In this episode: how switching up your space and creating a solid sales routine, surrounded by places and things you enjoy, can actually improve your sales strategy and mindset.

Alyssa Moorhead runs an 11-year-old DFY Lead Generation Agency for bold, unicorn category-of-one business owners. She helps women generate new leads through IG Stories and IG DMs to make ethical sales to dream clients for service-based agencies and high-level mentors. Alyssa shares the steps she took when scaling her business, including creating a “hiring wish list” to determine where she needed the most support, and how to structure her business to make that happen. Alyssa and Teresa also talk about how to navigate Instagram to find warm and hot leads, email marketing, whether using automation makes sense for your business, and the ins and outs of sales content.

If you are someone who is dreading the sales side of your business or struggling to turn your Instagram stories and DMs into consistent client conversations, then this episode is for you.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Build yourself a “hiring wish list” for all of the roles you need the most support in as you are scaling your business.
• Build a morning routine and a sales morning routine - this allows you to create time for yourself, while also budgeting in a daily time to stay on top of your leads and more urgent tasks for your business.
• Take time to look at who is viewing your Instagram stories - there could be a lot of hidden leads there.
• Using an automation may not make sense for every business model.
• Sales is a practice - you have to be practicing on an ongoing basis.

Letting go of the “shoulds” changed my life. - Alyssa Moorhead

Connect with Alyssa:

• Website: https://alyssamoorhead.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alyssalmoorhead/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alyssa-moorhead/
• Sassy Sales Tips Email List: https://alyssamoorhead.myflodesk.com/emailsignup

Connect with Teresa

• Join the Becoming Obsessed Playground, the weekly email for curiosity-led women building a life they love.
• Instagram: @becomingobsessedpod and @teresaajean
• Leave a review on Apple or Spotify Podcasts. Reviews are the biggest thank-you, and reviews help ambitious women find the show.
• Website: teresaajean.com

topics: sales content, ethical sales, lead generation, Instagram marketing, sales strategies, women entrepreneurs, morning sales routine, marketing versus sales, client relationships, social media sales, sales coaching, DM sales, audience engagement, sales conversion, sales process, content creation for sales, personal branding, small business marketing, building a life you love, business that supports you

Mentioned in this episode:

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The goal of sales content in relation to my sales ethos as selling is helping is to not gatekeep the information people need to make an ethical decision about working with you.

Marketing is putting out information content to lots of people so it's one to many versus Sales for us is one on one.

The point for me of marketing at this point in my career, put as much information out to the people that need it as we possibly can because it makes our sales process so much more efficient.

Welcome to Becoming Obsessed where curiosity leads you to a life you love.

I'm Teresa Stasney and after over a decade of traveling the world, working with small business owners and creating a couple businesses of my own, I know a thing or two about playing by your own rules.

It's not always easy and it's often messy.

It can be hard, especially especially if you're doing it alone.

I've seen way too many incredible women shoot for the stars only to burn out along the way.

Or worse, live on default and never chase their dreams.

We're done with all of that.

Together we're gonna challenge what keeps us stuck and figure out what it takes to live a life we truly love.

Today we are becoming obsessed with getting over our fear of selling and building little small ways to sell into our daily and morning routines so that it doesn't feel as heavy or as hard.

I know in my own life when I got better at selling or really just the way I think about it is helping somebody make a decision.

It helped me in my businesses to actually bring in more money and feel less of that pressure.

And today's guest is the perfect person to help us do that.

I'm so excited to welcome Alyssa to Becoming Obsessed.

Alyssa moorhead runs an 11 year old done for you lead generation agency for Bold Unicorn category of one business owners.

She helps women get new leads through Instagram stories and DMs to make ethical sales with dream clients for service based industries and high level mentors.

Alyssa's moving to Denver on May 1 and loves the mountains, EDM, cats, dogs and flopping in the park.

And she has a brand new podcast coming out or might have just came out when we're recording this called DM Sales Gal where she is going to help bring what she does to her clients to the masses so that you can do it too.

Alyssa.

Welcome to Becoming Obsessed.

Thank you.

I'm so excited.

I feel honored to be on this pod.

I've been so excited to do this with you so I can't wait to chat about sales and building a morning sales routine, especially because it's about to be spring and summer.

And if you didn't get this yet from Teresa's introduction, I love outdoors, so I'm excited to be able to be outside more and make more sales and help more people.

Yes.

So tell me you love the outdoors.

You're our sales gal.

You help us do more sales.

You're working with one of my good friends to help bring leads into her company.

So I've kind of seen behind the scenes.

Before we get into all of that, just tell me how you got here.

How has your journey been to build a company and build a life that you really love?

It has been a wild journey like most people's.

I'll back up for a second.

I was raised by a family of entrepreneurs.

We were taught that we could do anything and everything if you were willing to work for it.

So, I mean, we were doing like lemonade stands when I was four and my brother was eight, and like, I would do all the work and he would take all the money.

Sounds a lot like being an employee.

But I come from a family of entrepreneurs.

Dad, brother, cousins, et cetera, et cetera.

And I went to NYU in New York City.

I had a marketing major, creative writing minor.

And I kind of thought that, like, those things would get me a job, but really just name dropping NYU is what got me a job.

So I had a job job for like a year and a half until I decided that, I mean, I needed to make way more money to live in New York.

And entry level jobs were so low.

It was absolutely nothing.

It was not gonna work.

And like, how hard I was working for how little I was making was just not cutting it.

Really, everything that I've done has led to the point that your whole business adds up to how much sales you make or not.

It's every single decision.

So I went all around the world of sales from being a marketing freelancer and doing lots of Instagram content and helping other people's with theirs.

2016, That's what we were all doing, a lot of us.

I went from marketing freelancing to pretty quickly growing a marketing agency, then sales coaching.

When I realized that a lot of the people paying for marketing actually want sales, but didn't know how or have time to actually close the sales from those efforts.

So then sales coach, then fractional chief sales officer and then lead gen agency.

The whole overview of the last 16 years is that I've realized that every part of your business adds up to sales.

