The Small Business Trifecta (Part 3): Strategic Selling

You're listening to The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast with Debbie Sassen, Episode 158. 

Welcome to The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast. I'm your host, Debbie Sassen. I went from being a financial adviser, author and chronic under earner to building my business to six figures as a financial planner and money mindset coach, and then on to multiple six figures as a fulltime money and business coach. 

I help entrepreneurs create money making businesses and build wealth using sales and money mindset strategies in alignment with authentic Jewish values. Now, let's dive into today's show.

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the podcast. Today, we are going to complete the three-part cycle of “The Small Business Trifecta”. 

But before we jump into the podcast, I really have to tell you about what happened in the last couple of weeks over Black Friday. Now, if you were listening in to my previous podcast episodes, you know that I kept warning you. I kept telling you that I was going to have some special Black Friday offers. And my inbox really went insane. Tens of people, 20s of people signed up and joined the Black Friday offer.

There was an amazing bundle, a prosperity bundle that I offered, which included masterclasses. It included actually a whole workbook on The Small Business Trifecta that you and I are doing, and a full investment program. 

So for any of you who didn't listen in, who didn't get on my newsletter and join my newsletter … because I send out a lot of early bird information … I want you to know that there is more good stuff, more goodies, coming up in December and in January.

As we move through the month of December, we're going to get to the holiday of Hanukkah. And you know that Hanukkah is all about gelt. Now, gelt — in Yiddish, money — it might not be the main theme of Hanukkah.

We could be talking about the victory of the Maccabees over the Hellenists. We could be talking about the oil that burned in the base of Mikdash for eight days instead of one day. We could be talking about the wonders that G-d gave us in the world. We could be talking about the latkes; those greasy latkes. We could be talking about sufganiyot - donut. 

We could be talking a lot of things around Hanukkah and the main themes, but you know me, I talk about money. So I'm going to talk about gelt. 

I do have some amazing money offers for you. In fact, one of the offers that I had for the Black Friday weekend was a mystery offer. There were about eight people, nine, 10, something like that, who signed up for my mystery offer. It was a crazy, insane deal. I'm going to spill the beans right now, if you didn't follow up on that.

I am launching a private Telegram broadcast channel in January. That's going to be my mystery offer. I'm still not filling you in on all of the details, but I am going really savage in that Telegram channel. 

I’ll be helping people to change their relationship with money, … we're going to talk about that today … to believe harder in their businesses, and to be more convicted in what they're offering. It's going to be tactical and strategic. I'm going to help you plan and change your relationship with money.

And you really want to be on my newsletter so that you know when that private Telegram channel is opening up. You might also want to know about the Hanukkah bundle that I'm participating in because I have a free giveaway in that bundle, plus another summit that I will be participating in, in January. 

So pause this recording now. Go to my website, DebbieSassen.com/newsletter, and get on my newsletter. Because there is so much goody, goody stuff, gelt-related stuff … I love that word … happening in my world in the next six, seven, eight weeks. And you really want to take part in it. So DebbieSassen.com/newsletter. 

And now we're going to jump into part three of The Small Business Trifecta. So the first thing we talked about in part one, you'll go back there if you need to, is really who you need to be. Who are you serving in your business? How are you serving them? What is your process? What are the results that your clients, your ideal clients, are going to get when they work with you? 

Knowing that with clarity … this is so often a problem that I see with my clients, is that they talk in fuzzy words … I'm going to help them have a better life. I'm going to help them live their dream life. I'm going to help them have less chaos in their life. Those are beautiful words. And I totally believe you. 

When people are living their dream life, what are they actually doing? Are they spending more time with their kids? Are they having holidays on the Jamaican islands? What are they doing? Are they doing pottery and painting and all sorts of art projects that they really wanted to do when they were very busy raising their children, and now they're actually expressing themselves in artwork? 

So that's the clarity that I want you to get. That was part one of The Small Business Trifecta.

In part two, we talked about your belief system — believing in yourself, believing in your offer, believing that there is an abundance of money in the world. And your mindset, your beliefs, and really, in your body on a cellular level, down to your tippy toes. 

You believing, and being so convicted that your people are out in the world, that you only need one, two, five, 10 clients, and you can actually have a thriving six-figure business. And really starting with that conviction, commitment, and belief. So that's episode number two, part two. 

Today, we're going to talk about strategy. Because you can believe all you want, you can have all the foundational pieces defined, who you serve and how you serve them, but now this is where rubber meets the road. This is where you have to get out from behind your computer and you actually have to go meet people. You have to tell them what you do. You have to make an offer. You have to write emails. You have to record podcasts. You actually have to do things. You need to have sales conversations. Okay? 

