Clients = Cash Flow. Here’s How to Get More
Episode 18 of the Self-Made Mamas Podcast
Today, we are going to be talking about how to sell your services, how to get more clients, how to inject cash flow into your business by increasing the number of sales that you make, when it comes to your client packages, service packages, things like that.
I’m going to try and keep this really succinct today, deliver you just what you need to know, no fluff, let you know about a really fun announcement that I have going on. I also received some questions about this specific topic that I’m going to address at the end.
This episode of the podcast is sponsored by Thrivecart. If I could go back and make one different purchasing decision in my business, it would be to go and get Thrivecart almost immediately. It feels like a pricy investment, BUT it is a one-time payment, which means you actually save thousands of dollars over the course of a couple of years. It is also the most powerful checkout and funnel builder on the market, and using Thrivecart checkouts has 3Xed my digital product and subscription sales—because it’s easy to checkout, looks legit, and makes the buying process easy and secure for customers. Thrivecart allows you to build any kind of funnel you want, take payment at any frequency or duration you want, and will save you hours of time by allowing you to clone your most successful sales pages and checkouts.
Today we’re talking about selling your services and getting more clients, which, if you are a client-based business owner, is probably something on your mind and something you’re wanting to do. I think for most people that have service-based businesses, this is a really normal part of the arc of your business.
When you first start your business, you have this slow drip. Your clients kind of trickle in and sometimes it’s a stop and start. It can feel a little bit feast and famine. That is 100% normal for a service provider. However, because we’re all on Instagram, TikTok, wherever we’re hanging out, we’re seeing this highlight reel of more established business owners or people that have gotten really lucky and become overnight successes by going viral or whatever. We see all these people that are just killing it in their business and it seems like they’re totally booked out. There are waiting lists for their services. When you’re a brand new service provider and you’re stopping and starting or you’re getting one or two contracts every couple of months, that can feel really demoralizing. It can be really disappointing and make you feel like you’re doing something wrong.
My personal belief, and this comes up with all of my clients, is that most of the time it’s not so much that you’re doing something wrong as that you’ve actually missed some core steps. That’s what I want to talk to you about today. Before I dig into the actual teaching, though, because I want to make sure this is valuable for you, I want to let you know that I’m doing something that I’ve actually never done before starting today. As of right now, you’re going to be able to purchase a bundle of the courses that are actually inside my group program, The Society.
Normally, The Success System, which is the biggest course inside the bundle, is only available when you are inside the Self-Made Mamas Society. I’ve gotten a lot of messages from you guys saying that you’re not quite ready to join or it’s just not a good fit for you right now because you’re not there yet, you’re not generating the cash flow that you need in your business. I’ve been sitting there thinking, what can I do around Black Friday? What can I do before the holidays to really have an impact on the people that follow me, people on my email list, people who are here being a valuable part of my community and really want to make a change in their business but aren’t quite ready for that level, aren’t quite ready for The Society yet?
I decided what I’m going to do is bundle up my three best-selling courses—The 5k Formula, The Get Paid Every Day Online Offer System, and The Success System. As I mentioned, The Success System is never available outside of The Society. It is usually exclusively for Society members, but I know there are so many of you who really need to create this momentum in your business. You need to learn how to fix your messaging, how to fix your market positioning, how to figure out how you’re even getting clients and do more of that, and how to write, copy and present your offers in a way that actually attracts people to you and has them asking to sign up with you and has them inquiring about your services.
These are the foundation pieces. These are the fundamentals of running a service-based business, and everybody skips them. This is the big issue I see with service providers. Everybody jumps right into, “I’m going to be an Instagram superstar, I’m going to go viral making reels, I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that,” and they haven’t actually tackled the fundamentals of their client-based business. The clients just don’t roll in the way they were hoping, and so that’s what this bundle is for. It’s called The Sell Out Your Services Client Attraction Bundle.
I am offering it at an insane price point because it’s Black Friday, it’s almost the holidays, and because I really want to make sure that you have access to this information. People message me every single day telling me that the content in these courses has changed their business. They message me every single day and say, “Oh my God, I cannot believe how much value is in here for the price point.” I keep the price points low on these two courses, and The Success System inside the society is separate. It’s not usually available. When I say this is going to change the game for your business, though, I’m not joking. This is really, really foundational and important.
