 What do you do when you are trying to sell something and your audience isn't buying it? So that's what I'm gonna talk about in this video because I just recently launched something that had much fewer sales than I expected. And I wanna share that lesson with you and some of the solutions that I'm taking and that you may want to take if you're in that situation of you've invited your audience to sign up for something, to buy something and they're not taking that action. And maybe they're even praising the invitation. They're saying, oh, that's great announcement or, wow, what a great offering, what a great service or product, but they're not buying it. So what do we do? Okay, so here's what happened. Let me tell you the story and then we'll go into the actual solutions that you can implement in your business now. Okay, so last Thursday, so this is pretty recent. Last Thursday, I announced a new offering that I'm trying out, testing out called the Getting It Done Sessions. These are focused sessions where I facilitate a group of people working on whatever project you bring to the session. You'll be working quietly, I'll be working quietly, others in the group will be working quietly on their own projects. You work on your project, I work on my project. In the beginning of the session, we'll do a little bit of coaching if you need to get done stuck on anything and then everybody shares what it is they're gonna be working on for the next 30 minutes. We actually do the work and then we take a break, do some more coaching if needed or you can continue working if you don't need coaching and then we'll do another 30 minutes and then we'll celebrate at the end. So the two hour session. And I have seen from firsthand that this can be transformational for people because so oftentimes you're not building a business because you're literally not spending the time doing the productive things because you're scared, you're procrastinating either those or you're not clear. And this get it done session is that's the purpose of these sessions to get you no longer scared because you're with people, you schedule a time so you're not procrastinating, you're working on it and that you're clear on what to do because you get some coaching. So anyway, anyway, it's a great thing for those of you who have tried it, very few people have tried that kind of thing. And so most of you were like, wow, what a great idea. It sounds like a great idea, but none of you bought except for one of my clients who was incredibly supportive. She has been with me for work with me for over a year. So she, and she's experienced this kind of thing with me before. So she knows it's powerful. So the lesson here is even if your audience is saying how great something is, the real result is whether or not they bought your thing. Right? So words don't often trans praise worthy words don't often translate into sales into money for you because people want to be nice and people might think it's a great idea. It's just that they don't have, they are not used to spending money on that thing yet. It's something new to them. They think it's great in theory, but when it comes to actually spending money on it, that takes a whole other sort of decision process. And so something that seems like a great idea, seems like a great offering might still sell in the future if they see it often enough. And finally they come to that decision, visibility, repetition of a particular invitation, will eventually change somebody's mind to say, you know what? And if they thought it was a great idea, they will eventually buy, but they have to see it repeated and often enough and it takes them time, their own organic process of coming to be used to the idea of spending money on this thing. For example, you know, therapy, I mean that just start with psychotherapy, right? Was only started in the past couple of decades, right? Less than a hundred years. Before people started buying psychotherapy, can you imagine the first psychotherapists that are trying to sell psychotherapy services? People around them are like, well, that sounds like a great idea, but why don't I just go to my friend or my, you know, my mother or my pastor, right? Let me just go to somebody who can help me with mental issues and emotional challenges. Why do I have to pay you to do that, right? To sort things out emotionally or mentally. And so over time, as more and more people saw that invitation and they saw it often enough, they started getting used to the idea that, oh, maybe it is worth paying a professional to talk to them to sort out my mental and most, and now of course it's normal, right? Psychotherapy is such a normal thing. Coaching, life coaching is now in that state of the public getting used to the idea of paying for coaching because coaching is still a little bit more like, well, why don't I just talk to my friend? Why don't I just journal about it? Why don't I just, you know, listen to some motivational videos or whatever, we're watching motivational videos, right? Why don't I just think about it? Why don't I just go into the woods and think about this thing, right? Coaching, right? Coaching, of course, coaching is not just thinking about something and talking. It's also, you know, getting you to explore what your goals are and really helping you to figure out what actions to take, getting unstuck, all these things, coaching is a very wide field. But you see, so coaching is also, people are now getting used to the idea of paying for it. And once they see someone else paying for it, they're like, oh, well, maybe it's okay for me to pay for it too, right? So any offering that is brand new in the world or in front of an audience needs the time and the repetition before the audience is going to spend money on that thing. Does that make sense? So when I was making that offering