In this episode of "The Real Truth About Business," host Michelle DeNio dives into 3 reasons sales are down in your business and the importance of active promotion for small business owners.

She emphasizes strategic planning, a proactive mindset, and overcoming the fear of being sales-focused.

Michelle highlights the value of establishing oneself as an expert to attract clients and cautions against jumping ship too quickly when promoting offers.

The key takeaway is that actively promoting and selling products or services is crucial for success. Patience, consistency, and confidence are key elements in achieving desired sales outcomes.

Tune in to this episode for practical tips and insights on effective promotion strategies.

Key Points:

- Active promotion for small business owners

- Strategic planning and proactive mindset

- Overcoming fear of being sales-focused

- Not jumping ship too quickly when promoting offers

- Establishing oneself as an expert to attract clients

Mentioned in this episode:

Coffee Club

Workshop

All right, I hope you're ready for a little tough love episode. I always get my best feedback on these. And if you ever have feedback or you want to leave a review, by the way, I'd be happy if you did that. Please, please, please leave a review and share it with me. And maybe I'll even give you a little prize or something. Anyway. All right. Three reasons you're not getting sales.

which by the way, if you hear a lot in the background, it's absolutely freaking pouring here, which is so good. We have not had hardly any rain in the state of Florida or at least where we are. I know the other parts of the country in Florida are getting rain, but where we live, it has been hot, and we are like in a severe drought. So the fact that it's pouring out right now is making me so happy. And anyway, all right, I digress, but again, we're humans.

And I also just always like to connect with you personally. I feel like I'm having a conversation with you when I get on these calls or on these podcasts. And so anyway, that's why I shared that with you. So three reasons you are not getting sales, right? Let's talk about this because I know there's a lot of conversation, there's a lot of noise in the online space right now. Sales are down, sales are down, sales are down. I'm having this conversation all the time. Michelle, I need to bring in sales, myself included. So this is a little pep talk, a little kick in the ass for me as well.

But again, there's three reasons I am seeing why you're not getting sales. All right, so let's dive in. Number one, because you're not selling anything. Hello. If you're not telling people and promoting your offers and being and actually selling, then you can't get sales. Okay? Build it and they will come. Hang in out.

waiting for people to come your way, hoping people ask you this whole attraction marketing. All this is just, it works when you do it. But if you're not selling and you're not saying, I have three spots available, I'm hosting this workshop, get on the wait list, DM me for more information, right? Like if you are not selling your offers, talking about them all the time, sharing them with people.

I mean, putting them up in front of people, having conversations, following up, sending emails, right? Like if you are not selling, people can't do business with you. I see this all the time. We talked about like people that you create these offers, you create these offers is like, oh, I didn't sell any. Well, when's the last time you shared it with somebody? I have this conversation all the time, multiple times. Well, when's the last time you told anybody about this offer?

How many times have you actually sold it? Have you shared it with anybody? Well, no, I mean, I kind of mentioned it. I mean, I mentioned it here and there. No, don't mention it here and there. Don't talk quietly about it. Be specific. Sell. I have two spots available. Or, hey, Michelle, the last time we spoke, you mentioned that you might be interested in this upcoming workshop I have. The wait list is open. Wanted to let you know. Are you interested? Ask.

Get out there and sell. Don't just put it on your website and hope people are gonna land on it and put it in, you're spending all this time making sure your landing pages are pretty and that you've got this link and you're buying domains and you're doing all these things. Well, guess what? If you don't sell the damn thing, nobody's gonna buy it. And if nobody can buy it, then you're not getting sales, you're not making any money, right? So if you are not looking and getting sales, I want you to look at when's the last time you actually sold somebody. When is the last time you actually told people that you have an offer?

Right? When's the last time you sold yourself, your offer, any of it? Think about that. If you're not selling, people can't buy and then sales are down and then you get discouraged. Right? And don't tell me you don't want to be salesy. Here's the thing. I got to tell you a little story about selling. Okay. About selling too much or feeling salesy.

I feel like I have been talking about this one-to-one profit accelerator workshop for months. Months, okay? Because I've been talking about it. I'm like, I should teach a workshop on that. Oh, I think I'm going to do that. Oh, I'm getting ready to teach a workshop, right? I've been talking about it on the podcast. I have obviously ads in front of the podcast right now. I've been talking about it on social. I've been going live, whatever. I hopped on the Hunter Coffee Chess Club last week.

and we were just talking about things that we were promoting. What are we celebrating? Right? So we were talking, that was the question for the 100 Coffee Chats for the week was like, what are you celebrating? And so I was in one of the rooms and I said, I'm celebrating the fact that the wait list is open for my upcoming workshop. Now, both of these people that I was in this room with, I've met before, they follow me on social media, they listen to my podcast. Both of them said, what workshop? What workshop?

