If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll have seen that I did something last week… I launched my Business Freedom Elevator, and I got 100 new clients in one week. It was a very, very successful launch, and it wasn’t even the actual launch yet – it was the prelaunch. And that made me realise it was time to talk more about sales. Today I’m going to share some hacks I used to get 100 new clients in a week, and that you can use too for whatever you’re launching or selling, whether it’s a product, a program, or whatever. Whatever you’re selling, I’m going to help you sell it faster, bigger, and better.
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Oh, and by the way, I’m going to be launching a mini training series in two weeks’ time. It’s gonna be four days of coaching calls from me, and you can join that for free. I’ll be teaching one of my most popular topics: my 10k roadmap. Register at https://fastforwardamy.com/10kroadmap so you get the recaps and the links! Now, let’s jump into how I got 100 clients in one week…
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#1: Use your FAQs
My first hack for you to increase your sales is your frequently asked questions (also known as FAQs). Your potential clients – prospects – have these FAQs in their mind when they’re considering buying your product. You need to know what these questions are even before you get started. For me, I make sure almost every question my clients could have is answered in that text. When people buy, it’s a very emotional decision. You really want something, and it might not even make too much sense.
It’s like buying a fancy car – you could just buy a cheaper car, right? You could just tell all of your friends “oh, but this has a bigger trunk, and it drives a bit faster.” But in reality, you’re trying to rationalize your emotional decision. You also want to help people rationalize their decision to buy from you by making sure the questions they already have are answered by the get-go.
You want to be eliminating their doubts. On my sales page, I made sure that most questions were already answered for people. How did I do this? I created a waitlist with a form asking people questions. You can use Google Forms for this, or Typeform, which I use. I asked anyone interested in the program what they were struggling with beforehand, if they had any questions, and what their goals were.
That’s how I get a lot of my information, and then I use that to sell my program. The same with my Stories! Before I launched my Elevator, I put a question box in my Instagram Stories. I then made sure to create stories answering those questions.
On my sales page itself, the questions are answered in the text, and there’s also a FAQ part at the bottom. I did a Live where I was answering questions, and I’ll continue in my Stories.
Questions might be:
- “is there a payment plan available?” or
- “do you have access to the course afterwards?” or
- “how many people are in the courses?”
If you know your clients well, you’ll know most of these questions beforehand, and you can already include the answers in your sales text and launch from the get-go.
If you’re currently trying to sell something and you’re not getting anywhere, it’s probably because you’re not really trying to sell it. Show up everywhere!
Recap: Use your FAQs everywhere – your sales page, your emails, your posts, your Stories, your Lives.
#2: Use social proof
This is such a big one. You need to generate trust from potential clients. People buy from you when they trust you. They will not hand over their hard-earned money if they don’t trust you.
Look at big companies like Nike or Starbucks. They already have trust because they’re a really well-known brand. We aren’t Nike or Starbucks, and we might not have as much trust from people yet, so we need to make sure we generate that trust rapidly. People don’t want to spend money on you. Spending money hurts, so people are going to look for any reason not to spend money. You need to convince them to actually spend their money – and spend it on your offer.
A great way to get around this is to use social proof. Social proof involves gathering external evidence that proves to people that your program or product is legit. Show reviews from people who’ve bought from you in the past and taken your courses. Use visuals. Show their photos, show what they said, and include screenshots. A lot of people tend to make their social proof very clean and in their own templates, but I like to screenshot the Facebook comments and Instagram DMs, because then people know that it’s legit. They know that I didn’t fabricate the review.
You know that feeling when you buy something from Amazon, and you see the reviews, and you’re like “did the manufacturers write this themselves…?”. That’s why I love to use screenshots – it might look messy, but at least it’s legit. I didn’t use reviews for this launch, but I have a lot of built-in social proof, because I’m sharing this kind of things all the time on social media.
I also filmed some of my clients who’ve turned into friends and more. I went for a walk with a friend of mine, Lise, who’s gone through another of my programs, the Business Freedom Mastermind. We were walking, and I filmed myself asking Lise if people should buy the Business Freedom Elevator, the program I just launched. She told everyone that they should go buy the program. What’s the reasoning behind this? Well, if you don’t trust me, at least trust this other person who’s been through my program.
Recap: Your social proof generates trust. And when there is trust, people’s belief in what you’re selling will go up. You need to have a lot of belief, otherwise people will not buy.
#3: Communicate transparently
This is something I tell my clients to do, it’s what I did with this launch, and it’s also what I did together with Jessica de Block in our Alfavrouwen launch a couple of months back. What does communicating transparently involve? It’s about being totally upfront about what’s going down. You need to be certain about the decisions that you make – so you need to have made those decisions before you launch.
It’s very typical to be like “I’m going to maybe launch a new program someday, or have group coaching, or something… blah blah blah.” But if you’re not certain about something, and you’re feeling vague, your clients will feel meh too. No one will love it, no one will hate it. You won’t risk burning anyone, but you also won’t make it possible for someone to love it, either. Often, we’re afraid of making decisions about pricing, for example, because we think we’re going to exclude a lot of people.
Imagine you make a program that costs €800. You don’t want to talk about it, because you’re scared of excluding the people who can’t afford it. But by doing that, you’re also excluding the people who can easily afford €800. From the get-go, in your launch, you want to be super transparent about what you have to offer: the numbers, the price, whether VAT is or isn't included, the start date, the modules, what people can expect… Make sure you know everything in detail.
