Episode 83 · February 4, 2024
How to go from scrambling to organized
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In this episode
Early in my business someone emailed me apologizing for taking so long to get back to me, and I scrolled down the thread to discover I'd sent her a proposal and completely forgotten it. I teach selling. That's what it looks like when you let a potential client fall through the cracks. The woman in this call is in the same place. Organizations are coming to her, she's got notebooks and spreadsheets and a LinkedIn profile she can't find anything in, and she's got a child and a protected afternoon, so she needs to work smarter. We get into a sales process, a CRM and templates. At the end I explain why knowing your sales process is what lets you lead it.
What you'll take away
- Referrals are not a sure thing, and she has the scar to prove it. A red-hot referral had her revising the proposal three times and calling their board chair on a weekend, then hired somebody else.
- They led that process and she followed it. Every time you jump through another hoop you're teaching them how to think about you, and nobody decides to do that. It just happens.
- Pick the CRM you'll open. Most of them do the same things, so choose the one that's pleasant to look at and works the way your brain does. The best one on the market is worth nothing if you don't use it.
- Never write an email inside your email. Write it in a doc, keep it, then paste it. She rewrites every follow-up from scratch, which is why she stops following up.
- You can start on a whiteboard. Stages of your sales process across the top, the name of each client underneath the right one. That is a pipeline, and it costs nothing.
In this conversation
The full transcript, in sections. Open any one to read it.
"I need to just work smarter"
0:02
I just need some efficiencies, because I have these windows to work, and I have a kid that I am committed to parenting in a really present way, and so I need to just work smarter.
The proposal I forgot I'd sent
0:17
Welcome to the smart gets paid podcast with me. Leah niedersol, I help women land higher paying clients in their independent consulting businesses, but I've never been a salesperson. My background is in corporate marketing, and when I started my first consulting business, I learned pretty quickly that it's about 1000 times harder to sell your own stuff than it is to sell someone else's. So I taught myself how to do it, and I created the sales approach that I now share with my clients so they can feel more comfortable in the sales process. Get more of the right clients and get paid way more for every client contract. So whether your client contracts are $5,000 $100,000 or more, if you want to work with more of the clients you love, do more of the work you love and get paid more than you ever thought you could, then you're in the right place. Let's do it together. Thanks for tuning in, and don't forget to rate, review and share. Hey there. Thanks for joining me in this episode. I hope that wherever you are, wherever you're listening to this, I hope that you're having a good week, making some good progress on your business and also taking some time for yourself. I'm feeling somewhat, I guess, relaxed or refreshed after this weekend, my sister and I went on a sister's trip to Montreal. I flew up there on Friday, and my sister lives in Vermont, so she drove up and she met me, and we spent a couple days, you know, eating. I mean, oh my god, we ate so well. This was my first time to Montreal, and I had no idea the food is incredible. We got a massage, and we did the steam room. We did a little shopping at the end of the night. We just like, got into our beds and read silently. It was, it was great. And I mean, my sister and I, we're both moms, we're both business owners, and, you know, we have just that general level of responsibility that all of that entails, and I think a relaxing weekend to just hang out was just what she and I both needed. And you know, the last time we took a sister's trip, it was to Portland, Oregon, and I knew it had been a long time, like it had been a while since we took that trip, but I don't think either of us realized exactly how much time it actually passed, because we played it back and we had gone to Portland in 2004 you guys, that is 20 years ago. That is way too much time to have passed between sisters trips. So we decided that this is going to be an annual thing, or at least like a, you know, every other year thing, because there is no reason to let that much time pass between sisters vacations. So I hope you had a great weekend too, whether you were at home or somewhere else, and I hope that you also spent time with people you love. All right, so let's get into the episode. Shall we? So early on in my business, I got an email from someone, and the subject line was like, it started with, you know, R, E, like, it was a reply to something I had sent. And I opened the email, and the first line said, I'm so so sorry. And for like a millisecond, I was like, What are you sorry about? She went on, she goes, I'm so sorry. It's taken so long to get back to you, but we've gone over the proposal and we're ready to move forward. And I read down in the email thread and was mortified to realize that I had sent her a proposal and I had completely forgotten about it, like I just I never followed up. It just like disappeared from my brain. And I'm so lucky that, you know, even though I wasn't thinking about it, she was, and then she got back to me and wanted to work with me. And, like, I was lucky because I got that client, like, by the skin of my teeth, and I realized that I really needed to get organized so that I can stay on top of things, like, stay on top of the clients I was talking to and where they were in the process, and you know, who needed a follow up, or who needed to hear from me? And the thing is that I'm really an organized person, like in my life, and I love systems and tools and technology, but I think I was just going so fast and trying to do the things that I kind of forgot to be organized. And I was doing a lot of these things for the first time, or doing them for what felt like the first time, because I was doing it a new way that time. And so I kind of wasn't even thinking