The Black Girl Business Bar

This is the last episode in our series on sales. In this week’s episode, I offer six tips for new online business owners to book more sales calls.

Show Notes

This is the last episode in our series on sales. In this week’s episode, I offer six tips for new online business owners to book more sales calls.

These tips are what I teach my clients, they are what my coaches have taught me, and I believe they’ll help you become successful, too. 

Sales calls help you convert high-ticket clients, help you better understand your audience, and help inform your marketing. Selling is a foundational business skill, and doing sales calls is a great way to practice your skills. 

Episodes mentioned

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More on Khalida
 
Khalida DuBose is a business coach specializing in sales strategy and mindset. As a previous crowdfunding coach, she supported more than a thousand crowdfunding campaigns and project creators in their quest to bring their dreams, passions, and ideas to the world. Now, she focuses on helping women of color online business owners nail the foundations of running a successful business and cultivate a rock-solid mindset as they navigate the entrepreneurial journey. For more information on Khalida, visit khalidadubose.com. Follow Khalida on Instagram @khalida.dubose. You can email her at khalida@blackgirlbusinessbar.com.
 
The Black Girl Business Bar is produced by Zuri Berry (@ZMCPodcasts). Music by Vincent Tone and Die Hard Productions.


Creators & Guests

Host
Khalida DuBose
Business + Mindset Coach
Producer
Zuri Berry
Principal Producer at ZMC Podcasts

What is The Black Girl Business Bar?

The Black Girl Business Bar Podcast is for Black entrepreneurial women who crave practical information to implement in their businesses and careers. They want tips and tactics that work and they want on-the-go mentorship that will make a difference in their businesses, projects, and lives.

Hosted by business coach and crowdfunding expert Khalida DuBose, the Black Girl Business Bar is all about letting Black women know what's possible for them in their entrepreneurial journey.

Welcome to the Black Girl Business Bar podcast. I'm your host Khalida DuBose. This podcast is my love letter to all of you, especially you, black women and women of color. I'm on a mission to help you thrive in your business and your life. By bringing you practical advice, tips, and mentorship that will empower you to make bold moves.

I want to see you increase your sales, overcome your mindset blocks and step into your best self as the leader of your business and your life.

Today, we are finishing up our series on sales for this month of March. Thank you guys so much for being here with me. Thank you for listening. As a recap, in episodes 35 and 36, we spoke about diagnosing the three main causes for confusion that I see happening in most businesses, either early on or before you've nailed down the foundations. We talked about stopping to really make sure you believe in your offer and how to cultivate stronger belief in episode 37. And then in episode 38, you heard my thoughts and tips around what you should be giving away for free in terms of your coaching or your service. And when you maybe don't want to give away things for free, when is it helpful for the client in you and when is it not helpful?

And so today we are going to wrap up the series and we're going to talk about getting more sales calls booked.

So here's a couple of notes that I want to share with you before we get started.

So if you're the person who's thinking, why do I have to do sales calls? Or if you're calling your calls, discovery or clarity calls, I'm, this is I'm talking about that. That is what I teach. That is what I learned from all of my coaches, everybody that I ever learned under whether it was one-to-one coaching or in my in courses. I learned from people who are very, very successful and that's the way they teach. And it's the way that I believe after trying it my way and trying it that way.

I also believe that it's best to use sales calls as your method of selling when you're first getting started, because it's the best way to convert your high ticket clients. It's a really great way to understand your audience deeper, which will help to inform your marketing. You need to practice selling because it's a foundational skill in your business. So doing sales calls is going to be really helpful because you're going to be practicing selling.

All right. So a few other notes that I wanted to make is that if you are booking one to two sales calls per month, or if you have a couple of trickling in here and there, that's great.

My hope is, is that when you listen to this podcast, when you listened to this series and you follow the advice, you will see an increase in those numbers. So if you're booking one to two right now, that's kind of your average number. Maybe you'll go to two to three or three. So I didn't want this to be like, I'm supposed to have sweeping numbers eventually. But if we see any change for the positive and that's a really good sign.

