Christina: (00:01) You are listening to the Scaling of Freedom podcast, and if you are an online coach or course creator, you are in the right place. I’m your host, Christina Bernhard. I’m an ads agency owner that gets an inside look every day on what’s working and what doesn’t. In the online coaching space, I’m here to share with you what we see works in our agency as well as what we see happening and changing in the industry. Stay tuned to up-level your coaching business to have the freedom you want. Let’s get started.

Christina: (00:31) You are listening to episode 170. In this episode, we’re gonna be talking about when your offer is not selling and how to find out why it’s not selling. So this is great for anyone who has had an offer that sold really, really well in the past, and it’s suddenly not anymore. And also, if that is you, I did recently do a podcast episode about that, so go ahead and check that out. Um, but this is also for anyone who has a newer offer and you can’t figure out how to sell it. Um, so this works for both of those scenarios and this is really, really important stuff. So I hope that you choose to listen and implement the things that I am talking about in this episode because this is something that I always recommend my clients do. And we talk about this all the time, and it’s extremely effective.

Christina: (01:19) Matter of fact, it is the way to find out why it’s not selling and what to do about it. So first I wanna point out that there are times that offers just don’t sell, whether they’ve sold a lot in the past, or again, this is like a newer offer. Um, I went over this in the episode, um, things your competition isn’t talking about because it can feel lonely if you feel like you’re the only one that’s not selling. When everyone else on Instagram or wherever looks like they are making lots of sales and great launches are happening all the time, you are not alone. This is totally normal. So marketing and talk on social media has really skewed what it actually takes to sell something well over and over again. And it takes time and a ton of really intentional work. And so what we don’t wanna do is when we’re in this situation, is to just throw spaghetti at the walls.

Christina: (02:09) And just guess the beautiful thing is that there are people out there that have all of the answers you just have to ask. So what I’m referring to is market research. So we’re gonna be talking about market research today because this is how you find out why your offer is not selling. And it seems so simple and straightforward, but I can’t tell you how many times I tell people this answer, like they’re like, I don’t understand why my offer’s not selling. And I speak in mastermind groups and um, you know, I’m of course really active on Instagram and I have like my client load and like all these things. So I have these conversations all the time. And a lot of people ask me, what do you usually see? You know, work whenever people are selling their offers online. And you know, what do you, why do you think my offer isn’t selling?

Christina: (02:55) And the answer is always that we need to go find out. So we need need to implement market research. And a lot of people are like, oh yeah, that’s a great idea. Like a lot of people aren’t really thinking about implementing this even though it is so, so simple. And then also some people maybe are thinking about it, but they don’t know where to start, or they don’t really know how to go about it, or they simply just don’t want to because it means that you’re having to, you know, get on calls with people and have these conversations with people. Um, and it does take a lot of work sometimes, depending on how deep you want to go into it. But also it can just be, you know, one of those things that whenever you are in the thick of it and you are, you know, having your business running and all of that, it can be something that’s very easy to just put really low on the priority list and just put it aside because technically your business can like operationally run without doing this.

Christina: (03:44) So it is one of those tasks that constantly kind of get pushed aside. So I want to bring it up higher in the priority list, especially if your offer is not selling. So the first thing is ways to ask people. So if we’re trying to figure out why your offer is not selling, we need to figure out how do, where do we even start with market research? What, what like do we actually do? Like what kind of tasks do we need to do? So there are different ways to do this. Um, and there’s really not like that many ways, right? So it’s pretty simple. I mean, one way that we can do is surveys. Now we can post these surveys on our social media, we can send it out to our email list. Um, we can actually put it inside of a funnel. So I always recommend at the end of a funnel, um, to offer some sort of like didn’t buy survey or something so that people can just on an ongoing basis put their answers in there.

Christina: (04:37) Um, you’re going to have a low response rate typically, so that’s totally normal, but you actually can get some really good data. So a lot of my clients implement this and we get a lot of great insight from this, and they’re able to actually make changes to either their funnel or their webinar or to their offer. And, you know, as they’re getting this ongoing data all the time. So surveys are one way to do it. Another thing that you can do are polls. So polls you can do on your Instagram stories, you can do it in Facebook groups. You can also implement this somewhere in your email list. Or if you have your own Facebook group, you can do that as well. Um, wherever your people are, you can do polls and polls are not going to be as insightful because they’re just like, you know, they’re not open-ended questions or answers.

