Ep 105 How to Price Your Services and Sell with Confidence (Interview with Sales Coach Adam Lowther - Part 2)

 

Sarah Bushell (42:18)

So let's talk now a little bit about pricing and confidence because I've seen firsthand how confidence plays such a huge role in terms of, well, first of all, how you price your offers and then go ahead and get those sales. I'd love to get your thoughts, Adam, on why you think so many people struggle to charge what their services are worth.

 

Adam Lowther (42:39)

Yeah, and I think I see it all the time as well. So for me, the main thing is that people are still thinking about money like a consumer rather than a business owner. Right. So, and there's a really important difference between the two. So as a consumer, when you hear a price, you brain immediately.

 

filters it through your own relationship with money, right? And how much money you have, you know, does this feel expensive to me? Could I afford this? And that's completely natural. You know, we all do it. It's how we're, why there's human beings. But as a business owner, setting your prices, that frame of reference is completely wrong to, the wrong one to use because clients aren't buying a number, they're buying an outcome. And the question they're really asking isn't, is this a lot of money? But

 

Is this worth it for what I'm actually going to get? So I think the shift is to start thinking about price in terms of value rather than the actual amount. Because 40,000 pounds sounds expensive, right? Until you understand that spending it will generate, you know, 400,000 pounds for your business. And then it becomes a no brainer that you'd spend it. So,

 

The number hasn't changed, the context around it has. And when you're a business owner, truly, truly kind of come to grips and internalize that, if you will. Because when you believe that what you're offering is worth more than what you're actually charging, the confidence comes through with how you present the price. And I think a lot of it is confidence and how you actually present that price. So don't apologize for it. Don't try to over explain it. Don't try to justify it.

 

Sarah Bushell (44:16)

you

 

Adam Lowther (44:19)

just clearly state the price and then let the value that you've demonstrated earlier in the call demonstrate the rest. Because ultimately, right, I mean, again, it goes back to that mindset, you know, I could say it's a hundred grand to work with me, but if all of my clients that have worked with me and have invested a hundred grand have made a million within a year, it's a 10 times on an investment and it's a no brainer. And also what you can think about is if you charge more money,

 

Sarah Bushell (44:42)

Yeah.

 

Adam Lowther (44:47)

you can work with less people. And if you work with less people, you can probably deliver more like one-to-one meaningful relationships and value, right? So I would personally rather have 10 customers that I charge 10 grand for 100 grand a year, for example, if that was your income goal, rather than charging a thousand pound to a hundred customers, right? Because I can give more attention to those 10 customers.

 

Sarah Bushell (44:57)

Mm-hmm.

 

Adam Lowther (45:17)

and that actually helps deliver more value to them as well. So I think the shift that needs to happen is moving away from thinking about the number and actually thinking about the transformation that you're delivering, you know, rather than just thinking about the monetary amount. So yeah, that's what I would say regarding that.

 

Sarah Bushell (45:38)

Yeah and I think that also links into the solution that you're selling here rather than the single sessions. So again you know if I think of if I look at like my my colleagues as dietitians, freelance dietitians, sort of the traditional freelance dietitian method of making money is charging almost by the hour so you know if someone buys a consultation from you for a hundred pound and that's it.

 

Adam Lowther (45:46)

Yeah.

 

Sarah Bushell (46:04)

And then if they've got insurance, they might get three consultations and then that's it. And then after that, there would be self-funding, but actually that's just an hour of time. That's not a solution. You're not selling anything there. Other than they're buying your time to pick your brain. know, you, yes, you're going to do your assessment and you're going to formulate what the plan is and give them some advice. But actually is that enough to actually implement?

 

No, no, it definitely isn't. And so one of the very early things that I did in my business was packaged up what I would have given to somebody one to one into a program and then charged what I wanted to charge for it. And essentially I was charging at one point 1250 pounds for a client, whereas the next dietitian who was offering the same service was charging 120 quid.

 

So it was like massively different. And that business hit six figures very, very quickly because I was charging more. I was serving less. Whereas, you know, that the other dietitian that I knew came to me a bit later for some support in her business and was turning over about 22 to 25 K a year. So, and the difference was we were both offering exactly the same clinical service. It was the way that mine was packaged up, presented.

 

sold in terms of the value, in terms of the transformation, in terms of the outcome that that client was going to get, rather than, oh, you can buy one session or you can buy three sessions and get a discount on it. You know?

 

Adam Lowther (47:36)

Yeah.

