The Real Reason Your Sales Are Inconsistent | 070

The profit doesn't happen by chance, it

happens by design. Let's dig in. If your sales feel way too

unpredictable, you're completely exhausted by the whole sales

cycle, and your sales are way, way, way too dependent on you.

Chances are your problems started way before you ever

started marketing. Let's discuss. I was talking with some

business owners today about profit in their business and

building the profit side of your business, and giving your money,

every dollar that comes into your business, a job to do, and

the way that you do that is by creating systems, you put

systems in place so that you can be replicatable, everything that

you do can be repeated, it can be done by someone other than

you, and you really need to have these kind of systems in your

business on the money side, and the same thing is true when it

comes to your marketing, because weak foundations in your

marketing create inconsistent revenue, so you know, I talk

about the seven pillars of profit, and one of those pillars

is your marketing, and you need to have a firm foundation,

really clear systems in place in your marketing, if you want it

to be effective, if you want to have a profitable business, you

need to tell your money where to go. If you want to have

profitable and successful marketing that converts and that

has people coming into you, your ideal clients responding to you

and coming to you to do business with you, you must have systems

in place, and systems go beyond when we're talking about

marketing, we're talking about the mechanics, right? Sometimes

in systems, they're just mechanical systems that we put

in place, but when we're, and when we're talking about

marketing, it actually goes far beyond that, and the first piece

of information that you really need to have really clear is

your messaging. You need to have really clear message. Now you

can say, hey, I have really clear messaging. I know what I

do. I tell people what I do. They should be able to

understand it and come in and do business with me. But if you are

using marketing language if you are using tools and processes

that are not being received by your ideal clients. Either your

ideal client is not in that mark in that space. Maybe you are

reaching out to people on Facebook and your ideal client

is on LinkedIn, or vice versa, you need to make sure that you

are in the right place to give that marketing message, and they

have to be able to understand it. There is a different

language between what we do in our businesses and what our

customers and clients understand, so if we are talking

to them from our perspective, we're telling them this is what

I do, this is how I do it, this is why I'm so good at it. I'm

very experienced, I've been doing it for a long time, it's

state of the art, I have the best of the best, I'm, you know,

all these things that we think of are value driven for us. What

we have done and built in our business that we are proud of,

that we are, we want people to know how hard we've worked and

how much we've put together the hours to become an expert, all

of the things that we have created in our businesses to

allow us to say, yes, I'm the best person to do your work for

you. So, if your messaging is starting at that place, you're

actually not going to reach your ideal customers as often as you

should, because you're talking to them in a foreign language. I

once had an employee who was really, really, really good at

what he did. He was brilliant, and he was a very technical

person, and he loved the technology, and he loved the

language of the technology, and he would talk to customers in

that technological language when they would come in, and so there

was a little bit of a disconnect, and he wasn't

getting customers to respond in the way that he wanted them to

respond, because he was speaking the wrong language, and so. I

had to take him aside. In this particular industry, there's a

lot of technology, and it's technology that the people that

do it love.