Christina: (05:22) So, um, you are are only able to just gather like, you know, very specific types of data from it, but it is something that you can implement on an ongoing basis just to make sure that you are gathering that kind of data. The last one that I’m gonna talk about, and, you know, there are some other things, but these are the main ways. Um, the last one is calls. So this one is going to be the most, most, most insightful. Um, and it’s really, really helpful to be able to get on market research calls with people because you’re able to ask follow up questions. You can kind of pivot the questions and, and the conversation based on the feedback that you’re getting in real time. You can ask people to elaborate whenever you don’t understand something. It can be really, really helpful and insightful to get on a call with someone.

Christina: (06:09) And you might think, you know, why would anyone just get on this call? You know, for nothing and you can’t offer something in exchange. You can offer for them to pick your brain or you can offer some free call or, um, a gift card or something like that. Um, but also you would be surprised how many people are willing to do it just to help. Um, it’s really, really common. I myself have gotten on many, many market research calls and, um, people just want to help and people wanna share their story. So it’s easier than you think to get people on calls. Um, but calls are really where it’s going to be at. So the second thing that I wanna talk about is, you know, where to find these people. So if you decided, okay, I’m gonna do a survey and I’m gonna get on calls, that would be my recommendation.

Christina: (06:56) Um, so where do I even find people to get on these free calls to share their story? So one place that you can start is past clients and current clients. So you want to know, you know, why did they buy or join? Um, and these people are, you know, finding out why people didn’t join or buy is really, really important. But also you wanna know what made people actually decide to take that leap. That’s also really important. So we don’t wanna miss that. So past and current clients, those people are often really willing to get on a call with you. Um, if their current clients, they might, you know, you might already have scheduled calls with them and you could ask them if they would be willing to say a little bit longer, um, on a call just to answer some questions for you. You know, obviously, you know, ask clients that you have a good relationship with.

Christina: (07:46) You’ll be surprised how many people are more than willing to. Another place is your email list. Your email list is, uh, full of people who have already raised their hand and said that they’re interested in what you do. So this can be a really great place to gather some insights. Um, you can also, again, if you have a Facebook group, you can utilize that as well. You can utilize your following on social media, um, wherever, whichever platform you’re really, um, active on. You can also look at your didn’t buy list. So this is also where I talk about adding that survey in at the end of an email sequence. But you can also go back and that can be for the future people who go through your funnel. But you can also go back to the people who have gone through an entire funnel sequence and did not buy.

Christina: (08:31) And you could send all of them an email, just them, um, and ask if they would be willing to get, uh, to fill out a survey and you can send them the survey. Um, or you can also ask if they’re willing to get on a call, um, maybe an exchange for, uh, a Starbucks gift card or something like that. Um, and it could be just available to the first 10 people that respond. Um, and I’ve actually found that to be very, very effective. You’d be surprised how many people do respond and are willing to do it. And then you can also, um, look at, uh, the people who signed up for your webinar or downloaded your freebie. Um, this can be, this is different from your entire email list. You would be looking at people who signed up for a very specific free offer that you had.

Christina: (09:14) So that’s gonna be a more segmented list of people. Uh, and that might actually be better data depending on what your product suite looks like and how many different funnels you have. So you’re wanting to talk to the people that would potentially be good for a very specific offer. So we wanna have this be focused on a specific offer just for this stance. Uh, you can, um, ask people just more general questions, but we really wanna figure out why this particular offer is not selling. So those are ways that you can ask, um, and where to find the people that you talk to. But we also wanna go over what to ask because it’s really important that we ask the right questions, especially if we’re getting someone on a call. We wanna make sure that we utilize this call, we don’t waste the time, and we’re able to take advantage of the fact that someone is willing to get on a call with us and we can get some really good insight or not much at all depending on how we’re utilizing the call.

Christina: (10:06) So the people that did not buy, um, we want to know how they feel right now without the solution. So that’s really important. What you’re gonna be doing with that information is this is a lot of the language that you’re gonna be using in your copy, whether it’s email copy or your sales page copy, things like that. You want to use their language. So you want to not only understand how they feel and really be able to put yourself into that space, but also make sure that you’re taking note of the specific words that they’re using, the actual language that they’re using. That way in your copy, whenever you are trying to speak to them, you’re using their language. Um, the second thing is how they would feel if they did have a solution. So how they feel right now without it. And then how would they feel if they had a solution to their problem?

