14. Stop Selling, Start Getting Leads

Do you hate selling, or sending spammy DMs

Absolute cringe right! 

What if I told you you never had to sell again? 

How good would that be? 

In this weeks podcast I’ll give you my exact framework that has helped me generate hundreds of leads…

Given me a very nice standard of living, great family trips abroad and allowed me not to work in the school holidays! 

Doing some massive sales pitch is old school, we switch off, so you can stop doing it! Thank goodness! 

Here’s what we cover in today’s Wanky Thoughts Podcast 

Download the 10 Min Lead Generator 

10 mins a day is all you need to create videos that actually attract inbound leads… without sending spammy DMs or spending hours on social media! 

Click here to download and get inbound leads 

GET IN TOUCH 

Message me at helen@helenwalkercoaching.com 

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Watch this podcast on YouTube

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Wanky Thoughts Podcast. How the devil are you? How's your week been? This week on the podcast we are talking about everyone's favourite subject and that is selling. So many people, so many people inside the Wanky Thoughts Club when they first joined, they go, sales just gives me the ick. I don't want to do it, it feels weird, it feels awkward, I hate doing it, please don't make me do it. So what people tend to do is they know they've got to be visible, right? I know you know you need to be visible. You gotta do videos and posts and get yourself out there and meet people and build up your audience, um, and you've gotta sell. But what people do is they do all this, they're visible and do posts and all that jazz. But they never actually tell people what they sell, how they can buy it, how much it costs, and what they actually need to do to get the thing. Like, how do they actually buy it? Do they click a link, do they book a call? Like they never actually say oh, there's a fly in my car, it's gone. They never actually say what you need to do, and it's all because of the wanky thoughts that sell oh, it's awful and it's weird, and oh god, it's icky, and please don't make me do it, and what if nobody buys and am I good enough and all of that jazz. But selling does not need to feel awkward. So I never ever, ever, ever, ever send cold spammy DMs, and you've probably received them. So my social media of choice, if you like, is LinkedIn. I don't think there's a day goes by when somebody doesn't they might start their message with, oh hi, thanks for connecting, how are you? I'm fine, thank you. Yes, how are you? You might make light conversation. The next question will be, how long have you been a coach? And you know that if you reply, and I do it now for shits and giggles, if you reply, you will get a pitch back. Now I'm always given the field I work in, I'm always interested to see, dare I say it, the mistakes that people make. What are they gonna send back? So I'll say, Well, I've been doing it 13, 14 years, how about you? Oh well, I've got this thing. Would you be interested? And some people say, Would you be interested in getting more leads, getting more sales? I'm like, have you ever looked at my profile? Have you even looked at what I do? Or people, and you can tell it's a blanket DM or blanket email. Sometimes they even get your name wrong, or sometimes it'll even say, Hi, brackets, name. Then you know it's a spam email. But they'll just send you without you, you'll just connect. You won't even get a chance to say hello, and they'll just send you a I've got this thing, and sometimes it's their lead magnet, sometimes I've got this free thing, I've got this free guide, and it's all do this, that, and the other, or I've got this free challenge, or I've got this offer, would you be interested? It's a low-cost offer, and I just thought of you. Now, when people are saying I just thought of you, and would you be interested automatically you go, How on earth do you know what I'd be interested in? What on earth has given you the idea that this would be of use to us? Now, if somebody just sends us this generic email, of course we're gonna go, Well, it's just spam, it's just it's not for me. No, they're not thought about this, they're just literally sending this to everybody. Now, if you go into a shop, you will make impulse purchases, right? You might buy a teapot that you didn't really want, or a new cutlery set, or you know, a dress or something. You didn't go out to buy that address, but you just saw it and thought, ooh, I'll buy that. However, in the area that we work in of coaching and mentoring or being a service provider or a creative or whatever, people have to have an element, and I would say a massive element of trust in you and your ability to help them solve their problem before they will ever buy. So, yes, there are people out there who will teach you how to sell in the DMs, but I think this gives you this impression that selling in the DMs is sending cold DMs. Now I do follow people who teach this stuff, not the sending cold DMs because that's just gross, but this idea that you can sell in the DMs, and I very much respect them and I, you know, enjoy their content and like what they talk about, but they're not saying sell to people who