Welcome to episode 328 of Hit the Mic with the Stacey Harris.
All right guys, as we have just a couple of days left in December, I wanted to sort of stay on this track that we’ve had going about reviewing things, and making sure we’re on track for our goals. I’m talking about this around the New Year’s because honestly this is when most people are most likely to take action on this content. This is something you can do anytime. If you happen to find this episode in June, do this then. This is not a, “Okay, well when December happens then I’ll do this,” or, “I’ll pay attention to this next year.” This is something that you need to be looking at and thinking about regularly. That’s really around this idea of not making it hard for people to pay you. Not making it hard for customers to say, “Yes,” for clients to book time.
There’s a couple of things that I want you to look at.
We’re going to touch on the most obvious one first. That’s your website, and your sales pages.
By this I mean does your website have sales pages? I know that sounds like a kind of ridiculous question, but I encourage you to really look at your website. Is there actually a place where people can go on and book something, purchase something? Take an action that gets them toward giving you money, or even better, just straight up give you money. Pay attention, that’s actually there. It’s easy to think it’s there, and it not be there. A great example from my own experience, where I messed this up big time for a year, maybe year and a half, was I have a speakers page on my website because I speak. However, there was not a contact form on it.
Now, there’s another contact page on my website, but I wasn’t making it easy for people to enter their information and say, “Hey, we’d like you to come speak at such and such event.” I made it really difficult for potential customers to say, “Yes,” for someone to pay me. Go back and make sure that’s there. I remember early in my business I had my consult page, and I did the same thing. There was no payment button on there, there was no way to actually hit the button. They had to email me, or send a contact and say they wanted to book me. Then I had to send them an invoice. I made clients go through this unnecessary steps to actually work with me. Look at your sales pages, make sure there’s payment buttons, make sure those payment buttons work, make sure those payment buttons don’t end up on links that are broken. This is something I actually experienced on somebody else’s website recently.
I went to go buy something, and I couldn’t because the payment buttons were broke. This was an evergreen product, it wasn’t something they were launching. It was just somebody had recommended it to me, they had gone through the course when this person ran it live and they were like, “It’s fantastic, you should check it out.” I went to go check it out, and the payment buttons went to a link, but it was just a payment process homepage, website, homepage for me to sign in. It wasn’t a place where I could make a purchase. It was going to sign me into my account on PayPal. That’s not going to work out real well. I did email them and say, “Hey, I think this might be broken.”
Go and check those things, make sure your buttons are working, make sure your buttons are there. Make sure your buttons look different than the rest of your text on your page. Give us a clear look at where the call to action is, make sure there’s a call to action. Make it easy for us to purchase. This is going to be your sales pages, for sure. Also on your website make sure there’s actually a link to those pages in the menu bars on the website. This is something a client of mine did. We were driving a ton of traffic to her free content, but then there was nothing to take them to this next step. She even had mentioned this program in blog posts, but there was no link to the actual sales page. It wasn’t in the menu, and it wasn’t on the side bar, it wasn’t anywhere. It existed, we were running ad traffic to it, retargeting traffic, but it wasn’t there. It wasn’t someplace you could easily find it.
It’s literally a mistake I think all of us had made at one point or another in some way. We all have that story. Also, as you’re going through this don’t be like, “How could I do that?” We all have done it, everyone. Don’t make it hard for people to pay you, don’t make it hard for people to say, “Yes,” because they need the help.
The next thing I want you to look at is a little less obvious, but it’s critical that you look at the first stuff first.
Next though I want you to look at your sales funnels.
We talked about sales funnels a couple of weeks ago on the show, and sales funnels are amazing because they help get your customer right where your customer needs to be, because they don’t know what they don’t know. They don’t know that your program is the bees knees, and just going to solve all of their problems. They don’t know that, because they don’t know that they’re looking for it. They just know that they’re unhappy with where they are. By sending them through a sales funnel, helping them get there, helping them be reassured that you are the value point, that you do know what you’re talking about, that you can help them.
Going through and knowing that this is the solution, this is the thing that’s going to change whatever issue they’re having. Then saying, “Okay, now here it is. Jump in, make the commitment.” That’s what a sales funnels for. Again, we’ve talked about sales funnels before, I will put a link in the show notes to that episode. Check out that episode if you’re struggling with sales funnels. Even better, join us backstage, we’ve got a sales funnel training in there. Make sure you have them in place. If you don’t, jot one down. It doesn’t have to be a super complicated sales funnel, it doesn’t have to be miles and miles of automations, and sequences, and if then’s, and, “Okay, so they start here, and they go through this, and this, and this, and this,” like 47 things later they get a sales page.
It can be really simple. For example, I’ve got a lot of content and ads that feed into the top of my funnel. That content fills into an email opt in, that opt in gives you a tripwire of a trial for the membership. Also, alongside that there’s more content. If you say, “Yes,” right than you do the tripwire and you’re in the membership site. You say, “No,” and this is the only place where it really splits off, you get some follow up content and … Well, you get follow up content either way. You get follow up content, and you get more call to actions to join in on the trial. It’s that simple. It doesn’t have to be this sort of ornate thing. It just needs to be there. Again, this is what’s helping your audience, your community, your potential clients know that this is the right yes, okay? All right.
Number three, make sure you have your systems in place to get paid.
I go back to my example from earlier where I had to … When somebody wanted to book an hour one on one call with me, they would have to submit a form, and then I would send them an invoice, and then we would work out dates. That’s a lot of effort. Now what people do, is they go to my calendar, they pick a time, they process their payment right through my scheduler, and they’re booked on my calendar. They don’t ever have to talk to me until it’s time for our call. They can see right there before they make a purchase if my availabilities going to work for them. It’s that simple.
There’s nothing standing between them. There’s no time for them to talk themselves out of the purchase, or not be able to justify the purchase. They know they need a solution, they find a solution, they book the solution. It’s as simple as that. The same is true for backstage. They land on the sales page, they sign up, they’re in. All of that is automated through the checkout system and my membership site. It’s all systemized. The last thing I want you to look at is now that you’ve got your funnels in place, now that you’ve got your website and your sales pages really gearing towards those sales, make sure that the other end of that purchase is also systemized. Especially for those of you who are adding affiliate … I’m sorry, passive revenue where you have evergreen programs, or a one to many model, or a membership model, or something like that.
That’s when it’s absolutely critical that you have this stuff systemized. No one wants to have to email you and say, “Hey, I’d like to buy your E-book.” Then you send them a PayPal invoice for the three ninety nine or whatever it is. Then they get it, because you then see the purchase comes through, and then you email it to them. No. There’s too many tools, there’s too many systems. If you want to talk tools, if you want to talk systems, join us backstage. That’s the place we all talk about these resources. I’ll share more about what I used if you check out TheeStaceyHarris.com/Resources you’ll find some of my resources. The best place to be to extend this conversation, to get serious about this review, and making sure that you’re making it easy for customers to say, “Yes,” is to join us backstage. Go to HittheMicBackstage.com, and we can talk about your specific needs, and your specific model, and your specific business, all right? All right. I will see you backstage.
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