Yo. Welcome to 3 Ways to Market and sell in economic times. Well, it should be economic tough times, shouldn’t it?

But actually, what I want to kick off with is what not to do. And that isn’t to stop marketing, stop showing up.

In fact, you can imagine where I’m going to head with this already. It’s like, you’ve got to come full throttle, lean further and, you know, don’t. Don’t take that as hustling and working harder. It just means don’t stop showing up with your marketing and particularly your sales.

So wherever the current challenges at the moment reflect market conditions, so the current challenges you’re facing reflect market conditions rather than the quality of your business. So it’s not you, your business doesn’t suck. It just means here’s an opportunity for you to learn strategic ways to keep yourself in business during these cycles. Right?

And if you haven’t gone back and listened to the other podcast I did about what to do when you’re in a period of flat sales, go back and listen to that.

So today I want to focus on, okay, what are three things you can actually go and do? Because like I said at the beginning, what I don’t want you to do is focus, stop. Even though you might feel like it, you know, if you need to have a rest and you’re feeling stressed, then you know, you’ve got to prioritise your sleep and your health.

So let’s, let’s kick off. So the first thing I’d like you to think about, think about, are we kidding? I want you to go do this. I want you to deepen and build on your current marketing actions.

So what I find with the types of women I attract, who are fucking marvellous, by the way, however we tend to be. Not personally, I’m not like this. I do find it funny that I attract this, but that’s okay.

Clients who will, they’re great creators, they’ll create a lot, but they’re not the great finishers. So teaching them, you know, and for myself too, though, to deepen into the things we’ve currently built. So I want you to, in your head, imagine building blocks. Like if we keep building a block on top of a block, if we keep building it, that thing topples over, right?

But if we take an action or an activity or a marketing piece or a creation, and we build deeper. So you’ve got five blocks on the ground, and then you have another idea and you put that on top, but then you deepen it so it’s five blocks Going up the whole way, you’re gonna have a tower that’s going to fall over. So deepen and build on current marketing rather than starting something new. So go back and find what, what is currently working.

So a client of mine was like, I, you know, I followed up 40 people and I’ve only had two yeses. I’m like, that’s actually really good conversion rate. So you know, cut it out. You’re doing all the right things. So bring some reality back.

So go find out what is currently working and go and amplify that. Go and like dial down and go, deepen on, deepen into that. And it’s about again thinking of those building blocks. Go and finish some strategies you started with.

Like I often go into businesses and look under the hood and I’ll be like, oh my gosh, that was so good. Why have you, why have you stopped that? Why are you not still doing that? Can we finish that? So deepen and build on current marketing rather than starting new. That’s number one.

Number two is probably going to want to come and throw tomatoes at me, but with business cycles, sometimes through the ebbs and the flows and the dip, the troughs and the peaks, we all have to come back to act like a startup again.

Which means sometimes the sale is longer, sometimes it takes a lot more effort to get one in than it used to. So this is just market change. You’ve got to come back to do the work. So number two is actually can you implement systematic follow ups?

So I was going to give you five follow up lists of follow ups you could take. So existing leads, past customers, referrals and referral opportunities and networking contacts and almost customers. So people who inquired 6, 12 months, 24 months ago. So are you following them up? Where’s your system for this? Can you automate it?

You can. It was a trick question. Why aren’t you doing it? And I know for some of you you’ve never had to follow up and now for maybe the first time in seven years you’re like, oh my gosh, I’m having to follow up. Yeah, it’s actually just really good business practice to do it, to learn it anyway. And you should have been doing it anyway because you know you potentially could have, could have had more revenue. Obviously we want that to equal profit.

So if you’re having some current challenges in this economic time, can you actually take the time to implement follow ups and go and do it? So I’ve given you five lists you can go and, and start with and if you just followed up two to three people a day, or just one a day, one a week, if you’ve not been doing it, that compound effect’s gonna be really, really big. And it’s gonna help you plant seeds, which is really important.

I’ve seen it work so well with a couple of my clients when they were going through a funny old time. And we just went right back to basics, stripped everything right back unbundled, right back to what she was doing at the beginning, and then came out and just planted a whole lot of seeds.

Now she’s got the issue, it’s a good issue to have, is that all these seeds have started to bloom. So, you know, then she’s got a different problem in her business. So it’s always moving. It’s always constantly jiggling and moving.

So anyway, moving right along from my rant about that, following up and actually having a systematic approach to it is going to do a lot of that seed planting.

And often, you guys know, I’ll give you analogies and I just want to give you one around farming. For example, like if you’re a farmer who is growing, let’s say you were growing corn in your fields, it’s not, you can’t always be harvesting. You can’t go to the seed of the corn you just planted and said, I need the corn, right, because I need to harvest. Sometimes we’re going to go through toiling of the soil. We’ve got to replenish it, we’ve got to plant it, we’ve got to feed it, we’ve got to let it fruit and then we can come along.

So sometimes it’s not always harvesting time. The idea is that crop rotation is maybe there is always going to be a crop that’s ready to go. And that’s where follow ups work because you’re going to be bringing them down your, down your sales funnels. So please follow up. It’s really, really important.

Okay, so the third way to market and sell in the tough economic times is, oh my gosh, I work with so many women who are so freaking well connected. But you get a little bit funny about leveraging those connections and now’s the time to do it.

So really leverage existing connections. So the third one is about collaborative partnership. So we can do this by making sure it’s a win-win by adding value. So, for example, Bunnings do this quite well. If you’ve ever been to Bunnings on a Saturday morning, you’re going to go buy paint. They’ll often have A external interior designer there. So they’ll be running their own business and one of the ways they get themselves out there is they will come in for bunnings on a Saturday morning and help you with your colour selection. And they’re not standing there trying to sell themselves, but they’ll give you their card to go if they’re helping you. So I love that it’s a real win-win and actually it was a. I’ve mentioned it to a client recently and her marketing strategy is you’re so well connected with some really great brands, can you go and offer this win win, can you add value? Now even if you’re not well connected, you’re gonna know people who you know, you could be get collaborative with and kind of share databases and share content around for each other. Because if you get the right collaboration. So for example nail technician and hairdresser, it’s very same similar market and you’re offering very different things but they all want it.

So this is the time to pick up those collaborative partnerships and including your professional networks like where you used to work. All those people from LinkedIn that you might be too scared to connect with, can you go connect with them?

Because it’s really important that everyone knows about your business and this is how you get yourself invited.

It Was exactly how I’ve got myself into opportunities is I’ve asked for them. So it’s actually how I’ve grown. A lot of my speaking revenue this year is simply asking for the opportunity to come and speak or be part of the conferences they’re putting forward. So and those are using connections of people I’ve just met in the recent years who know those people.

So it’s not about, you know, having like deep long term partnerships. So another one that I’m seeing a lot of my clients do, which is really great, is collabing in a big group, like a big community as a group and running competitions and workshops and events.

It’s just another way that seed planting remember of getting yourself out there and using the power of that collective pulling power.

So a little bit like how just the buying power of bringing bigger audiences so there in front of you because even in tough economic times you’re still going to have some kind of conversion happening. It’s just getting more eyeballs on there.

So I’m hoping this is giving you a little bit of a kicking the old pants to can you keep going, keep showing up even if you’re not getting immediate returns, what you will be doing is that farming analogy. You’ll be planting seeds, you’re replenishing, you’re meeting new people, you’re taking courageous steps.

Because I know some of the stuff I’ve said today is going to put you out of your comfort zone, but that is where that growth will happen. So hit me up. Let me know what you go and decide to do with these three ways to market and sell in economic times. Catch you later.