Ep 23 - Stop winging it! And do this instead.

Episode Show Notes

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Episode transcription:

Beyond the Clinic EP23

[00:00:00] Sarah Almond Bushell: Hello and welcome to episode number 23 called Stop Winging It and Do This Instead. So before I create anything in my business, I always do a little bit of market research, really just to find out what my audience are doing, what they're struggling with, and so it's probably no surprise that. When I was preparing for this episode, I popped a short poll up on my social media and I asked my fellow colleagues the following question.

[00:00:30] Sarah Almond Bushell: For those of you who don't rely on referrals or insurance, do you get clients by Advertising in directories like the Freelance Group or Nutritionist Resource, or perhaps on your own website, and then just sit back and wait for people to make contact. Or option B, do you have planned campaign and sales activity throughout the year?

[00:00:56] Sarah Almond Bushell: Now, I only got 20 votes in my poll, and so this is by no means statistically significant. However, 95 percent responded with option A, that they advertise in the directories, on their website, maybe on social media, and then they just sit back and wait. For people to contact them and only 5%, which was actually only one person voted for option B and said they had planned campaigns and activity throughout the year.

[00:01:29] Sarah Almond Bushell: Now, this was really in line with my gut feeling because very few of my colleagues, when I get chatting to them about their businesses, have a mapped out sales strategy for the year ahead. And yet, this is a Basic fundamental fact of business because success comes from planning ahead, doesn't it? And so in this podcast episode, I want you to stop winging it.

[00:01:56] Sarah Almond Bushell: And I want you to get thinking about making some plans, some campaigns, some sales activity. If a year ahead feels like too long, maybe six months, or maybe even just for the quarter in front of you. And the reason for this is so that you can have more money. You can have more clients, but also so that you know what you're doing on a day to day basis, and you also know what you're doing and when.

[00:02:24] Sarah Almond Bushell: How did this come about? When I first started investing in my business growth, I used to Binge listen to podcasts. And it was while I was driving around the Sussex countryside between my home visits, I was a pediatric diabetes dietitian and the vast majority of my work was visiting children in schools and parents at their home.

[00:02:47] Sarah Almond Bushell: And Sussex is quite a large county, which meant I spent a lot of time on the road, a lot of time driving around the place. So I consumed a lot of podcasts and one of the business coaches that I came across was a lady called Janet Murray. You might've heard of her. Shout out to Janet if she's listening, because I learned so much from her in the early days.

[00:03:10] Sarah Almond Bushell: This was probably around 2017, maybe early 2018. Now, Janet was the queen of online content, specifically around social media content. In fact, her podcast was renamed from the Janet Murray Show to Build Your Online Audience and then eventually to the Courageous Content Podcast. And she was probably most well known for her A4 desk diary that she sold, which is an annual social media content planner.

[00:03:42] Sarah Almond Bushell: And when I was getting started, it was fantastic because it gave you jumping off points for creating social media posts by using things like Awareness Days for inspiration. And that was brilliant for me because at that point in my business, I really didn't know what to write about. And actually it was because I didn't have much of a strategy.

[00:04:04] Sarah Almond Bushell: Anyway, I digress. That was the backstory. Janet had this annual event. It was a two day event that happened every year around November, and it was all about creating a content plan for the content that you would need in your business for the entire year ahead. So as I say, it happened in November every year, and by the end of these two days, the intention was that you would come out with this fully mapped out plan of all the content that you would need to create for your business.

[00:04:32] Sarah Almond Bushell: For the year ahead. So the first time I attended her event, I remember I took two days of annual leave. I booked the kids into afterschool club and this was so that I could be 100 percent present, 100 percent focused on the job in hand. And she asked all of the delegates at this event to start by just taking a bird's eye view of their business activity.

[00:04:58] Sarah Almond Bushell: So looking at that year ahead and what they were going to be selling. And how they were going to be selling it throughout the year and break this down into quarters. The idea was, you would say take January, February and March and pencil in the key things that you are planning to do in your business in those three months.

[00:05:20] Sarah Almond Bushell: And invariably, there was always a flurry of messages from people saying, you know what, Janet, I can't do this because I don't know what I'm going to be selling or promoting or getting involved with. Often they only sold one thing. So for example, like me, one to one consultations. And so they didn't have any planned activity.

[00:05:42] Sarah Almond Bushell: And I can remember this I remember hearing this as clear as day. She responded to this by saying, If you don't have a plan for your business, you don't really have a business. If you only sell one thing, you can't sell it the same way throughout the year. Now this resonated so deeply because I was one of those people who was thinking, I can't do this Janet, but I probably wasn't brave enough to actually say it out loud.

[00:06:11] Sarah Almond Bushell: But I certainly sat in amongst all of these people who didn't have a plan and only had my one to one consultations with private patients. I would go from week to week or month to month in my business, winging it essentially, thinking, oh, it's weaning week this week, let's do something around weaning, or it's food allergy awareness month now, so let's do something around that.