Everybody for the most part, usually most of the time, wants to make more sales, wants to help more clients.

But once people know they don't have to do it all themselves, they either don't want to or can't, or don't have the skill set to manage sales on a daily basis, which is what it takes for me.

Our highest revenue month that we're inching close to and pass would be about $25,000 for the month.

And I tell people we have content on this too.

Like you don't run the same business at 25k months that you do at 10k months.

And there's so much sales planning and infrastructure and delegating activities and delegating sales activities specifically that goes into it.

And most of the time I've found that people even who are really good at sales don't want to do it all themselves forever and either want support with it to be doing it together, or eventually want to offload it.

So most of the people that I know would rather do client work than get new clients.

I'm like the stray who.

I'm the anomaly where getting new clients is my favorite part.

But I was smart enough to make getting new clients my job for my clients, which happened really well.

So now I get to sell for myself and sell for them, and my entire career basically is getting new clients.

Even though getting new clients is my client work.

I love that so much because it is.

It's like, okay, what do you love to do?

Great.

Now how do you make money doing that?

And that's exactly what we did.

Yeah, over a long trajectory.

It took a long time to be able to build that up enough to do it.

There was a long time and even right now, and I'll go into this in a minute too, but there was a long time where like all I ever wanted to do was sell.

But there's all these other pieces of the company and I find people run into the issue and you have to get really, really smart about hiring where like, I know I want to offload all of these different things, but you have to like, make the money and be able to plan for those hires, plan for the investment for those hires, hire for people and be able to like train and onboard them before they'll become lucrative and or time saving lucrat piece of your business.

So I have only wanted to do sales, even for the last few months, and we've been massively scaling and I can't do it as much as I want to.

But to get to the point that I can, I mean, we have steadily hired up to like, going on our 10th person.

So it's been a shitload of work to get back to the point where I can do more of what I love.

And it does, like, affect my mental health and my mood and how I feel about the company because, like, last month, the company really pissed me off.

I feel like I am working for myself in the sense that I'm working under me.

Like, responsible me tells me everything I have to do and then I have to go do it even though I don't want to.

So being able to like, plan for the hires that you need and invest in them even before you immediately need them is what is allowing me to get back to this month.

Like, way more of what I want to do, which is selling.

But it's been a journey.

Scaling up is its own journey every day.

I really want to know if you're, like, open to sharing.

Talk me through the tangibles of how you decided who to hire, how you found the right fit for some of those first hires.

I know you said, like, you've been growing the team and so you had to be like, okay, Alyssa, like, we have to go do the stuff we don't want to do, but it's going to help me get to where I want to do and do the work I want to do again.

Yeah.

Mean, those are like, what do we even call that?

Like, delayed gratification.

I've been so disciplined in Q1, and I really want to just let myself off the hook.

Can I just say I'm so proud of you because that is hard to do for a whole quarter.

Like, oh my God.

Very proud.

Thank you.

Yeah, it was exhausting.

So the hires, really, I talk about this sometimes with clients internally.

For me, what's starts with hiring is what is your investment and who do you need most to fit into those, like, pockets of the investment, knowing that for us, like, month by month, the income is going to scale.

But I have been like a fastidious hard ass about our margins and I'm proud of myself for it.

But it's hard because, like, I want to hire our creative director back.

It's like, I can hire you when we have two more clients.

Not because I can't afford it, because I want to be fastidious about my margins and I want my take home owner's pay to be A, B and C for each given month.

So in terms of like hiring structure, I made a plan first.

The last three to six months of last year, I had every person I was going to hire almost by name, in like what order I was going to hire them and how much they were going to cost, approximately, which is like a hiring wish list.

But it's so valuable, like what these conversations.

And also it's a boatload of work to put them on.

And like you're doing interviews every couple days, every day, like just to keep up with how many people want to be on.

But investment structure, so kind of sort of traditional.

This year we really like grew the team substantially.

And last year I kind of took a mental health break for Q1 and a lot of like end of December and January, there was a lot of stuff that happened in the business in Q4, a lot of legal stuff.

It was not fun.

It was the hardest thing that I've gone through in 11 years.

And I won't go into it too far right now, but it was a lot.

So that happened.

And then really like mid January, early February, we started scaling back when I was ready.

So operations manager.

First I had my creative director come back.

Then I had my booking keeping slash, CFO slash CPA come back.

Then I grew our sales team and then I added my podcast manager.

We also had ads in the middle of that.

So really like operations is my least favorite things.

But as a side note, on sales, which we're going to talk about, you have to have like sales operations, which sucks.

I'll tell everybody till I'm like blue in the face that lead tracking and lead report hoarding is essential.

And also doing it manually once you're at like scaling size is just awful.

If you're doing it manually for my business and my clients, like nobody has less than a hundred to thousands of leads.

If you're updating like the date last contacted the notes per conversation.

If the conversation switches between Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, if you're talking to Samantha and you need to pull in her co founder and switch to email, like it just gets to be a massive wild animal that you're trying to tame.

So that's why we hired operations first.

I mean she, Annie helps with all of our Operations, including some sales operations.

I hired an order of what we needed the soonest, which was ops first, then a massive bookkeeping cleanup.

I couldn't say whether I hate bookkeeping or operations more.

I loathe both of them.

Please.

No.

None of them.

Please.

Please, no.

I don't know.

If we had to rank like operations, bookkeeping, and podcast editing, it'd be like, they're all such a level of hatred.

But, yeah, that's how we scaled.

And, like, I thought it was cute for a little while Q1 that we were at like 10 clients and 10 team members because it, like, matched.

I thought that was really fun.

And now we're gonna go past that, but here we are.

So then what does it look like for your sales process and kind of getting into this morning sales routine as well?

I'll go back to, like, morning routine.

There's, like, a lot of things that female entrepreneurs do that, I'm sorry, striving to continually make time for as well.

So, like, in the mornings, you might do movement and journaling.

Maybe you read, maybe you listen to podcasts, stretching, yoga, all sorts of things.