It's all those numbers and ratios and aspects and all that

cool stuff, but the client's not coming in because of those

things. At least 90% of your clients are not coming in. You

will find those people who are as excited about your jargon

about your particular industry as you are, but they're not

everybody. Not everyone is coming in with that catalog of

language, so it's very important that when you are reaching out

to your clients that you are meeting them where they are. If

you are giving them a product, you need to not tell them just

what the product does and how it's made and how much quality

goes into it. You also need to explain to them how that product

meets their need, solves the problem that they're having,

that for which they are looking for a solution, because

remember, you sales is about you have a solution over here that

you need to match up with a problem that your customer has,

and if your solution matches their problem and they can go to

you and get that resolved, then they are going to do business

with you, most more than likely. So it's really important that

one of the pieces of foundation is actually understanding how to

talk to your clients, how to speak the language they're

speaking, and for the employee that I had, I said to him, you

know, maybe talk to the clients as if you're talking to your

grandmother. Your grandmother doesn't have the level of

expertise and technical knowledge, so how would you

explain what you do to your grandmother? So that was helpful

for him to get a perspective of, oh, I'm speaking at this level,

but my grandmother doesn't understand any of that, so I

need to turn my languaging to speak at the level that my

customer understands, so you have to be very, very clear

about your messaging, and one of the really powerful ways that we

can identify this is by learning what your customer says, meeting

your customer in that moment of the conversation that's already

going on in their head. What is that problem that they're trying

to solve, and what words are they using to describe that

problem, and to illustrate what the solution would look like for

them, sometimes they don't have the solution, they always know

what the problem is, and they always know that it's in their

own words. So, as a, as a business owner, it's really

critical for us to step out of our role and look at our

business, look at the solutions we're providing, and find that

language that your customers are already using when you speak

their language. Then you have broken down the communication

wall, and they can clearly hear what it is you're trying to say

to them. Another area that business owners struggle with is

in offer positioning. How are you describing what your

solution is going to do in a way that your client is going to

identify with that? Now, sometimes your clients are going

to find you because they're looking for you. Right, I have a

problem, and I'm going to go, and I'm going to ask my

computer, where can I get this solved problem solved? Who has

my solution? And they're looking for it from the perspective of

this is the problem I need solved right away, or this is

something that's going on for me now, and I'm shopping right. So,

you want to meet them in the shopping area in that shopping

time frame with the correct messaging. Now, at any given

time, more than 80% of the people who see your message are

not ready to buy. When you are, when your message hits somebody

who is ready to buy, they will move very quickly. However, when

your message hits someone who is not ready to buy, that does not

mean that your message didn't get to them or that they didn't

identify with that solution that you're providing. However, the

timing might not be correct, so you still want to be really

clear about what you're doing, and you want to position your

offer to be the solution that they need, even if it's not the

right time now, because adults need to hear information

repeatedly over and over seven times before they're ready to

move on something, so you need to position yourself as the

solution.

The problem that they have, even if they're not quite ready to

buy yet, and I think for business owners it's important

to realize that statistic, because sometimes we do things

and we're like, well, nobody responded, nobody bought the

thing that I'm doing, nobody clicked on my ad, nobody called,

nobody took the action I want them to take, because even

though you have the solution that they need, it might not be

the right time for them, so you have to be aware of the fact

that your message is going to hit at a time, maybe they are

just collecting information, or they've just become aware of the

problem, and they're not quite ready to buy, however, if your

message is clear, they will remember who you are, and when

they are ready, they will reach back out to you. So, you want to

be, you want to have a very clear message, and you want to

position it where they can see it over and over and over again.

Another piece of that is a little bit weak in your business

on the marketing side that can cause the sales to be stalled

and cause you to be frustrated and overwhelmed with all of the

unpredictability of your sales process, is that you have not

taken care of the client experience, the client journey.

How are they encountering you when they encounter you? What is

going to happen next? How are you communicating with them? Are

you communicating with them in a clear fashion? Are you

communicating with them in infrequently? Are you

communicating with them with incomplete information or too

much information, like what is that client journey, and what is

that client experience? Because it's very critical for your

business for you to have continuity when it comes to the

client experience. There are lots of studies and statistics

that show that if you have the client experience dialed up, and

they really are responding well to what to interacting with you

as a business. They're more likely to come back, tell their

friends, and to keep doing business with you. The key,

though, is continuity of that quality, so if they experience

really good quality with you the first time they contact you, and

then the next time they experience a lower piece, a

lower quality interaction, then that will erode the trust that

you're building with them. So, you want to be consistent with

that client experience. Client experience is the number one

reason why people stop doing business with with companies, it

is the number one reason, and I will tell you this: a lot of

people who have a quote unquote bad experience with you, even if

you didn't think it was a bad experience on your side, you

feel like you did everything right. If they feel like they've

had a bad experience, they'll leave, they will not tell you,

and they will tell their friends. So, creating a client

experience for your customers, every time they come in, they're

greeted. Every time they email, they get this kind of a

response. Every time they buy something, they get an extra

sticker or something, and every time they get that, if you're

giving out stickers, and then the next time they don't get a

sticker, and they're like, well, they didn't give me a sticker,

I'm not going to go back there and do business with them again,

and it is absolutely ridiculous. Like, how could they not come

back because they didn't get a sticker? But you've set, you've

set an expectation now, and when they come back again, they have

that level of expectation. So, being really having continuity

and systems in that client journey, in that client

experience, is really, really critical. So, if you are missing

this piece of your, of the marketing, it's not going to,

it's going to cause the, you know, unpredictability, the

exhaustingness, the fact that you have to push and push and

push to get someone to do business with you, because the

client journey has not been clearly, clearly identified and

systems put in place for that journey, and this is actually

something that we talked to in my profit class today. I did a

masterclass, raise your revenue master class, and that is

systems need to be in place before you grow and scale.

So, what I mean by that is, if you are running a business, and

in most businesses started this way, right? You start your

business, you start your.. you want to do this, you have a

goal, you know what you're selling, and you do that thing,

and then you solve that problem, and then there's another problem

that comes up, and you solve that problem, and you just keep

solving problems and filling in things as they are needed, then

whenever you build your business. This way, and it's a

very valid way to build a business. However, when you

build your business this way, it creates gaps and weaknesses in

the foundation. Your systems aren't there, so what you're

actually doing is running a business without a firm

foundation, like, you know, the three little pigs, you know,

you've got the house of straw in the house of sticks, those are

not very firm buildings, and whenever the bad big bad wolf

comes, he's going to blow those houses down, right. So, when you

have your, you're building your business on sticks and straw,

when you are running a business with a chaotic structure

underneath, as you grow, as you sell more as more clients come

to you, and the bigger you get, the bigger those weaknesses,

those gaps will become in your business. So, as you're growing

on one side, you're actually creating even bigger cracks and

weaknesses, which is making your foundation even more unstable.

