Selling through lives — do you really need to do it? What if no one shows up?
Lives can mean anything from an Instagram live to a group sales call where you are engaging with your audience in real-time. If you are selling through them, what do you need to pay attention to?
Before I dive into the do’s and dont’s of selling through lives, let me explain why I even want to talk to you about this.
Last year, I learnt a lesson through one of my launches that didn’t perform quite as strongly as others. As always, I jumped in and started to look at what I had done differently to try and improve next time.
What I realized was that I was talking a lot, and describing the program a lot, but I wasn’t engaging with my audience.
Your audience has questions — but are you listening?
The very end of your launch is called the permit phase. This is when it’s especially important to engage with your audience. However, if you’re truly engaging with your audience, you won’t miss the peak phase. This is when your audience has the most questions.
The questions depend on your business — what time are the coaching calls? What colors will the product be available in? Is that skirt still available? Is the course online, offline, and in what language?
You need your audience to speak up — buying signals and frequently asked questions mean people are almost ready to buy. This is why live engagement is so important.
We are in the age of digital sales, but don’t forget about old-school interactions.
Live engagement and selling through lives is something we often forget as part of our sales strategy or launch.
As millennials, or active social media users, we forget that in a physical store you would be talking to people. People would pass by, you may sell at a market, maybe go to a conference.
When we are at home behind a laptop strategizing, we can forget to put the social in social media.
Don’t reuse messaging, reconnect with your audience every time you launch.
My mistake was building launches on previous messaging, and not going live enough to figure out what my audience really needed me to say.
Your newest audience are often your hottest leads — talk to them.
So, lives are scary, are they worth it? I convert over 80% of the people who comment on my lives with questions.
As a trick to get my clients to engage with me on my lives, I always get them to do something — comment their favorite emoji, for example — to show that they’re listening.
It also makes people more comfortable commenting. That means more comfortable asking questions, engaging, and ultimately buying.
The point is to engage with people, but it can help your sales.
The main goal of me going live is not to sell. In life, my goal is to engage with people so that afterwards I can help them become a paying customer and ultimately help them make their business and life better.
That being said. When people do leave a question in my lives, I can make note of who they are. Circle back to them later. Those are my leads.
Don’t be afraid, you’ve won just by doing it.
Maybe your big fear is ‘what if I go live and no one’s watching?’ — good news, you already win when you put yourself out there. You challenged yourself, and you’re now going to pop up on other people’s social profiles more than before.
People will get the notification that you’re live, and if you do it regularly enough, they’ll start noticing and tuning in. Or at least seeing your name more often.
By going live you’re letting your audience know ‘I’m still here’. You’re showing you’re dependable, and you’re available to answer their questions.
I saw a brutal post once that said if your launch didn’t go well, but you didn’t send out at least 5 emails, create stories everyday, or go live at least 3 times — did you even launch?
If you don’t go live, did you even launch? Not really.
Don’t be afraid. Show up. Talk to people. Stories and posts are one-sided communications. Going live is scary, but you will get massive results.
Another handy trick is using your lives in later content. Save them, take bites from them, take ideas from them, or content, and you can use them again later.
People need to trust you to buy from you.
The paramount point to communicating with your audience is getting them to trust you. Once they trust you, they’re more likely to buy from you — and to tell their friends about you.
People talking is one of the main ways businesses grow, so start talking to your audiences.
Meeting someone in real life (or through a live) will give you a lot more trust in that person because they're a real life human being, that’s why you always know how you really feel after that first Tinder date!
The same goes for sales. If you meet someone in real life, it's gonna be much more fun, easy, and trustworthy to buy from them.
A few steps to get started.
Number one, don’t forget to announce your live. I have forgotten to do this so many times!
How do you get people to attend? Well, they don’t owe you anything so you have to give them a reason to.
I’ll always put up a little post a few minutes before saying I have an announcement coming, and I’ll post 24 or 48 hours before to announce the same thing.
Another great way to get people to attend is to announce the live as a Q&A, but you should always make sure you have leads and people who have questions before you do this.
A big reason why people attend a live, for example, a group sales call, is because of the title. Give them a reason to show up. For example, I’ll say I’m going live to discuss the 9 ways I did a 800,000 euro launch.
Some other tips that are super important to remember when you go live are:
- Make sure you get your mood right — smiling, with your iPad/laptop in front of you, maybe with some resources to share. If you were in a shop, how would you be approaching and helping customers?
- Don’t make it ALL about your product — what problem are you solving for your clients? Dive into that for 80% of your live. At the end, offer up your product as the solution and explain its value.
- You don’t need hours to do this — keep it simple, conversational, and focus on engaging with your audience.
- Follow-up with those who ask questions. Take their name down, return to them, or use their questions in future lives to let your audience know what other people asked.
I have a feeling by now you’re convinced going live will help your sales. So, don’t be afraid! Get out there and talk to your audience. Engage with them. Find new leads and find out who has questions, because they’re the same people that are almost ready to buy.
This episode was a sneak peek of some of the amazing content and strategies we will discuss in my latest Launch Gamebook course.
If you’re interested in perfecting your launches to create big cash injections, please check it out at https://fastforwardamy.com/thelaunchgamebook. I would love to see how it will help you grow!
Are you new to launching? Then check out my free training The Launch Blueprint: 5 Steps to Launch Your Next Big Thing to learn how you can tackle your first successful launch. Register for FREE via this link: www.fastforwardamy.com/launchwebinar
Watch this episode on YouTube or listen via Apple Podcast, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, and search for episode 172 of The FastForwardAmy Show.
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