Hi there, and welcome to Less Is the Strategy, the podcast that helps you to strip away complexity and finally step into growth strategies in your business by doing one thing, that is simplifying.
My name is Ant Hodges, author of the book Simplify the Funnel. You can grab your copy over at simplifythefunnel.com. This is the playbook for online business owners who want to escape the cult of hustle and complexity forever, and be able to simplify and scale.
This podcast was born out of me writing the book, and wanting to share the knowledge and wisdom that I've been able to gather and gain over the last 20+ years of being involved in this online space. I see a lot of, um, Gen Z's, a lot of boomers... no, not boomers, boomers are older, um... apparently my daughters call me a boomer, because I shouldn't be on TikTok at my age, and apparently that's the kind of term that they use. Term of endearment.
But I see a lot of Gen Z's and pro marketers jumping into this space, thinking that they can just jump in and help people to be able to sell online, to be able to market their businesses online, when they have not had the experience of being able to help others over the years. Now they may have found a quick trend, an AI tool, an AI thing that helps people to do some stuff, or some cold email marketing trick that sends out tens of thousands of emails, and you get a small tiny little percentage return, which is enough to be able to say that business is a success.
Now over the years I've seen these trends come and go. But there's a few things that hold true more than anything else, and will never change. And one of those things is human psychology. The way that we're wired as humans may change over time, we're talking like hundreds of years. But over the next 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years, the likelihood is that the human psychology that we have today isn't actually gonna change that much.
And what I've actually seen in recent years is the way in which people are engaging with content, and the way in which people are being sold to, and the way that people buy, is very much like how they used to buy back in the early nineties. And if you look at lots of different studies, and lots of different ways in which the consumer behaviour is changing, and the things that do impact their behaviour... you know, things like automations and bots and things like that, it has an impact. But there's almost like a bit of a cyclical way in which things often return, because people get annoyed or frustrated, or, um, you know, they don't enjoy being engaged with in that way, and it reverts back.
And I feel like right now, this is a trend that we're seeing. AI came into the world, predominantly in a very public way, with the launch of ChatGPT from OpenAI. AI has been around for a lot longer than that, but that's really where it kind of sort of the hockey stick of adoption of AI, when it became more accessible. You didn't need huge computing power, you know, and systems and processes. We can literally harness AI through our browsers and through apps today, without having to pay for all of that infrastructure ourselves. So that was the hockey stick moment.
And yeah, people started to create content when it first came out. And they would... and I've seen many people, oh, create 30 days of social media content in an hour, or 30 days of social media content in 10 minutes. You know, going into ChatGPT and asking it to write a load of stuff, export that, drop it into Canva, import that data, select images, bish bash bosh, export, you've got your content. It's a way in which people have trained, and still train people how to do it today. But it's certainly not a way in which I would recommend you do it. I would not recommend you do it.
Because there are some people who are arguing that AI content is the best thing that they can do for their business. You know, they're producing all of this content, they're out there everywhere, they've got AI clones of themselves on lots of different channels, and they're getting millions and millions of views. But what is the percentage return that they're getting? The argument is, you need to be even more out there, because the competition's got harder and harder. But actually, the percentage return that they're getting is so small, they believe they need to be everywhere even more.
In my book, I talk about something called Selling Without Selling. It's a sales process that I'm gonna unpack in this episode. And Selling Without Selling has seen me be able to get the best return from sales conversations that I could ever imagine. At its height, I was getting around 90% conversion. That was when I was selling agency services and things like that. It's about a 75% conversion at the moment, because I'm talking to a slightly different type of business. It's a more considered purchase and things like that. But if 75% of my sales calls are turning into sales of some kind, and I'm not operating any kind of manipulative sales techniques... I'm not sat there objection handling for half an hour to try and persuade someone into a, you know, buy a product, and shoehorn them into something that they don't really want... I'm literally just offering the next step on the journey for them. Then why wouldn't you wanna do that?
I'm not interested in millions and millions of views. I'm certainly not interested, like, all these appointment setters are calling us out and saying that they can help us to fill our calendar full of appointments. I don't wanna be on the phone 24/7. I don't want a calendar full of appointments. I want to speak to the right people. The people who resonate with me, the people who listen to my podcast, who enjoy my social media content, who then say, do you know what, I'd love to get on a call. Those people who resonate with me, and then I triage them by asking them about what their business is about and things like that. Then we jump on a call, and I understand, and I ask questions so that I can understand more.