 

Yeah. Because when people buy one session as well, they're not committed to actually investing the time and it's not just about the money. It's about investing the time. You know, if, if I commit to a one-to-one consulting session with you for an hour, that's very different to if I commit to a six month, you know, coaching package with you. It shows that I've actually got real intent there.

 

You know, I think potentially consulting can have its place or like the one-to-one can have its place for an initial, initial kind of way to touch base and then decide whether actually, you know, they, want to work with you. But I think like you said, it really, it really comes down to ultimately you're trying to deliver value. That's what you're getting paid for and to deliver that transformation. The best way to do that possible is to actually work with that person over a

 

over a period of time, because then you can actually understand the needs, understand what they've tried so far, understand what the resources are in terms of time and etc. And then give them the best personalised, you know, actionable plan that will actually get them the result.

 

Sarah Bushell (48:48)

Yeah, definitely. And I like what you just said there about one-to-ones having their space, one-off sessions. But the purpose of them is to upsell them into the next thing, not just to be one and done.

 

Adam Lowther (48:59)

Yes, yeah. Yeah, 100%.

 

It's all part of your funnel, bringing them into the next stage. I agree.

 

Sarah Bushell (49:06)

Yeah, yeah, yeah,

 

absolutely. Great. And then finally, let's talk about, well, what I often say, the fortune is in the follow up. Let's talk about the follow up because one thing that I do see all the time is people who have these, you know, lovely conversations with people and then go, but they didn't buy. And actually they don't follow up or in my opinion, they don't follow up enough. So I'd love to get your take on why the follow up is actually really,

 

really important.

 

Adam Lowther (49:36)

Yeah, I would agree that the, you know, fortune is in the follow up. So if someone says no, it means they're not interested. But that assumption is actually costing them clients, you know.

 

Think about your own life. Like how many times have you seen the message? You know, I'll reply to that later and then you've completely forgotten. Doesn't mean that you're not interested. It just means that maybe you're busy and it happens all the time. People are busy, we have busy lives. You know, maybe they're on the school run or you've got back to back meetings. So I wouldn't see it as an insult. I wouldn't take it personally. And I take it as a...

 

Sarah Bushell (49:49)

Yeah.

 

Adam Lowther (50:13)

I take it for what it is. They've not replied in that moment, but there's no reason that they wouldn't reply at another time, if that makes sense. So I think having a system in place where you can track a simple system like a spreadsheet, simple CRM, where you can see who you've messaged, who you've followed up with, what date, and then what date you want to follow up with them again.

 

If you followed up maybe like three times, then you can start thinking maybe this person just is ignoring me. They're not interested for whatever reason. And we don't want to hound people. But at the same time, we also want to give them the opportunity to converse with us should they want, because it could just be a series of unfortunate events. Like I might, may not have replied three times to you, but I may just have

 

Sarah Bushell (50:45)

Yeah.

 

Adam Lowther (50:58)

been super busy and then I may have had to take my mum to the hospital and then, you know, my baby may have got ill or something like that, right? Or I might just be a person who gets tons of messages and I've not even seen them. So I think there's no, there should be no shame in following up until someone says explicitly like, I'm not interested. And if that's case, it can be, you know, okay, that's fine. You know, if you're ever interested in improving this in the future, I...

 

here I am, I'm happy to chat, but all the best. And then you've left it on a good note. So I think the... I think people just assume, people can assume the worst if someone doesn't reply right. I'm guilty of it. If you send a message, someone doesn't reply. You think, they've seen my message and they've not replied. How dare they? I've taken time to send this message and I'm not even trying to sell anything. I'm just trying to have a conversation. But I would say take the emotions out of it. Don't think about it personally. Think about it.

 

you know, logically, and have some sort of simple spreadsheet where you can actually track who you've messaged, when you've messaged them and what stage they're at. And that's really important because otherwise what you would end up doing is following up with people.

 

Say you followed up three times and they haven't replied, but you'd send them a message like you'd send to someone who hasn't replied once, if that makes sense. So it's just being really aware of where they're at in your process as well.

 

Sarah Bushell (52:22)

Yeah,

 

yeah, absolutely. And I am guilty of that as a as a client and as a business owner as well. Because so I've got ADHD, so messages come in and go out and know there's a baby lout over there in the field, you know, I'm just on to the next thing. So if you've got somebody who's got lots of different things to be thinking about, those messages might not even resonate, you know, let alone think, I'll deal with that later. So I definitely think there's that.

