As we roll into the fall selling season, it’s time to refocus our time and energy on the basics: our ABCs. It only takes 20 minutes a day to move your business forward through active selling, building relationships, and creating content, and this week, the Modern Direct Seller Podcast is packed with suggestions to take those activities to the next level. Listen in to learn how to elevate your selling strategies and finish the year strong!

Time based notes:

2:22 Daily 20-minute ABCs
4:01 Active selling
4:55 Warm up your customers
11:08 Building relationships
12:14 Engage in conversation
13:22 Follow up successfully
15:26 Creating content
16:49 Boost others’ content
18:22 Move into the DMs
19:28 Embrace new habits

Back to the Business Basics: ABCs

You’ve heard me talk a lot over the last couple of years around how to prioritize what matters most in your business. And, I am a firm believer that in 20 minutes a day, you can knock out the most important things, which I like to call your daily ABCs: active selling, building relationships, and creating content. For all of you that might be new to this concept, the whole idea is that every day, you’re just doing those three things, and you’re getting in and out of your business in about 20 minutes every day. Today, I want to give some additional suggestions in each of those three areas to really help you elevate your business this fall season.

So, the first one is active selling. We all know what kinds of strategies involve active selling. It might be doing a pop-up event, a vendor event, an online party, a party and a post. The list goes on and on. But, what we don’t always talk about when it comes to active selling is the baby steps that you can take before asking for a sale. Of course, we want to warm up that relationship and get to know people and have those conversations, and taking a couple of baby steps before just dropping a link and sending people to shop—which can often feel a little bit less than authentic—will really spoil them and create a good return on investment for you.

Share a first-time shopper coupon. If you have a coupon code that you’re able to share, or a first-time customer discount, that is a very high-value way to invite somebody to shop before just sending them over to the site. Reach out to your warm leads and individually, in a conversation, say something like, “Hey, my company gave us these awesome discount codes! Would you like me to share one with you?” As simple as that, right? Don’t give that promo code away in that conversation; ask if they want it. We want to let them say, “Yes, please send me the code,” and then deliver on that.
Offer a sample. When I think about samples, I think about Costco. We go to Costco because we want to get samples, and walk up and down the aisles, and think about all the things that we’re going to add to cart, so they get a good return on investment. The same is true in your business. If you have samples, go ahead and offer those up. In fact, I would take it so far as to creating a sample request form. You could do this very simply with a Google Form, a Jotform, or even a form on your website or Oh My, Hi site, where customers fill out the form, provide their contact information, and you send that sample out to them. This is super high-value and gives you a good reason to follow up with them.
Suggest a peek at the catalog. This low-commitment. It’s not sending them a link to shop, but it might be saying, “We have new seasonal releases! Our holiday stuff is out, and I wanted to know if you wanted to take a peek at the catalog?” This is a very simple ask, and they’re probably going to say “Yes.” Who doesn’t want to browse the catalog? Now, you might have physical catalogs that you can actually mail out to your customers, or you can send a digital link. Again, that’s going to give you a reason to follow up. “Hey, did you get a chance to take a look at the catalog? Anything jump out at you?”
Poll your lead. Send them a direct message and say, “Hey, I’m doing a little bit of market research for my company. And, I’m curious: Which one of these describe you most?” And, you could present the challenges that many of your customers are facing. Or, you can say, “Would you prefer this or that?” Or, “Pick your favorite of these three products. I’d love to hear which one stands out to you!” This works super, super well. It’s easy for somebody to respond to. It’s getting product in front of them in a very easy, breezy way and striking up conversation around that product by looping back a couple of days later and saying, “Thanks so much, again, for your feedback on that research! It’s interesting. Most of my customers said they like ‘this.’ If you ever wanted to take a peek at it, I have a coupon code,” or “I have a catalog link,” or “I have an event or a workshop or a party coming up,” whatever that might be, to ease them in to stepping into becoming a new customer.
Send an invite. If you’re hosting in-person or virtual events, workshops, or parties this season, it’s a perfect time to invite your warm leads to come and learn more. Use a simple invitation, keep it personal, wait for them to say “Yes, I would like an invite,” and then give them the details of the event. Make sure that it’s not an assumption that they’re going to say “Yes,” and you’re giving them all the details about the event and the link and the time and the place. You really want to say, “Hey, I have this coming up on Thursday. Would you like me to send you an invite?”
Give personal recommendations. We are approaching the gifting season. This is a great reason for you to offer your expertise. You truly are an expert at your business and at your products, so the conversation might be something like, “Hey, tell me who’s on your gifting list this year. I’d love to send you over some of my personal favorites.” Or, “Hey, you might be taking a peek at what we have to offer. Can I send you some personal recommendations for your family that I think you’ll love?”

All of these baby steps are usually a pretty easy “Yes, please” response from your warm lead. And, as you’re thinking about the fall season and your active selling activity of the day, these are all things that you can do at least once a day. In just a couple minutes, you can put together a simple message and send it to somebody that you’ve built a relationship with but has not yet shopped with you. This is really going to fuel your new customer acquisition this fall. Then it comes to asking, “Can I help you get that ordered? Can I send you a link to get that order in? I’m placing a bulk local order today. Can I grab anything for you?” You’ll follow up in that message, as well.