about, you know, quote, unquote, efficiencies or streamlining, because I was just trying to, like, get things out the door. But, I mean, I teach how to get consulting clients like, I teach selling, what does it look like for me to let a potential client fall through the cracks? And just for some icing on the cake, early in my consulting business, when I was doing, like, all the things you know how you're supposed to do right at the beginning of your business, just like do all the projects that come your way, I even did some CRM implementations to help my clients. Get and stay organized in their marketing and in their sales activities. So after that, I decided that no matter how fast I was going or no matter what I was doing, I needed to at least stay organized. And since then, I have been and it's made my life so much easier. It's reduced my stress, and nothing falls through the cracks, but I remember how I don't know, I guess scattered I felt, you know, back before I got things together. And so I really feel for my client who I'm talking to in this episode, who's feeling like she just needs to get herself organized. She has potential clients, like she has these organizations coming to her, to work with her. But the problem is she just feels so scattered in trying to talk to all of them and trying to lead the sales process and help them say yes. So in this conversation, we're going to talk about some quick wins that she can use to get organized and how to work smarter, not harder, and as you'll hear, that allows you to reduce your stress and anxiety, but it also actually helps you get more clients. So I want to send a huge thank you to this client for allowing me to share this conversation with you. Take a listen, and at the end, I'll come back and share a lesson you can apply to your business. So you might have noticed that with the economy being as it is, things feel a little shaky. Referrals are slowing down. Budgets are getting cut, and clients who you thought would say yes are saying no or not right now. And here's the thing, in this economy, you can't run your business by waiting for referrals. Clients just aren't going to swim into your net. You have to be intentional. That's why the best way to protect your business today and for the future is to have the two systems that every consulting business needs, a marketing system to bring the right clients to you and fill your pipeline, and a sales system to help clients say yes and get you paid more. But it's not just about getting clients. It's about security and stability and making your business sustainable no matter what's happening out there. Smart Women are doing this right now. Even in this economy, they're winning their biggest contracts, filling their pipelines, and their businesses are growing, which lets them do things like build up six months of family savings a lot sooner than they had planned, or go from having one to two months of revenue booked to having eight to 10 months of revenue booked, or getting to the place where you're able to pick and choose your clients and say no to the ones that aren't perfect. These are real results from women in the academy, because this is what we do inside the Academy. We help you build the marketing and sales systems that make your business and your revenue more stable, more secure and more sustainable. So if you've been in business for at least two years, if you made at least 120k last year, and if you want your business to feel secure no matter what's happening in the economy, join us. Apply today at Smart gets paid.com/academy we get started on Monday, February 9, because you can't control the economy, but you can control what you do about it?
What she's loving so far, and the peer mindset
8:04
I'm super excited to have this call with you. Me too. I've been really looking forward to it. It has been so awesome to dig into the resources I am loving it so
much, amazing. What do you like? What do you love? Tell me about it.
Like the peer mindset was a game changer for me, and going through my emails and noticing because I thought I already had that, but then look at like, the specifics of looking through my emails and being like, oh my god, I'm thanking you and sorry, and you all over the place, The actual ways that can show up at behaviorally, getting that specific and geeking out on that is awesome. And then I'm working on my painkiller just because to get started.
And just, why not? Because we're gonna do it anyway, focusing, yeah, it's awesome. Oh, that's great. I'm so glad. I'm so glad
exactly what I've been craving, I get so many referrals, and I am still bumbling through what it is that I do, and this kind of clear way of organizing and clarifying what I'm doing, it's so helpful.
Oh my gosh, this is going to be so awesome. Yeah, so let's I love this energy to start. So the purpose of this call, then, is to talk through what might be on your plate or on your mind as you're coming into this program so that we can just get you some answers, get you some next steps, and clear some space for learning, right, without some of these, like lingering major questions.
Awesome, great. All right, yep. So let's start
with the first thing. First, talk to me about what's on your plate, what's on your mind.
Her list: say it clearly, get organized, fix LinkedIn
9:38
Okay, I made a list. Okay, let's do it. Okay, so I was thinking about it, and the thing that I really want is to describe what I'm doing more clearly and more impactfully. So when I really want to just have that sentence of describing what I do, that is as energizing as I feel about the
work that I'm doing. Okay? So that's one
and two. I just really need to feel more organized, like I need, I think I need a CRM, and I can't figure out which one to get. And so I have notebooks after notebooks. I have Excel spreadsheet I have everything is I just need to feel more organized, and I need templates in order. I was thinking it was about the branding, but really I just need one invoice that I am like repeating some key emails. I just need some efficiencies, because I have these windows to work, and I have a kid that I am committed to parenting in a really present way, and so I need to just work smarter. And you wanted
to keep your afternoons? Is that right? You wanted to keep your afternoons free?