And I was like, the workshop where I'm teaching about the rapid fire, you know how I offer rapid fire, blah, and I started telling them, they're like, how come I haven't seen this? How come I don't know anything about it? I don't know, I don't know, I feel like I'm selling the crap out of it. But I'm not, right? So use that as proof and use that as your validation that you can never sell too much because.

There's algorithms at play, there's busyness at play, there's people lives at play, there's distractions at play, there's all these things that come into play. And you can't just assume that people are seeing your stuff, right? And it's okay to reach out to somebody personally and say, hey, you wanted me to let you know when I did this, okay? Or, hey, here's why I think this might be a great fit for you, okay? You have to sell.

You have to sell. Go look at all these people you follow. So, because I guarantee if you're not getting sales right now, you're following people who are shouting from the rooftops all their sales. And you're wondering why, what they're doing differently. I want you to go and look at what they're doing differently. I want you to go and look at how many calls are they having? How many times do they post a day? Some of these people, you see their content all the time because they're posting two, three times a day. So, attraction marketing works when you're constantly posting.

I saw a post from, I think her name is Penny Sue. I want to give her credit. She posted the other day about this, about this topic of selling. And she even said, you should always be selling something. Promote your low ticket item in the morning and promote your high ticket item in the evening. Promote your low ticket item on Monday and Thursday, promote your high ticket item on Tuesday and Wednesday. You need to be promoting. You cannot promote and share something once a week and think that's enough. It's sorry.

Sorry, not sorry. It's not enough. If you are not getting the sales that you are looking for, get out and sell. Sell. Stop being afraid of that word. Stop feeling icky about that word. Get out there and share what you have to do. Like both those women that were in that room with me in the coffee club were like, oh my God, this sounds amazing. And they both jumped on the wait list that minute. Okay? So if I hadn't mentioned it, I'm doing them a disservice because

They are both wanting to learn how to implement this type of offer into their program and I'm sitting here just assuming people know about it when they don't. All the while, they're going to miss out. People are missing out because you're not selling to them. You don't want people missing out. Stop feeling bad about sales. Get out there and sell. That's just number one. That's a little kick in the ass number one. Number two, reason why.

you are not getting the sales right now, is you're jumping ship too quickly. And this comes back to not selling enough, right? If you put an offer out there once a week and you don't get anybody to take it and then you're like, well, it didn't work. Nope, it didn't work. I'm gonna move on to something else. I'm implementing a new idea. I got this new idea. I think I'm gonna run this. I think I'm gonna run this workshop. I think I wanna do this. I think I wanna run this masterclass. I think I'm gonna try this offer.

I think I'm gonna offer a rapid fire day. I think I'm gonna do this. I think I'm gonna do that, right? No, you can't keep jumping ship. You're jumping ship too quickly. First of all, if you're not selling the damn thing, how do you know it didn't work, right? And people, unless you have literally been selling the crap out of it, and until you have data that supports it, because you know everything I do revolves around data, like it or not, unless you have data that supports it.

you are probably jumping ship too quickly. So unless you can say to me, Michelle, I've had 100 calls and I've gotten 100 nos and everybody has told me that this is not a good fit for them, or this is what they don't like, or this is why it's not a good fit, right? Then okay, fine. But if you've promoted something for one month and then you jump ship, you jump ship too quickly. It takes people seven to 12. You've heard these numbers before. This is not new.

This is just the reality. Again, the real truth about business. It takes people time. It takes people time to buy. And if you aren't giving them time and you're jumping ship, what happens if somebody was on exposure six and they were ready to buy an exposure seven, right? Because it takes seven to 12 exposures to something. And all of a sudden you jump ship. Well, that person that's ready to buy now an exposure seven is gonna go with the person that's promoting their offer and they see it.

But if you jump ship, they're gonna be like, oh, shoot, I must've missed it. I must've missed it, right? You have to give things time. 60 days minimum, 90 days preferably, before you reevaluate and say, this is not working. All right? I talked about this, I think, I don't know when I talked about this, but if you, with even the coffee club, right? So for a while there, it's not been converting that well. A, it's summer.

So again, looking at data, I could jump ship and do all these things. B, I wanna look at the data. So there's a couple things that are telling me about why it's not converting. One is 100% the timing, all right? But number two is I'm jumping ship because as I mentioned in that episode about my revenue being down, it's time to jump ship. Like I promoted it for a while, it's tanking my income, I need revenue to be increased, right? And so I'm still gonna talk about it.

but it can't be my be all end all because I've got a, you know, the data supporting that like, A, it doesn't convert as well as I would hope. There's a reason for that, I'm working on it. And B, I need revenue increase, right? So it's time for me to jump ship because I wanted to do this workshop. I'm getting ready to talk about this planning. It's just time of year, right? But I've been promoting that since February. So we're now at time of recording in the middle of August, end of August.

