Without simple scalable sales systems your business will be stuck

Without simple scalable sales systems your business will be stuck

by | Aug 29, 2022 | Business Chaos, Business coaching for women, Profitability and business growth, Sales Mindset, Smart Growth, Womens Business Mastermind

The truth of it is that your business can only go so far with a reactive approach to sales and business growth. 

You’ve had some awesome success in your business (congrats btw!). 

But it can feel a little chaotic, and even with all of your wins under your belt, somehow it feels like you’re ‘winging’ it.

When you don’t have a sales process in place you’re basically starting over every time a new client comes through the door #exhausting

You don’t want to have to think about the next steps all the time or be worrying about the quality of sales conversations your team are having when you’re not there. 

You want to feel like everything’s consistent, under control and taken care of at all times. 

I’m sure you’ve heard people like me bang on about how important a sales process is to business. 

I get it, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what needs to be done or exactly what that means. 

And let’s be honest, you don’t have the time to sit down and map this stuff out! 

But here’s the thing, when you know where you’re going you can get there quicker and easier. Think about it like using a GPS system for your clients. 

A good GPS will give you suggestions on shortcuts and takes the thinking out of the driving for you. It guides each milestone, pit stop, and the road to travel. It also navigates detours around unexpected surprises that pop up. 

When you put a destination in the GPS, it gives you the most efficient way to get to where you’re going. 

Don’t you want that for your clients?

If you do, there are 6 areas for you to think strategically in your business. To get clarity right away on your strengths and gaps, how many do you answer yes to?

  1. Sales set up: Do you intimately know your #’s – past, present and future and do you have a positive mindset about sales?
  2. Attract: Do you have a reliable lead gen strategy in place?
  3. Qualify: Is there a simple and effective qualifying process for new clients?
  4. Convert: Are you consistent in your approach to converting clients ie. 1st time appointment and 2nd appointment, effective (repeatable) questions to uncover needs?
  5. Nurture: Do you have a nurture sequence for the yes’s, no’s and the not now’s?
  6. Innovate: Is there a system to ensure you regularly review your services, revenue streams, processes, and client experience?

Research conducted since the pandemic (by the Brevet Group) shows there are longer buyer cycles than ever before. 

This highlights the importance of having a sales framework or process to take the emotion out of selling and to make sure leads don’t go cold.. or are forgotten about.

You don’t want to be leaving money on the table or not getting paid what you’re worth! Check out more on getting paid what you’re worth here.

Most importantly having this process makes your clients feel taken care of and helps them decide if you’re the right fit for them.

What are your next steps?

Once you’ve identified your strengths and gaps, don’t put pressure on yourself to put everything in place at once. Chip away at each point one step at a time. Start with area 1 moving your way through to 6. 

Remember, you don’t have to do this alone! 

This is the exact process we take our clients through to help them get more time and step back from the business with ease and confidence so they can get back to doing what they love. Book a clarity call if you want guidance on what your best next step is. 

Nicky is a Sales and Business Leadership Coach with over 2 decades experience in sales and leadership. She’s been running successful coaching businesses since 2015 and is obsessed with helping business owners and teams thrive. She helps her clients install smart business growth strategies and leverage leadership for peak performance.
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Do you have the financial foundations to set your business up for success?

Do you have the financial foundations to set your business up for success?

by | May 3, 2022 | Business coaching for women, Money Mindset and Management, Profitability and business growth, Womens Business Mastermind

This week in our True North in Business Mastermind I ran a Masterclass all about the financial foundations that are essential to have in place to run a successful (and profitable) business. It was one of the most popular Masterclasses so far with many valuable take-aways and lightbulb moments for our clients.

If you’re anything like the women we speak to and work with, you might be able to relate to some (or all!) of these challenges:

  • Lack of cash flow
  • No clear planning
  • Unreliable financial data
  • Poor understanding of the numbers
  • Lack of time

If you said nodded along to any of those, then read on…

 

The 7 key financial checkpoints in business you need to nail:

  • Whether your business structure is best for now and will see you into the future
  • Making sure you have the correct amount of tax put aside so you don’t end up with any surprise tax bills
  • Starting out strong when it comes to setting up your cloud-based accounting software
  • Knowing the three most important financial statements you need to be across in business and how to interpret them
  • There are 7 key numbers to monitor in your business – how many are you currently looking at and where’s the gap?
  • What profit-building habits you need to implement in your business
  • Keeping your expenses in check with a simple plan to ensure they’re a part of a monthly system

Whether you’re in the early stages of business and setting up your foundations, or you’ve been in business for ten years and realise that perhaps those foundations are rocky, being able to feel confident across these areas is essential.

