Don’t Blame Your Prices, Fix Your Systems First

Colie: 00:00:27

Hello, hello, and welcome back to another episode of The

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Business First Creatives podcast.

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In fact, this is episode 200.

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Now that number feels a little

surreal to say out loud.

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I mean, we all know I like to

talk by this point, but was I

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actually gonna get to 200 episodes?

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Uh, I wouldn't be able to do

it without my amazing, awesome

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podcast manager, Haylee Gaffin.

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So if you are thinking of starting

a podcast, highly recommend Gaffin

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Creative, because she is the

one that makes all of this work.

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I'm gonna take this opportunity to

bring us full circle back around

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because I want to revisit the topic

that I discussed way back in the

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very first episode of this podcast.

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I shared a spicy little truth, just

because someone says no to your offer does

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not mean that the price is the problem.

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I hear this a lot,

particularly from creatives.

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If bookings are low, if you get too

many NOs in a row, you automatically

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think, well, maybe I should lower

my rates, and I said it then.

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I'm gonna say it today, even louder.

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Don't blame your prices

if your systems are shit.

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I said it a little nicer in episode

one, but I feel like in episode

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200, if you are still here, we

are probably good friends, right?

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You enjoy me giving you the real, and so I

am going to straight up blame your system.

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Because you can have an incredibly

well priced, well positioned offer,

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but if the system around it is

messy or confusing, your offer

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doesn't even have a fair chance.

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You are getting NOs and you are

blaming your pricing, but you are

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not looking at the real culprit.

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So today we are gonna dig into what

makes a system actually support

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your offer and get more yeses.

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I wanna zoom out, if you will,

to where your customer or client

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journey typically begins because it

doesn't begin inside of your CRM.

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It doesn't begin with a workflow.

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It starts with however they found you.

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Whether that is on a podcast

or on your website, on

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Pinterest, on your social media.

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That's how they found you, and

hopefully wherever they find you

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you are funneling them to your

website to make it do the hard work.

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Now, your website might be working,

you might have a beautiful services

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page, an awesome contact page, and if

you don't think that you have these

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things, I do wanna encourage you to

go back to episode 101, where I talk

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to my real life bestie, Kate Hyde,

about what makes a website work.

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Okay?

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But if your website is doing the job,

it's only getting you the first YES,

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which is, I want to know more, but please

don't confuse that with getting a booking.

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That is not a yes, I am ready to commit.

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That is curiosity.

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That is, I am willing to see what the

rest of your experience would look like.

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And so you, as the business owner, need

to create a client experience system that

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takes it from that, "I'm curious" all the

way through the rest of their decision.

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Because an offer, like a listing

of what's included features is

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typically not what gets you the Yes.

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It's building that confidence in

what your offer is, that prompts

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people to sign on the dotted line.

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Now I know I talk about CRMs a lot,

but the problem is most creatives

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build their systems around what

they wanna send, a task list, what

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CRM templates told them to do.

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Not my CRM templates, but

other people's CRM templates.

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It's mostly like, here's my autoresponder,

here's my scheduler, here's my proposal.

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But the truth is all of

those are task-based.

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That's your internal checklist.

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That is not a client-centered

experience, that is a customer journey.

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And so I don't have time in this

episode to really distinguish between a

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client journey and a client experience,

but I do want you to think about

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this for the rest of the episode.

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Client journey is the path they take from

A to B to C to finally getting booked.

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The client experience is how you make

them feel at each of those touchpoints.

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One more time.

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The client journey is the actual

path they take to go from inquiry to

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booked, to delivered, if you will.

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The client experience is how you

make them feel and what you do,

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in each of those steps, to build

confidence in you and your offer.

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People make decisions on trust, clarity,

timing, and emotional readiness.

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I'm gonna tell you a secret.

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When I first started as a photographer

way back in: 2012

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to build my inquiry processes, I was

focused on the ready to book crowd.

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Everything about my system was,

you've contacted me, you must want my

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services, here's how you can pay me.

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It was all automated.

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It was all great, but I wasn't accounting

for the fact that some of those people

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had not yet made their decision.

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Now, I was leaning into the fact that

my website was an incredible conversion

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device, like it was taking people from

curiosity to ready to book, I think

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in a way that a lot of websites don't.

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But eventually, because different

buyers have different buyer personas,

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I started to get more inquiries from

people who were just kicking the tires.

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They hadn't already gone through the

process of going from the curiosity to

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ready to book on my website, and so they

needed a little more from me, and that

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is when I modified what my system was.

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So what I think a good client

experience system is now is that you

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are answering questions before they ask.

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You are anticipating their hesitation

and addressing the objections before

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they even make them You are reassuring

them that they are in the right place.

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They have contacted the right

photographer or the right creative

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for what their end goal is,

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Most importantly, you need to make

the next step easy, which is once

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they are convinced that you are the

person that they want to hire, have

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you made it easy for them to do so?

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That is why I harp all the time

about my five minute booking process.