of the get it done sessions, most of you were like, theoretically, it sounds great, but I can't see myself spending money on this yet, but you're not gonna tell me that. You're just saying, wow, that's great because you wanna be supportive and I get it, right? And it's great. Thank you for being supportive and I love that. But I try to be as objective as I can when it comes to whether an offering, whether a product or service is what the market wants. You are my market, but you're only my market when you spend money on something that I sell. And if you don't spend money on it, it's simply you telling me, George, it may be a great idea, but I'm still not used to the idea of spending money on that. And of course, there's also the question of price, right? Price, of course, makes a difference. If somebody is asking you to pay them $10,000 an hour for coaching or therapy, then you'll be like, that's crazy, that's way too much money, right? But if somebody says, oh, I charged $200 an hour for psychotherapy, that's still a little bit high, right? And then psychotherapy. I charge $100 for psychotherapy or coaching. Oh, well, that sounds reasonable. Great, you see, so pricing obviously matters. And when you're offering something brand new, the audience doesn't know what to pay for it. You don't know what to charge for it because it's not a normal thing in the market yet. So naturally, you just have to test what the price is. And so I'm charging $60 for three get it done sessions because I figure, well, something similar to what I'm offering is you all are, some of you are buying courses from me and my courses are at this current time, $60 for three, a three session course. So I figure, oh, $60, I'll charge the same price as the kind of thing you've been buying from me. But the get it done sessions, it turns out, is very, it's different, it's a separate category. So, see, so here's another important lesson. Even an expert marketer like me is continually experimenting with trying new things that may not work at all, may not work at all. So don't look at successful marketing people around you and say, well, everything they sell must be working because it looks great and their audience seems to be saying, yes, this is so cool, but you have no idea that behind the scenes, you really don't. Because I actually know some successful marketers and I know behind the scenes that some of their things are falling flat, completely flat, like almost nobody's buying it. But you can't tell from the front, from the public side. It looks like, wow, it's designed well and people seem to be clicking like and saying it's so great, you have no idea. So don't, so you think your thing isn't selling? It's not just you, it's those of us who are more advanced in the marketing, we try things all the time that fall flat, but we just don't tell you. I'm telling you because I want you to learn something from these lessons, right? And thank you, Michelle, for your comment there. Feedback is important, she wrote when it comes to what we offer, absolutely. So, okay, so let me get back to the, what do you do then? Okay, what do you do? You're offering something people aren't buying. So the thing to do, the overall idea is you've got to try offering something else, right? You've got to experiment as quickly as you can. This is something that I've noticed a lot of you, I wish you would do, because I noticed a lot of you are taking a long time to work on something before you present it to your audience or present it to the world. And then you get devastated naturally because you worked on a long time. You get devastated if not enough people buy or nobody buys. And of course I would be devastated too if I were you because I worked so long on that. So I try to experiment quickly, the get it done sessions, the idea came to me and I launched it immediately the next month without too much work. It took me a few hours to put the webpage, think about it, put the webpage together and to offer to just a few hours, not too much wasted time, right? I think it's a great idea, you know, and eventually I'm gonna keep trying it occasionally until you get used to buying it. You get used to the idea, maybe I should pay for focused working time. Maybe that makes sense, right? So anyway, so you've got to try something new. So what I did was I allowed myself after 24 hours, one person bought who happened to be a very supportive client, not that her sale, her purchase doesn't matter, her purchase is also a vote, but if only a few supportive clients buy something, obviously I can't make a living doing that at $60 per sale, right? So at $60 per sale, it's gotta be a lot of people buying it for me for it to work financially for me. So that's why her vote is grateful, but it's not a legitimate vote to have enough sales to make it work, right? So after 24 hours of one sale, I knew, now you might say, George, why don't you wait longer? Maybe just, you know, the sessions are still two weeks away, George. I mean, why are you judging it so fast? Because I know based on the regular promotional cycle that I have that 24 hours is a great early sign for whether an offering is going to work. Let me explain. So let me give you the actual example, right? After 24 hours, one sale from a supportive client, not enough to make that offering scalable enough to make it work for me financially. So I gave myself a couple of hours of wallowing in depression, okay? Still, like, you know, even somebody like me, successful marketer, I mean, I know I have so much to learn, but some of you see me as a successful marketer. So I'll let you keep that, keep that perception, right? Even as a successful marketer like me has failures all the time, not all the time, but sometimes, and yes, I too get depressed sometimes. So I allowed myself those few hours of being down. It's