Accidental ways you are blocking the flow of revenue

Being in business, I’m guessing that you want to make more money, right. After all, that’s why we’re in business, not running a charity. But there might be some ways that you are accidentally blocking money flowing to you. In today’s episode, I’m going to share some of the ways that you can remove these blocks so that money can flow to you with more ease.

Hello and welcome to The Clare Wood Podcast, where myself and incredible guests share about money, mindset, financial successes, and how to manage your money in a fun and practical way to create wealth and abundance in both your business and your life. I’m your host, Clare Wood. I’m a business coach and a money mentor. I strongly believe that money has the power to positively change the world. I can’t wait to help you transform your mindset around money, create a love of numbers and build the business of your dreams so you can live a life of financial freedom, giving and global impact.

Being clear on what you offer and how people can work with you

The first way you might accidentally be blocking money from flowing in is that it’s not easy to work with you. So, when someone first comes and has an experience with your brand, is it super clear what you do and how they can work with you? I can’t tell you how many times I have really been enjoying someone’s content and I’ve gone to check them out and I’m not a hundred percent sure what it is that they do. Does that make sense if you have ever had that experience, I’m sure you’ll know what I mean. They might be talking a lot about websites and you are wondering, so do they build websites? Do they do consulting for websites? Are they into SEO? I don’t know. And when you go to their website, it’s still not clear. So, it’s very important that you are extremely articulate with what it is that you do and how you help people.

So, the first step is having clarity around what you offer and how people can work with you. But there’s also this component of making it easy for people to actually take that first step to start working with you. So, let’s start with your website. Is there a super clear way that it says, contact now or book a call here or join my course here or join the course wait list here. So many times, people don’t have a clear path for customers to take when they come to interact with a brand, then think about all of your other social media platforms or ways that people might find your business. Again, is there a clear path or a clear journey of how they can connect with you and book in a call, book in a service or sign up for your program? If you are active on Instagram, then make sure that your Instagram bio is up to date.

And another pet peeve of mine is when there isn’t a clear link to someone’s website. So for example, someone might be launching a course. At the time, I go and have a little bit of a stalk, and I’m not wanting to jump in a course, but maybe I’m wanting to work with them one-on-one, but I can’t actually connect with their website through their Instagram bio, because the only thing it has is a link to join their course. So, this is all just food for thought. I want you to start looking at your brand with fresh eyes. You can even ask a family member or a biz friend, if they can go and have a look through your website and or your social media platforms and let you know whether there is a clear customer user experience that is really seamless and allow someone to find you, connect with you and work with you.

Remember that people doing this are actively seeking you out. They want to buy your service and or products. So, make it easy for them to do so.

Making sure you are serving the common questions/ issues that come up from clients

The next way that you might accidentally be blocking money flowing to you is not having a way that you can serve your frequently asked questions. Is there a question that potential clients or followers ask you all the time? Some examples of this might be that people reach out to you all the time and say, “Who does your hair? I love your hair.” I don’t know, I’m just picking an example here. But, whatever it might be that you get asked as a common question, is there a way that you can create an offer around it? So, I know that was a bit of a silly example, but let’s just say that you are an influencer and people do ask you all the time, “Who your hairdresser is?” Is there a way that you can say, “Hey, there is. Here’s a discount that you get if you say that I sent you.” And you could have affiliate revenue program with your hairdresser, if that’s a question you do get asked a lot, or perhaps people ask you in your DMS a lot or via email, “How do I go about doing a website audit?” If that’s something you do in your business. So you could create a little mini course, you could create an ebook. You could create something that answers that question in a way that you can charge and sell it as a service. Now we do not need to monetize every single thing in our business. I am not suggesting that, but I am just challenging you to start to think. Is there an opportunity to capitalize on questions that you get asked and to convert it into a money creating offer?

Another idea might be that you don’t actually monetise that deliverable itself, but you convert it into part of your funnel. So for example, you can say, “Hey, I’ve created a free view with all of that information available.” And then when they download the freebie, they then join your mailing list. So, you can then contact them regularly. An example of this, particularly in the early days, when I launched my podcast, I used to get so many questions about what equipment I use for my podcast. Now I have no interest in creating a podcasting course, but what I did do was I created a freebie that says the podcasting equipment that I use and people can download that from my website. If this has peaked your curiosity, I will stick it as a link in the show notes for today’s episode, if you did want to download the equipment that I do use, but the point I’m trying to make is that I can then use that as a tool to bring people into my email list so that I can then communicate with them on an ongoing basis.

So, have a think about your FAQs. Is there a way that you can create either a paid offer or some sort of freebie that can bring them into your world around the information that they ask you regularly? The next way that you might be blocking the flow of money coming to you is that you don’t have a high ticket offer. This is something I talk about quite a lot. And many clients come to me for support in creating a high ticket offer. A high ticket offer is essentially something that you sell at a higher price point that consumers really value and therefore are happy to pay a high up price for. A great example of this is something that you are offering in a one-on-one capacity. So, people might be able to go and join your course or program, but some people will not want to do that. And they’ll say, “I really want to work with you and I’m happy to pay a premium price for.”

I’m not saying that everyone needs to sell one-on-one services necessarily, but just have a think about, is there a high touch point way that people can have access to a service that they desire. Again, think about your frequently asked questions when you are pulling together your high ticket offer.

