Ep. 030: The 80/20 Rule of Selling
If you're struggling to hit your revenue goals, it could be that you aren't talking enough about your paid offers!
I know that talking about ways people can pay you feels scary and sleazy, but it's not.
The way to do this well is with the 80/20 Rule. This way you can continue to give tons of amazing free value to your audience and still convert people into paying clients.
Tune in to learn more about how you can use it in your business this week!
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Erika Tebbens: Before we dive into the episode, I wanted to share a little bit about my group coaching program, the Success Squad. If you find in your business that you. Aren't quite as booked out, as you would love to be. Perhaps you are having some amazing revenue months here and there, but it's really inconsistent, or maybe you still haven't hit a revenue goal that you've set for yourself. Maybe you really overthink what you should be offering and you're confused around how you should actually be putting it out there into the world, then I have great news for you because you're going to get all of that and more when you joined the Success Squad.
So what can you expect? In the success squad, I make sure that all the squad members get a ton of clarity around what they should be offering and how they should craft their messaging so that the right people are finding it and loving it. And then you get a ton of confidence around visibility, showing up different places, getting the word out so that people actually know your offer exists.
And then some tools and tips on how to actually close more sales, how to sell those amazing offers. And lastly, you're going to get a phenomenal community of other entrepreneurs who get it, because even if you have some incredible people in your life who are really supportive and they've got your back, if they aren't running businesses of their own, they don't always completely understand your struggles, right?
So if this sounds like something that you're curious about, that might be the exact thing that you need to get, where you want to be in your business, then I would encourage you to go to bit.ly/success-squad and read more about it. And on that page, depending on the time of the year, it'll either let you apply or get on the wait list and if you have any questions, just be sure to reach out because everybody deserves a squad. All right! Now, onto the episode.
Hey, and welcome to the Sell It, Sister podcast. Today, I'm going to be talking about the 80-20 principle in regards to selling and talking about what you have that people can buy from you.
I recently, uh, went in my Instagram stories and I was kind of ranting like a positive rant, not a negative rant about how one thing that I was noticing with some of my clients and just some other business friends is the very very, very common thing of women, not actively talking enough about what it is that they sell and what people can buy from them.
And I know that a lot of where this comes from, uh, is just worrying about being spammy or sleazy or coming across as pushy. So, when I started thinking about it and I went on my stories and I was talking about it and then I use the little question feature and I'm was trying to figure out, you know, how often are people talking about this stuff and what is their general feeling around it and why they're not talking about it more.
And what it really comes down to is that worry. That worry of being judged about talking about how people can essentially give them money. So what I see happening a lot, and you might notice this too is that people put out great content, right? So there'll be really consistent about posting, um, whether it's just helpful information or tips or whatever in their Instagram feed, let's say, or in their stories, or they're putting out blog posts or podcasts episodes, or, uh, you know, a million other things and what ends up happening is that that feels good because it's giving value, right?
It's no strings attached, you're not making them have to give you any money for it. You aren't really making an ask; you're just being of service, which is really cool and you should absolutely do this. But what the problem is is that, if you aren't balancing that out with actually telling people what you've got going on, then they don't know.
And in the absence of information, we try to fill in the gaps ourselves in our brain. It's just sort of how we are hardwired, right? So kind of like, imagine when you text someone and then you see the little three dots, like they're writing you back and then it goes away and then you don't hear from them, our brains start to think, oh my gosh, they're mad at me or I offended them or they're trying to avoid me or whatever it is, it could be that they started to type you back, and then they got distracted, they had to tend to something. And then they replied in their brain in their head. I've done this so many times, and so then they're like, okay, I replied, it's all, you know, whatever, I took care of it. And meanwhile, you're sitting there and stewing and freaking out and they don't realize that they didn't actually reply, right?
And then they see it later and they're like, Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I replied to my head and whatever. And then you're like, Oh, I'm, you know, I'm just, I'm so ridiculous. I can't believe I made that into a whole thing when it wasn't a whole thing, right? So, what our brains do. Like there are people probably following you right now. And I know I'm going to share an anecdote that happened to me in just a minute, but there are people probably following you right now who just love you.
They think that you are the coolest, they love what you're all about. They're like, "Oh my gosh, she, you know, gives such good values, such good free content, I've learned so much, like I did her challenge and it was amazing or uh, you know, I love listening to her podcast or watching her YouTube videos," whatever it is, they are just digging on what you are putting out into the world.
And then you don't ever talk about your offers. So in your brain, you know, your business backwards and forwards, you know, your offers, you know that you've got that course, you know that you've got that the one-on-one the group program, the, this, that, the other thing, you know, all of it, you know, when you've raised your prices, you've known when you got rid of a service and added a new one or are fully booked or not fully booked, like, you know, the ins and outs cause it's your business, but we are bombarded by so much information all day long.
It's easy to not know what is always going on in other people's businesses, right? Even some of my very closest friends who are also business owners, I might have a general idea of what is going on in their business. But specifically from time to time, I don't know all the details, like I may not know, you know, did they actually launch that thing yet? Or is the cart closed on that? What's the current price? Does she offer a payment plan? Like those specifics? I probably don't know even of my closest business friends. Right?
