In this episode of Smart Leaders Sell, Jess brings back Podcast Producer Scott Doucet to talk about a membership sales blunder he’s made! Actually, in the spirit of full transparency, Jess scheduled 4 other guests to record this week and all of them got the same sickness and had to reschedule, so Scott has arrived as an afterthought, but luckily: he always has a sales problem in need of a solution!
Scott recently launched a membership community for podcasters and aspiring podcasters to get better at their craft, promotion and monetizing. He has offered his membership out for $1 for the first month, and one person has signed up.
His sales question: Why is no one signing up, and where do I go from here?
Jess starts off by congratulating the one person who has signed up and explains that it’s difficult to get people to sign up to membership sites because they have an aversion to signing up to anything low cost. She explains the psychology behind why that is and mentions that Scott has no problem selling higher ticket services.
Jess asks Scott where he feels he went wrong, and he explains that he didn’t really believe in the price, and felt it should have been a higher dollar value right from the start. She asks about a few different strategies that Scott normally uses and asks if he’s done them for this offer, and the answer is a strong No.
Jess shares her strategy for the benefit of not only Scott but those of us who are listening in with plans to launch our own membership sites. She shares that when she initially launched, her site was not complete. She describes her process and the cost she launched at, as well as offering the reason why. She also talks about why paying customers approached her and told her to charge more.
She tells Scott what happens when he devalues himself, and the ripple effect that has throughout his audience. He comes to the abrupt and painful realization that he’s training people into a behavior that doesn’t match the attitude that he actually wants them to have. Jess also explains the difference between Scott’s community versus the ones he used as an example for this offer.
Jess goes on to share that the best salespeople don’t necessarily have dominant personalities, but they do need to be told to buy. She goes on to tell Scott why confidence is necessary, and why his offer actually showed the exact opposite of confidence.
Quotes
“They assume that they’ll get what they pay for”
“I made the coupon code ROBBERY because that’s what it feels like”
“I wanted people to buy when it was incomplete so I could test it and tweak it”
“We have this mentality, especially in the online business space, where we think ‘Build it and they will come’ and that doesn’t actually work”
“I have a goal to make my community the richest podcast community in the world”
“I made it happen because I wanted it to happen that badly”
Links
www.Podcastbay.net
More Jess:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/FabulousFemaleEntrepreneurs/
https://jessicalorimer.com/supersize-your-sales
https://jessicalorimer.com/list-building-legend
Disclaimer: Some of these links are for products and services offered by the podcast creator