So, you need to have the systems in place before you start

scaling, so when you are doing your marketing, when you are

reaching out to people, when you are telling people, here's how I

can solve your problem, and you're talking to them and

telling them this is your solution, before you even open

your mouth, you need to make sure that these foundational

pieces are in place, that you have them locked in, so that

your messaging and your marketing will resonate, and

people will go, "Oh, that's what I need, that's the solution that

I need. Oh, Sharon is going to solve my problem, I trust her.

She's speaking my language, she sees me, she hears me, because,

and every time I do business with her, I have the same

experience. I understand what she's saying to me, and she's,

she's speaking my language, and I, everything that I do is easy.

It's easy to do business with her, it's easy to get the

answers that I need, and it's easy to get the solution to my

problem. So all of these things are actually building trust in

you, in your business, in the solution that you're creating

for people, when you build your foundations, when you have these

pieces in place, you are clear, you are you, you have excellent

positioning, your client journey, the client experience

is excellent, and you have these systems in place before you

start trying to scale, then your sales become more predictable.

You are not exhausted, but you are energized when you're going

out and getting these sales, and people are doing business with

you. And systems, the correct systems at the right time, in

the right place in your business, actually free you up,

so that you're not the one who is completely doing everything.

You've set things up in such a way that you have that flywheel

going, and it's building its own momentum, and the momentum that

that flywheel builds is built on the systems that you have

created in your business, so think about your business this

week. Look at where are your, where are the weaknesses in your

marketing that started long before you began to write words,

long before you started putting messaging out. Did you, did you

understand the language that you should be speaking, which is the

language that your customers understand, not necessarily the

language of your expertise. Did you get really clear about what

it is you're offering and how that's going to solve their

problem and create the correct expectations?

Expectations are the biggest landmine in dealing with

customers, because you will say something and you will say it

very clearly, and they will hear something else, because they're

solving their own problem, and so they'll hear what they want

to hear, and then look at your solution, and maybe it's maybe

it's not exactly what you said, but that's what they heard, so

it's really, really critical for you to be clear about the offer,

the offer positioning, and what they get, and how you're solving

their problem. Have an excellent customer experience, and a

consistently excellent customer experience, so every time they

encounter you, wherever they encounter you, however they're

doing business with you or interacting with you, you are at

the same level of consistency of excellence on that client

experience on the journey, and make sure that you. Have those

systems in place that you are filling in the gaps and the

weaknesses in your business, so as your business grows, as the

sales get easier, as they come in, as you get better at

marketing, and you filled in all of these foundational pieces,

and you're growing and scaling, you can actually have the, you

can reap the rewards that you think you're going to get.

Sometimes we, we think we're going to get something, but we

haven't built that. We haven't built the car the right way. So,

it instead of taking us down the highway at 60 miles an hour,

it'll only go down a dirt road at 15 miles an hour to make sure

that you're building for the goal that you want to have in

your business, I do have a resource that I'd like to give

you, so you can look at your marketing. It is this, the

Profit Growth Audit, and this will actually rate you in all

seven areas of the seven pillars of profit. One of those areas is

your marketing, so you can look at, you go in, you take the

test. It's not a test, it's a quiz. You go in, you answer the

assessment questions, write yourself on all those areas of

your business, and it will give you back a written report with

numerical values associated with all those areas, so you can

actually see in sort of black and white, you look at a new at

a number rating, and it'll tell you how you rank in that area.

So take a look at your, take that, go ahead and take the

audit, take a look at your marketing, listen back to this

podcast, and make sure that you are lining your marketing up and

solidifying it on the foundational side, so that when

you are out there giving your message, telling the world how

you can solve the problems that they have and how you are the

difference maker that they need, you have a path that's clearly

defined, and you're going to be more effective, more successful,

and you're going to change more lives, so use the profit audit,

the profit growth audit. What I'm going to do is I'm going to

put it into our community. Our community web address is called

Profit Connectors dot c l u b profit connectors dot club. That

is the portal. It's free to join. You just go put your email

address in there. You will get instant access to the profit

growth audit, and you will also get information about all.

You'll be able to see all of the podcasts that we've already

done. You can listen to the podcast, you can interact with

the speakers, that all their information will be in there. A

lot of times, our speakers will have gifts for our guests, free

resources, tips, tricks, tools, and those are all available in

the Profit Connectors dot club portal. So, all you need to do

is go to Profit Connectors dot club, and you can go in there,

get the Profit Growth Audit. I encourage you to do that this

week, take the Profit Growth Audit and look at the numbers

and see where you rank in the seven pillars of profit, and if

you want to talk to me, I'm always available. Reach out to

me.

You can reach out to me through the for the podcast portal,

Profit Connectors dot club, or you can reach out to me at

Sharon at Sharon galuzzo.com That's my email address. I

welcome, I welcome you to send me an email and let's chat. I'd

love to know what's going on in your business, and remember you

are when you are running your business, it is paramount that

you build with clarity and lead with purpose. Thanks for

listening. I'll see you next time.

Bye.