Whether you’ve started a business because you wanted to spend more time with your children or knew in your heart there was a better way than slogging it out working 9-5, had massive ambitions to create an empire or you just wanted to be in control of the who, what, when, where, and why, there is one thing a lot of new business owners don’t realise and start to wonder, and that is how to create a business step by step formula to get them to and beyond $5000pm.
Selling successfully, of course, is the crux of every business.
The make or break.
No sales, no income, no active business.
For a long time, the word sales has received a bad wrap, it sounds dirty right?
But, truth be told….
Selling is a beautiful thing when you have a create a business step by step formula.
*If* done authentically, genuinely and with the best interest of your potential customer/client in mind.
Making sales means we get to serve others, help them, guide them, provide for them.
And, of course, making sales in our business means we get to run our business for another day.
There is no better feeling than knowing you are doing it, really doing it. Finding the sweet spot of running a business which is generating sales, great feedback and gaining momentum is the end goal, right?
So, here is my best advice:
Above all, learn how to sell. But sell honestly, authentically and with your customers best interests in mind. Woo them, give them TLC and the sales will happen naturally.
Do not force sales, do not hard sell, do not sell when it is not in the best interest of your customer and do not keep a client if you know you can’t serve them, always refer back to your business step by step formula to ensure you are still in alignment.
Resist the urge to spam groups with low-quality business posts, never PM people to spruik your business and refrain from doing the “10/20/40% Off Sales” when you are straight out of the gate in your new business. It is not a good look or representation of your new business if you need to discount your products continuously in order to make sales. And let’s face it, selling to a cold audience is making it way hard for yourself.
Most of all, remember the energy you create from the way you run your business will hinder or escalate your business. Be mindful of your actions and ensure they unfold as you intend, even if the intention has not been realised yet.
Instead of hard selling, I teach my e-course students and Business Jump clients to start with building their audience via social media and their mailing lists by offering high-quality content which is valuable to your audience. This creates a warm audience, then you can start to think about dropping in some sales posts, but not all the time. Adhere to the 80 / 20 rule. 80% of the time woo them, give them value, insight, expertise, and 20% of the time you can chat about your products and/or services.
Once you have your warm audience, you can turn your attention into converting them into paying customers.
Here is the formula I have used to create a six-figure business in its first year of trading:
Step #1 – Set Your Income Goals
It is likely you have some income goals floating around in your mind, and you may even have a business plan with the actions you need to do. But, have you ever taken a moment to reverse engineer how many sales you need to make in order to reach your income goals?
Here is a quick and easy step by step guide:
Step #1:
Work out how much you want to profit in your business per month. Eg: $5,000.
Step #2:
Add your outgoings and profit together. Now you know how much you need to earn to reach your preferred profit.
Step #3:
Review all your income streams and work out what and how much you need to sell in order to reach your goal.
Step #4:
Plan your marketing/promotion strategies and break it down into monthly/weekly/daily goals
Step #5:
Set your intentions, take action, stay focused and BOOM!
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Step #2 – Work Out How Much Traffic You Need to Generate to Meet Your Goals
Ok, so you know how many sales you need to make in order to reach your goal. You may or may not have some ideas on how to advertise your business, but do you know how much traffic to your product or sales page you actually need to generate to start sales ticking through?
If you are looking at your Google Analytics and there is no traffic then this must become your #1 priority. No selling until you have traffic flowing around your website to sell to.
To work out how much traffic you need, remember the average conversion rate is 2.5%.
So, if your goal is $5,000 per month and your profit is $100 per sale you need 50 sales per month.
Let’s say you get 10,000 people to see an FB ad, guest blog, or some other type of material you’ve created which links through to your product or sales page.
On average 10% will click through to your website.
That is 1000 out of the 10,000 people.
Out of that 1000, there will be approx 2.5% people who will buy from you. That is 25 sales. Do that twice and you’ll meet your goal of 50 sales which = $5000 per month.
Step #3: Increasing Traffic
Now you’ve worked out how much traffic you need to get in order to convert sales, you need to manufacture that traffic. You should have a good warm audience by now, so we want to utilise that and also boost it with the following suggestions:
Facebook Ads:
My favourite way is Facebook ads. This is because it is quick. I can upload an ad and traffic will start to filter through to my website almost immediately. Ok, so if you aren’t familiar with FB ads, it may not happen that easily, there is a lot to learn and get your head around but once you do it is a really powerful way to get traffic.