 

I love the spreadsheet idea because you're absolutely right. I would, I usually say, you know, send an immediate follow up like straight after the call. Thanks so much. I've really enjoyed this conversation. Here's what we discussed. Here's the links, that kind of thing. And then try and then often I'll follow up with someone the next day. And then if I don't hear anything, I might leave it two or three days and then it might be the week after. So, so definitely have some sort of system. And I think

 

that system or that cadence probably varies from one person to the next person because everyone's clients are different and you will know what your ideal customer's journey is really. And one of the things that's very different in this business compared to my nutrition business is that actually what I find is sometimes the follow-up can happen over several months before people are ready to say yes.

 

And you're exactly right. It's like a series of events. Some of them unfortunate, some of them are just life. Sometimes something will have happened like they were about to hand in their notice and their NHS job ready to grow their business and then the husband was mid-redundant or something comes along and gets in the way. But they remember that conversation with you and they'll jump back in a year later and say, hey, I'm ready now.

 

And so I think it is always useful to have that sort of follow-up process, but then get to a point where, you're not, you're no longer going to be following up to remind them of your offer. Maybe it's nurture emails. So maybe they drop into your regular sort of once a week nurture emails or

 

once a week or here's the new podcast emails, you know, that kind of thing so that there's some nurture, you stay on top of mind, you're reminding them that you're around for when the time is right for them. Do you agree with that, that sort of nurture follow up as well?

 

Adam Lowther (54:35)

Yeah.

 

Yeah. And I completely agree with that. And I'd say you've reminded me, you know, in terms of the actual follow-up, it's super important. Like you said about if they're not going to buy on that call or you're not going to try and sell on that call, they're not a good fit or whatever. Send them the links to your resources. Send them a summary of your conversation, the most important parts as soon as possible after you've had that conversation. Cause you want to...

 

Well, it's still fresh in their mind. If you send it like a week later, they might have forgotten that they even had the conversation and then they'll just put it aside. You want to act when they're, when basically the emotional peak is. And what I mean by that is the point in which they're most emotionally bought into what you're trying to do with them. You know, if you've just been on a discovery call and you've identified the pain and with the example we used about the crying daughter.

 

That's still fresh in the mind. So then when you send things after a follow-up, it's, more likely to take action. Whereas if it's a week later, they've kind of forgotten about it or, yeah, I remember that, but it's not urgent. So yeah, I would say always, always send a follow-up as soon as possible. And also about like the language of your follow-up, like try to be natural. Again, use the language that you're comfortable using that you'd use.

 

I'm not a massive fan of just checking in or just circling back. It's kind of quite like corporate or quite, it feels like scripted, doesn't it? And it kind of feels like it's a generic thing that you would send to everyone and it's not personalised. That's how I perceive it. But maybe if you're in a corporate world on some sort of other offer, that will make sense. But for me, maybe for yourself and your audience, it wouldn't really for me work. And I think...

 

Sarah Bushell (55:58)

You

 

Yeah.

 

Adam Lowther (56:21)

With that, the moment someone reads that, that they know they're being chased and the guard goes up and going back to what I was saying before, you know, that makes them feel like they're not open to hearing what you've got to say. So it makes it very hard to try and bring them on as a client. Um, one thing I like to think about as well is adding value to every follow-up. So you don't want a follow-up to just be that you're nagging that person to reply because it can get very, very annoying. It's kind of like, if I've seen your message,

 

I want to have my own autonomy and my own judgment, whether I reply or not. So I think a way you can do that is by adding value to every follow-up you do. You know, something like, you know, Hey Sarah, you know, I've been thinking about what you said on Friday, struggling to convert your discovery calls. You know, what you said about XYZ really stuck with me. And I think this, because of this, it shows that you're thinking about the conversation you had with that person.

 

And what it also does is it brings that person back to the conversation you had with them, puts them back in the frame of mind of, of this is what we were doing. And I think that's important if you want them to move through your funnel.

 

Sarah Bushell (57:35)

Yeah, absolutely. It's the personalisation part of it, isn't it? So that they are getting that very personalised response in the follow up to remind them of the conversation that you had.

 

Adam Lowther (57:42)

Yeah.

 

Yeah. And I think, I think that's what it is. It's just about being human. You know, there's no smoke and mirrors. Like they know that you're selling the service. They know that you're a business. They know they're to have to spend money if they want to work with you. So it's just about being genuine, being a good human being. And actually, you know, let's go for the scenario that you've been on this call.