Christina: (10:57) Same thing, understand their language and keep track of the specific words that they’re using. Um, you also obviously wanna know why they didn’t join or purchase. So you want to get to the bottom of it whenever you ask this question, because a common thing is going to be time and money. So those are gonna be really common answers. We want to get past that and just kind of ignore those answers. We want to know exactly what it was that blocked them, because people spend lots of money on all kinds of things that they don’t actually need. So, but they found some sort of value in it for whatever reason. So we want to know why they didn’t find value in your particular program or offer. So get to the bottom of those answers and ask them to elaborate if you need to and ask some follow up questions.

Christina: (11:44) Whenever you ask follow up questions, ask very specific things, that way it’s easier for them to answer. Um, the other thing is why or what they did instead of joining or paying for your program. So, or what they think that they’re going to do or they’re going to try. So like an example is, did they decide that they’re gonna try to solve this problem on their own? Did they decide to not do anything? Did they not think that this problem’s really big enough to actually invest money in, they’re just not gonna do anything about it? Um, or did they join a competitor’s program or, um, offer. So you want to know, uh, those answers. That’s gonna be really, really big to understand where their mind is. And this is also going to understand things that you need to do to change your offer or to tweak it.

Christina: (12:31) Um, because we want to make sure that if someone is deciding that the problem’s not big enough, we are either talking to the wrong people who this problem is not affecting them, or you just wanna make sure that you know you, the solution that you are offering for this problem is, you know, that problem is worth paying for, for someone out there, right, for people, um, to be able to sell to. So what they did instead or what they think they’re going to do. Um, and then also a really great thing to ask them is, what would their dream program or solution look like? So this is really a really, really fun question because this can really get those creative juices flowing for you and you’re asking directly to the person, you know, what, what it, what would be the perfect offer that you think would be the right solution.

Christina: (13:20) Um, and then you can also, if you want, you can ask them, um, the pricing that they think that it should be at just to see where their heads at. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you need to make it that price, but it does help kind of gauge what the value of solving that problem is for them. Um, so yeah, those are the main five questions that you wanna make sure that you do ask. There are lots of other questions that you can ask and that you should ask, um, that are more related and specific to your offer, um, in your business. But I would at minimum ask those five questions. So how they feel right now without the solution, how they would feel if they did have this solution to their problem, why they didn’t join, and, you know, get a deeper beyond time and money, um, what they did instead, or what they think they will do instead of joining your program or, um, investing with you and what their dream program or solution would look like.

Christina: (14:16) So those are the main ways that you’re gonna do it. That’s the way that you can start. You can get started. Where to find the people, what to ask them. Um, and I do wanna point out that you want to get in the habit, so you wanna ask as much as you can on an ongoing basis. So you want to do this regularly. I would do this at least quarterly, certainly, um, a big bulk right now. If you’re having an offer that’s not selling, you wanna make sure that you make this a a really big focus coming up. Um, and also another thing, you know, the market changes. So this is a really great way to stay on top of it if you’re doing this on a regular basis. Um, and you can just continue to get multiple perspectives. So whenever you’re doing it on an ongoing basis, over time, the amount of people that you’ve actually had conversations with is going to start really rising in volume and that’s gonna be so, so helpful and insightful.

Christina: (15:07) Um, so just as much as you can do Instagram story polls, you can do Facebook group polls, um, you can do things like that too. Also for just topics of webinars or freebie ideas and things like that. Um, just getting in the habit of asking your audience what, what it is that they want. Um, and then of course, on a regular basis, get on those market research calls and be able to ask those deeper questions to really understand your ideal client, where they’re at, how they’re feeling, the language that they’re using, um, and, you know, really gauge the value of finding a solution for their problem. So that is what I have for you in this episode. If you have an offer that is not selling, whether it used to or this is a brand new offer, definitely dive into market research and again, do it regularly.

Christina: (15:57) So we went over ways to ask people, um, where to find those people to talk to, what exactly you wanna be talking to them about and what you wanna ask them. Um, and then also just noting that, you know, to get into the habit of doing this on an ongoing basis. So that is what I have for you this week. I hope you’ll have an amazing week. Thank you for listening to the Scaling to Freedom podcast. If you are a seven figure coach looking for ads management with an agency that partners with you to get your work out into the world and amplify your impact, see if we are a good fit by applying for a spot in our agency@christinabernhard.com/apply. Find the link in our show notes.