So for me, I do all of those things first, like a traditional morning routine, and then I have like a sales routine on top of it, and I'll list out, like, specifically the things that I do.

So the first thing that I do is look through, like, DM responses.

So we have emails and DMS across Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, et cetera, et cetera.

So I'll look at replies first and match it to our lead tracker, which is in ClickUp.

So that's what I'm looking at first is usually the hottest leads that either need a DM reply or email reply, or I need to, like, follow back up with them and, like, answer question that they've asked.

So that's first.

Then after that, I'll go through the lead tracker and usually identify, like, 10 people that I want to get back to, even if there isn't a response.

So Sabina might be like, hey, we're traveling for two weeks, but could you come message me on April 6th and I'll check back in at that date and, like, help them out in that way.

Usually identify about 10 people that I need to, like, follow up with or want to follow up with.

Then I look at my Instagram stories viewers, which nobody does, which is like, so much sales that you're missing.

There's no way for me to even over dramatize it.

But I look at my stories viewers, and I look at all the People that have viewed the first story, because that's everybody.

And then I look at everybody that viewed the last story, because those are usually the people that are the hottest.

And Teresa is nodding.

Do you do this, too?

I am a huge fan of selling in your stories and using your stories very strategically.

And that is something that I've really leaned into learning.

But it's interesting because what I have done is I will tease something in my personal stories, and it is just people I know.

If somebody is like, help me, that is where I'm like, okay, I've got you.

We're gonna figure out exactly what you need.

And that's my sales process is let me find what problem we should solve and then help find the solution, whether it's me or somebody else.

Like, we're gonna figure it out, But I don't wanna sell to people I know.

I don't want their money.

But it is if they see your stories, that's the algorithm side.

If somebody sees your stories, it's because they're the person who is engaging with your account the most.

And somebody's not gonna see your story unless they've seen your other content engaged with it.

And then once they have seen it and they're actually watching it, then it gets fed to more and more people that maybe don't engage with your account a lot.

So I hear you, Alyssa.

I'm like, yep, that's great.

That's.

I totally agree.

Yeah.

That's such a common problem that people have with stories sometimes.

If it's something they want to change, is that everybody in there is people that they already know.

Like my sorority sisters from college, I'm like, girl, you.

We.

You don't need to buy anything from me, okay?

I have people from middle school watching that have, like, nine to five jobs.

And I'm like, I'm glad you still like me enough.

I have no idea why you watch these, but, like, have added.

But, yeah, that's a super common problem for Instagram Stories is, like, everybody in there, for whatever reason, is not a client.

And the best way I've seen to combat that is, number one, like every other platform besides Instagram, you can send people to your Instagram from all of those.

So I have people that come in from paid networking groups that I'm in, Facebook, LinkedIn, emails, podcasts, collaborations, Instagram stories, collabs with other people, ads, all sorts of places.

But on Instagram also, the reels really bring in a lot to your content.

And then they'll look at Instagram stories first.

And then the other thing is just DMing people, like finding people on threads that you start new messages with with, or people on Instagram that you start new messages with.

Then you get to like the other side of the rainbow, so to speak, where you've DM so many people for the last 11 years that you have a thousand messages in your inbox plus.

And people are like, wow, that sounds awesome.

I'm like, careful what you wish for.

It's a whole other thing that then requires you to hire a sales team in order to keep up with them or have people waiting forever.

Okay, I want to actually jump back into this because as you're talking, Alyssa, I was not prepared for you to ask me about my story stories.

And as I was answering that, I realized that I probably have this bias that I'm actually like, if I don't know the name on the account, I'm like breezing over it.

I'm not like, oh, who is this?

And so as I see who's on my stories and I really usually look when I am like pitchings, like I have this new like 30 days of little rebellion where it's like a 30 day email sequence where it's just like we're tuning back into ourselves.

I've been soft pitching that, like kind of talking about it, getting some people on the kind of beta of it.

And that's when I look at my stories and again, I see these people and these account names that I know who they are, but I actually am not even looking at the ones I don't know and digging in to see who they are.

And so hot tip for anyone who feels like me.

And you're like, oh, I know all these people.

Do you?

Or are you not looking at the people you don't know?

Because you're like, I don't know who that is.

Most people are looking, oh my God, we talked my client through this.

It was like a two day endeavor for her to figure out how to get to another panel of Instagram to see the viewers.

If you've opened your Instagram stories, what you're going to see is nearly useless information.

Information that's occasionally useful, which is you're going to see your stats.

And I'll say this across the board for posts, for reels, for stories, for lives, for threads, whatever.

If you look at your stats, I'm gonna see like, oh, I'll use me.

Alyssa got.

And I don't get like a shitload of stories views even as our account grows.

And I don't care.

What I do get is people that watch my stories, that pay me.

That's the point.

That's why I'm in there.

And I believe something I think you said, like in this podcast or right before too, I believe, like, my ethos for sales is selling is helping.

So, like, we're there for people that are like, you know, Rachel, one of our clients, DM me.

Like, I'm interested in the lead gen.

I think I'm ready.

That's like a straight inquiry.

Like, she wants the details and I can give her the details.

We're also there for people that, like, need the door held open, that have never considered this before, that I can put out enough content for the rest of my life, and I will.

But people are still going to need to talk to a human being, especially for sales.

Like, it's, it's personal, it's human to human.

If you've done it all yourself forever, you know, you want to trust and talk to the person that you're going to work with.

But I say that to say that most people, when they're looking at their stories, their reels, their posts are showing what Instagram shows you, which I think was really, like, made for influencers.

Like, did I get 10,000 reels views or did I get 11,000 and 200?

Who cares?

But you would care if you had a podcast sponsorship, if you had a clothing partnership and you're an influencer.

It does matter because you're getting paid based on those numbers.

But I'm not.

I'm not getting paid on if my reel gets 250 views or 500 views or 6 likes or 15 likes, like, nobody cares.

But what Instagram stories and posts and reels show you when you first look is your stats.

So to bring it back to Instagram stories, you're going to see how many people viewed.

