Plan your $150k quarter

Transcript

How would you like to make $150,000 worth of sales in your business in a three month period? In today’s episode of the podcast I’m sharing with you that not only is it possible, it is possible for you and today I’m going to breakdown how.

The reason I decided to create this episode is that recently I hosted a free masterclass on this exact topic, which was Plan your $150k Quarter. And it was so well received by both the people that signed up for and those that came along live that I thought that I would share it here to the podcast in slightly different format, but delivering similar content, because I really want you to have a really successful year in your business and if you aren’t hitting those $50,000 months in your business, we’re gonna chat about a framework to support you to get there.

So let’s get back to the foundations of how to grow your business. The key to nailing it when it comes to your sales is to have a compelling offer, at the right price point and have an audience who are ready and willing to buy. I’m going to take the assumption that you have the demand, that you have an audience who are ready and willing to buy from you, who have the problem that you have the solution, that you are going to deliver through your product or service.

So, how do you actually grow? There are two key ways:

1. Increase the volume of product that you’re selling
2. Increase your price point.

How to raise your prices (and how to put together a premium offer)

Let’s spend a bit of time talking about pricing your products or services because when I talk about price increases a lot of times people get their heckles up. And there’s a lot of perception about what premium pricing can mean, and people are worried about how people will perceive them if they are charging a premium price.

So, let’s go back to the early days of bartering what used to happen is that people would trade their products with other people. So for example, someone might have access to a running water supply and another person might have a farm and have chickens. These two parties might come together and say, hey, I think that one gallon of your water is worth one of your chickens, and they might negotiate a bit and they would reach a point which each party thinks is a fair value exchange. Now that is how it used to work in the old days and now we have currency. We’ve got money and it’s essentially the same thing. We are always doing a value trade, whether you are walking into a grocery store, whether you are buying a product or service your business, or whether you are hiring people to work for you. There is always that question – do I see the value? Do I perceive the value in the price point at which this is, or is there someone else, or something else that I can use my money for instead? We’re always making that decision. And the truth is what some people perceive to be a ridiculous, expensive, completely ridiculous price, other people might not even think twice.

I remember one day, bless my granny. She her whole life lived on the poverty line and I remember I was chatting to her on the phone before she passed away and she said to me “Can you believe the price of this asparagus?” You know, I wouldn’t really know this unless asparagus was like $10, I probably wouldn’t notice if it was $3 or if it’s $5 because to me that’s not a material amount of money. Whereas to my granny, she really knows the increase in a tin of asparagus. And a more extreme level, we all have that amount that is a material or significant amount of money to us. Perhaps for you to invest $1000 for an hour of someone’s time is completely reasonable. You think I’m paying for a specialist, I want to help, of course I recognise there’s going to be a premium price. Then other people might think, there’s no way I would pay that for an hour or someones time. We are always making value judgments around the price of something, and there’s going to be some things for me at this age and stage in my life, maybe this will change, but for example, I just can’t see the value in paying for $10,000 for a handbag. I don’t even really have a handbag I use. It’s not something that’s important to me, whereas I completely recognise and appreciate to some people, that having a beautiful bag is a representation of something that they really love and desire. It. Sure it makes them feel good about themselves and they are more than happy to pay a premium price for a beautiful handbag. I willingly hand over money for my personal development. I will go and spend $5,000-$10,000 on a session with someone who I really value their import if I can see the possible return. I love to invest in my self development, whereas I know that other people really struggle to even buy a $500-$1000 course. I don’t think twice about spending a couple of $1000 on a course, whereas I wouldn’t spend that on the handbag if that makes. The point that I’m trying to make is that some everyone is always evaluating the worthiness of things and saying is this, in my opinion, worth that amount of money?

So, I’ve created this thing which is called The Robin Hood Theory. I’m if you aren’t familiar Robin Hood used to take from the rich and give to the poor. Now I am not at all suggesting that you should gouge in terms of your pricing, that you should definitely not steal, or do anything to rip people off. However, one of the ways that we are able to actually help people who perhaps aren’t able to invest at the same level as other people is to create products or services at a price point that is more accessible to them because they are making a higher level of margin.