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But there are some things that you

must do between the inquiry and

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the five minute booking process

to get them ready to say yes.

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Let's talk about sales calls for a moment.

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There is a reason why most business

coaches will tell you to get your

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prospective clients on a call, whether

it's an actual phone call or it's

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a video conferencing call on Zoom.

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The truth is getting on a call usually

helps you close the deal easier, and

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that's because you can hear their voice.

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You can catch their hesitation.

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You can see what part of your

offer or your process is confusing

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and you can address it there.

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So sales calls definitely have a

place, and they are definitely a way to

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increase your conversion rates overall.

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Not everybody has time for a

consultation call, and it doesn't take

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a consultation call to get the sale.

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I'm gonna take it even one step further.

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The goal of a consultation

call isn't to make a sale.

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Lemme say that one more time.

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The goal, at least of my consultation

calls isn't to make a sale.

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It's to give them clarity.

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It's to help someone make a confident

decision in whether or not they are

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ready to hire me, whether I am actually

giving them the service that they want.

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That's why I call them decision calls.

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Now, decision calls doesn't

look good on a website.

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It doesn't really ring when I

say it out loud, but in truth, my

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sales calls are decision calls.

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It is to make sure that we

are aligned with each other.

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The offer that I have is what will

actually solve your problem, and I

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give you all the information that

you need in order to make a decision.

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Now if that decision is yes, great.

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You're gonna fill out my proposal

and we are gonna continue

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on the client experience.

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But if you say no, I'm okay with that

too, because you are gonna find someone

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that is a better fit than I was.

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And once again, when I get that,

no, my first thought is not, oh,

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I must have been too expensive.

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It's not, my first thought is, okay,

I was not the photographer for them.

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Whatever it was that I was offering

is not what they needed at this time.

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And that's okay because

now they have clarity.

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I have clarity and I can close

their project and basically move on.

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So not every business needs to include

calls as part of their process, but

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your system should do the equivalent

of a call if you're not having one.

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There are many other ways that you

can build confidence in you as the

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service provider and your offer,

as in the result that they're

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going to get without having a call.

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In fact, I love to talk

about sales videos.

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If you can record a video that

is short and to the point and

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adequately explains your process

from beginning to end, that is gonna

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be just as good as actually hopping

on a synchronous call with someone.

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So if you haven't tried making a

sales video , I highly recommend

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that, especially for those of you

that have no inclination, or time,

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in order to get on a sales call.

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Okay, so let's get into the

nitty gritty of your system.

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Let's say that you've built

a system that's amazing, but

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people aren't saying yes.

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Okay.

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What does that mean?

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Again, don't blame your prices.

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Don't assume that it's the

market, and please don't

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start overthinking your offer.

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Sometimes people are like, well, if

I lower my prices, they'll hire me.

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Other times people are like,

well, if I increase the number of

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images I give, they'll hire me.

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Neither one of those is necessarily true.

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You might need to have additional

touchpoints in your client experience

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that gives them the confidence to say

yes to you and actually pay you money.

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Okay?

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So I want you to take a

hard look at your system.

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Okay, this is where the audit comes in.

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I know I am on a client experience

audit, but to be truthful, the audit is

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where you are going to get the questions

that you need answered because again.

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Probably not your offer, but if you

get a client experience audit, and

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I do think that there's a problem

with your offer, whether you don't

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have clarity in exactly what your

process is and exactly what they're

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gonna get at the end of the service.

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I'm gonna tell you that if there are

parts of your system that have gaps

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in either communication or where

I feel like you are dropping the

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ball, I'm gonna tell you that too.

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Okay, so in my client experience

audits, I walk your system just

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like a prospective client would I

flag the friction, the mixed signals

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and the missed opportunities?

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I give you what I think are

a list of critical errors.

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These are things that you must

fix immediately because they

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are more than likely hindering

your ability to book clients.

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And then I give you a bunch of

like suggested touch points where.

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You're not doing this, but I

feel like if you did this, people

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would have more confidence in

your offer and moving forward.

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And just so that you know.

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This is not just to get

somebody to book with you.

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You need an amazing client experience

from beginning to end because that

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offboarding period or that delivery period

where you are actually giving them the

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photos or the finished website or the

finished copy, that is actually what's

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most correlated to customer satisfaction.

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So not only do you wanna.

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Have all these things when you're trying

to get them to say yes and commit to

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the booking, you have to follow through

until the end because that is when

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they're gonna brag about hiring you.

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That is when they're gonna

refer you to all their friends.

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That is when they need your service

again, they are gonna come back to you.

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Okay?

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So if you are ready to hear

more yeses from people who have.

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Already indicated that they love your

work and they're curious about more.

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If you go to coley james.com/client

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experience audit, that's when you

can get my eyes on your system.

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Now, if you feel like you need a

little baby step, I do have a self

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audit quiz that you can take, and

that's at coley james.com/audit.

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Okay, thank you.

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For hanging with me for 200 episodes

and I hope to see you in 200 more.

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That's it for this episode.

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See you next time.