So you're talking, you know, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, six months before I jump ship. All right. So again, you're jumping ship too quickly. You cannot promote something once and then tell me it doesn't work and then decide to jump ship. All right. You've got to give things time. You've got to give things time. Most of the time we get impatient. If you don't feel like I heard this on a podcast years ago,

But if you don't feel like things are moving fast enough, then good job, you're in the right place. Because things never move as fast as we want them to. As entrepreneurs, we decide like, yep, this was a great idea, I know you need it. And because I know you need it, you should be willing to buy right now. But think about your own buying habits, right? Like how many, I know, I know there's people listening to this episode right now, and I'm talking to you in your earbuds.

How many times have you followed somebody and you've had to see them post about a workshop multiple times before you buy it? Or you've got to see eight million social credibility, you know, social credits and testimonials before you buy. How many of you are following somebody right now? Maybe you're even following me, you're wondering about this workshop, but you're like, I don't know, it's first time, I don't know if I really want to do it. So you're gonna wait, you're gonna wait, I'm gonna run the workshop, and then you're gonna see all the results.

and then I'm gonna run it again, and then maybe next time you'll sign up, right? Like, just admit it, we've all been there, we've all done that, our own buying habits, right? Your clients, ideally, a lot of them have very similar buying habits to you. So, don't jump ship so quickly. Again, this is why I say you need to have a plan. We put in 60 day plans, right? Because it takes 60 days to have accurate amount of data to know whether or not you should jump ship.

Sometimes 90, 120 days is too long. But if you don't have enough data after 60 days, then you stick with it. But if you have enough data after 60 days that truly says this is not working, then you jump ship. But most of you are jumping ship every other freaking week. Every other week you're changing up, you're doing something different, you're changing the way you're promoting, you're talking to different people, you got a new strategy for visibility, you're promoting a different offer. It's confusing, all right? Which leads me to point number three, you're not seen as an expert.

I have been there, done that. I've been in this position. I have been in the position where I'm posting content that's inspirational, that is happy, and people think, Michelle, I love your content, but I have no idea what you do. I've heard that before. I've heard it multiple times, even now, five years in. I get that question all the time. Well, Michelle, I know I followed you for a long time, but like, what exactly is it that you do, right? So if you are not seen as an expert, people can't buy from you.

People can't buy. And so this is where it may require help. You may need some brand messaging. You may need somebody. You may need to do some market research. You may need to get more clear on the transformation you provide. You may need to get more clear into the pain points. You may need to dive deeper into the emotional pain points. I hate that word pain points, but again, we understand it's what sells. But also, why are you the expert, right?

I want you to ask if you're wondering that, maybe you don't know how to share yourself as an expert. Go back to all your clients and say, why did you hire me? What was the best part about working with me? What do you consider me an expert in? Go back and use the words of the people that have hired you, that believe in you, that see you as an expert. And then ask them. Ask them, why? What do I do? What am I an expert in? It's okay to ask.

Sorry, I had to take a drink. If you're not seen as an expert, and again, this gets to where when you're jumping ship too quickly, your messaging gets all over the place. One minute you're promoting this, the next minute you're promoting that, the next minute you're promoting this, the next minute you're promoting that. Nobody can see you as an expert for who you are. And so when nobody can see you as an expert, they might really like you, but they don't know how to work with you. They have no idea how to work with you because one, you're probably still not telling them.

right? You're posting all this content and it's all really great and it's fun and it's happy and people love it. You're getting all this engagement but you're never selling to them. And then the second you do try to sell to them and they don't buy immediately, you jump ship. And so then you're promoting something different. And so people are just confused. A confused audience doesn't buy. So get really clear, right? Talk about one thing. One thing. I mean, obviously,

you can, there's more than one offer. Maybe you have an email list. I'm not saying you can only promote one thing at a time. Like you can promote your email list. I can promote coffee club and this workshop that I'm getting ready to do because they don't really go together. Right? Like it's okay. And again, not everybody sees everything all the time. So, but if you're not seen as an expert, people can't buy. A confused audience doesn't buy and they're going to go with a person that's promoting themselves as an expert. And again, this is like, share your testimonials.

share, tell people, own your expertise for God's sakes, own it, own it. I am an expert at helping you grow your business point blank. If you're looking for a customized strategy to get you from where you are now to where you want to go and you need somebody that can help you understand the data that your business is that right? Like I know what I'm an expert at. I know I'm an expert at implementing this one-to-one unlimited support model.

