How To Covert Prospects Into Paying Clients with This Simple 3-Stage Sales Process
Want to learn the exact strategies top-level influencers are using to successfully and quickly convert prospects into paying clients?
If you’re a coach or consultant looking to scale your services into an online empire, you absolutely *must* have a way to predictably and easily take your leads from freezing cold to piping hot!
I’ll walk you through my super simple 3-stage, 10-step sales process to repeatedly get your ideal clients to say “YES! Where can I sign up?!” and fill your pipelines with prospects so you can build a profitable, sustainable online business that gives you the freedom you’re craving.
You don’t have to have a deep understanding of sales or consider yourself a salesperson to use these life-changing strategies. Just follow my simple process and you’ll find yourself converting leads at a higher rate than ever before!
My 3-Stage Process for How to Convert Prospects into Paying Clients
Let me walk you through the three simple stages to convert more leads and increase your online sales - engage, enroll, and compel.
STAGE 1 - ENGAGE
The simple truth is this: successful people have more conversations. You have to be having more conversations, with more people, more regularly. This is the fundamental principle of the first stage, where you’ll engage with your potential buyer.
Step 1: Prepare
Any effective sales conversation starts with preparation. You’ve got to know who you’re speaking to and understand their deeper why, their motivations, and struggles. When you have a clear understanding of your ideal client’s problem, you’re able to present your offer as the solution. Successful coaches know their clients inside out!
Preparation is the key to opportunity, and those who take the time needed to prepare for sales conversations will be able to convert prospects into paying clients faster.
Step 2: Turn on (your enthusiasm!)
So much of how to influence people to buy is your ability to transfer that feeling of excitement and bring people into your energy. Show them just how much your method for solving their problem lights you up. If you’re not excited about your offer, no one else is going to be, so turn on your enthusiasm and don’t hold back!
Pro tip: being OVERLY enthusiastic can sometimes feel like desperation, which will turn prospective clients away. Make sure you find that sweet spot where you get your clients intrigued without suffocating them.
Step 3: Contact (get their attention!)
The reality is, we live in a noisy world. We are bombarded with distractions - social media notifications, a constant flurry of emails, 24/7 news, and a myriad of other things competing for our attention. Successful coaches understand how to cut through the noise of the online world and quickly connect with their ideal clients.
A lot of the time we do this through intelligent online marketing strategies. But don’t be afraid to go the old fashioned route and simply pick up the phone and have a conversation.
Step 4: Connect
When you do reach your ideal client, make sure you’re coming from a place of service. Don't focus on yourself, make the focus all about your ideal client. Be genuinely interested in their life, in how they’re doing. Talk to your ideal client like you would a friend rather than simply treating them as a prospect or lead. Make an effort to connect with them on a deeper level.
Step 5: Create Interest
Once you’ve been engaging for a while with your ideal client, it’s time to swirl up interest around the solution that you offer.
Think of your work in the engagement phase almost like that of a detective. You’re listening deeply to your ideal client, to their struggles and their desires. You’re asking open-ended questions to understand their pain points and see how your product or service will help them.
You want to begin to connect with your prospect not only on a logical/strategic level but an emotional level as well. This means going beyond how your program/service helps them achieve a core result (i.e. getting into shape, eating healthier, learning how to meal prep) but how it changes their life from an emotional standpoint. Does your program help them feel more beautiful than they have in years? Does your service help them have more time to spend with their kids? Does it improve their relationship with their partner? Focus on these benefits too.
STAGE 2 - ENROLLMENT
Once you feel like you've got a solid understanding of your ideal client, you can move into the qualifying stage, also known as the enrollment stage. You’ve identified that this person you’re speaking to does, in fact, have the problem you solve with your product or service. If you’ve determined they don’t really have the problem and they’re not a good fit, it’s time to STOP the sales process and move on and find someone else. Remember: the whole point of sales is to find real solutions to real problems - not to sell for the sake of selling.
But if you’ve identified that yes, your prospect would be a perfect fit client, then it’s time to move on to the next step in the sales process, which is to qualify them.