okay, it's natural. It's a natural human reaction. And, you know, I go for a longer than usual walk. I, you know, journal a little bit maybe, and I just think, ah, it's too bad, too bad. You know, a little bit of regret that didn't work, right? But then after the few hours of depression, after I allow myself that, I bounce back as quick as I can. That's what I want you to do too. I want you to bounce back as quickly as you can instead of wallowing, because wallowing doesn't help anybody. It doesn't even help you, right? It doesn't help you. You've got to stop the thought of wallowing as soon as you allow yourself a couple of hours. It's okay. But then after a couple of hours, you stop the thought that that's enough. Thank you. You know, wallowing thought, depressive thought. I know you care about me. That's why you're so sad. I know you care about me. That's why you're regretful. I know you care about me. That's why you're frustrated that you made the offer that didn't work. Whatever the emotion is, thank you for caring about me enough to have that negative emotion, but it's enough for now. Let me now try something new. Because the market isn't judging you. It's not that your audience isn't going, you're not valuable to me. That's why I'm not buying from you. You, as a person, are not valuable. And that's the mistaken thought that a lot of us make. People aren't buying. Therefore, I am not a valuable person in the world. That's nonsense. Okay? It is so far from that. People aren't buying. It means that thing, okay? That particular offering said in that way didn't make sense to them. It wasn't valuable for them. It's not you. You are an infinite source of offerings. Remember this. You have an infinite amount of ideas within you for what you could offer the world and to your audience. Infinite amount. Who is to judge how many things you could create? Nobody can judge that. I can't judge that. All I can believe that's true about you is you have an infinite number of ideas within you. You just, of course, need to give a time for those ideas to come out, right? Okay. So after those few hours of following, I allowed myself, I then said, okay, I'm gonna make a decision. I've got to make something work in August because it's not that, thankfully, it's not like I have to make it work or I'm gonna be on the streets, right? Homeless, no. But I do have certain goals for myself that I try to keep. I have certain financial goals every month that the financial goals isn't like I'm chasing money. I love money. It's not that. I think we have a little bit of buffer from my successes over the past few years, but I keep those financial goals to keep myself experimenting and keep myself serving you in ways that are valuable to you, okay? I know it's valuable to you when you spend money on something I did I sell, right? Because that's what the market is, right? That's exchange of value. So I'm like, okay, what am I gonna experiment with next? Allow myself a couple hours of depression and then I bounce back right away and offer you a new course and you saw it. I just offered it yesterday. Well, Thursday, I made the get it done session offer. Friday, 24 hours later, I was depressed, right? And then I allowed myself a few, but then Friday afternoon I said, all right, I'm gonna work on, I'm gonna offer something on Monday. So then I put together something new on Friday afternoon, okay? I asked some feedback from my clients, gave them a few days to give me feedback, and then yesterday on Monday, I offered it to you, a brand new course for the month, your core message, et cetera, et cetera. And within 24 hours of that new offering, I've already gotten five sales, okay? Now, five sales is not enough to feed me for August, but I know that five sales is gonna multiply to 50, maybe 60, something like that. And of course I don't live on $60 times 50 is $3,000. I can't live on $3,000 in San Francisco, but with my other income sources, it's definitely enough. That's just one of my income sources. So do you see, so after 24 hours, right? One sale versus five sales, one offering had one sale from a very supportive client that's not gonna be scalable. Versus a second offering that had five sales after 24 hours. And I know those sales were from, a few of them were from people who had bought courses from me before, super grateful. But a few of them were from people who haven't bought courses from me. So I know, ooh, this new course, this new offering seems to be scalable. So now of course I do the, continue the regular promotion of emailing my list about it, doing Facebook ads on this thing. So do you see, you have to pivot quickly when something isn't working. Don't think, well, let me try selling it for another six months, even though nobody bought this thing. If people aren't buying it, it within 24 hours of enough people seeing it. So that's a question. What is enough people? For me, 1,000 people seeing it is enough of a test. God, one sale after 1,000 people seeing it in 24 hours, pretty good test, right? For you, maybe it's 100 people seeing it, right? Thankfully, when we use Facebook, we can see how many people it reached, right? When we reach 1,000 people got one sale, I'm gonna work. So, okay, let me kind of finish this video by giving you a couple of factors to test out. Well, how do you know whether or not something is working and it should be, you should stop doing it and try offering something new, okay? So here are a couple of factors. I'm gonna write a whole blog post on this and then I've already outlined it, so I'm gonna share it with you. Are enough people seeing it? I started talking about that. I would recommend you gotta have at least 100 people see something before you get one sale. One sale out of 100 might not be enough for you, but it might be like, well, that's pretty good. I