Yeah, yeah, there are some evenings that I can work but, and it's negotiable with my partner, we can work things out. But right now, I just feel like I'm scrambling all the time, and I'm spending time, yeah, just on looking up the contact information for this person, which is in this email, and this one is in this old Excel spreadsheet, and this is in LinkedIn, okay? And then the other thing that stresses me out is LinkedIn. I just don't know how to do LinkedIn. I don't even care about posting. I just need my profile to be something I'm a little more proud of, and that's tied to, how do I talk about what I'm doing? So those are the things, okay, talk about what I'm doing. Some systems and LinkedIn
are my Yes. And all of those things are so connected, because we're going to get into the sales process and the conversations and all that, but getting winning a new client or a new contract or gig or what have you, starts with how they think about you before they even get on the phone,
totally Exactly. And I'm getting girls, and people are excited about me. I don't have a good follow up. I just don't follow up on so many people like, it's there, I trust it's there, but I just,
why, yeah, why do you think you're not doing that? I just
The referral that came in hot and went somewhere else
12:17
don't fit it in. I'm like, so focused on the gig at hand, and I'm Oh, no. I write every email from scratch, so I'm trying to tailor what I say I do to each person that reaches out. I mean, I'll follow up, but then when they don't follow up again, I lose track of them, and then I remember, oh, I should follow up with that person, or there was this one really strong referral. They talked to me as if it was a dead deal. I actually, like gave them so much they they kept wanting me to revise my proposal based on conversations they would have with their board and the conversations they would have at their staff to make it more I was like on the phone with the Chair of their board over the weekend, and then they fucking went with somebody else. So frustrating. Know that they love me. I know they liked what I'm putting out, but the other piece is that I'm not always I'm hearing what they say, but I'm not doing in the painkiller statement. I'm not always giving it back to them in a way that is resonating, especially when it's I don't know how to I can go way into detail about that, but
no, no, I'm getting it. I wanted to make sure I had a thought, and I need to write it down before I forget it, because I want to share it with you,
like, all these things I want to make sure I share.
Okay, that is really frustrating, but it's also such a clear illustration of referrals are not a sure thing. No, a lot of people think they are. A lot, yeah, yeah. A lot of people think they are, like, I don't need to learn how to sell because they get referrals. But, like, not every referral is a Yes, right? It's more likely that they will say yes, but it's certainly not a done deal. And when you think about a process like that, like what happened with this one that came in super hot, or, you know, it's not even coming in hot. They were very warm to you, right? So warm.
And they're, like, their relationship to the person that referred me was so strong. There was, like, a lot of trust there. Yeah, totally, it was that they came in hot, for sure, yeah.
Who was leading that process
14:33
And then what we have to do is look at, how do you lead this process? Because I think it's also, what I'm hearing is they led the process.
They did lead the process, right? And they were very much jumping and responding and responding totally.
And one thing you're going to hear me say over and over and over is that we're always teaching our clients how to think about us, yes, and so one. And it becomes like, can you revise the proposal the third time? Can you talk to our board over the weekend? Can you take this thing out? Or can you do this thing and you feel like you are that little dog jumping through hoops? Yeah, you you have accidentally taught them how to think about you. Yeah, yes, as opposed to what I what we'll get to through our work together is this is how the process goes right. Of course, there will be things that come up, revisions, new and people who are brought into the sales process, but you'll have a lot more tools to stay in a position of authority.
Yeah, all right, cool. What are my marching orders? I know. What are
Choosing a CRM you'll open
15:49
your marching orders? Let's okay, we'll get to that in a second. We'll get to that in a second. I also do want to talk about the CRM organizing thing. Okay, so it feels like you're looking in different places. You're recreating the wheel every time. That's the gist.