don't know you from Adam, right? These are the good coaches that do this, are always telling you to, you know, sell to people who you know. Now I do I do things a little bit differently. I want to get inbound leads, so I don't want to be spending all my days. I'm gonna have to open my car door because we're still in this heat wave. Excuse the plane going over. I don't want to be spending all my days. Christ, come on, hurry up, you're very loud. I don't want to be spending all my days sending spammy DMs, you know, even even to people who I know, because if people just send me a even people I know, if they just send me a do you want this thing? I'm like, have you even thought about that? What's you know, what's we haven't even spoken about this. So my way of working is is never to do that. I have conversations in the DMs that might lead to a sales conversation, but we're not doing buy this thing, do this thing, etc. Hang on, let me just turn my icon off because that's gonna be really annoying listening to that in the background. That's oh my god, it keeps trying to come on. Um so I think this is why we feel awkward and sales gives us the ick because we have this idea that selling is sending spam EDMs, it's interrupting people's day, it's making bat making people buy crap that they don't actually want, it's twisting people's arms, it's making them say yes, it's making them part with their money. And what we need to be thinking about is selling in a different way. Now we've heard this before, we've heard it a thousand times, you know, selling as service and all that jazz, and it is, and I think we've got to get rid of the word selling because it's got such a bad reputation, it just conjures up all of these wanky thoughts. So rather than thinking, I'm gonna sell, I just want you to think, I'm gonna help. I am gonna help you. So if you saw your friend on the side of the road and she was walking, she got like 58 shopping bags, and it was chucking it down with rain, and she was wet through, and you're like, God, she lives just near me. Would you just drive by her or would you stop and say, Can I help you? Would you like a lift? And this is all selling is it's just the people who you can see are in need, it's just saying to those people, Do you need help? Would you be interested? Now, yes, you can send them a spam a DM if you want. For me, that would never work on me. What would work is you showing up and showing and sharing the right kind of content. Now I get it. That the idea of sitting down and creating content plans and strategies and then actually recording it and editing it and putting it all together, that feels like a mammoth task, and indeed it is a mammoth task, right? I do a mixture of videos that take me no time and videos where I do the comedy bit, I call them comedy reels. People may disagree with me, but I think they're funny. Where I dress up in wigs and I either act out the problem or I act out the wanky thought, and I I use characters to do so. So I do both videos. So, yes, the character videos, you know, I've got them quite quick now, it'd probably take me like an hour from start to finish. But yes, they are edited, right? And not everybody wants to do that style of content. I do that because I'm a bit goofy, I like messing about, and it's on brand for me, that's my personality. But if you're not that person, you're like, that's just cringy and I ain't got time, and I don't want to do that, then you don't have to do that. But the way that you're going to build up this trust so people come to you is by sharing your story. It is the easiest form of content there is because there is zero thinking. So before you do this, yes, you've got to understand who your ideal client is. There is no point producing anything if you don't know who your ideal client is. So, producing your offers, producing content, producing uh videos, challenges, courses, one-to-one programmes, there is zero point if you don't know who your ideal client is. You've got to know what problem they've got and how they talk about it, and why they want to solve it, and how they want to solve it, because then everything else you create is a is a result of that. So do that that first, and then once you've mapped out your client's journey, so you map out like where are they now? Like, call it point A. What is their current lived reality? What are they struggling with? You know, the problem that you can solve. What does that problem look like? And I don't just want things like well, she's burnt out or she's stressed or you know, she's not living a life to the full. I want to know in tangible, real life examples, what that looks like. So, right, she's burnt out. What's it stopping her doing? She's burnt out. What is she not doing that she really wants to? Is she not showing up for work how she wants to? Is she not starting that business? Is she not going for that promotion? Is she not going out dating because she's so burnt out with other aspects of life? What is it that she is struggling with? Now imagine her stood on the side of a bank, and in between there's there's two banks, there's a river running in between, and that river she can't swim across, it's too dangerous. The water is it's running like a torrent, it's um you know it is dangerous, there's