Starting With Services
Now I want to get into teaching with you. What is the big problem when it comes to service-based businesses and client-based businesses? The big problem is that people teach this idea of online business and being a digital entrepreneur, using social media to run your business and working from your laptop and stuff like that, people teach it as though the only way to be truly successful is to generate tons of passive income is to be the next course creator. They want you to be like the next Amy Porterfield, the next Jenna Kutcher.
What happens is service providers see all these super established business owners. When we talk about people like Amy and Jenna, these are eight-figure business owners. They have multiple millions of dollars in their businesses and they’ve been at it for a long time. Maybe you see people that are a little more established like me, and I’ve been at this for four or five years. You see that I have lead magnets and I have courses and I have all this other stuff going on in my business. When you’re coming in as a new entrepreneur, maybe you feel like that’s what you should be doing. That’s kind of rammed down our throats all the time.
All the ads you’re being targeted with as a business owner are to do with passive income. They’re to do with courses, high ticket group programs, all this kind of stuff. The reality is that’s not actually a viable starting point for most service providers. When we try to skip steps and jump straight into having a group program or course, being that kind of online business owner because that’s what we’ve internalized as what an online business owner is, when we jump straight to that we’re missing out on foundational experience. We’re missing out on so much cash flow and we’re missing out on building this rock-solid, sustainable business that we can fall back on as market trends change, as ad costs rise.
I see in the backend of a lot of businesses and do a lot of tech work with higher level entrepreneurs, and market positioning work and things like that. I can tell you right now that because of the skyrocketing ad costs in the last year, since iOS 14 started rolling out, people’s businesses are not doing as well as they used to and you will actually see higher level entrepreneurs scrambling to add different types of offers and to reposition themselves in the market because they have gotten to the point where their business model relies on the passive income that comes from selling digital products and courses. They’ve moved away from one-to-one or group delivery models and as the market has changed, as ad costs have risen, their funnels are no longer profitable. That’s not a huge deal. If you’re like you or me, and we’re talking about small amounts of money each month. If you’re running a multimillion-dollar business, and you’re spending $100,000 on Facebook ads every month, though, you need it to be profitable.
I believe what you’ll see over the next year, and you’ve probably already seen it if you’re on their mailing lists, is actually a lot of these bigger names, these more established brands, they’re actually going to be bringing back a bit more of that human element into their offers. In the current market, it’s no longer profitable to do what they’ve been doing, where everything is so passive and hands-off for them. I also think there’s actually a huge amount of fun to be had and a huge amount of integrity and growth that happens when you’re more hands-on in your business.
That’s what starting with services allows you to do. When we talk about starting with services, it means that you are providing a service to an individual or a group, typically a smaller group. Maybe you’re teaching workshops or doing some kind of consulting. Whatever it is, you’re providing a service to an individual or group. That’s what I mean by client-centred or client-based business.
Structuring Your Services
I’m sure you’ve seen in my content for the last several months, I’ve really been harping on this message of starting with services. Don’t jump right into passive products because it’s not going to work, you’re going to end up spending a bunch of money, you won’t be profitable unless you have a huge engaged audience that’s literally chomping at the bit to buy something from you. Everybody would love that, but most of us don’t have it, especially when we’re just starting out. Unless you have that, I really am advocating for starting services, because it’s hands down the best way to get cash running through your business. Once you have cash flow in your business, if you’ve structured your services properly, then you can move on to scaling with more passive things. Or you can hire people to execute services for you and you can become more hands-off and you can buy back time by scaling your business. You need cash to do that, you need an audience to do that, and that’s what you’ll build over time when you start with services.
When we talk about selling out your services and getting more clients, the very first thing you need to do is actually map out the structure of your business. You need to know what you are going to be offering specifically, you need to figure out how much money you need to make in order to pay yourself, to pay your taxes, and have a bit of a float left in your business. That’s key, and you won’t necessarily have that right away. Some people knock it out of the park right away and are super lucky, super skilled, or they have really great connections. That’s not the case for most people. Most people will stack slowly. We stack our income month after month until we hit the point that we want.