Also follow the advice in this podcast that resonates with you the most. For instance, if you follow advice in this particular episode, try sticking with it for 90 days. We never see results overnight. First of all, it takes practice to implement what we're doing.

So try sticking with it for like, at least at the minimum of 90 days, probably a little bit longer as best but 90 days at minimum. And if you have only implemented some of the stuff that resonated with you, maybe you can go back and implement other parts that didn't resonate with you immediately, especially if you're not seeing the results that you would like.

Finally, I would like to say, I'm not going to jump into sales call training in this podcast, but if you are challenged feeling like you're challenged around your sales calls, if you're like, hey, I get sales calls, but I don't convert sales calls. If you're having any other challenges in your business that were brought up in this series, or at any other point in this podcast, I would love to talk to you.

And I'm giving you an invite to book a sales call with me, and let's talk about the challenges that you're having and how I can help you.

All right, so let's dive in. So in order to start booking more sales calls, I have six practical tips. Again, I follow these tips. I teach these tips and I hope you will learn from them.

So tip number one, you have to believe in yourself. You have to believe in your offer. Believe that what you are doing as a service provider or as a coach or whatever kind of business you have, that it's very valuable. That is going to change somebody's life. So think about that is very valuable and it's going to change somebody's life.

If you're struggling with this, listen to episode 36 as many times as you need, and then implement some of the tips that I offered around cultivating the belief.

So my personal opinion here is that belief is 80% of this game. 80%. If you don't have belief, if you have zero or 10% belief, it is going to be a huge uphill battle. So if you find that, you know, maybe you aren't believing in yourself, maybe you have a lot of doubts. It's time to start cultivating that belief.

You will be called to believe in so many unseen things in your business and every single stage of your business in the beginning, when you start making money, when you want to go to the next level, speaking from experience, you're going to have to, your beliefs will be challenged.

But many times you have to start cultivating that belief by acting, and then the proof comes later. That's what it means to have faith in something. That's what it means to believe in yourself. You have to believe in yourself by putting forth the action as if it's already true. And then you will see it start to materialize.

I read a powerful quote the other day, and I'm not sure who to attribute it to, but I do now have it on my second desktop monitor. And it said, what you believe, you build. What you doubt, you delay. So let me say that again, what you believe, you build. What you doubt, you delay.

So if you don't believe in your ability to help people or that your knowledge or expertise is helpful, then you will build something that isn't helpful, where you will show up not on purpose, but you will show up in a way where you're not really helping people. We see many iterations of this in our lives, in our careers and in our business. All you have to do is stop and think about something that you have a lot of doubts around, and you'll start to see how you show up for that.

We also see our results delayed by constantly doubting that we have what it takes. So a lot of times, many of us want to see the 10 steps first, before we even take one step. We really want to see the path before we start the journey.

Okay. So tip number two, make sure your ducks are in a row. So this one's a little bit more tangible for those of you out there who really just need something tangible to hold onto.

One of the main things that are holding a lot of you back is that you don't have clear systems in place for people to seamlessly work with you. That can cause you a lot of stress and it can be very fertile ground for mindset spirals. So it's like having your business set up and then setting these little mines out there. These mines pop up when we don't do the things that we need to do. And then all of a sudden, as you walk through your business, it's like, you're just getting caught in these snares.

So systems don't have to be overpriced, extravagant, you know, these huge automations. I don't even believe in that until you're at that level. I don't use crazy systems in my business yet. And when I'm ready to use a system that I need for the next level, I'll make sure I'm relying on my coaches who already use those to teach me how so that I stay focused. So the same things goes for you. I'm talking about just the bare minimum of what you need for things like payment, onboarding, et cetera.

You can check out episode 16 of this podcast around the tools that I recommended and the tools that I use. If that's going to be helpful for you.

Tip number three, let people know about your offer over and over again. So I cannot stress this enough. I can't stress this enough. Every person starting out thinks saying the same thing over and over is going to annoy their audience.