can scale this to 1,000 people seeing it, okay? For me, it's like 1,000 people seeing it. It should be at least a couple of sales because I know I can scale it past enough, 5,000, 10,000 people seeing it so that it makes enough sales for me to make it worth my while, right? So are enough people seeing it? For a lot of you, not enough people are seeing your thing. That's why you're not getting enough sales. Like getting a couple dozen people seeing something or even a couple hundred, maybe that's not enough people seeing it. So how do you get enough people seeing it? Are you, have you emailed your subscribers? Your email subscribers? Have you emailed them specifically about the thing? And usually need to email them at least once. I email my subscribers two times. Most marketers email their subscribers five to 10 times for any one offering. I think that's too salesy. That's my opinion. So that's why I limited it to two emails about it. For you, you may be used to doing two or three or four emails and that's okay. Have you emailed your people? Number two, have you asked some of your supportive friends and fans to help you get the word out? Maybe you haven't done that, okay? So that's the second one. Third is have you run a Facebook ad to your warm audience, people who are on your email list, who are surfing Facebook, who visit your website, who are surfing Facebook, who have engaged with some of your Facebook content. So Facebook ads, if you don't know how to use Facebook ads, I have a whole course on how to do that. Facebook ads to the warm audience, have you run a Facebook ad to cold audience to test it out, look like audiences? Are you on Instagram? If you love using Instagram, have you run an Instagram ad for that thing? If you know how to use Google ads, have you done that? I'm gonna be teaching a course on Google ads later this year if you're interested in that. And lastly, have you looked at reaching out to influencers, partners who could promote this thing for you to their audience if it's the right audience for you. That can make or break whether an offering has enough sales. That's how I really got started in the very beginning when I had no audience at all and I didn't know how to run Facebook ads. In the beginning, I just approached people who had the right audience and I struck up a conversation and made it really a good deal for them to share it with their audience, so influencers. So are enough people seeing it? Number one, number two is are the people who are seeing it used to buying this kind of thing? That's a real question, right? If you're selling something that's completely brand new and your audience is like, I've never bought this kind of thing. I don't know anybody who has bought this kind of thing before, I'm sorry, it doesn't matter how many people you share it with and nobody's used to buying this, then it's a brand new offering that they have to see for enough time. That means you have to make your money doing something else and then it's just occasionally still offer this thing and knowing that enough people have to see it until finally you get one sale and then two and then five because then word of mouth starts to happen, okay? So now how do you know whether something they're used to buying this kind of thing? Well, okay, let's go through a couple of examples. A book, a course. If you're selling a book, people are used to buying books. So that's pretty normal. An online course, people are used to buying online courses now. It's getting more and more popular. So that's a relatively easy thing to sell. One on one services. Well, it depends on what kind of one-on-one services. For example, I have some clients who are working on selling self-care coaching, okay? Self-care coaching, even though it's one-on-one, people are used to buying one-on-one services, psychotherapy, starting to use to buying coaching, but self-care may be something that they're not used to spending money on. They're like, well, I know self-care is important, but do I wanna spend money on that? Is it selfish to spend money on that, right? So if enough people have saw that offer, but not enough people are buying it, then they still, you need to make money doing something else or offering something else and still offer that thing. And just occasionally so that people get used to the idea and then finally they'll start buying eventually, okay? So are they used to it? And third factor is, is it from a credible source? Meaning, whatever audience is being sold that thing, do they find you the seller to be credible? Well, how do they find you credible? Okay, number one is the page that's selling the thing well-designed and that is a real thing, okay? Is it nicely designed? Now, it doesn't have to be, you don't have to pay a web designer $1,000 to design a nice design page for you. I do it all myself for free. I just make it really simple. I have one single image at the top, so I don't have to, because I'm not very good at choosing images. I'll just choose one image and even my recent images are not like so-so, right? So I choose one image, seems okay. I ask my clients, do you think this seems okay at the top? And then the writing is not too wide. When you look at a webpage and the writing is like, whoa, it goes really wide. It's really hard to read. It's not well-designed. So I try to make the writing somewhat narrow and I try to make it not too dense, not the paragraphs aren't too long. So these are all little design things that you should think about, right? Is it easy to read? Is it not messy? That kind of thing. Is there anything that's off about it? And you can ask some friends and some colleagues to give you feedback on it. Is something off about this page or is it look relatively well-designed? Again, doesn't have to be a fancy design. Just has to be clean, clean, easy to look