I do very little talking. Now yes, I can sit in front of a microphone here and I can talk for 20 minutes, half an hour. I can stand up on a stage and do a 60 minute presentation on something pretty much off the cuff. But when I'm on a sales call, I use these more than I use this. I use my ears more than I use my mouth. I listen far more than I talk. I ask questions. And the whole Selling Without Selling process enables me to take much smaller amounts of traffic, much smaller numbers of inquiries, and have a much higher conversion rate.
Would you rather have millions of views that resulted in maybe 1 or 2% of those views booking a call, and actually you converting less than 10% into some kind of sale? Or would you want to have hundreds of people watching your reels as you post them, even maybe thousands of people watch them, and from those you get dozens of sales calls, and you convert 70 to 80% of those into customers? I know which I prefer. And I'm not chasing the virality, I'm chasing the impact that I can have. And the impact that I can have comes from having real human to human contact. That's where everything wins today.
So my plea, and my question in this episode of this podcast is, how are you gonna change up your idea of selling? I'm gonna walk you through the Selling Without Selling framework in a moment. But it's really important to understand that selling is not about persuasion. Many people will say selling is all about persuasion. Selling, for me, is not about persuading anybody to do anything. Selling is simply about presenting an opportunity, and allowing that person to choose to make that step.
Selling Without Selling was born after I did a coaching certification. I did some training with an organization called Master Coach, um, over a weekend. And then I bought into a 5 day accreditation program, um, to become an accredited master coach. And during that five day accreditation program, something dawned on me, that the process that we were going through to be trained as a coach could actually be used for other things. And so I started to use the coaching framework and ideas around that coaching framework in my selling process. And it really revolved around three really important questions, and then one clear action step for myself.
And those three questions were really to help me understand more about the person's business that I'm talking to, and get them talking more about themselves than actually listening to me. Because you know, the number one subject that everybody likes to talk about is themselves. So if you give people an opportunity to talk about themselves, then they're gonna love you for it.
So I often will start these kind of sales calls with maybe just a tiny little bit of chitchat and small talk. I often might ask, so why me, why now, to get an understanding from them of why they've reached out. But the first major question I ask in a sales conversation is, what's bugging you right now? There's a few things going on in this question. What's bugging you, what's the irritation, what's the thing that's really annoying you, what's the thing that is frustrating you about your business right now? And right now means not what has been, or what's going to, but what is bugging you right now. So asking you that question, what's bugging you right now, is gonna help somebody to unpack the challenges and the pain that they have right now.
And it's really important that you get them to articulate it and understand that. Because a lot of people say that marketing leads with pain, sales will often lead with pain. And rather than you spelling it out and being the person who is talking about pain all the time, if you can get them to talk about it, then that's better, because you're getting and hearing the truth from them as well. You're not making assumptions. So we understand their pain that they're in right now.
I will often switch the next two questions around, dependent on where the conversation is going. But typically the next question that I wanna ask in this conversation is, okay, so what's gonna happen if we don't get that fixed? And unpacking this tells me and helps me to understand future pain. The consequences of not getting what's bugging them right now fixed are what they want to avoid in the future. So it's pain in the future that doesn't yet exist, but it's something they want to avoid. We will return to this in a moment, because it's so important that we understand it from that perspective. It's not just what's keeping them awake at night, what's worrying them. What are the consequences for their business and for their life? It's the things that they wanna avoid.
The third question, and again sometimes I flip question 2 and this one around depending on the flow of conversation, is, where do you wanna be in a year's time? And I might again change that timeline depending on the conversation. It might be that I'm selling something that's quite a quick fix, and I might say, so where would you like to be in three months? But if it's potential for me to be able to think, well actually, this is something that could be worked on for some time, I might take some time, I might say, where do you wanna be next year? So that I can pre frame an aspiration, a destination, a vision, a goal, an ambition for the future. I wanna understand what they want in their future.
When I understand these three things, the frustrations now, the fears in the future, and the aspiration in the future, I can then prescribe the ideal next step. But I don't wanna just dive in and go, here's my offer. I wanna basically get an invitation to be able to present an offer. And some people would often say, well, this is kind of like the yes bias, and I'm trying to get people to say yes, yes, yes. But I'm not doing it from that perspective. I want an invitation. I wanna be asked to present my offer. I don't want to impose it on them.
