How to increase sales and stability in 2024
Author & sales expert Sara Dalrymple shares how we can make more money in our creative business without burning out.
Hiya 🌊! I’m Lucy from Hype Yourself. I chat about self-promotion and creative living to earn income from your expertise or passion. If you are new to this page, pop your email below to ensure you receive my posts. This week's post is free to read with sales expert & author Sara Dalrymple.
My paid subscribers tell me about their current challenges, and a lack of confidence in their offerings comes up regularly.
How to package them, what to say about them, and how to expand from 1:1 work are common problems.
I knew my sister in visibility, Sara Dalrymple would be the perfect person to answer these, and she has a book on this topic.
More Sales Please is being published this week, and I highly recommend this book if you find sales icky or want more of them.
My secret weapon in my Substack paid subscriber growth is Sara’s advice. Specifically, I advocate for the need or solution my work solves and share that daily.
Over the years, she has been a genuine champion of me and is the type of friend who brings a homemade pie to your doorstep when life knocks you down. I’m honoured to celebrate her book launch this week by inviting her to share some of her best tips.
Enjoy Lucy x
Incredible things happen when your creative business makes more money. The real flex is doing it in a way that won’t burn you out.
As business owners, we are the lucky ones. We create the work life we want.
Flexibility, fluidity and financial gain can happen as part of an intentional build rather than as naturally occurring consequences of being a business owner.
The best way to create a business that stays light and ease-filled is to align the products you sell, the pricing, and the promotion to your season of life, your available time and how you want to fill your days.
Ergo, knowing what you want and not getting dragged around by anything that isn’t that.
It’s crucial that what you sell, the pricing and your approach to getting it out there are unique and individual to you.
Nobody else’s version will work for you, no matter how much you may want it.
While there is no one-size-fits-all, some key things will save you time, make you money and ensure your business is built for ease.
TURN YOUR SKILLS INTO SOLUTIONS
How can I turn what I do into something that will sell easily?
Ease is earned: the easier you can make it for your buyer to see the need for what you’re offering, the easier you’ll make it for them to say yes to it.
This is why your sales process is such an important service.
“Speak to a need, a desired future state or a change you can help effect.”
Turn what you know how to do into something people want to buy.
Job titles don’t work here - people want you to break down what it means for them.
“I’m a photographer”
tells your buyer very little about what they’ll get from you, whereas
“I’ll make sure you have a set of natural headshots you love that will save you time promoting your business online”
It is much more enticing for the frazzled client who wants a bountiful bank of un-posed headshots they can whack up whenever they need to create content, do some promo or feature on a podcast.
The best thing you can do for your clients is to speak plainly to them.
So, what do you actually DO and who do you do it for?
ADVOCATE FOR YOUR WORK
How do I make more sales without coming across as being pushy?
It is not for you to push or force anyone to buy anything before they are ready.
Your role is to ensure that anyone ready to buy what you’re selling on any given day can easily do so when the time is right.
This is why I advocate for selling in a few minutes every day.
You are not in control of who will buy what and when. And nor should you be! That would be hard. You can only control that the information is readily available when your people need it.
The key is simple, repeatable messages that give all parts of your audience what they need.
The best thing you can do for your business, your clients, and your sales is to spend up to 30 minutes each day talking about the solutions you offer until it’s effortless and as automatic as brushing your teeth.
Remember that the thing your clients want more than anything else is ease.
And the best way to give them that is to provide them with regular opportunities to learn what your product is all about. Solutions sell because they have inherent value.
Therefore, talking about your services becomes almost entirely about sharing information about that solution.
It is not about push or force, it’s about breaking down who it’s for / not for and what they can reasonably expect, so they don’t have to guess.
If you don’t advocate for your products, who will?
SET YOURSELF UP FOR SPACE AND EASE
Do I need one core offer or multiple different options? Should I sell 1:1 first? How do I know where to set my pricing?
There is no right or wrong way to do business - only right or wrong for you.
To answer these questions, ask yourself: what do you want? What feels easy right now?
And what type of business are you looking to build in the longer term?
Clarifying what you’re building for, your time allocation, and how you’d like to get there will help you decide the products that best support that.
For example, if you are in a season where you have 3-4 hours a day available for work, or if you want this to be your long-term ideal, it makes sense to create a product that is scalable and spacious and not to overly rely on 1:1.
That way, you can set a fixed number of hours for delivering calls and ensure you still have work time available for marketing and selling this option.
You can be known for one signature service or build a few options at different price points.
One offer will not suit everyone, so it makes sense to consider what you can make available to a range of budgets.
Give your audience more than one entry point to work with you as part of the overall journey you want them to have with you so that you have solutions for different requirements and budgets.
The working landscape is changing: we no longer want one job title for life. We want to change directions as many times as we like.
We want the freedom to allocate time in different places for different seasons.
We want to earn money from our natural skillsets, in a way that feels easy to us.
Having a business of your own presents a golden opportunity for those looking to make work “work” for our circumstances.
There has never been a better time to make money doing whatever you love and to build plenty of time for yourself while at it.
To get More Sales Please make sure you order a copy of her book
Thank you Sara from
for the guest post today. If you have any questions for Sara about your sales, please drop them in the comments.If you have been considering becoming an annual subscriber, I’m offering a 30% discount on yearly plans until January 10th
See you next week for our first prompt card of 2024!
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My very first Substack takeover! THANK YOU Lucy for creating the perfect promo place for everyone to learn from - I’m so honoured to be here! ASK ME ANYTHING you want to know about how to increase sales the sleaze free way - I’m here for it all :-)
I love this - warm, wise, practical and genuinely useful! Thanks Lucy and Sara, I’ll be buying a copy of More Sales Please! X