at. Pleasant to look at, that's all. Doesn't have to have lots of images. Pleasant to look at, easy to, the buttons are not way too big or way too small, right? That kind of thing. And also in terms of credibility is have you been talking about that topic for long enough that the audience says, I trust you on this topic. So for example, if I suddenly start selling you an online course on how to do knitting, you know, George, you've never said and created any content about knitting. How do I trust that you know how to do this thing? How are you credible as a knitter, right? But I've been talking a lot about the course, the kind of things I sell courses on. So that makes sense to you. You're like, oh yeah, I can trust George on that stuff. One way to shortcut the credibility element is to have a promotional partner. Somebody who has an audience that already trusts them, if they sell your thing, they say, oh, George is really credible in this area. You should trust him on this. And that word of mouth, that kind of promotional partner can really shortcut the credibility. Well, I trust you, you know, Bob. And if Bob says George is credible, then maybe George is credible and I should go ahead and buy it, right? So that's third is credibility. Fourth is at the right price. I've already talked about this. It needs to be something at a price that the audience says, yeah, that makes sense that this is being sold at that price. Captain here asks, what if it's not within people's budget to purchase within 24 hours, but they would be able to buy a week later? That's a good question when it comes to something that's higher price. I would say if something is several hundred dollars or higher, then there is a, you know, 24 hours might be too soon within the announcement. But if something is under a hundred dollars, it's generally kind of an impulse purchase for most people and you should see some sales within 24 hours. But yes, you're right. Several hundred or several thousand dollars within 24 hours if the audience and if the audience is big enough, then there's something wrong. I'm sorry. It's sort of like this balance between price and enough people seeing it and the timing, but you are right to think about that. Tanya asked, do you think offering a free discovery session is a good idea or should I offer paid coaching at the same time in the beginning with no clients yet? No, I think, you know, I talked about this in a different blog post about sampling. You know, people need to sample what you do before they decide to buy it. You do parenting coaching, okay? Parenting coaching is starting to become a thing. It's still kind of new, right? Life coaching in general is kind of new. The people are, yeah, should I pay for this thing? I mean, I have the money, but should I pay to talk to somebody about thing if they're not a licensed psychotherapist? So parenting coaching is starting to. So I think Tanya, for you, you need enough credibility with your audience. You need to talk about the stuff enough. You need for them to see your content enough to say, you know what, Tanya knows what she's talking about. Does she? I don't know. But I need to see her talk about parenting enough to say, yeah, she seems like she knows what she's talking about. Maybe it's worth paying her now for this kind of thing, right? So I think partly in the beginning, it's about credibility, building up the content to people. People go, oh yeah, you seem to know what you're talking about. And then, of course, I think a sample discovery session is helpful. I would recommend that. Some people don't believe in free discovery sessions. I think they are beneficial. And I've noticed that when it comes to discovery sessions, the longer the discovery session, the more people tend to say, you know what, I do want to work with you. So if you can possibly do 60 to 90 minute discovery sessions for free per person, they're more likely to sign up with you. 30 minutes might be too short. At my level where I have a lot of credibility with my audience, I only need to do 30 minute free sessions. By the time someone comes to a 30 minute free session, they're already sold, by the way, right? So it's 30 minutes is kind of confirming that things are the right fit. But in the beginning, you need to do longer discovery sessions. That's my recommendation. Okay, so enough people, something they're used to buying, a credible source at the right price, and they need to see it often enough. Even if it's something they're used to buying, they still need to see it a couple of times before they buy, right? It's usually the case. So maybe in the beginning, you'll get a few sales, 24 hours, but then those who didn't buy it, they just need to see it two or three or four times or need to see it in different places. You email them about it. They also saw it on Facebook, right? Even two places is helpful for them to say, oh yeah, that's right, I should buy this thing. I do want to buy it. So anyway, I hope this is helpful. This has gone a bit longer than I expected, but I hope that hearing these stories and hearing about these factors will help you to make your next offering or your future offerings more successful. So thanks for those who are able to join me here, Captain Tanya and Michelle. I see your comments here. So thank you so much. And any questions you have for me, you know that I'm always welcome to them. So just comment below if you have any questions or if you want me to make a video about something in the future, you just post it on my page or probably message me if you like. So have a great rest of your day. I wish you success in your future offerings and remember these things all matter and it just takes time as well for people to get used to you and then to buy from you. So thank you, Elisa, for your comment there as well. Bye, everybody.