And if you've listened to this podcast in the last year, you probably heard me say this multiple times. And in marketing, we really need to remind people. We need to remind people. We need to remind people.

People also, you know, when they're running a business, they think that once they say what they offer so many times people will just know, and then they never have to say it again.

But here's a hint. If you have people asking you what you do, or they're mistakenly giving you a different title than what you've actually identify with. Right? So if they're like, Hey, life coach, and you're not a life coach, then that means that they probably don't know what you do. And you might need to say it more. You don't have to say it in the same exact way. There's many ways we can talk about what we do. And there's many ways in which we can communicate that to people.

So figure out how to do that and make sure you're doing that often. Remind yourself of all the people that you needed to hear from over and over and over again. Before you ever went to work with them, before you ever went to their website. Et cetera. Remind yourself that this is an exercise in helping people warm their selves up to you and letting them know. And we don't have to be attached to it. We just let them know and we just keep moving. So this happens to me in my family a bit.

I have a couple siblings who always call me like a life coach. Well, you're a life coach and I'm like, I'm not a life coach guys. I'm a mindset coach and a business coach. So I'm a business and mindset coach. I focus on that because business is very heavy in mindset. But I don't feel so bad about this because they do not follow me on social media. They're not really on social media, but my relatives who are on social media and who have worked with me know exactly what I do.

Tip number four, build relationships with your community, whether you have 100 or 1000. If you've listened to this series, you're probably thinking, okay, this sounds like deja vu. I've heard this before. Yes. You've heard this before. I did mention this in episode 36. If you're struggling with feeling like you need to just build your audience, that that's, that's what the problem is. Build, build, build. No. You have a hundred people, or you have a thousand people, you need to start to cultivate the relationship with them, make sure you're providing value to them. The more value you provide to people, the more you will attract people.

Why? Because the people that are in your audience, who like what you say and who is resonating with, what they, what did they do? They hit the share button. Or they comment on something and then it pops up onto their friends explore page. Or they visit that post from their friend sharing and then they make a decision like, hey, I want to follow them. And chances are your ideal audience has friends who are also your ideal audience. Right.

So instead of worrying about how do I get the algorithm to work for me and build, and let me get more followers. And if I have enough people, then I can do something, focus on building the relationships with the people that you have now.

So my coaches always told me to focus on the audience that I have. And when I finally took this advice and leaned in, no matter how scary it got, I got more engagement over time. My community started to grow. And of course you guessed it, I got more inquiries and my calls picked up.

And I'm going to be honest here. I feel like my calls would go through cycles. So if you feel like that, totally normal.

Tip number five, open your heart and your mind to the fact. And this is good news guys. Open your heart and your mind to the fact that potential clients can come from anywhere. Seriously, anywhere and everywhere.

So this probably belongs more under the subtitle of belief, our first tip. But I wanted it to stand alone because it was really a game changer in my mindset. When I started reminding myself a lot, that you have no idea who's watching you, your audience can come from anywhere. I don't know if I mentioned this last time, but my first three clients came from people that I didn't really know. They weren't following me and benefiting from what I was sharing. They came from referral and then people that just came across me and then they got on a sales call and I converted them.

So I love this because our brains usually want to know where's my next client coming from, especially if you're not fully booked yet. Or if you're at a place where you're trying to get to the next level, whether that next level is client number two or a client 100, your brain's like, okay, so where's the next person coming from?

So, this is just natural that we want to know. We want to know. We like stability. And so it's really nice to, in my opinion, remind myself that, hey, my clients can come from any place. And when you relax, then your brain starts to find all the places. Your awareness starts to zero in on like people who could potentially be clients and that you can learn from.

So I know this to be true now because like I said, I signed the clients who came from nowhere and then also I've had people that I never thought were going to like work with me on the business, like with business or book calls who have done just that. So now this belief has kind of solidified for me.