So we cannot assume that other people know this stuff either. So one thing that happened to me, which was a very, a very eye-opening example of this is there's this woman who I know I'm friends with her. She's been in business for a long time, but I only have met her in the last few years. She's super rad. She's incredibly talented and I had told myself this story that she's probably totally booked, she's probably out of my price range I'm probably not even at the point where I would need to be in order for me to even work with her. She's probably like, you know, only works with people who are at a way higher level than me and, and all of this stuff.
I just had completely filled in the blanks of my own brain and had basically put, you know, work with this person on my future, uh, like dream board, like my vision board for my business. It was like, "Okay. You know, my dream in the future is that I will be in a place when I can work with this woman." Well, lo and behold, not that long ago, um, sort of Facebook friends, she had posted that she was thinking about doing this sort of half day intensive for people, right? So not people who were going to be ongoing marketing clients of hers, but people who wanted some quick help and a plan that they could then then implement on their own instead of having her do it for them.
So she had said, you know, who would be interested? I had commented, she had us do a survey so she could get, uh, like, you know, a little bit more information, so she could craft this offering, so for every person who said that they would be interested right now and taking advantage of this, then she reached out after they had completed the survey and she said, you know, here's my booking link, here's the specifications of the offer, uh, here's how you can book, here's the price and I'm only doing it for this a certain amount of time and then, you know, kind of like a beta round, then the price will go up.
So if you want to do this, like here's all the info you need. Here's how you can book it and all of that. So I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is exactly what I need and I can pay for this, like this, this is the price that I can do and, and I have the time and, and everything worked." So I was like, Oh my gosh, I'm booking it. So I did. And it's been like, it was a really great session and it's been great too. Um, I'm currently working through the marketing plan and it was awesome, but I wouldn't have known if she hadn't posted about it.
Right? So this, what I'm going to encourage you is this, so there's, you've probably already heard of like the 80-20 principle in a lot of other things, but. In terms of selling. I like to think of, uh, talking about what you sell, talking about your offers, talking about the ways that people can actually pay you for your work in an 80-20 sort of way.
So that means all that amazing content that you're already putting out all that really cool, totally free value that you're giving do that 80% of the time, right? So if you are on social. Like, you know, five days a week, let's say pretty much four of those days, you are going to be putting out stuff that is either informative, like it's educating, it's entertaining, it's inspiring, it's uh, you know, just getting people aware of you and getting them engaging with you.
You're going to do that for about four out of the five days and then the fifth day, you can actually drive people to like, however it is in your business that you want to drive them to work with you.
So this could be, "Hey, you know, have a discovery call" or "Hey, check out this course" or whatever it is that you want to push them to, you can do that now in your free content. If you have a free opt-in, let's say you can totally drive people to that free opt-in because you are still giving them something that is free.
You're just giving them a new way of getting free value with you. So let's say you have a free PDF guide and you know, one day out of every week for a month, you're going to talk a little bit about something from that free guide and then your call to action on that post is going to be, you know, click here to download the rest of the guide. Again, that's free, that goes in the 80%. And then in that one day a week, drive them to the paid thing.
And as you're driving into the paid thing, it doesn't just have to be, Hey, I have this thing that you can pay me for and here's how you get it. Like, this is where you go into, you know, what's the overall value? What's the transformation? Like who is it for? Why would they want it? What problem does it solve? All of that.
So even if you're a creative. And you're like, well, my thing doesn't solve a problem. Like I so cute coffee mugs. I mean, people still buy coffee mugs all the time. Again, a problem doesn't mean a huge problem.
It doesn't mean like me. I'm, I'm actively helping people to solve the problem of not hitting their, their sales goals and not knowing how to market themselves in their business. Like that feels more like a problem. But if you are making adorable coffee mugs, it could just be that people like coffee mugs, they like to have something fun and beautiful to drink their morning coffee out of, right?
So you can very easily, especially for creatives, if you have something that's really visual, you can actively show people like, "Hey, this is my new offering," this is this thing that I just made or that I redid, or that I'm running a special promotion on or whatever the case, right? So there's, you're not just going to post it and then kind of be like, you know, buy it here for X amount of dollars and then be gone.
There's going to be more nuance to it than that, but there's nothing wrong with that because at the end of the day, the people who are following you who, again, I'm just going to reiterate who are loving that 80% of free stuff. If they don't know what the 20% is, the stuff that they can actually pay from, you know, pay you for, they are going to fill in the gaps themselves, they are going to think, Oh, I bet she's out of my price range. Or I bet, you know, her cart is closed right now, or she's not taking on new clients or whatever it is, they are going to make incorrect assumptions and people, a lot of the time will be too nervous to reach out to say, "Hey, you know, are you taking on new clients?" Or "Can you give me your rates?"Or this, that, or the other thing.