rocks, there's massive waves, she can't get over. Now, what she needs is a bridge to get to the other side, because on the other side of the bank, let's call that point B, is the life that she wants. So you need to map that out. Okay, well, what does that look like? So if she solves this problem, it's not that she's not got burnout, what is she doing that she wasn't doing before? Look at the ripple effect of both sides. So where she is now and where she wants to get to, what is the ripple effect of her problem? So if she's not doing X, Y, and Z, what impact is that is that having on her money, her health, her relationships, her happiness, her fitness? Think of everything that is going wrong for her, and then do the opposite of go, well, when she solves this problem, when she gets across this this dangerous river, how is life gonna be? Right? What are the ripple effects of that? What who else will be affected? Who else will benefit from this? What will life look like? And your job with your content is to go, I understand where you are now. Because this all of this we talk about, you know, be relatable to your ideal client and they'll just fall in love with you. Well, they do, because if we go into that, we're going a bit geeky, if we go into like human psychology, we are we are it's in our DNA to want to fit into a tribe, into a group. Because if we don't and we're flung out of the group or we never find a tribe, we face almost certain death because we can't hunt and we can't build shelter on our own, and we certainly can't reproduce on our own, so we die out or we get killed. So we have this overwhelming need to find our tribe. Now we want to feel safe, we don't want to be embarrassed, we don't want to feel like we're gonna stick out, we don't want to feel like we're gonna get thrown out, we want to belong. So if we're then should saying, well, actually, I get you, because nine times out of ten, coaches, mentors, service providers, we do something because we've struggled with that problem, or we've seen other people, you know, people we love struggle with it and we want to do something about it. So, for example, when I'm talking about point A to my ideal client, I understand it because I've lived it. So I know that she's struggling with selling, that she's struggling with showing up, she's struggling to you know get clients into a business, she's relying on referrals, but those referrals are a bit hit and miss. They dry up one month, next month there's too many, next month there's none. And it's feast or famine months, and that's no way to run a business. And you're working all the hours because if you're not dealing with your clients and doing your face-to-face stuff or helping them solve their problem, you're trying to hustle for for more clients, but it's not working, you're not getting the clients. You feel weird showing up online, you should you're like, what do I talk about? You know, you go well, uh how do I bloody sell in a video without sounding like a snakeskin oil salesperson? So I understand all of their frustrations. So I talk about that, I tell that in my story, and I say, Look, I get it, I get where you are. So that's that's the first part of your story. Now remember, we've got two parts of this story already. We've got the the point A, where they are now, likely you where you were, and then we've got this point B, where they want to get to. Now you've solved the problem, you know exactly what it takes to get to point B, and you can talk about it. So I talk about it. I say, now that I've cracked videos and I've cracked this selling lack and I don't feel icky anymore, or like an 80s car salesman. I have a great life now and I get clients, I get clients coming to me. Like they come in my inbox. Can I join? What you know, can you tell me more about the Wanky Thoughts Club? Can I book a call? Can I do X, Y, and Z? Which means that I'm not hustling around for clients anymore. I don't feel weird selling. In fact, I find it very easy now. Which means I don't have to work as hard. So, where before I was working Monday to Friday, I was getting up before the kids were getting up, doing a bit of work, the go to bed. The first thing I used to do was get my laptop out and start working again. Well, there's none of that anymore. I used to say to Chris, can you take the kids out? I just need to do some work at the weekend. So they'd be going off and you know, I'd be waving up the window thinking, oh god, I want to go with them, racked with mum guilt. And then I'd be working weekends and it would never be off my mind. I'd be always thinking, not thinking in a good way, because now I still think about my business a lot, but it's in an exciting way. I used to be stressed out thinking about my business. It was always on my mind thinking, oh my god, I'm not making enough money, and how am I going to get clients and where they're going to come from? And oh my god, what if I can't pay the mortgage and all these horrible things. Well, that that doesn't happen anymore. In fact, I work three slash four days a week. I don't always work full days, very rarely. I go to the gym quite a lot. I go off, you know, for a maybe a walk during the day, have a long lunch break, um, and I don't work school holidays. So there I am