Now I personally do this in my own business. I’ve got my high end offers my VIP days, my private coaching. I have a middle of the range offer, which are my courses. I also have been able to use some of the profits from those higher margin areas of my business to invest into things that make me very little or no money. Some of these things I absolutely run at a loss. For example, my book. So, my book is Intentional Profit. If you haven’t got it yet, go and grab a copy of it. But my book Intentional Profit usually retails around $30. For $30, I give so much value inside that book. I feel really confident that if you read my book and you went and took the actions at the end of each chapter, that you would grow your business profit. I was able to create a low cost product like that because of the profit in other areas of my business.

There are other things in my business that cost me money. An example of this, this very podcast. It costs me money to produce a podcast. I pay my podcast editor, shout out to Dan Sugars. I pay my beautiful assistant Sally who edits the videos for my podcast. Sally also creates reels off the back of it, she writes the transcription so that people who have a hearing impairment or perhaps you just like to learn in a different way, can also access the content inside this podcast. I create social tiles around it, I invest in an email marketing system that gets it out to you, I invest in a programme that allows me to load this podcast onto various platforms you’ll listen to. Podcasts cost me money. So you can see how The Robin Hood Theory works, is that you know you can have areas of your business that you have a higher margin or a higher price point and it actually is helping you to create impact or create offerings that can serve more people. Maybe that might help you to alleviate some of the guilt and shame if that is something that’s coming up for you.

Another example of this, a beautiful client of mine that I worked with as a private coaching client, she runs a tutoring business and when I first spoke to her about having a more premium price on her tutoring, she felt a lot of guilt and shame around it because she was helping kids who perhaps had a learning disability or were struggling. Firstly, I said, OK, let’s talk about the demographic of people that are coming in and she soon realised that everyone was coming in with their design label handbags and driving fancy cars. And she realised that the slight price increase that we were talking about, wasn’t gonna bankrupt any of them. Secondly, as we forecasted to increase profitability, I said to her, “hey, do you know what you can do? You can go and find some people who really need your help and are absolutely not in a place to invest and work with you and do some pro bono work.” And that felt really beautiful and expansive and abundant to have these kids that never would have been able to afford private tutoring, through the new structure that she created, knowing full well that the people who are, you know, paying a premium price, didn’t even bat an eyelid in the time we worked together, she put her prices up multiple times, she said, “Not one single person left, no one even commented.” Now I’m just throwing this out here, I’m not saying that premium pricing is the solution to all of your problems, or the only way that you can hit your $150k quarter. I’m just putting it forward as a suggestion. Is it time to revisit your pricing across your products and service? Or is it time to consider having a premium price offering?

I just want to go a little bit deeper on this mindset stuff here because again, I know the resistance is going to come up and people say, well, why would clients want to pay me a premium price? Now in some areas of my life I’m really happy to pay premium in other areas, not so much, and you might think I’m never happy to pay premium price, but I bet you are and let me share some examples.

Have you ever paid for convenience? Have you ever gotten Uber eats? Because let me tell you, do you know that you can walk to a supermarket, buy food for a cheaper price, cook it yourself, wash your dishes? And it’s a lot cheaper than Uber eats. Another example, sometimes people love to pay for prestige. You know, the reality is if you are driving a fancy car, I shared on the podcast that, you know, we used to own it at BMW and you know you’re paying for, like, the leather, the nicer seats you’re paying for the logo. Some people love to pay for the prestige experience. Customization, some people are happy to pay a premium price or a bespoke solution. So, I myself this week invested in a couple of things – A session with someone about my Instagram account. She’s got a membership that I could have gone and done for a fraction of the price, but for me, I wanted her to come and look at my profile and give me some tailored advice.

Let’s have a think about it if it feels aligned? if a premium offer is right for you. And your business? I want to throw just a couple more ideas out there.

