Welcome to another episode of The High Profit Event Show, hosted by Rudy Rodriguez. In this week’s episode, we are joined by a guest, Charlotte Chalkley, CEO of The Ultimate Hypno Coach. Charlotte is known for her pioneering spirit and diverse professional background, which includes being the first non-officer female to jump from an aircraft in the British Army and a career spanning over 20 years as a qualified hypnotherapist. She combines her expertise in psychology and hypnotherapy in sales training, creating innovative strategies for client engagement and conversion.

During our discussion, Charlotte highlights the transformative impact of well-trained, professional sales teams on event conversion rates. Unlike informal staff or volunteers, professional teams excel at managing interactions to ensure potential clients receive the necessary attention and information, significantly driving up both satisfaction and sales figures. 

Charlotte also delves into her approach to enhancing client retention and ensuring a positive client experience. She emphasizes the importance of creating a structured, consistent process followed by all sales coaches, which not only improves the client’s journey during the event but also significantly enhances their perception and satisfaction post-event, fostering long-term relationships.

Charlotte also shares insights on the common pitfalls that event leaders face, particularly in the sales aspects of high-ticket programs. She stresses the need for creating urgency, having a professional team to handle sales effectively, and ensuring that financial solutions are readily available at the event to facilitate transactions. These strategies are key to converting interest into actual sales and are vital for any event looking to improve its bottom line.

Charlotte’s experiences and strategies are not just theoretical but are backed by tangible results, making this episode a must-listen for anyone looking to elevate their event management and sales strategies.

For more insights and detailed discussions, tune in to this episode of The High Profit Event Show. Don’t forget to visit Charlotte’s website at Charlottechalkley.com and check out her work with The Six Figure Life Coaches Academy. Whether you’re an event leader or a sales professional, the lessons shared in today’s podcast are invaluable.

Want to connect with Charlotte?

Website: https://charlottechalkley.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlotte-chalkley-8b785079/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/charlotte.chalkley1/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyou.unlimited

 If you'd like to be a guest on the High Profit Event Show, click HERE.

Hi, I'm Rudy Rodriguez and welcome to today's episode of The High Profit Event Show. On today's episode, we have a really special guest, Charlotte Chalkley. Welcome to the show, Mimi.

Hello.

Charlotte and I actually we go back about a little over five years now. We met in the sales industry, worked together with Bob and Jill and the top performers on that particular project that we worked on. Charlotte went on actually to start her own sales training academy and building teams, sales teams of herself, which she's going to share with us today on how she was able to create processes to convert 60% of attendees into a 25-career hire program. I'm really excited to jump into that. Before we do, I want to share a couple of really cool bio points about Charlotte, really interesting things. First and foremost, when I met Charlotte, the number one thing that jumped out to me was the fact that she was the first non-officer female to jump out of an aircraft for The British Army. She's part of The Airborne Unit, the first non-commissioned officer to do it. Since then, many women have joined the ranks, which is really cool to know that you're a pioneer in that space. You're also a qualified hypnotherapist. You've been doing that for over 20 years and you run a pretty successful hypnotherapy practice that you've integrated along with your sales training to help people reach higher levels of performance in their business and life, which is really cool. You have a background in criminology and in psychology, so you have a lot of credentials, a lot of really interesting life experiences and a lot of results to show for it. So welcome, mam.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Before we start anything, actually, the whole sales side of things is all down to you, Rudy. So and wow, who would have thought five years ago I would be sitting here with my own company having this conversation with you.

Pretty cool.

Very cool. This is what's possible.

That's what's possible. I'm curious to hear, I know you have a lot of expertise to share with our audience and I'm curious, I'm ready to take notes myself, share with us a little bit about the journey you've been on in the last five years and and the skills that you developed and how you've been able to produce that type of result for for some of the teams that you worked with.

I started off five years ago with Wingman with Rudy and was the top coach for the team that I was on. From that I realized I could build my own business like the sales conversation for me to this day is still the key to any business. So I put that into my hypnotherapy business and grew my hypnotherapy business and at the same time was asked to set up some sales teams for other people, which I kind of threw together and grew from there. From there, I mean, I don't know about you, Rudy, but when you're running teams for other people, getting good sales coaches is really hard. So my skills as a hypnotherapist really came in useful there. I set it up. I set up the Secrets of Selling Academy, where people could come in and join the academy, and I would help them build their own businesses. At the same time, for those of them that were good and worked hard and really enjoyed this sales process, they would have the opportunity to get onto one of the teams that I was running and become a sales coach. I've had over the last two years, three years, coaches earning $15,000 a month, $20,000 a month on a regular basis.

And my clients, I've been running the sales teams for making multiple millions for them through my sales coaches. So it all kind of happened organically. But it certainly grew into this kind of united system that I have now.

Awesome. Thank you for sharing that, Charlotte. Our audience here are event leaders, men and women who run events, many of them have their own high end education type programs that they run and manage themselves. You had some success earlier this year, I think it was February this year with the live events, I think you said in Florida, where there's a smaller room with about 100 attendees. You and your client team that you were working with, you were able to convert quite a few of those people in the room into $25k mentorship tech programs. Can you kind of break that apart for us and kind of take us through A through Z, because I know that's what our audience is super curious to hear.