painting the picture of what it's like. So if you work with me, you can have that life as well. Because I'll show you exactly what you need to do. Now, this is where the bridge comes in. They need you as the bridge to get from where they are to where they want to be. And you've said, I get it. So I get where you've been. I've lived in I've walked in your shoes, I've lived your life. Then this tribal instinct kicks in, they go, Right, this is where I belong. She gets me. She knows exactly what it's going to be like, what I'm gonna have to do. There's gonna be no embarrassing questions because she's lived it, she knows exactly how it is. So we feel safe, we feel like we belong, we can see ourselves in that group because of the way that you've described that story. She's going, Oh my god, it's like she's describing my life, it's like she's in my head. Then you start telling the the second part of the story, which is the bridge element. So here's what I did. So I just started grabbing my phone, and when I went to pick the kids up from school, I used to turn on Instagram stories because I knew it would disappear, and I would just tell a little story, and I'd just say all the mistakes that I'd made that day or things that had gone right in my business. I didn't realise at the time that I was this was gonna work, but that's what I did. I just showed up, and eventually people started to reach out to me going, can you tell me um what you're doing, like how you're making this work? Because the perception was that was really good and stuff, and then the clients started to come, and then as a result, that's when I've had like big launches and lots of clients come in and I've made the money, which has allowed me to have the life that I've now where I don't work at the school all the days, and life is easier. So you've given them this three-step story almost. I call this the 10-minute lead generator, because these videos really shouldn't be taking you any. I mean, 10 minutes, I mean that's a mammoth video. You could do all of that in a couple of minutes. These videos don't have to be long. Because what you've got to remember is you're not gonna one person's not gonna watch one video and go, oh my god, she's given me every bit of information I needed, I'm gonna sign up. Because that's not how we work anyway, because that would be too much, and we go, I've just totally forgotten everything she said. But over the course of a week, two weeks, three months, four months, you drip feed all of this information, all of these stories, and you tell, you know, almost the same story but in different ways and different parts of that story. Over a few weeks, few months, they've got this really good idea of who you are and this this framework that you've got, like how you help people and the story that you've been through. Now you can swap out your story for a client's story. So maybe you haven't ever lived this experience. Okay, well, let's talk about your clients then. Where were they? What did they do? What kind of life have they got now? Now, people then start to see themselves in this process because you're describing the journey that they must go on to fix their problem. Now, the person that lays out this in the simplest way and the easiest way, and go, I just did this, and you just need to do this, they go, Well, if she can do it or her clients can do it, why not me? And then it's the most obvious person to work with is you, because you've just told them exactly what it what they need to do, and you've started doing videos and showing your personality, and there's you know other videos that you can do to bring your personality in. As over the few months that they've been watching, they've got all of that. So they've got you know, you've implied that you know what you're doing with with rather than go, here's three ways to do this, or here's six life hacks, because we forget all that and it's boring, it's been done, and we're so over it. But stories, we put ourselves in your story, and we see it and we hear it, we feel it, and we all these emotions come, so we remember you, and this is the really important thing about being visible is we want people to remember us because when people are ready to buy and we can't change that time frame, it might take them a week, it might take them a year, anything in between, maybe longer. That's none of our business how long it takes. We need to just be there providing the content that nurtures them so that they remember us, so that when they are ready to buy, who do they think of? You because you are the one keep showing up, telling those stories, you've been memorable, and really importantly, you've built that trust. Now, what you then do is when you've told your story, this is where the selling becomes so easy. So if you hate selling and you have moments where you almost take a deep breath and go, right now I'm gonna sell. This is the selling bit, and oh my god, all the wanky thoughts have come, and I feel icky and I don't want to do this, and I need a shower because I feel so awful. This is how easy sales can be. This is all the money I've ever made has come from this process, right? This little one thing, and it will take you 30 seconds. So now selling and this big pitch, however long it would take