In this episode, we’re going to be talking about a huge sales mistake that I made and I made it with my team and looking back, the bad one, guys. All right. So I’m going to reveal this to you guys so that you can learn from my mistakes.

So let’s get into it

Hey, you guys, Dino Gomez here and you are listening to the Secrets of Coaching podcast, where we break down the nuances of growing seven-figure online coaching business. And we are about to get started in 3 2 1. All right, so here’s a massive sales mistake that I made, all right, and it was Growing Pains mistake.

And I’ll preface this by saying, you know, so basically what was happening is, with our first coaching program, we started raising the prices. We continually worked on making our program better and better. We are racking up testimonials. We had over 100 testimonials at this point. And so it was time to raise the price quite significantly. So we went ahead and raised the price to several thousand dollars. All right. And so we were at the point where, you know, in order to enroll people into this program as a sales call was going to be needed, people were no longer just going to go to a checkout page and buy an online course.

And I’ll talk about the difference between an online course and a coaching program in the future and when and where to use each. But we raised the price significantly. We made the program a thousand times better. We instilled a bunch of coaching that was otherwise missing from this course program so that people could get help with technical issues inside of their Facebook ads to account because we had a Facebook ads program. And so what I had to work on doing was develop a new skill set, which was training a sales team.

And so up until this point, I really had trained one person before on our team on sales, but I hadn’t trained and I used to run a marketing agency. So I trained them on how to sell for done for you services, marketing services that we would complete on behalf of the client, which is a vastly different sale than to sell somebody on your coaching services. So what I went ahead and did right. We raised our prices and I took the first wave of sales calls.

All right. Now, as an online coach, guys, you should always do this right when you are going to enroll people into your program because it’s a high ticket and you’re going to do it through a sales call. You need to sell your program first. Like, don’t just if you’re not good at sales, I think a major mistake is to run out there and just grab somebody who says I’m good at sales and then say, hey, sell my program because not being good at sales, like you got to be good at sales to be a good coach like it is a crucial skillset business to develop because you’re going to be doing webinars and you’re going to be on interviews and you’re going to be on camera and you’re going to be on videos and all these types of things. And so there’s an aspect to selling from all those different platforms. And so you want to learn and get better at the fundamentals of that.

All right. And so what happened here is we raise the price of my program and then I go ahead and I sell the first ten people into the program. And I didn’t go ten for ten. I think I did pretty, pretty well, though. I think we had like a 60 or 70 percent close rate when I was initially selling it. And that’s generally speaking, that’s normal. All right. It’s much easier to sell your own program than it is for a team member or somebody else to sell a program for you.

And the reason is that you can sell with conviction, because when it boils down to it, like I’m the one who put all the blood, sweat, and tears into building our program and so I like the hundreds of hours that went into that program and the late nights and the weeknights where I’m sitting there answering questions in the Facebook group and giving people, you know, 30, minute response time and spending time away from my wife, like all those different sacrifices, the weekends where, you know, whatever we’re doing, we’re out to lunch.

And I’m still on, you know, in the Facebook group answering questions like before I understood the importance of building a coaching team, all those types of things. So it’s very easy for me to sell my own program because I know how much went into it. And also, I literally threw recollection know the names of every single person and all of their results. So, like, no matter who came on the call, I could be like, you know, if they seemed similar to Sarah as far as their background, what their experience was, you know, all these types of things, I could be like, you know who you sound like?

You sound like our client Sarah and Sarah did this and she came from this and she felt this way and she was worried about this. But then we helped her do this and she got these results. And if somebody came on the call and they were like, Miguel and I would be like, OK, you know what you sound like, Miguel. You know, Miguel did this to address this. You know, like, I can go through the whole wrap it all off the top of my head because I’m the one seeing all the testimonials and posting them on our sales page and on our website and all these things like it’s all top of mind for me.

It’s much easier to sell when it’s your own program. All right. So it’s also important that you sell your own program before you bring on a sales rep, because then you can train them. Right? You can record your sales calls and then give them a flow of how the sales call should work. And it instills confidence in your sales team and your team members. Right. If you’ve gone ahead and sold the program at a very high, close rate before him because we’re able to say I can show them like proof and evidence like here.

Right. I’ve gone you know, I’ve closed six of eight people. The six of the first eight people. I’m going to hand it off to you now. Right. So this is what was happening, right? I’m. Bring it on a sales team and the mistake I made bringing on a sales team was, well, there was really a couple. But the main mistake that I made guys was that I naturally I love people and so I can, like, talk to people and jive with them.

And again, it was my program, so it was easier for me to sell. But what I had to do at this point was put together an actual sales framework so that our sales team could come in. That’s kind of like an S.O.P or standard operating procedure, and they would have that, so to speak, script. Right. And we don’t just have them read off a script, but at least have a flow of what the direction the call should go, what questions to ask and where and how to direct the call and what things to say and how to answer certain questions, those types of things.