Blocking money by not invoicing or not chasing up new leads

The next way that you might be blocking the flow of money accidentally is not invoicing for work or delaying sending out your invoices. Now, I shared this on my social media recently. I actually went through this myself recently. So, in my earlier days of business, when I was desperately waiting for every invoice to be paid, I was religiously sending my invoices and chasing them up as soon as they became overdue. And what I noticed as my business evolved is that I stopped sending the invoices out as soon as they were due. And I also stopped my processes around following up my invoices.

Now there’s usually something underpinning a reason why you aren’t getting your invoices out and or why you aren’t following them up. I know that for me, I had a sense of guilt around it. I was like, I don’t desperately need the money. And I was making up stories about people’s capacity to be able to pay at a point in time. The other excuse that you might have is that you don’t have time. And I hear this a lot. I don’t have time. And I ask you this, what is more important in your business than making money? So, sometimes we can prioritize all of the things that seem urgent, but ultimately we’re in business to turn a profit. So, I really encourage you to invoice for your time, get your invoices out when you have done work and to make sure that you were chasing them up.

One more thing on this point is that sometimes people don’t actually charge for parts of their service. And I don’t know if this resonates with you, but perhaps a client asks for add-on services and you don’t actually charge them for those add-on services. This is a really important thing to start to define with your clients is setting boundaries around the inclusions that they get. And if people are asking for things outside of the scope of your agreement, to advise them what additional charges there are, and then to make sure that you do follow through and actually invoice them for those services. If you are feeling resistance around this, it can be really helpful to do some journaling and dive into why am I not invoicing? Or why do I feel bad for charging people? It can really help you to unblock those money stories and uncover what beliefs are underpinning your reluctance to take action.

The next way that you might be blocking the flow of money coming to you is not telling people about your offers. I spoke about this right at the start of the podcast episode. And I really wanted to expand on this a bit more because so often people are fantastic at what they do, and yet they don’t tell people about how they can work with them. So, make it super, super clear what you do, how people can work with you at any point in time. And don’t forget to mention it multiple times. People are busy, they are distracted. So, just because you’ve put it out there once, you can hire me as a photographer by booking here, doesn’t mean that everyone in your audience would’ve seen it, make sure that you do mention it multiple times. And this is particularly pertinent when you are launching a course. People need to be bought on the journey.

The last way that I want to talk about today, that you might be blocking money flowing to you, is not following up your leads. Again, people have beliefs or stories around why a potential customer hasn’t come back to them. So, if you have sent out a quote to a potential client and you didn’t hear back from them, you might assume they’re not interested. If they were keen, they would’ve booked in by now. You might have a whole bunch of stories that you have around that. But let me tell you, from my experience as a client or a potential client, I have often had a discovery call or asked for a quote from someone and they send it through and I think, oh, that sounds great. And then life gets busy and crazy. And perhaps the particular thing that I reached out to them about isn’t something urgent, but it is something that’s important to me. So, it sits in my inbox for a day, for a week, for months until I next think about it and think, “Oh my gosh, I need to follow that up.” So, your potential client might be just like me. It might be something that they saw the price, they saw the offer or proposal and thought, fantastic. I’d love to do that. But with all of their competing priorities and the things going on in their world, they simply didn’t get a chance to get back to you. There is nothing pushy about following up leads. In fact, some people like me will find it really helpful. So, make sure that you have a system in place for consistently following up leads and a little tip that I’ve got for you here. Don’t do it via email. If your potential clients are busy people, and I’m guessing they are, most people these days are, then they probably won’t want another email sitting in their inbox. So, think about a way that you can contact people in a way that’s going to serve them. I personally love a phone call or a text message follow up. So, check with your clients if it’s okay if you follow up in that way.

To sum up today’s episode of the podcast, if money is important to you and you are listening to this podcast, so I know that it is, what you want to do is make sure that you aren’t accidentally stopping it flowing to you. The ways that we spoke about in the episode that you can make sure that people can pay you and work with you with ease are the following:

1. Make sure that it’s easy to find out what you do and to reach out if someone wants to work with you.
2. Create an offer that answers a question that you get all the time. This can be a paid or a free offer but create a way that you are building connection through your frequently asked questions.
3. Create a high ticket offer. If people are really want to work with you and are happy to pay a premium price for it, why not create a way that you can serve them in that way.
4. Make sure that you are invoicing for your work and that you are invoicing for additional services that you offer as well. Keep those boundaries tight and make sure that you’re being paid for your time.
5. Make sure you tell your audience about your offers. Let them know, Hey, this is how you can work with me.
6. Follow up your leads. If someone has reached out to work with you, they are keen. So follow up and get a clear answer one way or the other so that you can move forward in your business and that you can work with the people that are keen to work with you.

Thank you so much for tuning in to today’s episode of the podcast. And as I mentioned in the episode, if you do want to grab my freebie, which is the podcasting equipment that I use, you can do so via the link in my bio. Have an awesome week. I’ll chat to you soon. Thanks so much for listening.

If you love this episode, please share it with your audience and don’t forget to tag me on Instagram @clare_wood_coach and also make sure you hit subscribe so you never miss an episode, have an abundant week. And I look forward to talking to you again next week.