If you haven’t used Facebook Ad’s there is a very high chance you’ll waste a lot of time and money trying to work it out. I certainly did. But now I have worked it out, it is my #1 favourite way to generate traffic to my website. I ended up doing an e-course to learn the ropes which I really wish I did at the start as it would have saved a lot of blood, sweat and tears. If you want to check out the e-course click here, I highly recommend it.
Facebook Groups:
Another way is creating a really meaty blog post which shares loads of value and sharing it around in some related business posts, but only if their rules permit it. Be aware of Facebook etiquette and don’t spam it. When I do this, I love looking at the real time stats in Google Analytics to see which groups and blogs generate the most traffic.
Your Mailing List:
Ever heard the saying ‘the money is in the list?’ Well, it is totally true. That is because the likely hood of your list buying from you is higher than average because they are a warm audience. This puts your sale probability far ahead of trying to convert your cold audience. Make sure you have a strategy to be growing your mailing list and also make sure you give them TLC weekly, fortnightly or at the least, monthly. Again, don’t spam your mailing list, you don’t want them getting sick of you!
Other Social Media:
If you have put in the work to grow your audience on social media and are gaining traction on scaling your numbers then you can also gain quick traffic by posting on your page, although if you don’t have an audience yet it is not going to be a quick fix.
Guest Blogging
Borrow someone else’s audience and scout out other like-minded businesses who have large audiences and do whatever you can to jump in front of it. This will be most likely paying them whatever it states on their media kit. However, if you have anything you can barter with, I also suggest proposing it to them to see if you can save your cash.
Tip: Don’t try to do all of these at once. Pick one or two and become an expert at it, dedicate all your time to it. This is where results come from. Intense, consistent and focused energy.
Step #4 – Converting Your Traffic
Now you have approx 10% of the traffic you have manufactured filtering through to your website. Presumably to a product page or a sales page. This is where 2.5% *should* go ahead and purchase. If they aren’t you need to look closer at a multitude of things. From your messaging, to your product/sales page, to your pricing. Ask for feedback, tweak and monitor your stats. Keep on it, you will get there. If it is a product page, make sure you have eye-catching images that really showcase your product.
Remember, your customer can’t touch or feel it, so give them the next best thing. But don’t try and over complicate it, a busy photo is a distracting photo.
Keep in mind, to reach your goal, it is really a numbers game. The lower priced your item is the more you need to sell. The higher priced your item is the less you need to sell, but generally, you’ll need more touch points before someone buys from you.
For example to hit $5000 per month I need to sell:
1.5 x Business packages
10 x Business Jump Starter e-Courses
50 x Create Your Website Like A Pro e-courses
When I had my old business, selling organic cotton baby clothes, I was only profiting between $5 – $20 per sale. So if we use $5 as the example, I had to sell 1000 units to hit $5000 per month. This is still totally fine, each price point has its positives and negatives and can be just as awesome and doable as a more profiteering product. The most important thing is knowing you need to reach a larger audience if you have a lower priced product. If you have a higher priced product you can get away with a smaller audience but you need to have more touch points with them. That is, they will probably see your stuff several times before they buy from you as they will be outlaying more money for your product or service.
Step #5 – Catch Lost Sales
You’ve done all the hard work to get them on to your website, what happens if they don’t buy?
The majority will get consumed with life and forget about your website and your product along with your chance to convert them into a buyer. Making your goal of getting to your desired income harder.
Worse still, if you’ve paid advertising dosh to get them to your website, you’ve also lost money.
So, let’s remedy that.
Ensure your website has these two things:
1. A Facebook pixel:
This is a nifty little piece of code that tracks your traffic so you can create Facebook ads and re-market to them. Either you can re-market a different product, or even a freebie to get them moved over onto your mailing list. If you don’t have it on your website, go and do it now.
2. An opt-in:
An opt-in is an enticing offer that acts like a magnet to get your potential customers to pop in their email addresses so you can re-market to them via your mailing list.
Step #6 – Increase Lifetime Value & Spend
Don’t for a second think that once the sale has completed that is the end of the story with that customer.
You now have a new hot lead and as research says, once that customer has purchased from you, chances are they will purchase again. So, develop relationships with your clients that cause them to buy from you for years and years instead of once or twice.
Think about what is the next step your new customer is likely to take? What else would be appealing to them? For example, if you sell stationery and they purchased a fancy set of pens from you, maybe they also might like some fancy paper to write on? Pop them into an email automation with an up-sell, cross-sell or another product that compliments the first product they have purchased from you.