You need to figure out how much you need to pay yourself every month to have the life that you want to have or to live comfortably or achieve your financial goals, whatever it is. Then you need to leave a buffer for your taxes, especially if you’re a sole proprietor because all of your income will be personal income so you have to pay tax on the whole amount. Then ideally you want to have a little bit of a float in there as well. Again, that’s not going to happen right away, but I want you to plan for it, and it’s going to depend on where you live. Some of you are super lucky and you get to live somewhere where your rent or your mortgage will be $700 a month. I live just outside of Vancouver, so for us to live, we’re looking at a five-figure monthly expenditure. Our cost of living is quite high. If you live somewhere else, your cost of living may be a bit lower and your numbers can be lowered accordingly.
The amazing thing about selling your services online is that you don’t actually have to adjust your pricing based on where you live unless you are delivering your services in person because you can go out and find people that are paying those higher prices. You can live in your amazing place where you could buy a house for $200,000 and you could be charging high ticket prices to people that are living in Vancouver, San Francisco, New York and places like this where we’re used to paying more for things. Similarly, if you’re a Canadian and want to do business with people in the United States or overseas, and you’re offering your services online, you’re able to charge in US dollars or in Euros, whatever currency you like. You have so much flexibility in this way and you can be intentional about creating the cash that you want to create in your business if you structure your services accordingly.
My approach is always a three-tiered service approach. I really like you to have a low-ticket package, a mid-ticket package, and a high-ticket package. It’s important to understand that as you get going, most people are going to choose either the low or mid-ticket package as you gain a reputation for excellence, because that’s going to be important. You’re going to need to be good at what you do. As you gain a reputation for excellence, find your feet, and really settle into your marketing and your rhythm as an entrepreneur, more people will buy your higher-ticket package. The key is that you create a low-ticket package that allows people to get a taste of working with you.
If you are a business-to-business provider, your lowest ticket item could be a consult call or something. Then you want to have a medium package, and you want to set these up so that they’re very profitable for you. We’re not adding up the hours that we’re going to spend on this package and just assigning a dollar value to that. This package needs to be very profitable for you and very valuable to the person purchasing it. We want value-based pricing, so think about what they’re going to get out of it.
Let’s say you’re a Squarespace web designer and you’re going to build a website. You start with a base template, and in total, a website takes you around 20 hours over the span of several days, and you’re going to charge $50 an hour or something. That’s not the correct way to price that. What you want to do instead is actually look at the website that you’re creating and look at the person that you’re creating it for. Look at your client and ask yourself, “What is the value that they’re going to get out of this?”
For example, you’re creating a website for a tattoo shop. Tattoo shops have pretty good margins because you’re paying for the artistry, not just paying for the person’s time. Having a website where they can display their work, display their portfolio, and have people make inquiries and book appointments is going to dramatically increase their business because we’re all looking for things online now. If they don’t have a website, they’re missing out on so much business. Whereas if they do have a website, and they’re a skilled tattoo artist, chances are they’re going to be booked up for months in advance.
When you think about the revenue they’re going to generate from having a website, it’s astronomical. They’re going to get so much value from you creating a good website for them. When you’re pricing the cost of creating that website for them, you can’t just price based on the time that you’re putting into creating it. You have to think about the value that’s being created for the person that you’re working for and price accordingly. I like to think about it in these terms: I want my client to get at least 10 times as much value or more as I’m charging them for this service.
I’m telling you to do this when you’re selling services but you’ll notice I do this with my products, too. My digital products, even if you go and look at the bundle I was just talking about, most people that put those courses into effect, even if they have zero income in their services to start, within about 10 to 12 months of going through those programs will have generated 20 to $30,000 in income from their business. That’s an insane return on investment. I’ve priced this bundle at $395. If they go and make $20,000 in revenue that they weren’t making before, that is an insane return on investment. Yes, I could charge more for it, but I want an insane return on investment. That is what you need to go for in your service packages.