So it really is the harmony, I think, between the event leaders and the sales team. There needs to be great communication there, huddles every day, being able to feed back information for the clients that are at the event, that certainly made a huge difference for us. As a sales team, and also for the event leaders, they found it very useful to know where people were at in the individual process who were at the event and were able to help people through their process, which then of course, reflected back to us and made the whole process very smooth. So I'd say that's the biggest thing, making sure that coaches, the sales coaches that are there, they have their space, and they're kind of a little bit protected in their space, they're just doing the sales calls and they're able to, you have other people there supporting, able to take those clients once they've had their coaching session, and sign contracts, take payments, that kind of thing. Those are the main key things. Did you want me to go into that a little bit more detail?

What I'm hearing you say is the major value out of actually having a proper sales team at an event is it helps the event leader have support where they can know where people are at in their journey and their buying decision because attendees have a dedicated people that are assigned to them. They're having private conversations and notes are being taken, reports are being made, and when sales happen, also contracts are being signed, payments are being taken, all of that, without the host having to be the person that's doing the first day themselves.

Absolutely. I mean, there's so much going on at live events for the event leaders, there's so much that they need to concentrate on and focus on. They need to be able to do that and be able to be fully focused. At the same time, feel safe, comfortable that, okay, like Charlotte or whoever it is, has got this, and I can go and find out and the information that I'm getting is accurate, it's up to date, statistics, constantly up to date as well and being reported back.

Charlotte, how would you say that that's distinctly different from just having people in the back of the room that are taking orders? Like, because I know sometimes people think of a sales team as people that are just hanging out in the back of the room and they're just volunteers and helping out and taking orders. How is that distinctly different?

Yes, that's very different. It's very different. It's, for me personally, I think that part of it is, it is not so good of a customer journey. It's spontaneous, it might happen at odd times, and they might miss something important in the event. But if they know that they've got a specific session, they're going to have their very own coach, as well. It's at that specific time, then it's for me, in my experience, the results have been way more effective than just people hanging out in the back of the room, just generally chatting to people. The commitment of the client is not so strong as if, this is, here's the process, you come in, you sit down, you go through the process, and you can really get into the commitment of the client, where they're at now, where they want to be, where's the gap, and how solutions to filling that gap so that they can get to where they want to be. I think that just people standing in the back of the room, it's very hard to have an authentic, in-depth conversation with people.

I agree 100%. That's one of the common misperceptions. I think a little bit of education goes a long way for people because they have it like, oh, I'm just going to have people who are my fans, or my volunteers, or people who have done my programs, they're going to be the best ambassadors for the program. Let me just have them stand in the back and help out. There's just so many inefficiencies in that, or points that can be optimized when you have a professional team that is actively managing those conversations, like you still have the proper statistics, and proper timing, and proper agendas, and being able to handle people's concerns and answer their questions.

Absolutely. Everybody's following one process, one system. The clients are following one process, one system. The sales coaches are following one process, one system. That means that the event leader can follow one process, one system too and I think, didn't we even do an event where they had sales coaches just hanging around at the back of the room? I can't remember if that was with you or not. But we, it was, and we didn't, we had a process where we were sat and we were working with people in the system that we use. I think the retention after the event is affected as well by just having people hanging around in the back of the room, and people are all in the excitement of the moment, like, yeah, okay, and maybe don't take much work. But after the event, when all the doubts come in, if they haven't had a solid, meaningful conversation, they will get home and they will change their mind and they're gone and you've lost them. Fear sets in.

That's it right there. It's one thing to have somebody verbally from the scientific community to talk to you, it's one thing to have somebody from the program see it through, pay their balances, you know, and be there a year later as a happy customer.

And successful. I find that, and I'm sorry I'm pulling the curtain back here a little bit. But many event leaders, and no offense to anyone listening to this, if this is you, it's not your fault. If you haven't had a professional team doing this for you yet, maybe. But oftentimes we get, they get preliminary numbers, it's like, oh, we had 80% of people go to the back of the room, so that means 80% of people bought our $10K program or whatever, and now they're reporting a million dollars worth of sales based off of promises. But then a month later when they actually look at the cash in the bank, it's like, oh, it was like more like 10% of people actually bought. It's like the perception of it versus the reality of it. When you have a professional team in place, you're able to fill in the sandwich, fill in the cracks, like not lose out on that opportunity, and to reinforce those buying decisions beyond the event. Prevent the buyer's remorse, prevent people from backing out, do all the refunds, because I think you said they had a proper conversation.

Absolutely. I really believe that if you're offering high ticket things and the coaching process of that, that it's a very clear, organized process that all the sales coaches are following the same process, so that the client has an awesome experience. All the clients, because we know they'll all go and sit down for lunch, and they'll all talk about their coaching sessions, that they talk about these sessions positively, and that they've all had a similar, obviously, it's not going to be exactly the same, but they've had a similar process so that one person doesn't feel like that they've got more or less than another person. I've seen that happen quite a lot actually, and not even at live events, but just the sales process in general, somebody says, oh, yeah, my coach said that I could do this, or I got this discount or whatever. It hasn't been understood properly and then all of a sudden, you've got 10 unhappy clients asking for a refund. So it is important.