You're going to see how many people made it halfway through.

You're going to see how many people liked your poll or your emoji slider or whatever.

You're gonna see stats, but really none of those stats don't matter if you don't go qualify who those people are and consider what humans are a good fit, not just how many numbers.

Watch your stories and like, look, if you start making Instagram stories like I do on a daily basis, talking about all sorts of things I usually do, like probably five to six plus days a week, it's just ingrained in me.

And I'll go back to, to the, like, sales routine in just a second because that's part of it.

But if you start making them on an ongoing basis for like John, for my client example who his stories viewers were all really high net worth super cool entrepreneurs.

They have like a squiggly brain membership, like super cool people.

There's another one that has like an ADHD membership.

Those are the people looking at his stories.

They're awesome, but he already knew all of them.

They'd either had him speak in their thing or they'd been a client or they'd been a client but were paused or they're on his team.

Like nobody in there was an ideal client because he wasn't doing them regularly and wasn't pulling people in from other places.

So if you want to look at your story stats, like, yeah, look at how many people it goes up.

Look at how many new followers versus current followers you have, which is what Teresa needs.

But mostly I try to pull people to looking at their viewers and I look at those people, like people who walked into a room that might be interested in how I can help them.

I pay special attention to my hot leads that are in my Instagram stories.

So like the 7s names that we have that are all potential incoming clients.

Samantha, Sabina, Sasha, Sean, etc.

All of our S names that are potential clients, I'd say like 80% of them are watching my stories.

They like want to make sure that I'm like cool to help them.

They just like want to keep going and get the little tidbits of what we're going to do.

So I look at the people that are hottest leads that we have tracked.

I also look at people that we haven't qualified as a lead yet.

But like she keeps coming around.

Christiana like be around every couple weeks or so.

And I know from our conversation that this person is planning for when they're ready to like get started with me.

And I know that because I have a convo because I've talked to the people that were once new followers.

So your hottest leads would be first, number two people that keep coming around that might be warm, might be cold, maybe you don't know them.

And then number three is one more camp would be your new followers.

And I'll go ask people what Teresa might have asked me at some point which is like, how did you find me?

Because I want to know, like if you know Katie that we have in common.

I wanted to know that and how you guys know each other and how you came to me.

But.

But yeah, that's where we do the highest volume of sales for 11 years, which isn't necessarily to say that, like, it's where the top sale that I've ever had has come from.

But that was just a fluke.

And it's like a downloaded file.

But our highest volume of sales come from Instagram stories, and they're like our bread and butter.

Regular clients.

Like, they're paying on average 2, 500amonth.

So we make from our stories, like, sales to the tune of 7,000, 500, 10,000, 16,000 plus per client coming in there.

And part of it is direct inquiries, like Rachel saying, hey, it's been two years, but I'm back around and I think I want Legion.

The other part of it is, like, I saw somebody I didn't know that well, and my story is like three or four days in a row, and I reached out and I was like, hey, I've been seeing you around.

Curious how you found me.

Like, curious if there's anything I can help you with.

And that yielded, like a $16,000 sale.

So definitely look at the new followers was the very long answer to that question because they found you for some reason.

So as I hear you talking, all I can think of is, do you use.

And how do you use automation in all of this?

Because you are, like you said, you're literally looking, you're tracking, you're seeing the people.

You're sending them a dm.

Are you using, like, new follower.

Here's a many chat.

Or are you like, no, that's killing the actual, like, connection.

You're killing me.

It's like our Achilles heel.

We.

I struggle with this for so long.

I, like, go back and forth in contentious debates with me, myself and I, and sometimes other actual people about the merits of mini chat, of Flowchat, which.

Do you know them?

No, never heard of that one.

Is that like the new many chat, like, competitor?

Finally, we are trying.

I'll give an overview of it because, look, there are like, five men in business that I really like in 11 years.

Like, five of them.

Girl, I hear you.

It sucks so much.

But there was a long period when I was a baby entrepreneur in Covid days when, like, there was nothing to do.

I was just trying to make as much money as humanly possible and move out of, like, the worst apartment with the worst roommate who didn't take her dogs outdoors, period.

They only pooped inside.

It was really, really rough.

Anyways, so these guys like who have flowchart are some of my five favorite people in 11 years of business.

So I'll get to that in just a second.

But we have run ads for four months once in 11 years and it's not what we need.

The majority of people that buy from me, from my company don't want a freebie, don't want a webinar, don't want a membership.

They want the real deal.

When you're ready for like Legion and sales work.

And we do lead management too for people that have leads but don't want to or can't talk to them all when people are ready for that.

It's a pretty firm decision.

It's like I want to start the next Monday that you've got.

We don't need other stuff.

So in my opinion for me specifically running mini chat would be helpful if we were like selling a digital product or trying to like run people through a funnel.

And we've done it to an extent.

I've been in business 11 years, of course I've had a freebie, a webinar, a paid webinar, a one month mini mind.

Like of course I've had all of that stuff.

But it actually is like a deterrent to somebody that wants ads.

If I'm ready for a coach, if I'm ready for ads, if I'm ready for lead gen, if I'm ready for social media, like, like if my buyers and for my clients too, for our done for you leads clients, like if they know they're ready, they actually get like kind of pissed off and deterred if you put them through something, if you put them through some like funnel that they know they're going through.

If somebody comes and inquires for lead gen services and I give them like a choice of two freebies to download, I've instantly deterred helping them my money and them getting that help, which pisses me off too.

So manychat doesn't work that well for my purposes.

The one thing I'll say good that it does when you're trying to identify a bunch of new leads is it starts a new conversation with each person that they follow you and you have like the follow message turned on like a welcome message.

But for a lot of my clients it's like 80% of those could be your business bestie and those 19 people you met on a networking call and, and so like it clogs up your inbox.

What I like differently about Flowchat that we're in is that it qualifies people before it sends anything.

So I know a couple new ones that we're getting into.

They can hear me say this because I'm like straight with them.

But the Flowchat guys are lovely.