Where things are time heavy, you always want to make sure you’re covering your time and then some because it’s always going to take a little more time than you think. You also need to price based on the value that the client is getting from your services, not just based on the time you’re putting in. You also want to make sure that with these packages, what is included in the scope of the package is very clearly outlined because what will happen, especially when you’re first starting out, is that things will evolve as you’re working with the client. They’ll want more things or they’ll want to change things or customize things as you go. That’s very normal at first, and as you get more established, you can be more concrete about those things. When you’re first getting going, you want to make sure that you are being at least a little bit accommodating and taking good care of your clients so that they refer you to more people. That’s why you need to have these very clear outlines of what’s included in each package. When the customer signs a contract or pays an invoice, you want to make sure all the deliverables are very clearly defined in the terms and conditions and wording of your contracts.
That’s the first step to structuring your services. You need to figure out how much you need to make, how much money your business needs to make, how to structure your packages and create value within the package so you can price them accordingly.
Don’t say, “I want to make $10,000, so I’m gonna have two $5,000 packages,” and they’re crap. That’s not what we want to do. What we want is to say, “I want to make $10,000 a month for my business. How can I structure my offers so that I’m not doing $100 and $200 projects but $2000 and $3,000 instead? So it’s much easier for me to hit that goal as I stack it over time.” That’s what I mean by intentional pricing and structuring.
Get Specific in Your Messaging
When it comes to marketing the services, I think this next part is the piece that everybody skips, I think the majority of service providers that I see out there are hanging out on Instagram, putting up random posts saying things like, “Work with me,” or “Did you know that…” Here’s a common one I see: “Did you know what a VA can do for you?” I see this all the time. I understand the logic there, it makes total sense. You think if you post and explain to them what a VA can do for them, then they’ll go, “Oh! I need one of those things.” and they’ll inquire about your services and book you. Nine times out of 10 that’s actually not what happens, though, because what you’re missing there is the foundational messaging and market positioning piece of your business.
We need to understand exactly how you fit into the market, because if you don’t understand it, then you can’t differentiate yourself. There’s always going to be somebody cheaper, somebody faster, somebody with a nicer website, or prettier branding, whatever it is. That’s a rabbit hole you can never come out of. When you understand your foundational marketing messaging and how you fit into the market, you can determine what the promise is that you’re making to your clients. What is it that you are that other people are not? Those are the questions that will differentiate you. Inside The $5K Formula, this is spelled out for you literally step by step. There’s a workbook, video trainings, things like that, and it will all walk you through every single step of this so you’ll understand exactly where you fit into the market and exactly how to position yourself in that market.
Then when we get into the messaging, we want to develop a really strong foundation for the things we’re going to be saying about our business so that our messaging is not only consistent, it’s also really compelling. Going back to the example of the virtual assistant, you don’t want to just put up a post and say, “Did you know this is what a VA can do for you…” You want to get in there, onto your Instagram or your website or wherever it is that people are hanging out, and you want to write about things that actually matter to them.
They don’t actually care what your list of skills is. That’s not compelling to someone who’s shopping for services. What they really care about is whether or not you can solve the problem that they are having. In the virtual assistant example, instead of making a post that says something like, “Here are eight things you can outsource to a virtual assistant,” you could write something like, “Imagine how it would feel if you woke up tomorrow morning, and all of those little irritating mosquito tasks that have just been snowballing in your business were done. You had an email in your inbox saying they were taken care of and you could just get right into the CEO work or visionary work of your business or serving your customers or whatever it is that you love to do.” You paint a picture for them of what it would be like to work with you, not like a checklist of things you could do for them, but how they would feel. That’s what good messaging does. It speaks to not only the problem they’re having but the thing that they want.