I know I'm an expert at teaching relationship marketing and building and how to create a network in a community. Own your expertise. You don't need 8,000 testimonials to be an expert. You don't need to have to compare yourself to everybody else. You get to be your own expert in whatever you are. There is something that you are an expert at. Whatever that is, own it and talk about it. Talk about it and let people know.

Here's what I am an expert at. That's one of the things I love this prompt when we do this in the Hunter Coffee Chats Club. We do this, we'll say like, I want you to go around and I want you to introduce yourself by telling everybody what you're an expert at. Because it completely changes how you introduce yourself. One thing is, I can help you grow your business and I can help you increase profits. No, I am an expert at helping you scale your business and increasing your profits and decreasing your time.

Wow, okay, tell me more, right? The confidence in yourself, like if you are not confident in yourself as an expert, your audience isn't gonna be confident either, right? So know that you are an expert and start owning it, start talking about it, start sharing about it. Say, when people say, so tell me about you, Michelle, use that, use what I just said, like we did in the coffee club.

Instead of when you get on a coffee chat or you're talking about, hi, I'm Michelle. I help blah, blah. Say, I'm an expert at this. Own it, own it. Because at least then people are like, well, let me learn more, right? Draw people into you. Okay. So I'm telling you, if you're not getting sales, you need to do a little deep reflection, right? Stop blaming the outside forces.

Stop blaming and putting all of the blame on the external factors around you and start looking internally. Okay. And again, I'm giving myself this pep talk too. It's easy for me to say sales are down, the economy sucks, da da, we're in a recession, blah, this change, yada yada. There's all these, we can always, always find some type of external reason why things aren't going well. But it takes a really, really big move.

to sit and reflect internally and really take that internal reflection, all right? Really sit with it. When is the last time I sold my offer? Go back through. When is, am I jumping ship all the time? Am I constantly creating something new? And ask yourself, when's the last time I told people what I'm an expert at? Does my audience know what I'm an expert at? Are people telling me they have no idea what I do? Well, think about it.

and then put a plan in place, right? So take action. Number one, if you aren't selling, start selling. That's pretty simple, right? Like go sell somebody, go follow up, go put your offer in front of, you know, every single day for the next 10 days. I don't care if people get annoyed. Guess what? If they get annoyed, they weren't your client anyways. They were never going to buy in the first place. Right? You don't have to be pushy. You don't have to be a jackass about it, but you can nicely start selling.

You can start selling. We are business owners. We are not in this as hobbies, right? Go be a business owner and sell your damn offer. Take action. Number two, stop jumping ship. Commit, commit, commit to at least 60 days before you jump ship. If you have one offer, figure out, put a plan in place, okay? For the next 60 days from whatever day you're listening to this episode, 60 days,

and say, I am going to promote this offer. Maybe it's a freebie to build your list. So maybe you're gonna promote your email list and then you're gonna promote one offer. One offer for 60 days and you're gonna sell it every single day. And then at the end of that 60 days, you're gonna have a lot of data to support whether or not you should continue doing what you're doing or jump ship. If it's time to jump ship, jump ship. But if not, until you look at the data, all right?

Not until you look and see, why didn't this sell? How often did I promote it? What responses did I get? Anytime somebody gives you a no, use it. Use it as a, okay, use it in your marketing. Hey, this person, you know, use that. It's all data. It's all data telling you exactly what you need to do to change and grow your business. It's all there, all right? And then number three, not seen as an expert. Start introducing yourself. I wanna challenge all of you to start introducing yourself as,

I'm Michelle, I'm an expert. I'm an expert at helping small business owners grow and scale their business without adding, while freeing up their time and increasing their profits. Come up with it and stand in your confidence. If you've got to stand in the mirror, if you've got to practice, go find a buddy, call me, DM me, call me, call me. Anyway, DM me and practice your expert pitch. You know what I mean? Say it.

Practice your expert pitch. Show up to the 100 Coffee Chance Club and say, hey Michelle, can we do expert pitches this time? Remind me, I'll do it. We can do that one anytime. People love it. I love doing that one, all right? But making sure you're getting seen as an expert. Making sure you're truly sharing the transformation you provide. Making sure you're sharing your testimonials. Tooting your own horn, okay? Be confident, start doing that, all right? And I promise you, if you start doing all three of those things, sales will start coming in.

And if they don't, then there's a way deeper issue. But honestly, most people don't have that deeper issue. But take some time, be reflective of it. Do the deep work and understand that yes, there's always gonna be, because the reality is there's always gonna be external factors.

There's always going to be something going on in the economy. There's always going to be something going on with the new algorithm. There's always going to be reason why people are busy. Life is busy. There's always going to be all of these things. All right. So you can't keep using them as an excuse forever, right? Do the deep inner work. That's really why you're not getting sales. Okay. I love you. You've got this. Go sell, go sell yourself. All right. I believe in you.

You can do this. I'll talk to you later.