This is something that so many people push back on. In fact, I was recently involved in a discussion on a local group, community, talking about sales conversations. And what some people wanted to suggest is that buyers these days are flaky. My response to that was, that we, as business owners, need to take 100% responsibility for what we can do in our businesses. 

And if you categorize, if you label all buyers as flaky … because that's a mindset issue, it's in your mind, you've thought to yourself, “People are flaky right now,” ... then you're not going to go out there and sell with conviction. You're not going to take responsibility for how you can master your sales conversations. You won't be looking and tweaking, and seeing, where did I drop the ball on my conversations?

In fact, recently, in one of my coaching classes, in my Wired for Wealth coaching program, one of my clients was telling me that she was having an issue closing her sales conversations. And so I asked her, “Tell me about your calls.” And she said she got them to the place where they really wanted to work with her. Their commitment level was a nine or a 10. 

I was like, “Yeah, okay, then what happens?” And she said, “Well, then I tell them the price,” just like I share in my Sacred Sales Conversation guide, and her people come back like, “Oh, do you have a lower priced offer?”  I asked her, “What happens in your mind and in your body when that happens?” 

And this, my friends, is part of strategic selling. Because what was going on in her mind was, “Oh, here we go again. Here's another person who's going to say no.” And that is exactly where she dropped the ball on the sales call. Because when you're going in your head, “There she goes. She's not going to want to work with me. The price is going to be too high. She's going to want a lower priced offer,” all of those sneaky, devilish thoughts in your mind, your whole energy drops. 

You've been guiding your person on your sales call. You've been in leadership energy. You've been telling them, “Yes, I can help you. This is the clarity around your problem. This is why you're not getting the results you want. This is how I can help you. This is how we can work together. Here's my price.” 

You hear the energy in my voice? I'm showing up. I'm strong. I'm empowered. I'm grounded. I'm convicted … All those beautiful words that we talked about already. Are those verbs or adjectives? They're one of them. I think they're adjectives ... 

And then, all of a sudden, she starts getting in her head and her whole body, it’s … I'm not saying that you could actually look at the video and see her sinking into her chair and all of a sudden dropping by two inches … but you can feel the energetic drop. Like, “Oh, this one's not going to work.” 

Your voice is going to change. Your conviction is going to change. Your body language is going to change. So I want you to be much, much more strategic about how you sell. 

The first one is believing that your product or your service solves somebody's problem. That's part of strategy. I know we've talked about it in terms of mindset, but that belief system, that you have something valuable in the world, you want to bring that into your sales calls. You want to bring that into your marketing. That's part of your strategy, is having that conviction. 

And you also want to believe that that there's a person out in the world who is looking for you. Can you imagine if you opened up a new car showroom, a new dealer outlet, and Elon Musk is all of a sudden bringing to the market Tesla’s? He's saying, “Well, I have this very expensive electric car and nobody wants to buy it. Let me just open up some showrooms with some second-rate salespeople. And maybe, if somebody wants it, they're going to buy it.” That is not going to be the energy. 

What you want to be doing is being, “This is incredibly valuable. It's good for the environment. I have designed it with all of the most aerodynamic features.” I mean, when you look at a Tesla, there are no handles. I remember the first time that I got into a Tesla. I'm like, “Wait a second, where's the handle? I need to open the door.” I realized exactly how it was designed for aerodynamics, so it would be very energy efficient.

I was just looking at a Tesla on the road. It was already a beautiful car, mind blowing. And then seeing it up close, I had conviction that this was an amazing car. 

Now, my brother bought one a couple of years ago and he told me that the windshield is very thin glass. Anytime he parks under a tree and a little acorn drops down from the tree and lands on his windscreen, he needs to get it replaced. Okay, so maybe that's also part of the car being aerodynamic and saving energy. But it seems to be a side problem of the Tesla that he hasn't solved yet; my brother, or maybe Elon Musk.

Anyway, I'm not getting a Tesla this week, but there are people, many, many people who are buying them. They're sleek, they're gorgeous, and they're energy efficient. When you have that conviction, “I have something in the market. It is solving problems and people want to buy what I have to offer,” then it's your job. 

This is your job as a business owner, to be strategic about your work and to go out into the world and talk about what you do. Tell people who you are. Tell people how you can help them. Share your offers with your people. Whether it's at an in-person networking event, whether you're going to a parent-teacher’s meeting in school, if you're going to a yoga class, make sure that you tell people about who you are and what you do, because that's the way people are going to find out.