Sometimes people can be so consumed by their problem that they don’t even quite understand what the outcome would be if their problem was solved. For example, if you were having a problem with your business that requires you to need a VA. People will be like, “I’m so stressed, I just have so much to do, I have all this stupid little admin stuff.” I was actually having a conversation with a client the other day where we were talking about how you get to a point in your business where you feel stressed about all the administrative stuff. All these little tasks that you have to do, and you don’t have time to do them all yourself, because you’re doing bigger things, but just having someone to check off admin tasks is actually not enough. It doesn’t actually solve the problem, because what we’re talking about is mental load. We’re talking about decision fatigue, mental load, and almost being paralyzed by how many things that you have to do and how many decisions you have to make. The solution to that problem is not just somebody to do data entry or answer emails. It’s actually somebody to come in and understand all the different things that need to be done and to understand what is required to complete each task and how to fill in the gaps between where you are, what you’re communicating, and what actually needs to happen in your business. That is valuable. That’s what you need as a business owner, as a solopreneur, who’s kind of doing everything and your business is growing. Most virtual assistants are totally capable of providing this service, but this isn’t what you talk about when you describe what you can offer. You don’t say that in your messaging. You say things like, “I know how to write a Google Doc, I know how to use Canva, I know how to do this and this,” and that’s great. It’s important that you have all those skills, and you can list them on your website for that kind of buyer that wants to know all those details and features. It’s more important, though, that you speak clearly to your ideal client and how you would alleviate the problem they’re having so specifically so that they’re like, “Oh my God! That person is talking to me.” It’s actually a subconscious psychological thing that happens when you encounter specificity in messaging, and it’s so specific that you can’t ignore it, your brain automatically switches on and pays attention.
You have to think about how much content we are all looking at every day. We’re scrolling Instagram, TikTok, Facebook—we are inundated with content. In order to really capture someone’s attention and get them to pay attention to what you’re saying so that they even know that you offer something, you have to be so specific that their brain is like, “Stop! This is for you. You have to do that.” That’s what understanding your foundational messaging will do for you. Working on that core messaging that is going to infiltrate every area of your business and fan out over every touchpoint that your brand has, that’s what it does for you. It allows you to write and present things that make the right people stop in their tracks.
Obviously, when you’re being very specific, the people that are not connecting with what you’re saying are just going to keep scrolling, and that’s okay. As service providers and entrepreneurs, we have a fear of that. We think, “I just have to be more general because what if somebody wants to work with me, and then they see this, and it’s not specifically for them, and then they don’t want to work with me anymore?” We get all up in our heads about that and we act out of fear. The reality is that if you speak too generally, nobody is going to work with you except maybe price-shopping, annoying clients (those of you who have already served a few clients will know exactly the ones I’m talking about).
When you’re too general and your messaging sounds like, “Yeah, I can do this for you, and I can do this for you, and I can do this for you,” you get crappy clients and it becomes very stressful for you. When you are super specific and crystal clear about absolutely everything, that is when you start to get those dream clients. Clarity and specificity are going to change everything when it comes to your messaging. Once you have that nailed down, you’ll start to book clients. People will start to come in and start inquiring and asking you, “How much is this? How do I work with you? What does it look like to work with you?” You’ll start to get inquiries through your website or your Instagram DMs.
Getting Comfortable With Sales
The next hurdle that you’ll come up against as a service provider is that people will inquire, and when you start talking to them, they’ll ghost you. As soon as you tell them the price or give them more information, they just won’t even respond and you have to awkwardly follow up (if you even do, because many don’t). It will feel like you’ve done all this work and made all this progress, and then you’re coming up against another wall. It feels a bit fruitless and frustrating. This is very common. The reason this happens is that you don’t know how to sell.
Unfortunately, whether or not you like the idea of sales as an entrepreneur, you have to be comfortable with it, and you have to get good at it. If you can’t sell, then you can’t help people and you can’t make money. That’s why we’re here. We’re all business owners and it’s okay for your goal in your business to be to make money. As you evolve as an entrepreneur, your goals will evolve. Once you get a comfortable amount of money coming in through your business, your focus may shift more to impact, which is a really nice full-circle thing.
For the first few years of my business, I was like, “I just need to get clients, I’ve got to pay my bills, I’ve got all these kids to sort out, I’ve got to make sale, sale, sale, sale.” In the last couple of years as things have gotten more comfortable, my business has grown quite exponentially. I have the wiggle room now in my business to come back and say, “Okay, what would have the most impact here?” That’s why I’m able to do things like put this bundle on sale at this price. These courses are worth so much more than that and they’re going to create so much value for you. I’m able to sit here and think, “I’ve already hit my revenue goal for the whole year, so what can I do now for the rest of the year that will actually positively impact my community, and create change for people?” This is one of the things that I came up with. That’s a really nice kind of evolution that happens in your business once you start to get to that level.