[00:06:37] Sarah Almond Bushell: And essentially, I hadn't a blimmin clue, there was no plan, there was no strategy, I was 100 percent winging it. And back then, I didn't really understand what I should be doing differently, but now I do. I understand that in order to have a profitable business, you need to have a plan. You certainly can sell the same thing throughout the year.

[00:07:03] Sarah Almond Bushell: You don't have to have a number of different products or services, but Janet was a hundred percent right in that you need to have different ways to sell it. You need to have planned campaigns or sales activities. Otherwise your audience just grows bored of you and they'll stop engaging with your content and you won't sell nearly anywhere as much as you would if you had these campaign activities.

[00:07:28] Sarah Almond Bushell: So her phrase that became really quite well known was, if you don't know what you're selling for the year ahead, you don't have a content problem, you've got a business problem. And of course, when you're planning and creating content for your social media, it's strategic purpose is to guide people towards becoming clients.

[00:07:49] Sarah Almond Bushell: So if you don't have any planned sales activity. You can't really create social media content that moves people along that journey towards becoming a customer. And if you're just creating content and posting it because you think you should, you honestly are just wasting time and energy and that just doesn't make good business sense.

[00:08:11] Sarah Almond Bushell: So when I put this poll out in my Facebook group to my colleagues to get their take on their planned promotional activity, I discovered that most people don't do this. And so I want to unpack this business problem and give you some advice on what you need to be doing in your business in order to have more clients and in order to generate more revenue throughout the year.

[00:08:36] Sarah Almond Bushell: So how do you do this? I've got Three steps for you. The first one is to identify the key promotional times for the year ahead. So the very first thing I want you to do is take a look at the people who you sell your service to and identify when in the year they're most likely to want what it is that you offer.

[00:09:02] Sarah Almond Bushell: So for example, if you work in the weight management area, you will likely know that in the new year people are more motivated. They want to lose weight, and so January might be a good time for you. The second point in the year might be in the run up to the summer, for example, when people want to prepare for their holiday abroad.

[00:09:22] Sarah Almond Bushell: If you are in the baby weaning space, like me, you will know that there's more babies conceived around Christmas, and so there's more births in September. And so six months from there takes us through to February March time, and so you want to be selling your weaning services around then. Maybe they won't.

[00:09:42] Sarah Almond Bushell: You know, popular times for your clinical speciality. For example, maybe you work in gut health. And if that's the case, try and consider when people are more likely to want to see improvements with their gut health. For example, if you work with children and their gut health. Parents might be looking towards the school holidays, for example, in order to address their child's digestive problems and so that they don't miss lots of time off school.

[00:10:09] Sarah Almond Bushell: If you work with adults, perhaps your ideal client wants to beat the bloat in order to get into her sparkly party clothes for the Christmas do's. So this is all about knowing your ideal client, their demographics, and actually what's going on, a day to day basis, in their everyday lives. While they are struggling with their problems, so that you can match your promotions at the right time to meet their needs.

[00:10:39] Sarah Almond Bushell: So I mentioned earlier about awareness days, didn't I? It's also worth having a little look to see if there's any relevant awareness days or weeks or months that relate to your clinical speciality, and if so, you can absolutely use this as a time to run a campaign. So for example, Heart Health Month is in February ADHD Awareness Month is in October, Diabetes is in November, and of course it's Dietician's Week in June.

[00:11:08] Sarah Almond Bushell: And then you can also consider your personal activity as well. For example, if you are invited to speak at an event where you'll likely get some fantastic publicity, if so, why not promote something off the back of that? You might as well. And then, if all else fails, And you just cannot identify any

[00:11:29] Sarah Almond Bushell: key times of the year for your clinical speciality.

[00:11:32] Sarah Almond Bushell: You know what? You can actually just decide for yourself. The most important thing is having key dates in your calendar throughout the year for your planned promotional activity. So here's an idea that all of us can bounce off. It's Black Friday on the 29th of November. This is a fabulous opportunity for promotions.

[00:11:55] Sarah Almond Bushell: And part of the reason for that is because people are primed and ready to buy, particularly online. So I suggest having no more than one type of activity per month. And if it's a big campaign, like a launch where you might have a masterclass or a webinar, or I don't know, a three day bootcamp, for example, You might want to limit this to just once per quarter because these types of events, they're really quite hard work.

[00:12:22] Sarah Almond Bushell: And frankly, I find them exhausting. And so you don't want to be constantly asking your audience to buy as well. You know, that just sounds spammy, doesn't it? So that's number one. The second thing I want you to consider is the promotional activity itself. So make a decision around that. So your promotions, they are part of your marketing strategy.

[00:12:48] Sarah Almond Bushell: And the purpose of your promotions is to coach your community or your audience of subscribers or followers towards making a decision to become a client. Just as a reminder, we are not in the convincing game here, nor do we want to be persuading people to buy things or work with us. Our job, with our promotional activity, is to give people the information they need in order for them to make an informed decision about whether to work with us or not.