So once I understand these three things, I might turn around and reflect on it briefly, but then say, I think there's a way in which I can help, can I share that? And I get an invitation to share it. The next phase is, I talk about the payoff and the benefits of a potential offer that I might have for them. I talk about wanting to be able to work with them over a next period of time, to enable them to get X result, to enable them to remove the frustration that they're experiencing now, and thirdly to avoid the consequences of the fears that they talked about.
So what I'm doing, in reflecting back and getting ready to present my offer, is I'm reinforcing the conversation. So it shows that I've been listening, that they feel listened to and acknowledged. And then I would talk about how we could work together on that, and then I simply say, so how does that sound? If I get a yes, then I will literally in one breath state, okay, well that's gonna be Ā£5,000 over the next six months, how would you like to pay? One breath, one sentence.
If they don't say that it sounds like it would be right for them, then I'll repeat back, and I will go back and get some clarification questions on where their business is at and what might be right. Because what effectively I've done, before I've even mentioned the price, I've positioned an offer that doesn't resonate with them, so there's no point in me presenting the price yet, because that will just be sticker shock and they'll walk away. I wanna present the right offer before I even mention price. When they say that's exactly how I want to do that, then that's basically how I can then present the price. So saying 5,000 over the next six months, how would you like to pay, opens the door for the transaction to actually happen.
And this is the part of the puzzle that plagued me for a little while. Once I figured this out, it's what has nailed every sales call. People who've been through my Selling Without Selling training... you can actually get access to this Selling Without Selling training as a mini course at sellingwithoutselling.com. It's a full on mini course where you can learn this framework in its entirety, in its videos and downloads and the frameworks, for you to be able to use this yourself. But people who have used it and haven't really got the right results, we've listened to some of the calls back, and I've chatted with them. The one thing that they will often miss is the way in which they present the price and asking to pay.
Because typically in a lot of sales calls, particularly with people who are there ready to serve, coaches, trainers, consultants, they really wanna help people, they get quite apologetic about their pricing at times. They might even say, well, it's only this, and maybe I can split that payment if you want, um, and you know, if you don't want to do it all, maybe we could remove some stuff, before the customer's even had a chance to respond. So actually by being bold and confident and going, look, to work with me over the next three months to get this sorted, it's 5,000, how would you like to pay? That then invites them to make a decision in their mind. Okay, have I got 5,000? Yeah, let's go for it. And they might say, well, just send me a link or an invoice. They might say in their mind, wonder if he'd split that payment. And then the question comes, okay, would you be able to split that payment? Absolutely, we can split that payment. What it will be is, it will be 1,000 over the next five months, and I can send you a link for it straight away, would that work?
And so what I haven't done is, I haven't increased the price based on the value that I've positioned as this offer. Because some people add more money to monthly installments. What I like to do is to reward up front. So what I will say, particularly on this offer, is if they ask for monthly installments, I'm like, okay, yeah, we can split that 5,000 over five months, it's just a thousand a month, I can send you a link. Or if you did want to make an upfront payment, I could reduce it by 500, so it's just 4,500 for a single payment, and I can send you a link for that. Which one works best?
So even on my sales pages, when I present programs and things like that, I'll always discount the upfront payment by a little bit, rather than adding more to the monthly installments. And there's another second really important reason for this, that it's not policed massively, but when you offer somebody a monthly installment and then you add more to it, there's a question over ethics around that, in my opinion. And there are a few that often will see this and say, but you're penalizing somebody to make the payments more easier. Literally, let's serve our audience. Monthly installments of the price split evenly, upfront payment is the price discounted slightly. It's worked every single time I've kind of pitched it and presented it. And most people will pay up front for stuff. It helps cash flow, and it eases things moving forward, and not chasing delinquent payments and all of those kind of things.
Selling Without Selling is fully outlined in my book, Simplify the Funnel. You can grab a copy at simplifythefunnel.com. And there is video training over at sellingwithoutselling.com, which takes you through this entire process. I want you to start to learn how to sell, and sell well. This framework has helped me, it's helped many of my students, to really grow their businesses, by learning how to sell in a non pressurised, non pushy, non manipulative way that invites somebody to make a buying decision, rather than you trying to shoehorn them into a sale.
Thanks for watching this episode of Less Is the Strategy. My name is Ant Hodges. This is a weekly podcast. You can listen to it on any of the podcast players, or by subscribing here on my YouTube channel, and I publish a weekly episode every week. If you wanna listen or watch the previous episode, then you can click here and watch that. My name is Ant, I look forward to seeing you again on Less Is the Strategy, the podcast that will help you simplify and scale.