All right. So our final tip and I have a little story to go along with this tip. So hang in there with me, but our final tip is stop focusing on the numbers, the hashtags, the algorithms, et cetera. I spoke to many of you over the last several weeks, and I hear so many iterations of the numbers, or I just need to figure out my hashtags or, you know, I give up on the hashtags or something, right. The algorithm, I need more reach, et cetera.

These things are distracting you from seeing what's happening in your business. They're, they're taking all of your clarity away and they're making it so like you're looking through like this fuzzy, you know, dirty window. You can't see things clearly.

What's really happening when you focus on the numbers and you, you don't need to be at this point, is that it's really speaking to a fear of something else. The fear of not having enough, if you're worried about reach, we're worried about building more.

Sometimes it's important for business owners to focus on their numbers. But again, most people are not at that level where they need to be focusing because when they get to that level, they've already gotten past all this algorithm stuff and they know exactly what to do when they find the people to do it.

So I'm going to share with you a story that I hope is very helpful, but. I learned all about algorithms when I was in medical device sales. So I don't know if I've ever shared this story or not, but I was a clinical rep and I had to learn dozens, dozens, and dozens of algorithms based on what a patient's heart was or wasn't doing.

So we would implant devices into a patient's heart. And I had to know how the algorithm worked because I had to follow up with the patient. I had to tell the doctors, you know, give them our advice on how they should program the device, et cetera.

And so I know a lot about these and I worked for two different companies and I had to do that learning two times over, it took me almost a year, each time to learn all the things that I needed to know to be able to safely go out into the field and do follow-ups and implantations with doctors.

So knowing this information was very imperative for my position. And so I learned it, but I was given all of the information right then and there. I got to go into clinical practice and see all like hundreds of scenarios of how a device would react. What types of disease states the patients were in, et cetera. Okay. So I had a lot of information at my disposal and I still, and doctors still, would get stumped by what the device was doing, i.e. the algorithm in the device, by what it was doing in relation to what was happening in the patient's heart. Why? Because the patients is a human.

You know, we program the device for a set amount of rules, if you will, that might happen. A set amount of scenarios. And so, what happens when one of those scenarios is just slightly different? Then the device reacts or doesn't react in a, in a specific way. We still didn't know what was going on. We were dealing with human beings and I was working with doctors who went to school for a very long time and they knew what they were doing. So the thing is, is that algorithms aren't that great at? I mean, they're pretty good at predicting human behavior, but like I said, there's always going to be something that isn't thought of that we didn't program into the algorithm.

If you spend your time trying to beat these algorithms and worry about them, it's just a losing battle. And I'm hoping that this story helps convince you if you need it to just stop looking at numbers. They really don't matter. If you focus on the things that you can control, which the algorithm then, you know, rewards you positively for like quality content, practicing that content, engaging with your community, and then of course, for your business overcoming mindset stuff, you're going to be so much better off.

There's a few people out there who learn the algorithms because that's their job, right. Maybe they're like the Instagram or a Facebook expert or a Pinterest expert. And they learn the algorithm because that's their job.

And then we get confused, seeing people do their job and think, oh, I'm supposed to focus on that too. No. When I worked for these medical companies, only a specific set of us focused on algorithms, everybody else in the company focused on something else. So you need to focus on whatever it is that you need to. And I really think the series is very helpful, parts one and two, of diagnosing the real problem in your business. It's going to help you and it's not going to be the numbers.

But yeah, so those are my six tips. Again guys, thank you so much for following the series. If you did not listen to all of it, I highly recommend that you go back and listen to it. And I think you're going to get so much out of it and it's going to help you out a lot.

Thank you so much for hanging out and listening to the Black Girl Business Bar podcast. If you haven't already, hit that follow or subscribe button, so you never miss an episode. And if you found today's episode helpful or had any ah-ha moments, tag me on socials and let me know about them.

As always friends, we're dropping podcast episodes on your favorite podcast player every Tuesday and episodes on YouTube every Thursday. And we can't wait to see you back then.