If you're the best-kept secret in all of the world, people can't buy your stuff. There might be some referrals here or there in other ways. It's beautiful to get referrals. We all love it because that is such a warm audience. They've already been turned on to you by their friends or by other people in parallel businesses. But don't forget that you as a business owner, you market your business. That is what businesses do. They market and market and market. 

As a business owner, part of your strategy is always to be marketing. It's not just showing up and talking to people and letting them know that, maybe, if they want to, you can help them. No, “I have a solution.” And this solution is right for the right person.

So here are some ways that you can get up in front of people. You can be on social media. If you are on social media, pick yourself one platform. It can be Facebook. It can be LinkedIn. It can be Instagram. If you do TikTok … I don't hang out on TikTok … but if you want to be on a free platform, which sometimes gives you paid options, you can run Facebook ads or Instagram ads or something like that. 

Social media is one place that you can hang out. And of course there's print media. You can write articles for a local newspaper. You can write articles for a community magazine. There are ways for you to show up. You could just have a little ad, like 1/8^th of a page. But there are definitely ways to let people know. Like by putting an ad in a local paper. And I think, depending on your community, that can be a very effective way. 

Recently, I was in a group and somebody said in the beginning of their business, they put some ads in their local paper and that turned into an amazing referral business. They barely ever have to do any marketing. So if that's the kind of business you're in, that is fantastic. But don't neglect that option of using print media. 

And then, of course, there's a podcast. You can get in front of people on a podcast. You can do an interview. You can share what you know. 

You can show up at a summit. I'll be involved in a summit, in January, for example, where I'm going to be sharing what I know about investing with the audience of the summit host. So that's another way that you can share. But don't forget that there are, as I said, yoga classes. Or you're going to the gym. 

Wherever you're showing up, you can talk to people and tell your stories. You can tell your story, again, by writing an article, by doing a video, or doing a webinar. Where you share your journey based on where you were to where you are now, and why it changed your life to go through what you went through.

And that's where you're helping your people do the kind of work that you do today. And this, that kind of storytelling, is very appropriate for people in the coaching and healing fields. 

But you can also be a creative. If you design websites, talk about what you love about websites. What is it about helping people to have their address out there on the internet that totally lights you up? And do you bring your creativity, your graphic skills, your wanting to see a beautiful online world out there that got you involved, for example, in websites?

So let people know who you are, what you do, and how you can help them. I definitely recommend, in the earlier stages of your business, to keep it simple. To keep it very simple so that people in your audience, if they don't know you yet… you want people to understand what you do. So make sure that you confine, constrain what you do to just, what I call, “one simple offer” or “one signature offer” so you get known for that one thing. 

If you are the ultimate website designer, make sure that people know over and over and over again that you design websites, quality websites. If you do it in a certain industry, if you know about websites for the financial industry, that might be one type of website. It might include some encryption so people can upload their financial documents that's going to have a certain level of privacy. 

If you design websites for coaches, or for schools or nonprofits, you want to let people know over and over again. Don't assume that everybody already knows who you are and what you do. People still reach out to me and ask me about financial planning. They're like, “Hey, do you help with investments?” 

I had this recently. Somebody reached out to me on one of the social media platforms and she needs help with budgeting. I'm like, “Listen, I don't do budgeting anymore. I'll be happy to send you the Excel worksheet that I have on my computer. Not a problem. It's there, it's free, but that's not the work that I do in the world.” But people still know me as doing that thing. 

So if you change, pivot, whatever, don't assume that the entire world knows who you are and what you're doing today. 

Now we can't talk about strategy without talking about money; because you have your strategy to show up and sell the work that you do. You have to decide on a price for your offer. Before you decide on a price for your offer, I strongly encourage you to choose an income goal for your business. 

As I'm recording this, it's the end of 2024, I want you to think about an income goal for your business in 2025. Your income goal could be $50,000. It could be $500,000. The numbers don't really matter. You, at your stage of business, can pick a goal that seems reasonable. 

I happen to love stretch goals. So if your goal might be $100,000, I might take that same goal and say, “Let me play around with the goal of $500,000. It's a little more stretchy. Definitely more audacious. I like that. How can I get it done? 

Just for the purposes of this podcast, I'm going to limit the income goal to $50,000 because it helps me do simple math. I like simple math. You might say, “Listen, it’s 2025 and I'm a new business. I want to earn $50,000.” Let's just brainstorm a little bit. How we can actually get that done? Because it might seem like an insurmountable goal. How could you possibly do it? 