Because as the old saying goes:

Revenue is Vanity

Profit is Sanity

Cash is Reality

Need more help with this? You might like to consider joining our True North in Business Mastermind. Or perhaps you’re looking for a more hands-on approach to support? Reach out and let’s start a conversation. Book a chat with me by clicking the button below.

 

Meet Nicky & Ness

Double your chance of success with two experienced Business and Leadership Mentors.

Nicky and Ness are obsessed with helping install smart business growth strategies - without the hard -core hustle and leveraging people leadership for peak performance. 

They are two savvy business women who have come together with a shared vision, bucket loads of passion and a burning desire to change hustle culture.

Underpinning everything they do is making sure you’re thriving now and able to thrive into the future as the world continues to change around you.

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What Is Hot Seat Mentoring?

What Is Hot Seat Mentoring?

by | Mar 29, 2022 | Business coaching for women, Womens Business Mastermind

Who do you turn to when you need business advice?

When you hit a challenge in your business – or an opportunity that is causing a challenge in trying to figure out what to do, who do you turn to for advice?

Often we ask our partner, family or friends for advice about our business thinking they will be able to help because they know us well and have our best interest at heart. But that doesn’t always result in the best advice.

So who to turn to?

Watch as Nicky and Ness talk through the concept of hot seat mentoring, a wonderful way of experiencing feedback from those who know how to answer your questions.

NEED MORE SUPPORT WITH THIS? WE ARE GOING DEEP INTO THIS TOPIC AT OUR NEXT VIRTUAL STRATEGY DAY IN THE TRUE NORTH IN BUSINESS MASTERMIND.

YOU CAN FIND OUT MORE HERE OR BOOK A CHAT WITH NICKY AND NESS.

Is your ego dictating your financial goal setting?

Is your ego dictating your financial goal setting?

by | Mar 11, 2022 | Business coaching for women, Money Mindset and Management, Profitability and business growth, Womens Business Mastermind

If you’ve ever set a big financial goal and deep down know you won’t be able to achieve it then this video is for you.

If we listen to others, we can get sucked into joining the bandwagon of 6 or 7 figure business based on our ego rather than setting goals that work for us.

What this means is that although we have a big goal written down that we’re aiming for, deep down we know we’re not likely to hit it. So we link a negative feeling to that number and get frustrated when we don’t reach it, wondering what’s wrong with us.

At this stage, we start chasing this elusive number by trying to be like everyone else and get further and further into a rut.

Watch as Ness shares her insights into how to solve this problem so that you can set goals aligned so closely to what you believe that you will smash them!

Do these practical steps to never work with the wrong client again

Do these practical steps to never work with the wrong client again

by | Mar 9, 2022 | Business coaching for women, Profitability and business growth, Sales Mindset, Womens Business Mastermind

Working with the wrong type of client can cost you time, money and let’s be honest it can be draining! 

The best time to say no to a client is early on before you’ve even started working with them. 

But how do you know if they’re right for you?

You qualify them!

In the early days of business, you might say yes to clients and work that comes in regardless of where it comes from. 

This can be an important part of figuring out how to improve your product and service or finding your niche. 

But once you’ve been in business for a while, there’s a point where it’s time to start saying no. And initially, this can be uncomfortable. 

Sometimes we’re not even aware that we’re still holding on to the wrong type of clients.

So my question to you is… 

Are you working with your ideal clients? And by ideal clients I mean those that light you up to work with and you can help them?

Because listen up… if they’re not right for you, you’re not right for them! It’s just the way it goes. 

I want to share a really simple process that helps you qualify your clients early on so you never have to work with the wrong type of client again. 

All you have to do is come up with a killer set of 3-5 questions and make sure you ask these of everyone before you work with them. 

Let me outline it for you below.

What do I ask? 

The best way to come up with your 3-5 qualifying questions is to think of your non-negotiables when it comes to working with (or selling your product to) someone. 

Then craft your questions around these. 

  • Non-negotiable: Must have a minimum of 10 staff members
  • Question: How many team members do you have?
  • Non-negotiable: A specific set of industries you work with
  • Question: What industry are you in?
  • Non-negotiable: They must be local to a certain area
  • Question: Where are you based?
  • Non-negotiable: They need to have a baseline level understanding of the work you do 
  • Question: Have you worked with a [insert service or product] before or what’s your understanding of [service or product]
  • Non-negotiable: There’s a minimum investment amount required
  • Question: Have you thought about how much you’d like to invest in this?
  • Non-negotiable: You want people to show up or be committed to your service/solution
  • Question: Why is now the right time for you to xyz or what do you want to get out of xyz and how committed are you?

Simple right? It is oh so simple and oh so overlooked. 

ACTION: Take a few moments now, to write down your non-negotiables and what the questions would be for you to ask them. 