So I was putting together that sales flow, that sales script, so to speak, for our team. And in that sales script, in that sales flow, I included a tidbit about how many videos and how many hours of videos and how much training was inside of our program.

All right. Now, that was a massive mistake because of the number one rule and actually I don’t know if it’s the number one rule, but one of the most important rules of sales is that you always sell the destination. Right. So you sell people what they want and then you give them what they need. OK, and so the example I always like to give people to really drill this home is that if you think of a commercial for a resort-like in Jamaica.

All right. What does that commercial show you? All right.

They show you visit Jamaica. They show you the blue and turquoise waters. They show you drinks poolside, they show you getting massages, they show you the trees.

They show you like kayaking. They show you snorkeling and scuba diving. They show you all the gourmet food. They show you the amazing amenities of the entire place. They show you all the great things about vacationing there at that resort in Jamaica. OK, so they are selling you on the vacation. They are not selling you on what it takes to get to Jamaica, which is what packing, which I personally am not a fan of packing, but it’s packing, doing laundry, finding a housesitter or a babysitter or dog sitter.

It’s going to the airport. It’s getting paid a ton of money for parking at the airport. It’s sitting in the airport for hours. It’s going through TSA and getting perhaps harassed. And it’s all this crazy stuff, right? All the stuff that happens. Right. It’s, you know, your flight is delayed. You’re crammed in this seat that’s uncomfortable for hours and can’t move. It’s either, you know, the person next to you as smells bad or whatever it is.

Right. All the stuff that I’m getting ridiculous with my exaggerations here.

But there is all that stuff that goes into actually going on a vacation and enjoying the actual part of travel. Right. And so they don’t show you the fact that you’re going to, you know, be fatigued from your travel and all those types of things. And they don’t show you the person packing and smiling. They don’t show you that right. They show you the turquoise waters and the beach in the sand and the drinks and the massages and the food and all that stuff.

Right. So they show you all that stuff. So that’s what it means. You sell the vacation, so you sell people on what they want and then you give them what they need. OK, and so the same is true when you’re selling your coaching programs, right. You’re going to sell people on, hey, here are the results of what our clients are getting or here’s the transformation that we’re we’re going to work with you on to get to.

Right. And at the end of working together, you know, you’re going to be here. Right. a goal is to get you here. That’s what everything that we’re going to do, we’re going to fulfill our bargain as a coach, I’m giving you all the tools and resources and to get you there. And as long as you do your part, you’re going to end up here, OK? And so that’s what you’re essentially you should be doing in a roundabout way on your sales calls.

Now, what I included as a tidbit in our sales flow or our sales script for our team members that we’re going to do enrollment for us, as I included in the script for them to mention how many videos were in our program and in our Facebook ads program?

We have like a hundred videos, no joke, and we’re consistently updating the program and stuff like that.

But every time we figure out a cool new thing and Facebook is always updating with cool new advertising techniques and opportunities, we would be like, oh my gosh, like we need to get our members this.

And so we add a new video and or otherwise we’d end up with a new, you know, client campaign testimonial where we had a really successful campaign like, OK, I’m going to record this and show them exactly this case study of how we did this for our client in this niche. OK, cool. We did. We have another cool case study of how we use Facebook ads to explode this business and the other night, I’ll throw that in there.

So pretty soon our Facebook ads program is massive, right. Is just massive. And so our sales guys are on these enrollment calls and people are all excited because they’ve seen our hundreds of testimonials and so they’re excited to join. And the sales call is going well, and then all of a sudden our enrollment reps, they get to that part of the script, that little tidbit I included in there that says, yeah, and you get access to over 100 different videos, you know, of 10000 hours of Facebook as training or whatever it was.

And they lost a bunch of sales because of it. Right, and so it’s interesting, I was going back through I was listening to recordings because all of a sudden, you know, sales took a dip for a second. And I was like, is this normal or is it just because, like, they’re getting their groove on this or what’s going on? And I’m chatting with them as well and figuring out, hey, guys, where do you think people are falling off or where did the energy change on the call or what’s, you know, what’s going on here?

And they go, yeah, like, you know, it seems to be like right around this part, like towards the end, towards the price drop in the clothes and put it thinking about it,

And I was looking at it and I was like, what is going on? And then I realized when I was closing people, I never talked about how many videos were in the program. That wasn’t it. I was just talking to them about, hey, you know, have you tried an online business before?

Have you tried this before? Have you tried Facebook ads before? What worked for you? What did it what do you think you’re struggling with? What are your strengths and weaknesses? You know, like and I was literally having a conversation with them and because that kind of just comes naturally, to me, I wasn’t even realizing that. I was never mentioned how many videos were in the program. I was just talking to them about, you know, what their goals were, what they were struggling with, and what we’ve been able to do with our hundreds of clients.