Yes, just all my stuff is in different places. Okay? And I don't have a place for that kind of like flow and to see in one place, who do I need to follow up with, because I've already talked to them. Or did I send that contract out? Or did I like one client, I set the contract out like the day before market. Like, I just don't have an orderly thing to help me stay on track, especially if I have multiple clients
at a time. Okay, totally. I love this also, because I'm, like, a total systems geek, and I've tried like, all the CRMs, so, so a CRM will help this. Two things are going to help us, actually, one thing that is going to be your marching order, which is, let's craft your sales process. Yeah. Do you have one? Even if it's a little it's been a little loose, yeah, all we need to do is put down what probably should happen in the right order, and then okay, even though, like we said, people, sometimes things don't go the right. Sometimes, there's always little hurdles. It's fine, whatever, yeah, but at least you get to stay organized. Yeah. So I'm gonna there's a lesson. It's really fast to create your sales process, and then let's talk about CRMs. Okay, there are a lot of good ones out there. It's sometimes it's really hard to tell which one to go with. Have you been looking around? Is that, you know, I
just get stuck on, I can't remember, because it's been a couple weeks now, but my clients are organizations, and then people and organizations, and they make you, one of the ways that they have you describe your client. Doesn't work for me, and for some reason it keeps being a rub. Yeah, I know there. I'm going to have to do a workaround with any one that I pick. There's not going to be a perfect one, but for some reason that keeps being a hiccup for me.
Yeah, there are a lot of good things about and I know a lot of clients who, particularly those who do coaching find a lot of value in it, but I don't know that it's exactly the right one for you. And the type of sales process you're leading, the way that people say, yes, yeah. And I mean, it sort of assumes that the person who you're interacting with is also the person who can sign and pay with, like, a credit card.
Oh, that's helpful. That is rarely the case, right? They're not paying for that on a credit card, right? Totally, yeah. So Something didn't feel right about it.
But for you, also, I would consider a CRM that sits on top of I'm assuming you're using Gmail right now, or G Suite, okay, that sits on top of that. So there are email there, like, sort of native. Because what you don't want it, like, anything that sits on top of email, like, where the emails automatically are visible inside the CRM. What you don't want is, some of them make you, like, forward an email into
the CRM. I don't want to do that. I don't want to copy paste. I don't want to forward, yeah,
so there are a few good options there. So yeah, I think a CRM will help you. And really, okay, so I once wrote a guide. This is, like, one of my very first, like downloadable guides, which nobody downloaded, but I was proud of it. It was like, how to choose a CRM, yes, I will send it to you. You'll see all my old branding. It's different company name. But the one point I make in there is that a lot of these CRMs are actually the same, okay? And so you should go with the one that is prettiest and you like using, yeah, because you have to look matters to me. I know that matters to me, right? It's like, if the best CRM out there, you know, quote, unquote, best is ugly and not user friendly and works the way your brain works, then you won't use it. That's why I'm like start with where you are. Start with something that lives inside Gmail. Okay, great. Or rather not lives inside but also as an option that sits on top of Gmail. Yep. So then let's talk CRM, and then I want to share one other like, tip for you. Okay, so once you and I want to connect with you before you do this. So it's not like I'm sending you all this information right now, and like you just go off and I never okay, see it again. These are great questions for coaching calls. These are great questions as you start to put this together, great questions to post in the Ask channel, you know. So there's there's help, but the See, the thing about a CRM is, most people will the way CRMs tell you to to start using the CRM and get it set up, is actually backwards, and it's very confusing. Most CRMs will tell you that the first thing you should do is bring in all your contacts into the CRM, because that's how it organizes little entities and little people and stuff like that, and that's what also makes it very sticky for them, right? If once you have all your people, you're going to keep using that, okay, yeah. But the real way to get value out of a CRM, especially for the type of business you're running and where you are, is to take what you're learning in the sales process module and set up your deals first.
Yeah, that's what I did, and that was how I learned. I didn't like it.
Okay, good, great. I'm glad you did that. And then you're like, No, this is not going to work for me. And then, so then I, after you have the deal set up, or the pipeline, bring in only the people who you have active conversations with, and put them in the right place in the pipeline. Oh, yeah, and then bring in everybody else,
all right, yep, that sounds great,
Never write an email inside your email
21:39
okay, but again, I want to there's a whole lot I can tell you about CRMs. It's funny, for years I wanted to do like a CRM set up your CRM boot camp, but I was so locked into on the promotion hamster wheel between the two programs I was currently offering that I had no room for that. But now what I think we're gonna start doing in the academy is running more sort of accelerator or, like, boot camp style, awesome sprints, yeah, so that everybody, or everybody who wants to work on that thing, it's like, okay, for the next month, we're gonna get your CRM set up, and you're gonna do it all together. And so in the meantime, I will help you through the coaching and the slack so that you don't have to wait for for that change. But okay, the other thing that I want to share with you, and this is something that I've started doing in the past few years, okay, is anytime you write anything, save it in a Google Doc, like one Google Doc for, let's talk, let's we can have a few, but like one Google Doc for sales emails and another Google Doc for, let's say delivery emails. I'm saying delivery as in, like, when you actually do the work, okay, you could call it
and they're all in one doc for these two different Yeah, yes. For these two use cases, I can just go to them and
yeah, I'm going to show you how mines, how mine are organized. Yeah, is awesome. I'm going to share my screen real quick so I have these I happen to I'm going to have more than you need. But emails for Academy member operations, emails for one on one coaching emails for sales process. This, I'll show you. This is Academy member ops. I just wrote, we just wrote this email, right? We recently. You just got this email yesterday? Yeah, we had to make a schedule change. I wrote it in here and cast took it and sent it, but I never have to write it again. The next time we have to reschedule something, I'll have this as a template.