Flowchat, the differentiator between manychat and Flowchat regarding, like AI, dms, automations, et cetera.

The big differentiator is that manychat does inbound.

So if I message Teresa podcast because I want the podcast application form, I get that because I'm inbound.

If I message me lead gen, then I would get something because I'm an inbound lead.

What flowchat does differently that a lot of people don't want to do this and it solves that problem.

Flowchat also does outbound.

So If I get 23 people on my post, my client is dealing with this right now.

If you get 47 new followers from a 200 person event you just went to, you can't talk to them all immediately.

It's going to take days plus to get back to all those people.

So Flowchat, which is the only platform I've found that we would ever consider in 11 years, which is a big deal, not for lack of trying.

I've tried other ones.

But anyways, I've tried so many different tools and looked at so many and flowchat's the favorite that I've found that we're ideally going to start working with in this quarter to bring it to women.

But they do inbound, where you comment a code and you get, you know, an automation.

But they also do outbound, where If I get 50 people that like my post, I can have it qualify them, then send a message and then you can pause the automation at any point for one person or everybody and go in and actually send real messages, which is what my people need.

Then you get into all these like stipulations with something like manychat where if you've started an AI flow but they haven't answered, or you've started an AI flow and they responded but you didn't get back within 24 hours, then you can't say anything.

Just all these meta regulations that straight up are meant for good ethical purposes.

It's meant for us to not all spam each other all day and night.

Like that's the point.

But in practice that means that if I have a hundred DMS and Teresa is one of them and I can get back to 10 today, the other 90 I can't respond to in that platform and I have to go back to the mess of Instagram to start with.

That's my AI automation talk.

I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about it for like the beginning of when this like really got crazy a few years ago I was vehemently opposed because I knew that people were going to substitute ManyChat for humans and I just don't think it will work.

And there are people, Melanie Auber is a great example.

Like there are people who are lovely and brilliant at what they do and put people through a whole funnel of like, first you're going to get my seven day challenge, then you're going to get my 30 day program, then you're going to get My four month mastermind, then you can upsell to one on one.

There are plenty of people that do that and there's a reason for it.

But if you're expecting ManyChat to substitute you selling or somebody else selling.

And also manychat does not address the problem at all, which we can cover if we want to, of sales content.

Manychat does not address the problem at all of if I went to Teresa's page and she doesn't have stellar content, I'm not interested immediately.

Even if manychat sent me like a gift to my life.

I'm still not interested if I don't know anything about you or what you do from the content that you're making.

So anyways, I have feelings about it clearly.

Okay.

I want to get into that actually and get into like the sales content and give some tips but also hear the side of that that you help your clients with.

But first, I'm so glad we're talking about this because you said something at the beginning of that answer that I think is so important.

I don't want people to miss it.

If you're selling a done for you service, your client doesn't want a DIY guide on how to get started or how to set it up themselves or to go through a seven day challenge where they're doing it themselves.

And so it matters what your business model is because if you are selling digital downloads and that is like primarily your business, then yeah, it probably doesn't make sense to go in your DMs and like personally sell everybody a $20 thing.

And that's where like in automation could make sense for you.

And again, either way though, you need that sales content.

So I wanted to name that that it really matters.

And this is something I help my clients through my marketing agency is what is your business model?

And then where are the holes?

And is your business model actually the right business model that works for you, your skill sets and your preferences like we talked about with you in the beginning, Alyssa.

Or is your business model like, oh my gosh, this is what everyone is doing.

So I have to have a done for you container and I have to have a done with you program and I have to have the paid downloads to get an SLO going.

But you don't have to do all of that.

And if we're cherry picking strategies from all these different people and places and just feeling like we should be doing them because somebody on the Internet has had success doing them, then your business is going to feel overwhelming and it's also not going to lead to the result you want to of the actual business model you want.

So glad we're naming that.

I totally, totally agree.

Yeah, sales content and I will so back Teresa up.

I totally agree on like building the right business model for you.

I'll say.

I mean Q1 regarding the shoulds, did we really get into business to do what we should do?

Because like if I did what I should have done 16 years ago, my family would have indoctrinated me into the real estate cult.

And like I'm a people person, I know I could do it.

But it's also like contract heavy.

You always got be doing that stuff.

But really Q1 I put my head down, I let go of the noise.

I'm not like really great at listening to people that I don't pay anyways.

So whatever someone else is doing, like it might give me ideas or not.

But like Q1 I think I really let go of the shoulds.

Even the self imposed shoulds of like this is a big one.

I was thinking about.

I don't know where you get your most inspired ideas, but I a lot of us it's like shower or jogging or like 2am when you wake up from a dream and you want to be sleeping but instead you're like writing gibberish down in your notes afterwards.

But I was thinking about this one yesterday when I was running like it took me 11 years to get to the point that I realized there are people that could do a client's entire work.

That's changed my life.

I told my husband yesterday that like Audrey, one of our top sales team members found a new lead, started a conversation, got it to the point of closing.

I sent a three minute voice note, that client is closing today.

She'll do all the onboarding, the work, the off boarding.

It's like still like blowing my mind up.

So anyways Letting go of the shoulds of like 11 years ago, I would have never let anybody else do the client work or do it mostly or do it it all themselves.

Like that's scary.

Are they gonna do it as good as me?

Are they gonna f up?

Of course they're gonna mess up.

Of course they're gonna mess up because they're human beings.

But letting go of the shoulds changed my life.

And then the freebies point, everybody can like come for me for this.

I might have had two freebies up in 11 years that I promoted like five times.

Like I've just never done it.

And there's specific reason for that.

Speaking on business model, my two page guide on how to make sales is never gonna get you there.

And this goes to the sales content and then the like sales routine.

Sales is a practice you have to be practicing on an ongoing basis.

When I meet people that are like I'm reading blah blah, blah books and I have a sales coach and they tell me a lot of things and I think about em, I'm like, that's fantastic.

Now you have to go do something every business day that's three days a week.

If it's four days a week, like you have to be practicing, you don't get better just by learning.