That's another really good point. All people, the whole team's trained the same standard so that everyone is one united voice. If there's a miscommunication, the mispromises that are being made to the customers, and then all of a sudden, you get complaints, and then people are backing up and that comes down to training. Not just having a bunch of volunteers in the back of the room, but proper education, proper training, proper reinforcements that comes with having a professional trainer, professional team. And Charlotte, that's also what you do. You are a trainer, you are a teacher of these concepts, of these principles, and you ensure that people know what to say, when to say it.

Exactly.

To get the appropriate outcome.

Totally. I mean, there's so much to having a conversation, any conversation, whether it's a sales conversation, whether it's a discussion, it doesn't matter. Discussions are sales conversations. You are trying to convince somebody of your opinion, the other person is trying to convince you of their opinion, they're trying to sell you their perception. That's what the sales conversation is. There's so much that goes into it. There's powerful words, there's words that are damaging, there's body language, there's tone of voice, there's little slight movements that people make that can give you clues as to what's really going on because the words, a lot of the time, are not what's really going on. It's not what we really want to get to either. So part of my training, again, this is where the psychotherapy and hypnotherapy really comes in, is being able to read those things and being able to get underneath all this surface level stuff that they come to the session with and get what's really stuck, what's really in their heart, what's really preventing them from moving forwards.

I like the extra add that with the hypnotherapy that you do. By the way, I'm a big fan of hypnotherapy, I became one in the last couple years with my own experiences around it. It's definitely a major value add to have a trainer that also can help use hypnotherapy to help remove those conscious blocks that hold people back, hold sales professionals back as well as participants or attendees. Charlotte, I'm curious to hear, what would you say are three of the common mistakes that you see that are made by event leaders when it comes to having a team in the back of the room and selling their high-ticket program? What are three of the most common mistakes that you've seen? And how do we avoid them?

Well, I think the major one you already pointed out is having people that aren't professionally trained in people and having conversations. Even if it's not in sales. A lot of the time they don't even have that and providing or seeing the value of having a sales team there, a professional sales team there rather than just people standing at the back of the room. Just that the conversion is not only that the conversions will be better by doing that, is that the clients will have a better journey, you'll have less people wanting refunds, and you'll collect more cash at the event. So I think another big mistake that event leaders make is if you are doing high ticket, having some kind of financing people there at the event. I know we're going off a little bit here but that's a major thing that I see. A financing company that can actually help bring some cash to the event. So you're collecting cash at the event and then the major thing that I see event leaders do is not creating the urgency for the high ticket sales. So not having some kind of special offer that's valid just for the event.

Or offering if people put down a certain amount at the event that they get this bonus or something like that. Usually, like they just come and say, yeah, here's my high ticket offer. This is what you're going to sell. But at the event it is great, because obviously you build the emotion, you build the momentum of it, which is great and people say yes, but if there's no urgency for them to put down some serious money, whilst they're there, I see that they leave the events having really high percentage of people saying yes, but very little money in the bank. Then it's, of course, we leave the event, and then it's very hard to get that money. So I think that that would be a major one for me.

A quick recap. Don't use volunteers, have a professional team, because you will collect more cash and get less refunds to have a financing person or people at the event who can bring cash to the event aka can help people get access to cash. And three, the common safety is not creating enough urgency around the high ticket program incentives to logical emotional reasons to buy right now and then having to try to chase people after the event, and then it's too late at that point.

Perfect recap.

Excellent. This has been short and sweet. I think you hit some really great points here that are helpful for our audience to tune into. If our audience would like to learn more about you and what you do, what would be the best way for them to learn about you?

You can visit my website, which is Charlottechalkley.com. I have a Facebook group for The Six Figure Life Coaches Academy and then from there, that's a free group, and then from there, for anybody that's interested in contacting me for more personal stuff, if they're ever interested in sales coaching or having a team, then you can contact me through there.

Okay, excellent. We'll be sure to include that in our show notes as well for our audience. Thank you for being a wonderful guest on today's show. I highly recommend it for our audience listening in. Check out Charlotte's work. She has a great academy. I've looked at it myself. She's really sleek, professional and Charlotte, you live in the Uk, or no, you're in Spain, but you're from the Uk. So you're in Europe. Some people in our audience may be like, oh, somebody from Europe. Okay, that's someone to connect with.

Yes, perfect. I have teams all over, actually, and sales coaches all over as well, and different speaking, different language speaking coaches, too.

Very cool. Well, thank you again, Charlotte, for being a wonderful guest on our show today and appreciate you. Thank you so much. We'll go ahead and we'll call it a wrap.

Thank you, Rudy. I really, really enjoyed this. I love discussing all this stuff. Thank you so much for inviting me.

It's been fun. Thank you.