What you can and can't do to make sales
Navigating the black box of making sales
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When I started my business, I kept hearing this story that potential clients had to have seven interactions with my content—seven ‘touchpoints’—before they would buy.
Five years in, and I can tell you for certain that the ‘seven touchpoints’-advice doesn’t hold true.
Here’s the thing. There’s no recipe for making sales. There’s no magic number of interactions. There’s no magic content plan. There’s no funnel to fix your lack of sales.
In this post, I share what I’ve learned to be the truth of making sales. It’s what I call ‘the black box’ of sales. I’ll share what we can do and what we can’t do, as well as a bit of encouragement if you’re going through a slow(er) period.
The black box
The marketing and sales gurus make it seem so easy. You put in the work, and sales magically appear. You follow a ten-step-plan and customers and clients come knocking.
If you’ve been led to believe that making sales is a matter of hitting on the right formula, plan or funnel, not making sales quickly feels very personal.
If you’re not making sales, maybe you’re not doing it right? All the other people seem to be making sales, then why can’t you? Are you even cut out for being a business owner? When will this get easier?
Parodoxically, marketing and making sales started to feel a lot less scary to me when I realised that I actually have very little control over whether people buy my services and products.
I grew up an over-thinker, prone to anxiety, always on the lookout for imagined or real disasters. Once I started my business I’d already begun to leave a lot of that behaviour behind. And while that was mostly due to CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy), my business has actually helped me try to grasp control less and less.
Because you see, no matter how many plans you have, you can’t control your business. And one of the biggest things you can’t control? Sales.
Let’s say you send a carefully worded, inviting sales email. You just launched a new collection of products and you feel great about it. The email goes out and then…silence.
Or, you haven’t sent out a sales email in a while. You continue to send out regular emails, but none of them make explicit that you have something to sell. And suddenly: three commissions come in, out of the blue.
The second scenario is traditionally seen as bad marketing practice. People should always know what you’re selling (which I agree to up to a certain point).
But having been in both scenarios I can tell you that there’s only so much we can control. And the part we can’t control about our sales? That’s the black box.
The part we can’t control about sales? That’s the black box.
The black box contains all the things outside of our influence.
How our newsletter subscribers feel when they receive our newsletter. How much they have to spend in a given week or month. The birthdays they have coming up in their family, or not (making them less or more likely to be on the lookout for thoughtful gifts). The products, courses, houses they bought right before our email came in. Their emotional bandwidth. Any big deadlines or holidays they have coming up. And more.
All of these are uncertainties that you have zero control over. And the only way to do business is to accept that.
(Also, please don’t try to factor in all of those uncertainties. It will drive you insane.)
The black box also means that when we don’t make sales, it isn’t our fault. Yes, there are things you can do to make people more likely to buy from you, but ultimately, it’s not all down to you.
What you can do to make sales
The most important thing you can do is to make it as easy as possible for someone to work with you or buy from you. This means taking a good look at your marketing channels.
If someone lands on the homepage of your website, how easy is it for them to figure out what you’re offering? How easy is it for them to learn what your core offers and any special or new products are? How easy is it for them to book a call with you, to buy your product? How easy is it for them to discover the price of what you’re offering?
Does your newsletter contain links to your offers and products? Not every newsletter is a sales email, of course, but if people like what they read or see, where can they find more? How explicitly do you remind people that you have a new collection, new services, new spaces for clients?
How clear are your offers? When is your service right for potential clients? What is the question you’re helping customers answer in your mini-course? What is the difference between your coaching packages? How are you helping them decide?
My biggest piece of advice? Keep going. Stay the course, stay steady.
Business can be really hard.
And when we’re in a slow season it’s so easy to conclude that it’s our fault that we’re not making sales. It isn’t.
You have limited control over making sales, the only thing you can is to be there, to invite potential clients and customers—and to do so at a pace that works for you. Root into yourself. You know best what is right for your business.
What you can’t do to make sales
The one thing you can’t do in business? Make people buy from you.
And that can be really hard. Business can be a lonely place, especially when it’s going slower than you’d like.
I’ve had clients sign up for my most expensive offer without reading a single newsletter.
And I’ve had clients that have been longtime readers and only decided to work with me after a few years.
The majority of the people on my newsletter list will never be clients. They will never buy from me. They’ll read my newsletters and hopefully feel inspired and seen, but that is enough for them.
As business owners, we need to be okay with that. We need to hold the uncertainty of business and stay close to ourselves.
Take a moment to think or journal about these questions:
How do you feel when you decide on a purchase? What makes you buy something or not? Remember this next time you wonder why or why not people buy from you, it will help you see how relative sales are.
If you’re in the mood for some Spring cleaning, review your website, offers and newsletter. How easy is it for people to buy from you? How easy is it for them to discover more from you?
What helps your mindset around making sales? What needs to shift for you in order to feel better about it? What do you need to tweak to make it easier for people to buy from you? Leave a comment to join the conversation.
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a book | I am once again rereading Middlemarch and while I understand that a 800+-page novel from 1871 isn’t for everyone, it is just so good, readable and human, and surprisingly contemporary (affiliate link).
a show | I thoroughly enjoyed season 3 of Trying, which manages to tell a human story that is potentially full of heartbreak in such a whimsical way. I also love the dialogue.
a post | It’s rare to read an author-interview that is quite this good, but
‘s interview with Hanna Pylväinen made me put her novel The End of Drum-Timeimmediately on my wishlist.What’s on your lists of favourites this month? What did you read, see, hear, drink, eat, observe that made your day?
Welcome to April: Female Owned Accountability Club: such great supportive conversation happening in the comments ❤️
I’ll be back in paid subscribers’ inboxes soon with a full behind-the-scenes of my recent launch: what I did, what I didn’t do, what worked and what didn’t (and how I stayed mostly sane throughout it 😅).
In the meantime, I’m looking forward to soaking up some sun and delighting in the vibrant green of new leaves.
Have a beautiful, calm and nourishing month,
Until next time x
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Helpful and encouraging, particularly the points about staying steady and realizing it's not always our fault when we don't make a sale. I've never heard anyone actually say it out loud. Most sales people seem to believe they have the power to make people buy and that you're a second class citizen if you can't. I often find myself believing them. In my industry, music, it's really hard to be successful, maybe even impossible, but I'm gonna stay steady another day 😊.
Thank you for sharing 🙏🏻.
Regarding it not being our fault if we don't make a sale.. I totally agree. It blows my mind that people think they are actually in control of so many variables they actually have no control over. That's why as a web designer and marketing strategist I don't sell guarantees about income. I simply set up systems and strategies that make it possible. What one does with that is beyond what I can do. It doesn't matter how much money I have in the bank. What are my clients doing with what I helped them set up/deploy?
It's not about avoiding responsibility, but not making promises we can't possibly keep. Just because someone is a proud owner of a new website I build for them or takes my course doesn't guarantee anything unless they take action. (Reminds me of the health and fitness genre)