The first one, can you offer a VIP day? I have my VIP days where we get together in-person. It is a really luxury experience. We go to a beautiful location, I get my hands right into your business. We have a look at your numbers, at your sales, at your marketing. We talk about your mindset blocks. It is tailored, it is bespoke and it is a premium experience. We also go and have a beautiful high end meal after our day together. What is something that you could offer like that? You’d be surprised there are people in your audience who would love to pay to pick your brains for a day. If you’re an introvert, you can do this in any way you want. One of my closest friends, Steph Taylor she’s a big introvert, unlike me, I love to meet people, but Steph just spends an hour on Zoom with someone and then the next day she spends an entire day mapping out a business strategy for you, which she then sends to you later.

Another example is that people are often happy to pay a premium price for speed or a faster turn around. My website took me so freaking long, like at least 12 months to get it up and loaded, and if I knew there was an option to make that happen sooner and even if it cost me more money, I would have been happy to pay it.

Let me share an example from one of my clients. She ran a Pilates studio and I said to her, as someone who’s done Pilates, I said one of my big pain points was remembering to bring my Pilates socks and my water bottle. If I could pay to have my chilled water bottle there and a pair of socks that were laundered for me, I’d be happy to pay more for that. So that was something that she introduced. She also introduced a 1:1 bespoke tailored training sessions for people again who are happy to pay a premium price.

So, take a moment and think about your clients. Think about their pain points. And check in. Is there something I could do at a higher price point? And what does that do for your $150K quarter offerings?

How to raise your sales volume

The other option that I spoke about at the start is of course increasing your volume.

Now if this is the path that you want to go down, then take some time and have a bit of a think about firstly what kind of volume would need to be turning over to hit whatever your quarter target is. Let’s say it’s $150k. How many of your products or services would you need to sell in a three month period to hit that sales target of your? And from there you can reverse engineer what are the investments that I would need to make to support that kind of volume growth.

So, let’s just say that you are a social media manager. I love to use that example because I tend to work with a lot of creatives in my business. You are posting all these people’s socials for them. You’re managing Facebook ads, and you’re doing it all on your own. And after listening to this episode of the podcast, you think I’m ready for a level up and you decide that you want to take on more clients. But to do that, what you might need to do is consider hiring new staff or investing in a new system that automates some of the work so that you do have bandwidth to take on more clients.

If the volume route is the route you want to go down, I want to empower you and remind you that you can significantly shake up your business. It’s your business. And if you want to make more money, you are in the driver’s seat to make that decision. I really want to encourage you to go away, play around with your offer, your offer stack and also having a look at Volume vs Price and say how many of that would I need to do to hit my sales goal, preferably at least $150,000 for the quarter if that does feel aligned for you at this stage in your business journey?

One final thing that I do want to say, don’t forget that everything I’ve spoken about today is sales, not profit. So just because you hit a $150,000 sales quarter or $150,000 a month or $150,000. What the most important metric that matters is your profit, because that is the money you actually get to keep after your expenses. And this is why I bang on and on and on about the importance of knowing your numbers because you can have $1,000,000 a year business and still be bloody broke. Make sure that you are keeping your eye right across those numbers (I’m going to be sharing more on the podcast about how you can do that, in the not too distant future).

To wrap up today, if you are willing to step into a new income level, the trick is to have a compelling offer at the right price selling to the right audience who want your thing and you can do that. You can increase your sales by either increasing your volume or increasing your price.

If you are wanting support to go and take some of the concepts that we’ve spoken about today, or perhaps you’re struggling with your mindset, structuring your team, hiring the right team, I would love to extend the opportunity to you now to reach out and find out more about what it looks like to work with me one on one as your coach. I take on a very limited number of private coaching clients at a time, but inside this is a fully supported container for multiple 6 figure business owners who are wanting to scale to the seven figure mark.

You can come and have a look at the link that I’m going to share in the show notes and see some of the case studies of what my clients have been able to achieve over the years and if it’s feeling aligned to you I would love to invite you to reach out and find out more about what it might look like to work together. I also offer, as I’ve mentioned in today’s training VIP days, which are an immersive one-on-one really bougie experience. And again, I’ll share the link to find out more about that in the show notes for today’s episode.

For now, I want to say a huge thank you for tuning in to the podcast and I hope this has inspired you to get out there and to grow your sales.