Let’s shift gears into our second area of building relationships, which is critical to build up your sales pipeline. These are the warm leads that are going to come in, so when you’re ready to take those baby steps and move into active selling, you have people to talk to.

When it comes to building relationships, we want to keep it really personal. We want to use their name. And, we want to get a response, right? You really want to have that back-and-forth conversation, so make sure that you’re keeping your messages super short and sweet. As a good rule of thumb, if the message is longer than your phone screen, it’s too long! Shorten it up. Keep it a sentence or two, get straight to the point, and be direct. The best thing to do here is to end in a question. When you end in a question, it’s going to prompt a response back.

When it comes to follow up, I do want to mention that we occasionally get ghosted. I know it happens, and it never feels good. But, I want to remind you that it’s probably not you; it’s probably them. They probably saw your message while they were at their kid’s soccer practice after school, or while they were in between meetings at work, or while they were making dinner that night. People aren’t intentionally ghosting you because they don’t want to talk to you. They’re literally busy humans that have a lot going on. Your job as the direct seller is to keep that conversation going.

Follow up with a voice memo. People are curious about voice memos. They want to push the “play” button to hear what you had to say. They also are going to hear your sweet voice and how genuine you are and how authentic you are. So, following up with a voice message is key. Now, you don’t have to call them out for ghosting you, right? Say, “I don’t know about you, but this week just got away from me. I didn’t want you to think I forgot about you. Can I send you more information on this or that?” You can own it.
Try another channel. If you’ve been messaging somebody on Facebook, and you’re not hearing back from them, they might just not be a Facebooker. Think about where you’re connecting with people. Maybe you want to send a text instead. Or, if you’re sending a bunch of texts and you’re not hearing back, respond back to their Facebook or Instagram story. This puts you in different places to get in front of them and allows you to be proactive and keeping that conversation going.

All right, we’re moving on to creating content. This could be a social post. This could be a blog post. This could be an email. This could be a podcast. This could be a YouTube video. Any kind of content really counts, but each day, I want to challenge you to deliver one piece of content to your audience. So, here’s a couple of quick tips that I’m seeing, especially here in fall 2023:

Post publicly on your personal page. For a while, we had a rule of thumb that you could just sprinkle a little bit of business content here and there on your personal Facebook page. These days, it is okay to mix in both personal and business together; you don’t need to hide behind that closed Facebook group. So, especially if you’re working to acquire new customers and bring new leads into your business, you’re going to want to make sure that those posts that you’re making are public, so they have the opportunity to engage with you.
Use the popular posting styles. I’m seeing that those big, bold, colored backgrounds on Facebook with just one or two sentences really stir up a lot of engagement and visibility. Creating a poll in your group or in your Instagram stories or your Facebook stories is another great strategy when creating content. That’s going to help with your engagement and give you more visibility.
Comment and engage with others. I am a true believer that we are better together. If you interact with a post from someone in your company or that’s a part of your team, that’s going to elevate their business, boost the algorithm, and strengthen your collective brands. Not to mention that law of reciprocity; if you’re putting yourself out there, and somebody’s cheering you on, go ahead and return the favor. It’s only going to help everyone out.
Create a clear call to action. Whether you’re doing a live video or making a post, you want to make sure people know what to do next. Maybe this is saying, “Comment ‘me,’ and I’ll send you more information.” Or, maybe this is saying, “If you’d like an invite to what I have coming up this week, drop me your favorite GIF below.” Anything that makes it simple and easy for them to raise their hand and say that they’re interested is a great way to create content that has a really strong call to action.

Last thing here: When people are engaging with your content and leaving comments, my challenge to you is to take it from the comments on that post into the DMs. If you can move it from a public one-to-many conversation to a one-to-one conversation, you are winning! So, think about what that looks like for you. It might be a simple message to them saying, “Hey, thanks so much for your comment. I so appreciate it.” Or, “Oh, I saw that this is going on with you. Just wanted to say hello again. It’s great to reconnect.” Or again, it might be those baby steps. “Hey, would you like to take a peek at the catalog? Hey, do you want to learn more? Hey, do you want to come to my giveaway or my event that I’m doing later this week?” When you’re building those relationships, don’t be afraid to follow up, because the follow-up is key. Your number one goal is to get a response back and have that back-and-forth dialogue one on one. And then, of course when it comes to active selling, take the baby steps, and then ask for the sale.

With that said, you have your 20-minute strategy for the fall season all laid out for you! I know many of you are working your buns off, and it might feel a bit harder than it did last year or the year before to get visibility and to create connections with people and to get responses back, because everyone has a lot going on. So, I want to encourage you to stick with it and really embrace these 20-minute basic habits of active selling, building relationships, and creating content on a daily basis. If you can do that in 20 minutes a day, good things are coming for you!

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