This might be an unpopular opinion, but I think it’s reasonable for a potential client to ask you for some ideas on how you’d suggest solving their problem, and/or for them to want to know about some examples of other people you’ve helped.
I’ve heard some sales coaches suggest that prospects who ask those things are “freebie seekers” or “don’t trust you and wouldn’t respect you if they were a client.”
And therefore that if they ask these things, you need to simply “redirect” them into talking about their pain and what’s going to happen if they don’t solve it.
And if they persist in wanting some evidence that you can actually help them, you should end the sales call because it’s “not a fit.”
Lately I’m feeling more and more uncomfortable hearing this kind of advice.
It lands for me as the seller feeling superior to their potential client.
Maybe even narcissistic, if they think people should just automatically trust them without any evidence that they know what they’re talking about.
No one is entitled to our trust. It has to be earned.
There are many ways to earn trust (I’m thinking of doing a podcast episode soon on some of the different ways), but actually, one of the best ways IS to give people free suggestions/ideas on how to solve their problem.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve given people free advice (via free content, in interactions with people in my Facebook group, over DM, and in sales conversations) and TONS of them signed up with me as a paying client after that.
And even told me that the free guidance was a big factor that convinced them to do so.
In many cases the free guidance actually got them some kind of result – like getting a client from a post that they wrote according to my framework. This proved to them that my method actually worked.
Interestingly, I think this kind of trust-building works even BETTER than having people see testimonials or talk to your past clients.
That’s because they’re having a real experience of being helped by you, not just reading about someone else who had your help and may or may not be similar to them. It’s first-hand, not second-hand.
It’s happened several times recently that someone messaged me saying they didn’t think they were quite ready to sign up with me, and then within 24 hours, turned on a dime and said, “Actually, I just got a client from something I tried to write using your framework! Now I know that this really works and I want to master it with your help! Where’s your pay link?”
There’s an important caveat here… and the example above kind of illustrates it.
As you’re giving your free advice and information, people need to have a bit of context for what you’re sharing. If they don’t have the context, they’re more likely to take the free advice and run.
What I mean is: they need to understand the outcomes that your work gets.
For example, I’ve let people know that if they really master my post-writing framework they can get leads and clients for their offer pretty much on demand… like 1-2 clients per week if they’re posting every day.
So, if someone has gotten one client from one post written in my framework, they have a “taste” of that result but not the full result.
And, especially if that one post took them a long time, they want to know how to get a lead or client every time they write one, with less effort.
And that’s what working with me will help accomplish… fine-tuning so they can get the full result that’s possible.
The mistake a lot of coaches and experts make with giving free advice is never letting people know the full scope of the work they do and the outcomes it gets.
Like, they’re always giving tips on how to “calm stress in 5 minutes or less,” but the people who are getting the advice from them never understand that their work is about (for example) helping women to end people-pleasing patterns for good.
And that’s way more dramatic and amazing than calming stress in a moment.
I used to give free advice the “wrong” way and definitely found that people either didn’t contact me about working together, or if they did, they just wanted to pick my brain for the entire call and then rave about how amazing I was before saying they weren’t going to invest right now.
That was 100% preventable if I had spoken more to results and outcomes in my content (like “Doing it this way should result in at least X number of leads/clients”) versus just saying “here are some tips on getting your posts seen” (which is sorta an outcome but not really one that seems big/amazing/worth paying a lot for, to most).
Some people get nervous about what I’m saying here because they don’t yet know the results of their work so they can’t talk about them.
And that’s okay. No one does when they’re first starting out.
If you keep helping people for free and not even expecting a ton of them to want to sign up and pay, you’ll eventually start to see what kinds of results they do get.
You’ll also have a chance to keep using your own methods and seeing what results you personally get.
And eventually it will all come together and you’ll know what results to talk about.
Even after that, you’ll keep helping clients and keep using your methods yourself and you’ll get even clearer about how you talk about the results.
And things will just get better and better from there.
My hope is that this post gives you permission to forge ahead with helping people (even for free) and getting clearer about the work you do, and to stop spending a ton of time memorizing objection-handling scripts or working on your sales mindset if you’re not seeing results from doing that.
If you see your prospects’ hesitations as a problem to be solved with sales tactics (or brushed off by ending the call with them), rather than an invitation to become clearer about what you do and how you do it, your journey will likely be a lot longer and harder than it needs to be. Mine certainly was.
I’m going to link some posts and videos below as examples of how much detail I give for free about my methods so that potential clients don’t come to me with objections/questions about whether or not they work.
They should also help you a great deal if you want to start enrolling high-ticket clients from FB posts without hiring me.
(though, if you do want to hire me, here’s how)
So, here we go with the free content about my methods.
Here is a video with an overview of my entire 5-part method for enrolling 1-2 clients per week from FB organic.
Here is a training on how to position the work you do in a way that will command high-ticket fees and that will show your ideal client how much they need it.
Here is a training on how to create an efficient and profitable high-ticket package that allows you to get paid a nice chunk of money (and help your client to get a great result) while spending relatively little time with them.
Here is a post on how to get more people to know about you and your work, to follow you on FB and grow your audience without any ad spend.
Here is a training video on my framework for writing a 500-word offer post and easily closing sales over DM/text.
Here is a training on how to write posts that generate leads every time (including live feedback on 10+ example posts from group members).
If you have any questions about anything – please ask. ❤