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Today, I want to teach you my five best sales strategies to help you close more deals without cutting prices, offering discounts, or using sleazy sales techniques – as well as the top five mistakes to avoid that can lead new coaches to hear the dreaded “NO” instead of the excited “YES” on their discovery calls. So if you want to know the exact tips I teach my sales team to close 10 or more deals every single month, watch the video below or simply read on.
I have been running an in-house sales team for the last couple of years, and it’s taken us a lot of hard work, strategizing, and training to get that team to close between $300,000 and $400,000 or more every single month. Now, I believe that everybody can be good at sales, however, you need to know these best in class sales techniques and secrets that I am going to teach you right now. These are the things that separate the sales superstars from people who just don’t enjoy sales and who will never be good at it.
So, without further ado, here are the top five mistakes and the top five sales techniques I have discovered over the last couple of years that I use in my own business and I teach to my clients to help them close more clients for their coaching businesses. With these sales techniques, you are guaranteed to close more, to love sales a whole lot more, and to make the entire sales process a lot more enjoyable and effective for you.
The first tip I have for you has to do with your posture, your energy, and your confidence on your sales calls – and this is what I call “Doctor Frame.” Now, think about having a sales conversation with a billionaire. Think about how you would talk to the man or the woman. Think about your tone of voice, what you would say, how you would act, and your entire posture. Would you be confident? Would you be calm? Would you speak with power? Would you command respect? I am willing to bet that you would show up a whole lot differently than how you’re probably showing up right now on your sales calls, right?
When it comes to selling and having success with sales, it all starts with your posture and your energy, so you want to come across like a respected doctor on your calls. It’s not about making your prospect like you, or joking around with them and being overly friendly with them. When you’re overly hyped up or overly nice, you’re acting for them, trying to please them, and trying to be something that you’re not. They will sense that and they will lose respect for you. There’s no schmoozing or softening.
Instead, there is grounded, calm questioning, commanding of attention and respect, and controlling your call so that your leads and your prospects really look up to you. They should feel as though you’re behind the wheel and you’re someone they need to be listening to right now. They will not buy from you because they like you. People buy from you when they respect you and see you as a real expert.
Your sales call is not there for chit chat or to have a nice conversation. It’s about showing people where they’re going wrong, what they need instead, and how you can actually help them. So when you go in with the Doctor Frame, your prospects will know it is serious and that it’s going to be a great call that is really valuable, worth their time, and where they can actually learn something.
Showing up this way on your discovery calls will get them to the place where they want to hear more about your programs so you can hear that excited “YES” instead of that dreaded “NO.”
Now that you’re in Doctor Frame and you’re the expert who is showing up with confidence, it’s really important that you take control of the call. This doesn’t mean that you’re talking all the time – you’re still listening, but you’re asking some very direct and pointed questions that make your prospect feel like, “Wow, this coach actually knows what they’re doing. They have an agenda in the back of their mind and they want to drive me to some very specific conclusions.” Again, think of your doctor. Let’s say you’re going into the doctor’s office and you have a cold. The doctor will ask how you are feeling and then run through your symptoms. Are you coughing? Are you tired? Is your head hurting? Do you have itchy eyes? Do you have watery eyes or a runny nose? Are you tired? Do you have chills? They’re asking some very specific questions to diagnose you accurately. It’s like this when you are hosting your discovery call as well. It can’t be a random set of questions, and it can’t feel like you’re having a conversation and who knows where it’s going. Your lead needs to feel like you’re already their coach on that discovery call, and that you’re taking charge of the conversation.
You do this by knowing your pain centers, which are the symptoms that you, as a coach, need to be asking about and discovering. So I want you to take out a pen and paper right now and start brainstorming your ideal client’s pain centers. Depending on your niche and ideal client, examples might be money, success, time, love, and purpose, or others.
When you’re on your discovery call, this is when you would pull up those pain centers and figure out why your prospect really wants to launch into a coaching business. So for example, in money and success, you would ask about how much they’re earning right now. “Is that covering your bills? Do you feel successful? Do you feel like you’re living up to your full potential or not? How is your lifestyle? Are you living paycheck to paycheck? Would you like to travel more? Do you have debt? Are you living off of your savings?” Those kinds of things help you to find out their pain center and what’s really happening within their financial situation and the success in their life. Knowing what those pain centers are for your ideal client allows you to take charge on your sales calls by helping you ask your prospect very specifically about what’s actually going on with them.