you, you boil it down to 30 seconds. So you tell your story, so you go, This is where I was. So you know, I used to hate showing up and doing videos, and I'd got the ick, and it was weird, and I'd never talk about my offers, and my business was failing, and life was really bad. And then one day it was either go and get a job, go back to recruitment, which I'd fallen out of love with, I didn't want to have a horrible commute, and I didn't want to miss out on my kids growing up, so I was like, Do you know what? I'm gonna give this video thing a try. And I just picked up my phone, and every day I went to pick the kids up from school, and I'd just do a video. My first videos were awful, and then I got better, and then I realised I was using this three-part storytelling framework, and oh my god, this is what works, and you should try it too. Because look at my life now, people have joined my programme and I'm making money and I'm not um working the school holidays. I'm I'm making this story quite quick just to go through the sequence. But at the end, this is where the 30-second selling bit comes in. You've told your story and you go, if you are struggling with this, you don't need to come and join the Wanky Thoughts Club because this is exactly what I'll teach you how to do, so that you can have inbound leads coming into your inbox so you don't have to go out there and hustle, you don't have to do anything that makes you feel gross or icky or weird or awkward. Who's got time for that? We're never gonna send spammy DMs ever again, and you'll have a great life. Get clients coming to you, take the school holidays off, and have fun creating your content. If you want to join. It's £45 a month. Just DM me, let's have a chat. That's it. I mean, how long did that you could time that? I don't know how long it was. Definitely less than a minute. But it was really easy. It was almost like what I said at the beginning, where if you s found your mate walking, loads of bags, wet through, would you drive by, or would you go, do you need any help with that? That's exactly what my offer at the end of that story was. It was like, I know you've got a problem, I've just taught you through it, and you can see yourself. If I didn't add that bit at the end, I was like, oh god, let's just hope that they read my website or you know they just see something and they they book, you know, click a link and book. That's like me driving past my friend. In fact, it's like driving past her, going through a puddle and getting a wet through. Like it's just not very nice if you don't offer to help. And that's all selling is is going, mate, I can see you've got a problem. I've got this thing, we can fix it. If you want, do you want to have a chat? Now they may say yes or no, and that's totally up to them. If they say no, fine. We we we're not a match. We're not I'm not everybody's cup of tea, like believe it or not, I probably get on people's tits, right? But there's other people who bloody love me. They love my northernness and my down-to-earthness and my straight talking and my no beating around the bush. They love it because it gets results. But yes, there's people who don't, but I'm not here for those people because there'll be another coach who's perfect for those people. So we have to forget about the no's, don't matter, don't care. We're here for all the yeses. So try this three-step formula: where you were or where your client was, what you did, the steps you took to fix it, how great life is now, and then just a PS. Do you need help? This is what the help looks like. Message me, just give it a go. Now, if you don't know the stories to talk about, I've got you covered. So you can have my 10-minute lead generator. So it'll talk you through exactly this the four steps, exactly what to say, but it will also give you some story prompt ideas. So you might be going, Oh, I don't know which parts of my story, because yes, you do need to be telling the right parts of your story, otherwise, your ideal client will go, Why the hell is she telling me this? So it'll help you pull out your story, and then it will help you put that into that framework. Now, that video, this four-step video, could be a 60-second reel, right? You can shorten it, or you could turn it into an hours podcast, you could turn it into a keynote, you could turn it into a um a written form, you could turn it into an email or a written post. It works for everything, that is the beauty of it. But the the the real gem, the real diamond is you don't have to sell anymore, you just sell by using a 30-second. Do you need help with that, mate? So it makes it so flipping easy. Anyway, this podcast is getting a bit long. So let me know if you're gonna use it. If you want the um 10-minute lead generator, just go into the show notes. I shall put a link there, you can download it straight into your inbox and uh enjoy, have fun, have fun doing your videos. That is the main thing. We built a business so we could have fun and make like life easier. So go and give it a go. You won't like your first videos, but keep with it because in the end, you'll bloody love having in uh inbox, you'll you'll love having leads come to your inbox. Very easy for me to say on this hot day. Enjoy your day and I'll see you next week.