You have to go practice.

So freebies has never done it because like, you know, you gotta be held accountable a lot of the time to actually get it done.

And then I'll caveat that to the best thing that our pal Ashley has done and I've done and lots of other clients is make like a post or a guide or both.

Like a downloaded guide.

That's when am I ready for Teresa?

When am I ready for sales with Alyssa?

When am I ready for ads with Ashley?

Like that's worked really well because like sales content that I'm going to get to next, that's information that leads to a buying decision which is totally different.

Like me saying ten ways for you to make sales is totally different.

Let's go down.

Five ways to make sales is totally different than five ways you can diagnose you're ready for a sales team.

One of those is go figure it out on your own.

Best of luck to you.

The other is I'm here and ready for you.

When you've hit a B and C milestone and this would be the right fit for you, then that's been a game changer.

So that's the one like guide I like.

What I love about that is so I spent like four or five years coaching wedding pros specifically, which is what led me to start an email marketing agency.

But what I love about that is whenever they would be like, okay, we're gonna have a freebie and it's like, great, what freebie are you gonna give a wedding client?

What does that bride actually want to learn from you?

And it is exactly what you just said.

A guide to help you decide who to hire.

A guide to help you decide, okay, if I do it myself, it's going to look like this.

Am I prepared for all the stress that's going to bring or do I want to have a great time and just pay somebody to do it?

And how do I know how to make that decision?

And so again, this comes back to even if it's not a guide to be like, should you hire me or not?

What is the resource and the communication you will give somebody that will make them a better client for you?

Somebody learning how to do email themselves is not going to make them a better client for me.

What will make them a better client for me is making sure that they're actually have something to sell that is proven so that we can sell it more in email and I can just do that part for them.

I love that you're doing the email marketing too.

There's like not that many of you.

There aren't that many people who has that specialty.

They're all men.

I am deep in the world of newsletter as a product.

So newsletter as a product, you think of the morning brew, you think of the hustle for women, the assist.

And they're media companies but they're like newsletter is where their revenue comes from.

And so that's what I love is helping people who they don't want a media company but they can actually use their newsletter and treat it like its own product and then sell on the back end.

So it's like, okay, how do we actually monetize the people coming in and then make sure that they actually get to a sale quicker instead of okay, well I want a huge newsletter and it's going to be a thousand people for the sake of it.

And none of them have bought.

It's like, no, no, no, no.

We only need people who are going to buy or help generate revenue.

We don't need everybody else and switching that mindset.

I love it.

It's so fun and it's low hanging fruit for most of us.

Like it's kind of like what you're doing too of if somebody's just in the DMs inviting people to the sale and inviting them to, hey, you have this problem.

I would love to help you with this solution.

You're helping people make more money and it's a very low hanging fruit.

Asking somebody like, hey, do you want this?

Then they're like, yes or no is a way quicker way to make money than sending them down a six month funnel that you may or may not have built and may or may not build once you get people in it.

And same with email, sending more emails, having that actual communication go to people is low hanging fruit to make more money.

And then I feel great helping my clients because I'm like, I'm not selling you some like social media, a package that you don't see an ROI on.

I'm like, no, we sent these emails and now you're making more money.

You Alyssa, we sent these dms, now you've made more money.

Yep.

I love what you're doing so much.

I can say so much about the email marketing.

The thing with the six month funnel too is like most people are not funneling six months out.

That's way too far in the future.

There are people I would have bought from if they kept sending emails.

Then they like, like show up and it's so cute.

And sometimes needed to be like, I was gone for six months, here I am, I've done that like five plus times, like for sure.

But I was making money from another place and I should have been doing both.

But sometimes we do what we can.

But I love that what you're doing with email marketing.

And yeah, I see people that are doing too little and doing too much and it is, it's low hanging fruit.

And then working with somebody doing leads for them that do email marketing, then I've learned all this stuff about like list cleaning and how if you would only like clean your dang list, then you actually would get better open rates and better conversion rates.

And stop wondering why my conversion rate is so low.

So like, why aren't they on there?

You're like, I don't need to have you on my list and you don't want to be here.

And that honestly is something that's one of the first things I build for clients is those re engagement and unsubscribe funnels.

And it's like when we start, it's like, okay, yes, we're gonna have to manually do that.

But after you've manually done it the first time.

You should not have to manually do it.

It should be set up in your system so you don't even have to think about it.

People who don't open, people who don't engage, they're gone.

I don't have to even think about them.

They're just gone.

It's great if I get you to look at like three new Instagram stories, followers that are in there and you get me to consider hiring someone else.

Our email is probably you then.

We've also done something great on this call.

But yeah, we really need to work on that.

We have like thousands on the email list and I don't know who these people are, where they came from.

Don't laugh.

Try not to.

I thought 95% of the people that signed up for my email list were like gonna buy.

It didn't matter if they told me that they had $10 left like in their name.

I was like dead set on finding a way.

And now we know that that is not true.

But I feel like email marketing is such a good place to catch people for the long run that aren't ready yet, but that will be there in months.

They're a great thing for like low ticket too, for memberships or even group programs, et cetera, et cetera.

But yes, I love what you're doing so much.

It's a whole other brain.

Okay, I'm gonna talk about sales content.

So sales content.

Sales content is something I've talked about for a really long time.

I think I started referring it to that kind of like our phrasing for it for the last six years.

So I have what I call a sales content recipe and we continually add to the recipe.

But the aim to this is that for all of you guys that are using Instagram, but this can be used in multiple places.

It can be sales content for it could be ads, it could be Facebook, it could be LinkedIn, it could be TikTok, it could be email marketing, collaborations, podcasts.

So the goal of sales content in relation to my sales ethos as selling is helping, is to not gatekeep the information people need to make an ethical decision about working with you.

Not to mention the fact that one to many marketing, which is like social media or just marketing in general, where you're putting out lots of information to lots of people versus and this is my definition that people ask me, marketing is putting out information content to lots of people.

So it's one to many versus sales for us is one on one.

It would be a one on one DM convo, email convo, sales call conversation.