When I listen to my new sales team members, they literally read the script and think about what question to ask next. That prevents them from being present in that conversation and using their intuition to figure out what to ask next. Maybe you can relate – have you ever found yourself in a situation where you had a sales call and you were nervous? You wanted to ask the right questions and say the right things and really lead the prospect to that YES, and actually buying from you right now. However, what happens when you’re worrying too much about the script, saying the right things, and what to ask next, you actually miss some very important signs or deep pain points the prospect may be sharing with you. For example, they might open the door to a specific conversation or topic, and you might miss it if you’re not listening intently to them. So let go of that script, and instead, focus on the person that’s in front of you. Focus on their needs, their emotions, and what’s coming out of the conversation, because that’s where you find the real truth and what you really need to know to help them make the decision to work with you.
In your coaching business, have you ever felt afraid of hurting someone’s feelings? Have you ever felt like you didn’t want to go deeper or you were afraid to ask those private or deep questions on a sales call? Well, that’s hurting you – because that’s exactly what you need to do to really serve your clients.
A lot of my new coaches and my new sales team members are afraid to say what they’re thinking. You’re smart and intuitive, and you usually know exactly what’s going on with your prospects, but sometimes you don’t want to hurt their feelings because, by asking them these direct questions, you’re making them feel bad or pushing them into a corner. However, this is the wrong mindset. By asking only surface-level questions, we will not ever be able to go deep enough to really figure out what’s going on or show our prospect the urgency of taking those next steps to work with you to put solutions in place. Instead, when you’re asking deep questions, you’re actually showing them what’s really happening, that you’re concerned about them, and that you want to know how you can truly serve them and help them.
In addition to that, if you’re afraid to ask those deep questions, you’re likely not holding them to it in the decision making phase. So if you’re weak in asking these questions in the beginning, chances are you’re also weak in the end and you’re not able to hold them accountable for what they said earlier. And that’s usually when people slip away and tell you it’s not the right time, they have to think about it, or it’s too much money. They give you objections that you’re not able to overcome because you’re not able to ask those deep questions, stick with them, motivate them, or give them the strength to say yes.
Another big mistake many new coaches make is to coach their prospects on their discovery calls. Sure, you’re a helper. You want to serve people and heal them right on the spot, and I get it, but you’re actually doing them a disservice if you coach them and serve them too much upfront.
Because let’s be real, how much can you really give them on a 60-minute call? All you could ever do is give them a kickstart, but you can’t really solve the problem for them. They need accountability. They need to work through things and have the methods and systems that you give them in your coaching programs. So, having a 60-minute conversation will not allow them to have the ultimate breakthrough and the ultimate transformation they really deserve.
So when you coach them on the call, and you say, “Hey, let’s figure this out right now. This is what you should do, and this is how to do this,” you want to impress them with your coaching skills, but you’re actually moving them further away from you. What happens next is that they want to try those tips. They may come back to you in a couple of weeks, but more likely than not they’ll never come back – because by giving them this higher-level information, you’re putting a bandaid on their problem and serving a short term need. You’re telling them it’s all good for now, softening things for them, and letting them go away. Of course, that does not serve them, and also does not serve you. Your purpose on discovery calls is to go deep. Find the urgency, find the pain points, then point out the solution and the steps they should be taking high-level and invite them in to work with you.
There’s so much that goes into a sales conversation, and I hope this helped you recognize the mistakes you have made in the past and given you the sales techniques to fix it going forward. So if you’re ready to improve your sales skills even more, bring more clients into your business, host those discovery calls, and apply everything I taught you so far – you also need to know how to host the entire sales conversation from start to finish. You’re in luck because you can download our complete Anatomy of A Sales Conversation Guide right here, where I’m going to walk you through every section of a sales call step-by-step. I hope this helps you love your sales, love your leads, and close more deals for your coaching business.
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