 

You you've really understood that person and what the pains are, and you really think that what you offer can help them so much. So in that scenario, you you're following up and you kind of just, you know, saying it was a great call, you really enjoyed it. And, you know, these are the main points. And when you're ready to go ahead, this is what we should do. But I also think booking in a time for another call is really powerful.

 

rather than just leaving it in open air because people forget, people need guiding. It's kind of like you can guide a horse to war, but you can't make it drink the war, right? It's the same with, you know, clients. And I don't mean that in a horrible way. I just mean that in terms of like, everyone's so busy in their lives. Everyone's got things pulling on them from all different directions. So to you with your business, what you're offering is the highest priority and it should be their top of mind because you've sent them this message now.

 

So that means that when they see it, they're going to be thinking about that, but actually they might just see it and then disregard it. So you've got to really hold the hand and guide them through that early process, you know, and say, you know, let's book in a call and we can, we can talk about this. Like maybe it's like a week later. So they've had chance to reflect, think about it. Maybe they have some questions they want to come back with, and then you can address that on a call.

 

Sarah Bushell (59:14)

Mm-hmm.

 

Adam Lowther (59:31)

And it's always better to book in a call rather than DM people because I don't know about you, but I really don't like DMing too much. It just comes to, you know, face glued to the phone and we're always on screens. I'm trying to get off them as much as possible. And feel like you can just achieve so much more in a, you know, either in person or obviously it's not always possible at Zoom or a Google Meet chat.

 

Sarah Bushell (59:54)

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's a really important point actually that it's totally okay to do more than one discovery call.

 

Adam Lowther (1:00:01)

yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah, mean, it's

 

not even, sometimes like for a discovery call, might not even be that you're going to, in your mind that you're going to sell them any, you know, anything in that call. It might just be purely to get to know them and have that discovery. And it might take two or three or even four or five interactions with them before they're actually in a position where they're ready or they want to buy, you know.

 

Sarah Bushell (1:00:24)

Yeah, yeah, but don't do it if you're only selling 90 quid consultations as a one-off.

 

Adam Lowther (1:00:31)

Yeah, definitely not. think what you need to be careful as well, which I didn't mention in your discovery calls, is not doing free consulting.

 

Sarah Bushell (1:00:39)

Yeah, yeah, and I think a

 

lot of healthcare professionals do that because they just want to help.

 

Adam Lowther (1:00:44)

Exactly. And it's natural. And I see it all the time as well. You know, you, you, you're a nice person. You want to help and you think you can help this person. So you give away bits for free. But in a way you kind of like doing like paid work for free and you should think of the discovery call in terms of. You can identify the problems and you can tell them how we're going to fix it when you're pitching your offer. But if they want help actually implementing those things and actually guided through the process.

 

then that's where you are. And you've also got to think that, you know, what we were saying before about the one hour call, where it kind of just doesn't work very well unless they're moving further through your funnel, you know, because you're offering, you know, just bits of information here and there that they might not be able to get anything from. It's the same if you do free consulting on the call, you know, you're giving them bits of information, you're giving them, it's not bad information, it's valuable, but it's all in the context, right? Like if they're at

 

stage one, and you're giving them advice that could be linked to like stage five, whatever that is, that might confuse them and that might actually have a detrimental effect on them. So actually, ironically, it might have the opposite effect that you want it to have, you know, because if it's not in the right context, then that information could be misconstrued and not used in a way that it's actually meant to be used.

 

Sarah Bushell (1:02:06)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So you need to meet them where they're at rather than try and bamboozle them with something that they need five steps down the line.

 

Adam Lowther (1:02:11)

Yeah.

 

Yeah. And, know, just try and, try and not provide that, that free consulting because even if you provide some free value, which is fine to provide a little bit, but you're not going to get them that transformation they want just by providing that, you know, the main focus of the discovery call is to do that, to discover, to learn where they're at now, where they want to go and what's stopping them getting there. And if you can help with what's stopping them getting there, then they should buy from you and become a client.

 

Sarah Bushell (1:02:22)

Yeah.

 

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Brilliant. Adam, this has been fantastic. We've been talking for absolutely ages. Final question for you. Do you think anyone can learn sales?

 

Adam Lowther (1:02:52)

Yeah.