And I would have, you know, be able to explain to them and show them all these different case studies and testimonials of our different clients getting results. That’s all I did. And then people would be like, what’s the price? I say the price. And they’d be like, all right, I’m in. And so I didn’t even realize because it’s just a thing for me that I was always selling the destination.

I was never talking about what it was going to take to get to the destination.

And I happened to include that in our sales script for our new team members, for our enrollment team. And so they were talking about the destination to get there, all the work to get there. And then sales went down.

And so once I realized that, I was like, oh, my gosh, what did I do? Right. So immediately rip that out. I was like, Guys, you never mentioned any of the stuff that’s in the program unless they ask and if they ask, then tell them, yep, this is how many videos are in there, right? You don’t need to watch all of them. And which is true.

And which is why and I kind of covered in a previous episode, I highly recommend with all your coaching programs, you have an onboarding call is because we didn’t want people to log into our program and feel overwhelmed when they saw basically 100 training videos. So real quickly, what we did was we gave everybody a one v one call and that would happen like the day they signed up, like, boom, get on. That won’t be one call now.

OK, and what our coach would do with them on that one v one call and this is Chelsea, who is just a rock star in our company is Chelsea would break down. OK, what experience level where they are at? What are they looking to do? What are their goals? And then she would literally basically custom design for them. OK, start with this module and then from there, stop and implement. Right. And then what you need to do is hop on the coaching calls.

Right. You don’t need to watch all the training videos, hop on the coaching calls. They will help you set up what needs to happen next. And she would tell them, I don’t want you to get lost. And in the video training, all right. Just watch these five videos then hop on our Tuesday or Thursday calls. Right. And let the coaches literally help you implement that so that you can launch your first campaign and then boom.

Right. Our testimonials skyrocketed even more because we started customizing the experience for our clients. And that’s something we recommend that you highly do inside your programs. If you’re unable to do that and you’re thinking, no, I don’t have the money or the cash flow to hire somebody to do that or I don’t have the time to do that myself. This is a reason to raise your prices. It allows you to do things like that and build a better program.

And we’ll talk about that as well in another episode. But that’s the big breakthrough I had was like, oh, my gosh, I gave our sales guys.

I told them to talk about one hundred videos and I scared everybody away because nobody wants to watch one hundred videos. Right. And so that I wanted to share with you guys.

Right. Just in case you’re having trouble with sales and enrolling people on the call, like putting together an actual sales framework that is specific for your coaching program is an art, and you can go and you can talk to sales coaches out there, like really great ones. I am not the best salesperson in the world or anything close to it. You can talk to the guys that are really good.

And it’s all about customizing a sales script according to the product and service and figuring out what works there. And so that’s why inside our programs, we have expert sales coaches who help our clients customize their sales script because it’s not just like, hey, download this script and it’ll work plug and play. It’s not like that. And so I always wanted to share that with you guys. In case you are having trouble with enrolling people over the phone, make sure you’re one you’re focusing on selling the destination.

Don’t talk about how many videos you have or those nuances. Right. People aren’t there to watch videos and stuff like that. They want just the end result, right. Everybody wants six-pack abs, but nobody wants to spend an hour every single day working out, eating just protein shakes. Right.

But you can say, hey, I can get you to six-pack abs if you’re willing to put in the work. And they say, yep, I’m willing to do whatever it takes. And then you say, great, you’re working an hour a day and you’re eating a protein shake and that’s all you’re having. Right. And so that’s what I wanted to share with you guys, was that major sales mistake I made, how we fixed it.

And then also just so that you guys, you know, the second kind of tip in there, right, was here’s how you customize your programs to make sure your clients get better results is literally have one v one onboarding calls, which was a game-changer for us.

And then the third step in there.

Right, is just don’t if you’re struggling with sales and you downloaded some script on the Internet, the ultimate sale script or whatever the Internet marketers are selling, just know it needs to be cut like it’s not as you might have some success with it if, you know if you already have some skills. But sales is something that we continually everybody should always constantly be working on and getting better at. And it really depends on what you’re offering and your niche and your audience and a bunch of different factors.

It should really be customized to you as well. So that is it for this episode. Guys, I hope that was super helpful. As always, keep doing. You have an absolute blast with your online coaching business and we will see you in the next episode.

Hey, Dino Gomez here. And if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to head on over to the secretsofcoaching.com for more resources, downloads, videos, and cheat sheets to help you grow your online coaching business. All right. And if you picked up a cool tip or strategy from this particular episode, we would love a five-star review where every single month we choose one lucky winner to win access to one of our coaching programs. All right. So that is it for this episode.

Guys, we will see you in the next one.