Top tip if you’re an online or product-based business. You can follow a version of this process in your website copy and make sure you price accordingly so that you’re speaking to your ideal client. 

How do I ask them?

A barrier is sometimes not remembering to ask the questions in the moment or not knowing when to ask them. The solution to this is creating a process that becomes second nature.  

Depending on your business if it’s online, or in-person, selling will depend on how you ask them. Below are some examples for different types of business. If you get stuck on this and want to pick the brain of an expert in this space, book a complimentary chat with Nicky here. 

  • If you have a booking system in place (like acuity or calendly) you can add some questions for the prospect to answer when booking the appointment. 
  • Use Typeform or Google Sheets if you don’t have the above systems in place
  • Verbally when you catch up with your prospect, make sure you have your questions in front of you as a part of your sales conversation and record the answers somewhere… even a word doco is better than nothing. 

However you do it in, getting to ask these questions early on is key to saving you time and future headaches. And it doesn’t have to be complicated! In fact, the simpler the better!

What if they’re NOT the right fit….#awkward!

It’s pretty simple really. You can politely tell them that you’re not the right fit, or not the best person to help them. 

If relevant you can be specific about why, but you don’t have to justify your decision. 

You’re allowed to choose who you want to work with.

Read that again 👆

A great way to do this without feeling like sh*t can be to have some referrals in mind. If it’s not the right fit for practical reasons ie. they’re too big or small, you can pass on the details of someone else who can help. 

And remember, even if you don’t have a referral for someone else who can help, you can still end the conversation on a positive by wishing them all the best.

What about the “not now”?

Another common problem is that you overfill your cup, and your calendar, because you’re saying yes to the right type of client but you’re too busy to fit them in.

First, ask yourself, why do you keep saying yes? 

  1. Is it because there’s an underlying scarcity belief and you’re scared if you say no the work will stop coming?
  2. Is it because you feel bad and don’t want to let people down?

It’s okay to tell people you have a waitlist or to let them know what date works to get started in the future! 

Read that again 👆

I’ve had future start dates with clients six months ahead and clients keep saying yes! 

The biggest expectations we often have, we put on ourselves. And most of the time people will wait for you. If not, that’s also okay.

Qualify the right clients by making sure the price is right!

If you undercharge, your ideal client will overlook you for being ‘too cheap’. Understand who you’re wanting to sell to so you can price, package and communicate directly to them. 

If the concept of understanding your ideal client is new to you, check out my recent article here.

Nicky is a Sales and Business Leadership Coach with over 2 decades experience in sales and leadership. She’s been running successful coaching businesses since 2015 and is obsessed with helping business owners and teams thrive. She helps her clients install smart business growth strategies and leverage leadership for peak performance.
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Can you separate your personal and business finances for better success?

Can you separate your personal and business finances for better success?

by | Feb 22, 2022 | Money Mindset and Management, Profitability and business growth, Womens Business Mastermind

When we start out in business there are some big decisions to make when it comes to how we set up – sole trader, company, partnership, trust? It can be overwhelming when all we want to do is just get out there and do our thing.

So for many women in business I connect with, they are carrying over their financial set-up from the start of their business. This means juggling their personal finances and business finances in one account.

I’m a strong advocate for separating these out. Here are 3 reasons why:

1. It gives your money a purpose

For all income received in your business, it’s important that you’re purposeful about where it’s going. It’s about separating it into different groups, such as:

  • Paying yourself a salary – which includes Superannuation
  • Setting aside your tax obligation – Pay As You Go (PAYG) tax for yourself and your income tax for your business, plus GST if you’re registered
  • Expenses – separating the variable and the regular expenses allows you to have a closer eye on what you’re paying out
  • Emergency fund – 3 months of expenses covered for downtimes
  • Profits – making sure you can see the rewards of your work

 

2. Easier management of your finances

If all your money is sitting in one bank account when tax time rolls around it can be a nightmare trying to sort everything out. Understanding what a work-related expense is compared to a private one is usually something best left to the experts – your accountant. Having to pay them to sort it all out is a drain on your expenses you don’t need. Consider setting up a cloud-based accounting system for your business such as Xero, it will save even more time for you in the long run.

 

3. You can get an eye on your cashflow

As the saying goes, in business 

Revenue is vanity

Profit is sanity

Cashflow is King (we prefer to say Queen!)

Once you’ve set up your accounts so that your money has a purpose and you are aware of where your money is going, you can develop an easy to track cash flow system. This is important to help you overcome the ‘feast and famine’ way of working and helps you make savvy financial decisions in your business. Don’t have a system yet for cash flow management? I’ve created a Cashflow Planner for you, which you can get access to here.