So if you had an offer at $1,000, that's 50 clients. That means that you need to enroll one client every week for the entire year of 2025 so you're going to meet your income goal. For example, if you're a life coach, you can have a three-month coaching offer for $1,000. And every single week you can enroll a new person into your business. $1,000 for three months of coaching is a total no brainer. 

You can definitely help people really, really change their lives in a big way once you understand how to talk to them, you've refined your offer, and you know how to run a sales conversation. And that's amazing. 

In fact, it could be that for the first 20 weeks of the year, you'll easily sign clients at $1,000. And then it might give you the opportunity to raise your prices to $1,500-$2,000-$2,500, depending on the results that your clients are getting, based on the work that you're doing together.

Similarly, if you're doing graphic design, you might have an offer at $1,000 and you get a consistent, steady flow of clients at $1,000. Halfway through the year, you could also raise your prices. So we just want to start and help our brain to see that it's possible.

Or maybe you're still going to set that goal at $50,000 and you'll be like, “Hmm, I wonder what sort of premium offer I could put out into the world that would be valued at $5,000?” And based on what you do, you could create a package that's valued at $5,000. You’d just need 10 clients. That's less than one client a month.

And if you consistently enroll, you go out there and talk to people, you tell them what you do, you hear about their problems and what's getting in their way, and then you share your solutions, it is totally possible that you can enroll 10 clients at $5,000 during the course of a 12-month year. 

So think about breaking it down into numbers. It helps our brain get on board with our goals. And then, also let yourself be a little bit in the land of curiosity about how that can happen. What your brain will want to do is push back and say, “It's not possible. I can't do it. $50,000 is just too much.” 

I want you to just write down all the obstacles that your brain is offering you. “I don't know enough people. Nobody wants to buy my offer. I haven't sold anything yet. People have told me my prices are too high.” All of these negative thoughts, or all of the garbage … garbage in, garbage out … all of the garbage that your brain wants to offer, these are opportunities for you to overcome the objections that you have in your mind. 

But also, if you work through these objections yourself, you create solutions. You can role-play with yourself. Somebody says to you, “Oh, wow, that's really high,” how do you want to answer? How do you want to answer that objection? How do you want to explain to him/her that when you work together, the website that you're building for them, it's not just a one-time price but it's actually going to have longevity. 

Their website is going to live on the interwebs for three years, five years, seven years before they upgrade it. So whatever price they're paying you now, that's going to change the way they're perceived by the potential clients. It will bring in more sales. And it's not like it's $10,000 in one shot. That $10,000 is really spread out, or depreciated we might say in the financial world, over two, three, five, seven years. 

So you have to start thinking about your investments in your business a little bit differently. But those are the kind of conversations that I want you to have. There are strategic selling conversations that you're going to have with you first, so that you are convicted in the value of your offer, so that you are convicted that the price that you are offering for the work that you do in the world is a good price, it's not too high. 

And in fact, there are probably people out there in the world who are doing what you're doing for a higher price. There is a buyer at every single price, so don't undersell yourself. 

And then what I want you to do, when you go out every single day and you talk to people and you do your marketing, I want you to do a daily assessment. This part of your strategy is looking at everything you did today and tomorrow and the next day. Forget yesterday, just look at today and all the tomorrows, right? 

But I want you to really note, how many people did you meet today? How many conversations did you have? I'm recording this podcast in the afternoon, and I've already been in a few online forums helping people, talking to them, networking, and letting people know that I exist. 

How many people are you spreading your wealth to who are getting to know you? That's number one. 

Number two, how many offers did you make today? If you're not making offers, if you're not letting people know that you exist and that you can help them, it's really, really hard to close the sales conversation. You’ve got to go out there. You’ve got to tell people what you do. So if you haven't made any offers today, stop the podcast, put it on pause, and go out into the world and make some offers.

Send an email. Show up on social media. If somebody had a conversation with you, you had an email exchange, go back to them in email and say, “Hey, I'm checking in. I just want to know… We haven't been in touch for a couple of weeks. I'm still here. I know how to help you.”

You have to make offers to get people to say yes. If they don't know that you exist, you're not letting them know how you can help them, then the answer is always going to be no. And you know what Albert Einstein said, that famous quote, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

So if you want more sales calls to close, you have to make more offers and you have to be more visible. And that leads me into the other thing that you want to really understand and assess. What happened on your sales call? I've told you about a couple of people whose energy dropped, or they didn't believe that people wanted to pay their prices. 