Even if they're on your website, even if it's plain as day on your website, we still, aren't always going to take advantage of that and go there. Right? Like we're busy if we're scrolling through, like, we might not even think as silly as this sounds, we might not even think to take the time to click the link in your Insta bio and go to your website and look at your work with me page.
Like we just might not even get that far and let's say we did. Let's say at one point we did. And it was like, okay, well that's really cool, but I'm just getting started. So I can't hire her yet. And now maybe it's six months down the road and you have a totally different offering and we haven't gone back to your website and we don't know, right?
So we don't know what that new offering is. Maybe you even, you know, three months ago announced that new offer, but maybe we didn't see it, maybe we saw it and forgot, maybe I don't know, maybe a lot of different things. Right? So things are worth repeating especially if it's something that you're like, well, I don't do a big launch for it because if you do a big launch for something, you might have a huge marketing plan.
We were like, I'm going to be talking about this every day for, you know, for a week until the cart closes, right? If it's just something that's an ongoing service or offering that you always have, then it's easy for people to miss it. And at the end of the day, people can't buy what they don't know exists, right?
So hopefully that helps it is perfectly okay to tell people like, what is going on in your business, what promotions you have, what new offers, if any offers are about to go away, uh, any price changes, anything like that is totally valid. And you can even think of it in terms of think of retailers like just online retailers that you shop with.
So it could be like, you know, I don't know, Old Navy, right? So, if you get Old Navy's emails, they probably email you I would say at least once a week, I'm going to guess at least once a week, I could go back in my own email and check if I want to and they're always going to be telling you like, Hey, here's what we have going on, right?
So, um, Hey, we have, you know, this denim sale. Hey, we have, um, you know, fleece. Oh, like all the fleece or, you know, $5 or whatever that promo is that they do each year. Uh, we have, you know, holiday pajamas are in, or we have this new collection of whatever. Uh, anytime they have something new and noteworthy to tell you about they are going to send that along. And if you also will notice, especially with clothing retailers, a lot of times now they will have, uh, some added free value, like ways that you can style things or, uh, hot trend alerts, different things like that, that are totally free value that come in their emails, but they also alert you to special things that you might want to take advantage of.
So, especially if they're doing like the Old Navy cash or anything, they want you to notice that you don't miss out. Now for every, like, I would highly doubt that anyone listening to this who gets, uh, emails from Old Navy and is just literally checking every single email from Old Navy, you're probably not doing that.
But let's say you've just been thinking like, Oh my gosh, I really, you know, it's the seasons are changing, I need some new sweaters. I need some new jeans. Like, yeah, I'm just, you're, you're mentally really focused on that in that moment. And then an email comes in your inbox from Old Navy and it's like, you know, denim and sweaters are on sale and you're not thinking screw you Old Navy, like, I don't want to spend my money with you. Like, I want to buy your stupid sweaters and your jeans, like how dare you, I'm a hit unsubscribe. I'm so mad at you. Like, no, you, if you're not in the market for jeans and sweaters, and that email comes in your inbox, you're just going to scroll past it. But if you are in the market for jeans and sweaters, you're going to be like, Oh my gosh, this is amazing.
Like, let me click on it, let me see what they have. Now you might look through and go. I don't like any of those jeans and I don't like any of those sweaters and still not buy, or you might be ready to buy and then you get distracted or an unexpected bill comes in and you're like, Oh shit. Now I can't you know, I kept check out cause I can't afford that stuff right now, but it like, in the meantime, you were glad that Old Navy let you know, because what if Old Navy was running that promo? And they're like, well, you know what? I don't like people might be bothered if we tell them that the jeans and sweaters are on sale.
So we're just gonna, we'll put it on the website. So when, if, if people are thinking about Old Navy, and they want to go to our homepage, then they'll see that they're on sale. Or if they come into our locations, they'll see our, our like marketing posters and they'll realize that they're on sale and then they could take advantage, but like, otherwise, we don't like, we don't want to, actually, we're not going to post on social about it, we're not going to send an email about it because right now, some of the people that we'll see that don't need jeans or sweaters, and if they see it, they're going to be pissed at us.
You know, that sounds crazy when you say it like that, you're like, why the hell would I care? I just wouldn't buy the jeans or sweaters, right? Now, this also doesn't mean that old Navy is bombarding you with you know, 20 emails a week reminding you that jeans and sweaters are on sale, right? It might just be once, maybe twice, however long that promotion is running for. And then that's it, right? So think about it in the same way just, you don't have to hit people over the head with it, but you have, I have to inform them and let them know so that they can choose if they want to take advantage of that offering.
So hope that helps. Uh, if you feel a little bit more empowered about this, or you are going to make a promise to yourself to start doing this. I would love to know, because I will say so far that of the people who have reported back to me, they've had really good results. So find me on Instagram @erikatebbensconsulting be sure to follow me there, that's where I hang out the most and I want you to tag me. So if you had any AHAs or takeaways or your going to promise that you're going to start doing this going forward, or you even have good results, um, to tell me about, because you started implementing this, go ahead and tag me over there Erika Tebbens Consulting because I would love to hear from you and I would love to cheer you on and as always happy selling.