The point for me of marketing at this point in my career, put as much information out to the people that need it as we possibly can because it makes our sales process so much more efficient.

I've made that like two carousels just on FAQs in the last month.

One of them has 23 questions in it and that took a long time to make.

It was very tedious and we're hiring our creative director back so she can do them for us.

Hey Emily.

It was very tedious to make, but it's going to save me and my team time with hundred sales conversations, dozens of sales conversations, which means we spend less time going back and forth because they have the answers they need, which means we can help them faster, which means we can close sales faster, which means I get to pay my team more for all the work that they're doing.

Buy my thing by my like the same post.

The exact.

Even like for crypto guys, buy my thing, you got to invest.

Invest today.

Buy my thing.

It's not that, that's not the point is to like hard sell to somebody.

It is just like the guide, when am I ready?

It's to help savvy smart entrepreneurs self guide themselves through am I ready or not?

And then they inquire or in the breadth of a sales conversation.

If we're talking to Maria in the DMs and she asked me a, B and C and we've already covered it in our carousels, then I can send her that and say, hey, we actually made some content on this to answer these questions.

Do you want to check this out?

And then come back with extra follow up questions to that?

So the point of this sales content is that we don't gatekeep the information people need to start making a buying decision, a sales decision.

And then within that we usually make about five carousels that are information people need to know to work with you.

And it goes pretty much in priority like this.

The number one is going to be a post on your offer.

So when people go to your page, we want People who are like, ooh, Theresa's awesome.

How can I pay her to work with her?

We want them to see that before the website.

So that would be.

Number one is an offer post.

Number two would be client stories, which is more than your testimonial.

So it's not just like Teresa said these three awesome sentences.

It's like, Teresa came to me with this problem.

She decided I was the right person to help with it because of this.

This was the offer we chose.

These are the steps we went through.

Here's what she says about it.

Here's what I have to say about it as an expert.

So offer carousel that you're going to make as a pin post first.

After that, it would be a client story carousel.

You can expand this.

You could put one client story first.

You can do multiple client stories.

We give our clients templates for all of this because carousels are a pain in the ass to make, but so worth it and so lucrative.

But offer carousel first, client stories second.

FAQs would be third.

This is like the easiest one to make that people always overlook.

Like, most people don't have that one.

Then I'll make a when is the right time to work with us?

And an about me are some of the top ones.

There's also like your process.

Like, if I'm going to work with somebody on lead gen, like, do we do this, then that, then this, then that.

So all of those go into it.

But that would be sales content and we have them as our like 5 carousels first.

I usually pin offer client stories and FAQs sometimes now I'll swap one of those for when it's the right time to work with us.

So we do all of those and then we can repurpose that information into emails, into Instagram stories, into reels.

People start asking such minute questions.

And if you can make content on those exact questions in their language, you're going to crush it.

Like Ashley and John and my clients are making the most minute content.

It's not like, when am I ready for ads.

It is like, so I've run this offer.

We've tried ads once before, but how many months do I need to test on what platform before I decide if I'm ready to spend how much on ads?

That's a very specific situation.

It's also applicable to a massive amount of people asking those same, like, very smart questions.

That's the sales content piece.

And then, yeah, to go back for a second on sales routine.

So I usually do my morning routine inside or outside if the weather is nice and I'll journal and I'll meditate and I'll do movement and stretch and all these different things, then I'll go into DMing the ones that have replied, making Instagram stories and then going through other dms that I need to get back to.

But hot tip about sales, I was talking to somebody about like energetics the other day and changing your location is super helpful for sales.

I love my office.

I have a loft office.

It's cool, we have these huge windows, etc, but if my selling is the same as my contract writing location, then I'm not as pumped about it.

If I get to go to the park and like sit on a towel and there's like squirrels and dogs and birds and trees and sun and clouds, that makes me amped.

I'm like, I'm gonna go outside, I get to put shorts on.

I'm not gonna wear a real bra.

I can lay in the grass, message people and make money.

That's exciting.

That's really exciting.

So think about changing your location for sales, answering DMs and I would say at least three to five messages per day you wanna be sending and having.

So if you get two replies, you'd message three new people on Instagram.

But it could be Facebook or LinkedIn.

I'm all for people doing this when they can.

We recommend at least like 20 to 30 minutes a day each business day.

If you answer your DMs and send them in your kid's carpool, cool.

If it's, you know, in between the kids snack break, cool.

All of that goes.

But if you can make like a routine where you give yourself 30 minutes on a morning walk or 20 minutes after the kids are on a play date or whatever it may be, if you can make a routine routine and do it in a way that's enjoyable, which for me means outside, it means I have treats, I have like Pringles and energy drinks and a giant water.

But if you can make sales something that's a happy practice that you commit to and do consistently, it's going to get a lot easier and more lucrative for you.

I want to take that a step further too and say Ashley, we keep talking about Ashley and Emily and I are in a collaborative and we were just talking about this, how it's so easy for sales to start feeling stale in your own brain and for you to get to in your head.

And so pairing it with something that improves the feeling of your nervous system.

Like you said, going on a walk, touching grass In a space that makes you feel better, more energized, and being around water, actually moving your body helps move the thoughts around.

And so it is easier to just, like, send that first message or send that response without overthinking it.

Whereas, yeah, just sitting and being like, okay, the only thing I'm doing right now is sending this message.

It's the same as writer's block.

I totally agree.

And, like, I messaged somebody that's been like, hanging around for a while and I was going to, like, pitch her something, and then I changed my mind this morning.

So, like, I oscillate back and forth on what I'm doing all the time.

I'm pretty hard on myself.

I still give myself, like, a hard time at night.

I'm like, like, ooh, should I have said that that way?

But I also know, like, I can let it all go.

I did the best I could at that moment.

What we don't want to do is have sales suck because you have a negative connotation with it or you get into desperation phase.

Even at desperation isn't like, I need a bunch more money.

Even if it is, wow, I haven't touched my DMs in an entire week.

That's me.

Because I've been busy and I was sick before that.