In December I’m going to do a live workshop on sales training, and anyone who buys the course bundle will get the workshop for free. I’ll be focusing on why you’re not closing sales and showing you how to do that. The general gist of it is that you’re not closing sales because you’re afraid or not closing sales. Humans are very intuitive, even through messaging. People know when you’re desperate for the sale and desperate to prove your value. What most people do is get on a sales call or into the DMs and they try to prove themselves to the person who is inquiring.
I recently spoke with someone who is a parenting coach and she was telling me that her sales calls go on and on and on. She feels like she’s teaching them stuff on the call and then they still don’t book. This is so common, almost everybody does this. They get on the call and they’re like, “Well, I have to prove to this person how much I know. I have to prove to them how valuable I am so that they will buy from me.” So they give and they give and the client ends up kind of interviewing them and getting what they need out of them. Not in a malicious way, it’s just the natural evolution of the conversation. The client gets off the call, they have all this information to act on, and they don’t necessarily feel a need for the service anymore. They also don’t feel super confident, even though they know the person knows what they’re talking about. They don’t feel confident that this person is someone that can lead them to the result that they want, because there was the energy of, “Please hire me, please hire me, please hire me.” Everybody does this when they’re starting out, so if that’s hitting a nerve for you, don’t feel bad because this is totally normal.
There is another way to do it, where we can kind of flip the script a little bit. Where you are in the driver’s seat of all of your sales conversations, and it will skyrocket your close rates. When we’re talking about mid-level packages, for example, I want you to be closing 70-80% of your inquiries. There’s no reason you can’t be if your marketing and messaging are qualifying your leads, and your sales conversations are being conducted from a place of leadership and guidance, as opposed to a place of desperation. We’ve talked about structuring your services, we’ve talked about your messaging, and we’ve talked about your sales. The last piece to this is putting it all together into a bit of a system.
As I mentioned, inside The Sell Out Your Services Bundle, there is a course called The Success System. This is normally only available inside The Society, but I’ve added it to this bundle because it is a game-changer. I really want to make sure as many people as possible have access to it before the end of this year so you can put it into action, start doing the work and start 2022 strong. That will walk you through how once you’ve got the ball rolling with some clients, you’ve started to close some sales conversations, people are starting to make inquiries based on your website or based on your social media content, what do we do with that? How do we make sure that that keeps happening? How do we know that it’s not just all going to go away next month? What if I don’t post to Instagram for a week, and I don’t get any clients for a whole six weeks? Those are the questions that start to come up.
At every level of business, we think that once we solve the problem we’re currently having, we won’t have any more problems anymore. We tell ourselves that and then every time we solve a problem, we have a new problem. Once you solve the problem of having no clients, you will have to address the problem of how do I get more clients? How do I make sure that my clients don’t stop coming? Things like that. That’s what a sales system does for you, and that is a process I walk you through in The Success System. It will show you exactly how to set targets properly, and how to audit your business so you know exactly what is happening at every stage of it, and how people are finding you, why they’re inquiring from you, why they’re closing or not closing. Then what we can do is we can basically set you up to do more of what’s working and cut out the stuff that isn’t. What you end up with then is a super sustainable, easy business, that is constantly bringing in clients and constantly bringing in that cash flow.
After a little while of doing that, you will have so much experience serving the people that you are here to serve, you will have so much confidence in your messaging and in your service delivery, and you will have cash. Those three things are what you need to start scaling. Those three things are what you need to start either bringing in support team members to deliver your services so you can step back a little bit, or adding more passive products to your business. Bringing in paid traffic, especially now with the way ad costs are, trying to run paid traffic to a business that isn’t already working is like pouring gasoline on wet logs. It’s not going to do anything. If you already have that fire lit, if you’ve already done that manual work and your service business is going and it’s burning, and you pour gasoline on it, it blows up (in a good way). That’s what we want to do. We want to do this more manual, foundational, slow and steady work first, get that cash flow rolling through your business, and then you’ll be in a position to scale with more passive products, to scale with team members. That’s when we start to get into that territory of like, “Shit, I’m a CEO, I have a company.” That’s when we transition from solopreneur to CEO. It’s a tricky transition, but it’s really fantastic. The only way to get there successfully is to start with this foundational step.
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Self-Made Mamas Podcast. You can find more information about working with us at theselfmademama.com or connect with us on Instagram at @selfmademama_. I can’t wait to chat.