Template. Totally, yeah, great. Same thing. Even the leaves. I rewrite my leaves all the time.
Totally so, like, so this is, like, delivery stuff. This would be a simpler delivery thing. After the contract is signed, they get this email when their coaching hub is ready.
This one, yeah, this is really cool. This is this is awesome.
Playbooks, and my take: you can't lead a process you haven't written down
24:08
And then just bookmark these so it's just a little bit of a habit. Change around, behavior change around. Instead of writing an email in an email, write it in the where it lives, then bring it into the your into your email. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, great. And the last thing I want to just offer on this is this shift actually started a few years ago when Cass joined my team and she she got us thinking about playbooks, like the things that you do. It's almost like a doc, like a playbook mindset. So when you have a you have an engagement, what things always happen, desperate for that, like emails to send, or documents or whatever, this can become a playbook for you. Totally. Yes. It, yeah. All right, how do you feel better, worse, the same? Yeah, I think this is going to change things for you. All right. I love that conversation, because, as you heard, I'm a total systems nerd. I actually added up the number of CRMs that I had either used myself or implemented for other people. And the total was 1212, different CRM systems. And if you were listening to our conversation and you were like, what's a CRM? CRM stands for customer relationship management, and it's a type of software that helps you track your sales pipeline, nurture customer relationships and helps you stay organized. And I actually loved that we were talking about CRMs, because most people think that you only need a CRM if you're a big company, but the truth is that any size company really can and should be using a CRM. If the way that you get a client is through conversations and nurturing a relationship down the sales process, then you need a CRM, and especially if you're a consultant and it's just you, or maybe you and some contractors, you just can't afford not to be organized and to stay on top of your sales pipeline and the clients you're talking to. If you've only heard of one CRM in your whole life, it's probably Salesforce, which is the biggest, but there are so many that are right sized for small businesses, and so many that are really good for, like, under 25 or 50 bucks a month, but beyond the fact that you need a CRM, I wanted to draw your attention to something in this episode and give you something to think about. So we talked about knowing your sales process. And we also talked about how it's your job to lead the sales process, not only because it helps you get a yes, but how you lead the sales process teaches your clients how to think about you. And these two things are so closely linked, your sales process and your ability to lead the sales process, because you can't lead the sales process if you don't know what your sales process is, and if you don't know what the next step is for the clients you're talking to. And then you know, just bringing it back to your tools and your systems, you certainly can't lead the sales process and know where each potential client is in the sales process if you don't have a way to stay organized. And yeah, CRMs are great. But honestly, you can start with something simple. In my training on creating your sales process, after you go through the steps of figuring out your sales process, you use what we call the sales process whiteboard where you lay out the stages of your sales process, and then beneath each stage you put the name of the client that you're talking to, you know at the right stage, and that way you can see what's in your pipeline, and it's simple, and then you would take that into a CRM and set up your pipeline in a more organized way. But that's how you can start. So the first step is knowing your sales process. And as you heard me tell my client, you do have one, and once you figure it out, you can stay organized, you can lead the sales process, and you can help potential clients become paying clients.
The two systems
28:13
Hey, everything we're talking about in this episode is part of the system. Women like you are learning in the academy. In the Academy, we help women consultants install the two systems. Every B to B consultant needs a marketing system to consistently attract the right clients and a sales system to lead a sales process to a yes and get paid more for every contract. So even if you've only gotten clients through referrals or word of mouth, in the academy, you'll learn how to attract and sign clients outside your network, how to lead a sales process with confidence, and how to get paid for your value, not your time, and there's no cold calling or cold emailing involved, no changing your services or making a course, and you won't use any pushy sales tactics. That's just not our vibe. So if you like what you've heard here, the academy may be your right next step to learn how you can get these two systems in your consulting business and make progress faster and with fewer roadblocks. Head to smart gets paid.com/academy and apply and we can chat about next steps. All right, see you over there. Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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