It’s important for you to know because then you can refine. You can tweak your sales calls the next time you show up online. Don't believe that everybody's flaky. Don't believe that people don't want to buy. Don't believe that people don't have money. Because I promise you, people have money. 

Whether you're hanging out online and seeing people's vacations, or you are talking to your neighbors, people … This is the winter now in Israel. It's cold and people are going to warm countries. They're going to get some warmth. They're going to warm up their bones and their bodies and hang out in the sun. Or people are going skiing. 

There are people in the world who do have money. You have to make sure that whatever it is that you offer, you are offering it to people who can afford to pay you. 

And I know we've talked about this before, that people really want to help all the people in the world who can't pay them. And it's a beautiful, beautiful thing. You go make money for you. You take care of yourself. And when you make more money, you're going to have 10% of your income that you're going to be able to give to tzedakah — to give to charity. That will be your tithing. 

If you want to increase it to 20%, if you want to take some pro bono clients, that is absolutely fantastic. But you have to go out there and make money and take care of your family first. 

So let me just leave you … I just love this conversation. We've talked about it before. Specifically, I had an entire podcast episode on Dan Sullivan's 4 C's, his formula. But because we're talking about strategy, I just want to leave you with these 4 C's. And I'll put a link in the show notes so that you can go back to the full episode. 

But there are 4 C's to building your business. The first one is your commitment. You have to be committed. You have to be convicted. We've talked about both of those words. They're both very strong “C” words. You have to believe in you, your product, and your person. 

Have so much conviction, that however uncomfortable it is to go out there and let people know what you're doing, the fact that you can get results for your people is going to overwhelm any sort of shyness that you feel. Be convicted. Be convicted in the results you offer. 

The second thing is, because it's going to feel uncomfortable, especially in the beginning, before you get used to doing what you're doing, is be courageous. It doesn't feel great; it feels vomit-ey. You'll be like, “Oh my gosh, I can't believe I just said what I said, out there to people, that I can help them. Maybe I don't have enough experience.”

One of my clients said that to me today, “Maybe I need more supervision before I go out into the world.” No, sweetheart, you do not need more supervision. It will always help you. You will get better. You have 20, 40, 60 years to get better in what you do. But if you slow yourself down today, by getting supervision, it's going to slow down your growth. 

There is something called “on-the-job training”. When you go out there and help people, and in the beginning your prices are lower because you are less experienced, right? 

That heart surgeon that is just doing his first private heart surgery is not going to get paid the same amount as that heart surgeon who has 30 years of experience. And he will always have somebody standing by just to make sure that he doesn't mess up, because you don't want to be the person who is there for the first surgery.

Anyway, commitment, then courage. And after you've done it a number of times, 10, 20, 30 times, you'll be very capable. And then, after you've done it like another 50 times, then you'll be confident. You will have hit a new level in what you're doing. And maybe it's not 50 times or 30 times or whatever, but go out there and become confident. 

You don't show up there with confidence, confidence is what you've already done in your life. I know how to ride a bicycle. I know how to take off the training wheels. I've been doing that for more years than I want to let you know. I know how to drive a car. I know how to cook a meal.

But to make a million dollars in my business in a single year? I don't know how to do that yet. But when I do know how to do that, I will be confident that I can do it again and again and again. So I'm showing up with commitment to reach that goal, and courage to make it happen. I'm learning. I'm becoming more capable.

As my annual income increases, I'm increasing my level of capability. And one day I'm going to be so confident that I'm going to share with you how to make a seven-figure business in one year. And I hope you're going to stick around with me for when we get there together.

All right, my friends, that is the end of this week's podcast. This is the end of the three-part series on your small business trifecta. 

I want to remind you, go into my newsletter, DebbieSassen.com/newsletter, and sign up. Because there are insane deals coming to you at the end of December and the beginning of January. 

And I really want to see you inside, especially in my mystery offer. It is a ridiculously low price. You've got to get in there. I have doubled it since I offered it during Black Friday weekend, but that's okay, it is still an insane value. I really want to see you inside.

I look forward to seeing you next week on The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast. See you then. Bye.

Thanks for listening to The Jewish Entrepreneur Podcast. If you want to stop underselling and underearning and close more sales, you need to clear the limiting money beliefs that are sabotaging your business growth. 

Head on over to DebbieSassen.com/mindset and download my free Money Mindset Workbook. Uncover and dissolve money blocks, like hundreds of other entrepreneurs who are now building six-, multi-six-, and seven-figure businesses and creating true financial freedom.