High transparency instills trust, and fear of missing out. Some people love lists, and others like a vision. If you do a personality test, you’ll see the different types. Some people – the blue people – really like details. Others, who are more like me, just want to know if they need to jump on the train or not. If you have details, you know whether it’s right for you. Be super transparent in your communication, because that’s how you ensure you attract the right clients and exclude the wrong ones. Some people messaged me about this program, for example, asking if 1:1 support was included. The answer is that this and this and that are included, but 1:1 isn’t – and that’s also written on the sales page. I also like making ‘who is this for’ and ‘who is this not for’ posts. It’s worth your time making sure you’ve got the right people taking part, because if you don’t, you’ll suffer from it later. Your customer service will suffer, and your clients won’t be happy.
Recap: Make sure you’re so transparent that you know you're only including the right people.
#4: Be obsessed with what you’re selling
This is my favourite one! You need to be obsessed with what you have to offer. I like to tell my coaching clients that they need to be almost orgasming when you talk about your product. You need to be the biggest fan of your product, and you need to live and breathe your excitement – because that’s what makes other people excited about it as well. Even if you’re selling socks, you need to be like “I love my socks so much, they’re so beautiful, they’re so comfortable.” You need to be in love with your socks. Or with your program. Whatever.
If you don’t believe in your product, why should anyone else believe in it, let alone spend money on it? Remember what I said earlier… spending money hurts! We need to give people a reason to overcome that pain. If you’re not selling something, I want to ask you something: are you obsessed with it?
I am obsessed with my Elevator. I’ll be launching officially in August – this was only the preorder launch. I’m hiring people for it, I’m creating the greatest visuals, and I spend every waking moment thinking about it, because I know it’s going to fill the need my clients have, and it’s going be amazing. Be super excited!
Whenever anyone’s like “I’ve done all the launching steps from the program but I haven’t got results”, often, the baseline excitement is missing, and they’re just doing it without feeling it. You need to feel it. That’s the beauty of launching! That’s also how you should create anything. You need to be fully in alignment. When I launch stuff that doesn’t feel fully in alignment, I’ll neglect talking about it. But when I’m obsessed, I end up accidentally talking about it because I love it so much.
Recap: Be so obsessed that you should almost get an orgasm when you’re talking about it. (Sorry not sorry for the dirty references. I’m being authentically me, okay. I listen to my own advice: I don’t want to attract clients that get shocked when I make orgasm jokes in the Business Freedom Elevator. Okay. I’ve said orgasm too many times now. Moving on…)
#5: Use urgency
When I was launching my Elevator that got me 100 new clients in a week, I decided to give away a mug to the first 50 people that joined and paid in full. I thought that maybe five people would register when we opened the doors. But in the first 30 minutes, 40 people signed up. It was amazing. The urgency was needed so that the first 50 people would start taking action.
I like to think of it as looking at a market square where you've got five restaurants. Which restaurant do you go to? The one with no one there, or the one with ten groups sitting there? You’ll go to the place where there are already people. So by creating urgency in your launch, where people need to act fast, you make sure that the first few clients walk through the door. And clients attract clients. Movement attracts movement. Create urgency, like I did by offering a mug. It’s a program that costs over €2000 and it’s pretty amazing that people want to get in so fast.
Recap: Use urgency to get the first clients through the door, by offering something extra.
#6: Create scarcity
Scarcity and urgency seem a lot alike. Urgency is about telling people to be fast, while scarcity is telling people that the doors will close, and there are only 100 preorders. There’s a limited amount, or a limited amount of time. I did that with my Business Freedom Elevator, and only opened the preorder price to the first 100 people.
When you’re sending out sales emails, we often forget to include the urgency and scarcity. That ties back into the third hack that we talked about – transparent communication. Include the urgency and the scarcity everywhere, because it works. Don’t tell yourself that people will have got it by now. At the bottom of your emails, be very clear about the urgency and the scarcity.
Recap: Make sure you add in an element of scarcity to your launch.
#7: Engage!
Let me just take a second to say that whatever you’re selling has to be amazing. If you're not delivering quality, you can’t be obsessed. A lot of people start selling and they get stuck because they’re not actually focused on making their clients happy, they just want to make a lot of money. In the end, that doesn’t work. If you do something because it’s easy and it will make you a lot of money, that won’t get you excited enough. A lot of money won’t make you happy. Above a certain threshold, more money and more clients won’t necessarily make you happier.
Engage. Talk to people. Ask them what they’re thinking about. Many times, I’ve had DMs and talked to people, and then they buy. The closing rate is insane. I teach my clients how to sell in the DMs, and engage with people in general. Go and see who’s clicked on your links, and engage with them. Maybe even ask them if everything is working alright. Open up the conversation, and don’t be in it to close the sale. Head to episode 13 with my dad to hear more about this. I once saw that someone was having trouble fulfilling a payment, so I reached out to them directly and asked if everything was okay. They told me that the link wasn’t working for them, so I sent them a separate link. That’s a way of engaging that closes the sale. But you can also just reach out and ask someone what they’re wondering, and help them see if your program is a good fit. Sometimes it won’t be!
Really listen to what your clients are asking for. Maybe there’s a feature to your product that you haven’t added yet. Maybe people want a lanyard for their phone case (shoutout to Jessica of Antwerp Avenue!). I saw in my Typeform that there was a word everyone was using about the Elevator: they wanted to automate their business more. I’m like okay, automation seems to be a really big thing. It was included in the program, but it wasn’t phrased in the same way, so I included it! I talked about automation more. Listen to people, so you can help them decide if your program is good for them. Please, for the love of everything, don’t get the wrong clients through the door.
Recap: Listen to what people are asking for, and keep engaging with them.
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