We got married recently.

But even if you're just trying to build a consistent routine.

Yeah, putting somewhere that feels calming and energizing.

People can tell when you're leaving.

And also, this is a whole nother episode about, like, voice notes and how incredible voice notes are for sales.

And if you're not using them, you should be.

You need to try it out.

It's just like, in kind relationship building.

If I waved to Teresa and I wasn't, like, teasing, she would probably wave back.

It's reciprocal.

So if you leave a voice note, share a little about you and ask about them, they're usually going to do that back and it moves it so much faster.

But, yeah, I totally agree about sales and finding an enjoyable, calming, but energizing way to do it.

When you're leading sales and you're like, hectic or desperate or short on time, people can tell.

People can tell.

So we want to try to do it in a way that is not overwhelming or anxiety producing for us.

Because I don't want to put that on the people I'm talking to either.

I try to keep my emotions reined in a little bit sometimes because I'm very open.

Okay, I have so many more questions, but we are over the Hour.

So before we get into my last few fun questions, Alyssa, how can somebody work with you if they're hearing this and they're like, perfect, she's my girl.

Get in my DMs.

Where can they find you?

Yeah, so on Instagram, my lead gen and lead management agency is under my personal brand, so it's under Alyssa L. Moorhead.

So come find me on Instagram, send me a voice note, let me know what you thought of Teresa's incredible podcast and me getting to be a guest.

We have two big things that we're doing right now.

We're always doing like lead gen and lead management, which is for people really above like 15k to 50k plus per month.

And that's 2, 500amonth.

So that's monthly for lead gen and lead management for three months for 2,500amonth.

And you do want to be like above 15k.

So that's really good to get you like a big influx of leads if you're trying to ramp things up for Q2.

I was looking at what quarter it is, but we'll probably be running those like all through April, May, June, and then a lot of those people elect to like stay on.

But those are two ways.

Amazing.

Okay, Speed round.

When it comes to ways to play, rest or get creative, what are you currently obsessed with?

Currently obsessed with, like getting back to the park for five hours a day.

I said on my call earlier this morning, like, I'm just like a sad dog if I have to be kept inside.

I'm like, you come home and your dog is like, why did you walk me in this prison for my entire life?

Which has been like five hours.

But that's what I'm obsessed with is getting back outside, getting more movement.

It's like inspiring to me.

Calming makes me better at business.

So just more outdoors time.

And we're moving to Denver at the end of the month, so that's going to be awesome for outdoors too.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, I love Colorado.

I'm currently sitting in a hotel looking at the mountains, feeling like, why am I inside?

There's a pool outside.

But it was very worth it to get to talk to you.

Okay, one more.

More.

When it comes to either education or entertainment.

What are you watching?

Reading, listening to watching.

Not much these days.

I pretty much cut out tv.

We've been watching like murder docs, as we call them, that my husband goes to sleep to and they've stopped, like infecting my nightmares.

So that's what we've been watching some of those and then listening to.

I'm starting to listen to more podcasts, trying to listen to my podcast manager and her bestie.

And this one, Marie's is called your girl media and she has a different name for the pod.

I need to go back to trying to listen to more salespeople's podcast and learn a bit more there.

And then reading I'm behind on, but trying to go back to Atomic habits and finish that one.

I'm just trying to make more space for all kinds of education and honestly, a little bit less space maybe for entertainment and media.

I just want to like sit at the park and try to get the thoughts to stop coming.

So I tried to tamp it down a little bit.

But yeah, trying to get more into podcast and more into some business books.

I feel that I go through phases where I'm like, okay, great, ready to learn.

Let's like get into it.

Very motivating for me to be, like, very inspired.

And then I'm like, okay, I'm burnt out on that.

Like you talked about earlier, I need to implement.

I don't want to learn another thing.

I don't need to know another thing.

I need to learn by doing.

I need to actually do the thing.

So I hear you on that.

Yeah.

And I'm kind of in a unique position with us growing this like, lead gen and lead management agency where honestly, most of the people I knew that were doing it, like five of them tapped out and switched to sales coaching because they didn't find a way to profit margins wise quality of people and skills, like, grow a team.

I got really lucky and have incredible people that brought me my sales team members.

But yeah, I totally agree.

And also books, if anybody has recommendations.

I've been looking for like a straight sales book by a woman for years and cannot find, like a really good one.

There's a lot of really great ones about women who like, tell their story.

Kind of sounds like if it doesn't exist, you should create it.

But hey, I'm working, I'm working on it.

That's definitely like a 20, 26 goal.

So we scaled in Q1 and we're still scaling Q2.

I'm trying to stabil and then Q3 and especially Q4 when I'm going to take off for a few months.

I want to make massive headway on this sales book.

And I was going to write a book on my recovery story as a business owner and that might be in there, but honestly, I think the sales stuff is its whole own book.

I can't believe I can't find ones.

There's got to be a couple.

So if anybody has, like an incredible sales book by a woman, I would love to read that too.

Oh my gosh, Alyssa, I can't wait to talk more.

At some point, I'm like, we just need to go hang out when you're in Denver.

Maybe I'll come home, visit.

Thank you for coming on Becoming Obsessed and sharing all of your sales and just wisdom with us.

And for everyone who is still hanging out with us, like Alyssa said, go to her Instagram, send her a dm, send us a voice note.

I love the voice notes as well.

You can find me at Becoming Obsessed Pod on Instagram.

And then send this to a friend.

Send it to your business bestie who is learning to build a life they love beyond the business and actually create stable income for their business to help them do that.

And then, of course, it helps get the word out when you rate and review the show on your favorite podcast app.

Okay, y', all, let's go get obsessed.

You're still listening, which means this episode connected with you, and I want to know how.

Send me a DM on Instagram at Becoming Obsessed Obsessed Pod.

Then send this episode to a friend.

If you know someone who is building a life that they love or they're feeling a little stuck and might just need a nudge, send this to them.

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And as you know, we're on a mission for more people to live a life they truly love.

All right, let's go get Obsessed.