[00:13:17] Sarah Almond Bushell: And there are some psychological steps that need to be covered in order to help people come to that decision. So we want for our audience to get a feel for what it's like to be a client. And so a large chunk of your promotional activity is gonna be giving them some training or education for free in order for them to get a quick win.

[00:13:39] Sarah Almond Bushell: Or to achieve a small result because they need to be able to see that actually there's some evidence here that you can help them. We also need to be able to address and answer people's objections to working with us and we also need to be able to share what we call social proof so that they understand that you have worked with people before and you've been able to get them similar results to what they are hoping to achieve.

[00:14:07] Sarah Almond Bushell: And this is so that they have all the information that they need to make that informed decision. And they're able to say, yes, please, I'd like to work with you, or no, thank you, not at this time. We also need to give people a deadline because otherwise they spend a long time weighing up the pros and the cons, never coming to a decision.

[00:14:30] Sarah Almond Bushell: Either way. And actually, because we're in the health game, without a deadline, I feel that we're actually giving people a disservice. What type of promotional activity or campaign will you run for each of these key dates? You can decide, and actually you can have a lot of fun here, because this is one of the beauties of being your own boss and business owner, because there's no rules.

[00:14:54] Sarah Almond Bushell: You can do whatever you think. Here's some examples that show people what it's like to work with you. That give them a quick win. That help them make a decision by addressing their objections and answering their questions. And of course, providing that deadline so that they come to the right decision for them.

[00:15:14] Sarah Almond Bushell: And at this point in time. As I mentioned, a live masterclass or a webinar. It could be a three or five day live challenge or book camp. You could create a short video series for people that's delivered via email. You could host your own awareness day. I did this a few years back. I created Fussy Eating Awareness Week.

[00:15:42] Sarah Almond Bushell: You could write a blog series around a particular topic and deliver it to them via email. They can opt in for that and it's delivered once a day or however you want to do it. And similar to that, you could have an email newsletter series. You can have promotions like discount or flash sales.

[00:16:03] Sarah Almond Bushell: You can have online events like a summit or a festival. You can have a podcast series as well. So essentially what you're doing is you're creating some kind of event around the dates that you have identified in step one. You're going to be educating people about a topic, and you're also going to be informing them about your offer or your service.

[00:16:27] Sarah Almond Bushell: So you may have heard people referring to this as a launch. That's exactly what it is. And then step three, you just plan it all out in your calendar. So I run a quarterly business planning event for both my clients and actually anybody else who wants to buy a ticket and come along. This is exactly what we do.

[00:16:46] Sarah Almond Bushell: So at around the beginning of the quarter, or sometimes the week beforehand, we meet online for 90 minutes or so, and we plan. We're looking at the quarter just gone. We're looking at the data to see whether the business is growing according to the plan and we're course correcting if we're not on target.

[00:17:06] Sarah Almond Bushell: We're looking at our money goals, so how much money we want to make. And we're looking at what we need to sell in order. To make it. And of course, we're ensuring that planned activity, that promotional activity is on course. We are identifying what we might need to do to make sure that it actually happens, and also what to do if past promotions haven't gone according to plan and didn't bring in the amount of money that you intended.

[00:17:36] Sarah Almond Bushell: And if so, you might want to layer in some unplanned promotional activity on top of that for a quick cash injection. So you're obviously welcome to come to any of my quarterly events, and if you're listening to this in September or early October, the next one is happening on the 8th of October. Just send me a DM on Instagram or pop a note in my Facebook group, Beyond the

[00:18:03] Sarah Almond Bushell: Now, one of the questions I'm often asked is, what if I put these dates on my diary and then I change my mind? Actually the answer is, it doesn't matter because this is just a plan and our plans are not set in tablets of stone. Things change in both our lives and in our businesses and we need to be able to be flexible in order to adapt to those changes.

[00:18:25] Sarah Almond Bushell: That is the beauty of being your own boss. So now you know why you need to have planned promotional activity in your business. You'll get more clients, you'll get more money, and you won't be wasting time and energy posting on social media just because you feel like you should be. You know now how to identify key dates, have some ideas for campaigns, and how to plan these in your calendar to make sure that they get done.

[00:18:52] Sarah Almond Bushell: And going back to my poll, if people are just stumbling across your website or finding your details on a directory and booking in, this could be tenfold or a hundredfold when you've got planned promotional activity layered on top of this. So my action step for you is just to do step one. Have a look at those key dates and see if you can identify times throughout the year when you might be wanting to run some sort of campaign.

[00:19:22] Sarah Almond Bushell: Will you do something for Black Friday? And then just have a think about what promotions you could be doing. So next time I'm going to be diving into Black Friday and Cyber Monday, that huge sales event that happens every year. So this weekend, it's actually the biggest date for online sales worldwide, year in, year out, and we should absolutely be taking advantage of this.

[00:19:48] Sarah Almond Bushell: And that's because the public are primed and ready to buy from you. So I'm going to be talking to you about how you can prepare for the Black Friday weekend and give you lots of ideas of what to sell and also how to sell them. So see you next time. Bye for now.