these things in place. Talk about it. I like to do something I call it passively selling. So basically, you’re not selling to anybody specifically, but you could be. So, if you have somebody in mind that was like on the fence of purchasing maybe a high-ticket program or a service, or what have you, you can like bring up because you know why people aren’t buying, right? A lot of times, they’re scared to invest.

So, I know why somebody’s not buying. And that’s when you’re like, “Hmm, let’s hop on Instagram stories” or “let’s make a post that explains and answers their questions before they even ask me.”

Because a lot of times it’s not that they’re telling me these things of like, “Hey, I’m not buying this because of X, Y, Z.” You have to pay attention to people, and deep down in your gut, you know why they’re not buying. And maybe it’s just solely because they don’t trust you or they have other options. Start figuring that out and then passively sell to them where they’ll see something.

So, then it gives them a reason to buy, right? So, you want to talk about that. You want to sell passively. Don’t make it like a cold sell directed at them. Don’t hop into their fucking DMS and be all weird. Passively sell. Show them why they should hire you. Don’t tell them why they should hire you to show them.

 

#3: Showcase your achievements and showcase your work.

 

So constantly putting up new projects, showing your clients that you’re consistent in the designs that you do. And that also repels people who aren’t a good fit for you. I recently this week just had a client where it just wasn’t a good fit, and she wanted a design style that is not my style. And we didn’t realize that until getting into the project. And I even asked her, what are some projects that I’ve done that you were drawn to? Like, why did you hire me? Because I want to make sure we’re on the same page here. And you know, she couldn’t pull up anything that she felt like super in line with. So that’s a big thing. You can’t hire people that don’t already do the design style that you like. You can’t find someone that works for someone else and be like, “Oh, I hope that they can do my design style.” It doesn’t work like that in design. And it doesn’t work like that in creative coaching or anything. So, you need to be on-brand with your design style, as you can, within your profiles and the work that you share, don’t share things that you don’t like to do.

There are tons of projects I do that I don’t share on social media. It doesn’t mean that the client didn’t love those projects. It just means it wasn’t something that I would necessarily want to do in the future. Like it didn’t creatively inspire me as much as the projects that I’m showcasing on my website and in my social media profile. And that’s because I want to attract more people that want to do those styles of work. And I want to repel people who don’t want those styles of work. I want somebody to come who isn’t my style and be like, okay, this girl is not my style. And that doesn’t mean that I’m a bad designer. It doesn’t mean that the client has bad taste. It just means that we have different styles, and that’s normal. So, make sure you’re showcasing your stuff, make sure you showcase your testimonials. Like when somebody is over the moon and super excited about the work that you’ve done, you want to show that that helps passively sell your stuff.

#4: Start creating funnels for your business.

 

So, funnels are just how a buyer gets from A to B. From not a buyer to a buyer. So, there’s a lot of different things that you can do with funnels. So, I’m going to give like a full example. So, I will create a typeface bundle guide because I notice so many people suck at typefaces and put them together. And I have many trainees now and mentees that are DIY in their sites or are new designers looking to like really up their game. Or you’re just somebody who wants to create a sub-brand, but you’re not quite sure how to pick fonts and stuff.

But basically, what I want to do is create a guide that has a shit ton of font pairings. So, here’s a subhead, a header, a body copy. And here’s a display to go with those three. And then here’s the link to purchase them all. And I want to offer free options. Here’s where you download them. Make it super easy for people. Obviously, it’s going to be something that you have to pay for, but I’m not going to make it a crazy price. But I want to help people. But I also want to make some money, so it’s a win-win-win-win situation there.

So, I’m going to create this font guide. And so, I’m going to create a funnel for it. Something that I can keep moving through. Because this is passive income and we want as much passive income as we possibly can get. Because you want to diversify where you get your income. And by having all these little passive income projects, it helps us make money while we sleep. So now we need to create funnels. So, I talk about it on my social media and create a blog post. People know that I’m doing it at this point.

And then, I can start funneling people into that blog post via Pinterest by creating a Pinterest graphic that says free font pairings. And then basically in the blog post, what I’m going to do is at the end, I’m going to be like, Hey, did you enjoy this blog post? We have a guide for 20 bucks. People would be like; I got all this free value. I loved these font pairings. So, I’m going to spend the $20 or $27 and get this book full of 50 of them. So, I can do the Pinterest graphics, which will lead them to the blog post, which will lead them to buy. I can create a Facebook ad that leads them to the blog post that leads them to buy. So, all of these things are funnels. It’s really fun to sit down and create all these funnels in your head. Because there are so many opportunities here. There are just so many different things that you can do.

That’s the point of creating funnels where you’re leading people from not a buyer to a buyer. So, it’s about creating that trust, building that relationship, and showing them that what they’re going to get will be great. When it comes to selling, creating funnels, it’s all very exciting.

 

#5: Create urgency.

 

You want to put a date on something. Create that urgency and make people think, “okay, I need to buy now.” But not too much where it’s like gimmicky or scammy or whatever, but you do need to put some urgency on there. Otherwise, people will be like, “Oh, I’m going to buy that later.” And I know how to create products that my consumers are going to love to purchase. Whether it be a done for you service or a DIY service or a training. I’m always focused on my consumer. And so I know whatever I do in the future, I have my dreamers, I have my dreamers who are always there who always want to purchase more because I always give them more than they ask for. And more than they purchase. I overvalue.

 

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