 

Yes, a hundred percent. think sales is just a skill. I think it's like going to the gym sales. It's like, think about it. I think about like a sales muscle, right? If you want to, you know, maybe get like a six pack or something, you just put it in those reps of, of doing the sit ups, doing the exercises. that's, that's building the muscle. And it's the same in sales, like the more of these discovery calls or sales calls that you go on, the better you become actually.

 

you know, not just following a script and actually genuinely listening to people and understanding the problems. And for me, you know, I have autism. So for someone with autism, you wouldn't necessarily think that would be someone who would be helping people with the sales and the conversions, but that that's just goes to show that actually sales is just a skill. And a lot of it is confidence as well, you know, which comes with time and it comes with

 

confidence in your offer. And you know, because if you're not confident in what you're doing and what you're offering, it's very hard for someone else to be confident in it. So even if you're someone who is maybe a bit cautious or a bit not pessimistic, but maybe finds the worst case scenarios that could happen, or what if this doesn't work? What if I do this program and they don't get the results? You know, like you said, just

 

You can't guarantee the results. just know that what you're, what the advice that you're giving, what your program coaching is, is good. and you have got people results before. So just think of it in terms of, you know, your, you're trying to do a genuinely good thing. You're trying to help someone. So don't be so afraid of, of the, you know, the actual, the actual sales and then also, also the results because you've

 

you know, had great results for people before, so there's no reason why they couldn't get great results as well.

 

Sarah Bushell (1:04:49)

Yeah, definitely, definitely. And it's really interesting. I've noticed with some of my clients, if they like Christmas, for example, they might've had a couple of weeks off. January, you would expect particularly in, you know, the world of diets, people are looking to get back on the wagon after Christmas and they can have discovery calls and they can say, people just aren't buying. And it's because they haven't used that muscle for a couple of weeks. They haven't practiced their sales conversations for a few weeks.

 

Adam Lowther (1:05:13)

Yeah.

 

Sarah Bushell (1:05:17)

or actually even longer because obviously nobody wants to think about dieting in December or from about middle of November anyway. can be quite a long time, but once you get back into the swing of things and get practising, does build. So yeah, I like that analogy of the gym.

 

Adam Lowther (1:05:31)

Yeah.

 

And I think if you go in there with a, maybe there's a little bit of a mindset piece there as well. You know, if you go in, if you go into these sales calls with a like, people should be buying now they're going to be ready to buy because it's January. Then you go into the sales call and you act differently, which in some ways may benefit you because it may make you more confident, but in some ways it may be detrimental because it may make you.

 

rush through a bit more because you feel like you're going to get the sale kind of thing. ⁓ And it might make your, it hires your expectations and you should never have expectations. You should go in there neutral. You know, it's kind of taking that emotion out of it a bit in sales because you know, someone doesn't necessarily buy because of you. You don't have to take it personally. It might just be because, you know, they're not seeing how it can...

 

Sarah Bushell (1:06:02)

Yeah.

 

Adam Lowther (1:06:22)

help them. So your job really is just to really guide them through that process like we've discussed. I think really going in there with that clear mindset, no expectations, know, not thinking, it's December, so no one's going to buy or it's January, so everyone should be buying because I guarantee there will be people in even December who will be motivated to lose weight. There's people who want to, you know, for example, do it all year round.

 

So just go in there, you know, clean, neutral and take it as it comes. Don't overthink it. Sales is simple. You're just trying to help someone.

 

Sarah Bushell (1:06:56)

Yeah. Yeah.

 

Yeah. I love what you just said there. It's very rarely the time of year, but it's always the excuse we jump to when things haven't gone well.

 

Adam Lowther (1:07:05)

We always want to pin it to something.

 

Sarah Bushell (1:07:07)

Yeah, yeah, brilliant. Well, thank you so much for your time, Adam. Where can people connect with you if they want to a little bit more about what you do and how you might be able to support them?

 

Adam Lowther (1:07:11)

Yes.

 

Yeah, so I'm on LinkedIn, Adam Lowther, but I'm also probably more active on Instagram. So that's Adam, at Adam Mark Lowther. And I'm sure you can like increase, put the links down below, whatever, you know, if you're a coach or a consultant and you want help, like with the sales aspect in the conversions, then I'm happy to just have a chat.

 

Sarah Bushell (1:07:31)

Yes.

 

Brilliant, that's great. Yeah, I'll put all of those links in the show notes on YouTube and on the podcast players so that wherever people are consuming this, they can grab them. Thanks for coming, Adam. Bye.

 

Adam Lowther (1:07:49)

Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me. ⁓