Step 6: Qualify
At this point, you’re getting your prospect further towards the buying stage. You’re continuing to ask questions, build rapport, and tying in both the logical and emotional reasons as to why they should work with you.
The goal is to show you understand their pain points and you have the solution for solving them.
Step 7: Create Conviction
It’s not enough to merely get your prospect interested in the solution you provide, you must create conviction. Give them a compelling reason to say yes to your offer. Show them why they should invest their time, their money, their resources, into you - into your system, your product, or service.
You can do this by connecting your offer to their deeper intrinsic why. Tap into their emotional body, and paint a picture of what will happen if they choose not to invest in the solution you provide.
What will happen if they DON’T take action? How will this problem remain and repeat itself if they choose to stay where they are? Amplifying the pain of staying where they are now will help you convert prospects into paying clients.
PHASE 3 - COMPEL
Once you’ve shown that you understand the client’s pain points, it’s time to paint a picture of what their life could look like assuming they say yes to your offer and decide to step forward.
Step 8: Assume the sale
After painting a picture of inaction, it’s your job as an influential leader to show the possibility of what lies ahead of them once they say yes. Describe in detail what the experience will look like. How will it affect their life, their family, their finances? Make it extremely clear what’s in it for them so that they’re ultimately compelled to take action now.
In a sales conversation, there are seven fundamental internal questions that your prospective client is needing the answers to, and you've got to make sure you answer each one of those. You can read about the seven fundamental sales questions here.
Step 9: Convert objections into commitments
Once you've assumed the sale, and you’ve started to sense an interest in what you’re selling, you’ll want to pay attention to any objections they may have. Is it that they think it's too expensive? Do they think they don't have enough time? Whatever it may be, it is your job to convert those objections into commitments.
Say your ideal client’s objection is time - they don’t think they’ll have enough hours in their week to actually implement your course or coaching program. First, empathize with them. Let them know that you understand being busy. You understand trying to juggle work, kids, and family life. But if they can just commit to your system for the six weeks or three months, or however long your program is, they will actually gain their time back in the long run.
Show them that they’re investing a little bit of time upfront so that they can reap the reward of massive time freedom down the line. When I sell my Income Amplifier program, I admit to clients, the program does take time.
The strategies I teach such as learning to identify your monetizable expertise, pre-sell your idea, build out a digital course, convert it into a book, set up your evergreen automatic sales machine, and generate those extra streams of income, all require an upfront time investment.
But once they’re built out, you’re generating passive income and having more time than ever to spend with your family and enjoy life...you’ll be SO happy you took the time to set yourself up for success!
Step 10: Close the sale
The tenth and final step for how to convert prospects into paying clients is to close the sale. When they ask “where do I sign up?” we want to make sure that we’re making it as easy as possible for them to pay us. Don’t make them go through a 12-step process just to hand over their credit card. Make it incredibly simple for them to pay and for you to close that sale!
Now, you might be wondering, what if you’ve gone through all these steps and your prospect STILL says no? While it’s not ideal and it’s normal to be disappointed, your hard work isn’t all for nothing.
Take this as an opportunity to go through and audit your online sales process.
Ask yourself: - Did I go through all of the steps? - Did I miss any important parts of the process? - Did I answer the seven key questions my prospect needed answered?
Take this time to grow and improve. Even if you were rejected, you showing up for this sales conversation starts to spark the process of reciprocation in your prospect’s mind. If you were genuine, authentic, and truly coming from a place of service, that’s not something people forget. While it may not be a good time for them right now, they’ll think of you when the need arises. Or, they might talk about you to others in their network and refer you to friends and family.
Remember: selling is a mental game. You must first be sold on your offer before anyone else will buy into it. Don’t be afraid to strengthen your persistence muscle and continue to follow up. You’re going to get a few no’s before you get a yes!
Want to learn MORE about building a wildly successful coaching business from home? Check out my free Masterclass, Pivot into Profit, where you’ll learn the seven secrets to launch, scale, and skyrocket your coaching business, all without startup capital, a massive email list, or paid ads.
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