#90 - 5 Signs Your Sales Strategy is Out of Alignment (and How to Fix Them)

Are you doing all the right things in your business? You're posting, showing up, sharing offers and following up, but creating sales still feels like you're standing awkwardly against the wall at the dance wondering if anyone sees you? 

Yeah. Been there. 

The problem might not be your funnel, your script, or your price point. It might be that your sales energy is out of alignment.

In this episode, I share the 5 signs that your sales strategy is out of alignment and how to shift back into integrity. These signs show up whether you’re selling a $5,000 coaching program or a $15 product, because alignment isn’t about the number, it’s about the energy behind your sales process.

You’ll hear real examples from my own journey and client stories, plus I’ll give you a mini self-audit prompt for each sign so you can start spotting leaks in your own sales approach.

When you realign your energy, sales conversations stop feeling like you're chasing a high-school crush and start feeling like the best people are coming to your party.

👉 Ready to go deeper? Grab my Premium Client Energetic Self-Audit here: 

Start My Self-Audit

Mindset to Market is a Luminous Creative Production. If you'd like to learn more about our business coaching program and group coaching container, please visit us online at DeborahcSmith.com.

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Mindset to Market is produced by Deborah C. Smith and designed to inspire and support big-hearted creatives in finding their own unique path, building a sustainable business, and creating financial, spiritual, mental wellness and abundance.

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Transcript

 Let me take you back in time for just a second. Uh, to when there was a season in my business about three or four years ago when I was doing all the things right. I was showing up everywhere. I was trying all the strategies at once, posting on every, you know, social media platform, sharing lots of content, sending lots of emails, but sales still really felt like pulling teeth for me.

So some months I was scraping by and some months were okay, but nothing ever felt steady. And I just never felt secure. And this was in a period right after the pandemic, after having run a successful business with consistent monthly income for over a decade. Um, that was really reliable. So. This was really a difficult moment for me, and I was all set with strategies and sales pages and email funnels.

I had the offer, I had the tech, I had that all figured out, right? That's literally, you know, how I built my last business before this. So it wasn't a shinier funnel or a new script that I needed. The problem was that my focus and my energy in my sales process was completely out of whack, totally out of alignment.

So, uh, it really wasn't until I fixed that, that I started to see. Consistent 5K months, then consistent 10 K months and then really bumped it up and started to see how the, the system could continue to feed itself and continue to run. And this was not because I was doing more things right, this was because I was showing up very differently in the conversations that I was already having.

So today I'm gonna walk you through five signs that your sales strategy might be out of alignment. And as you listen, I'll give you, for each one, I'll give you a little mini self-audit. And then of course, if you wanna go deeper into this conversation that is exactly. What the Premium Client Energetic Self Audit is designed for to help clear up any leaks that you might discover and help you get back in alignment so your sales can flow.

So let's not waste a second. Hey there and welcome to the Mindset To Market Podcast, your go-to place for practical tools and solutions for the everyday challenges of being a creative and spiritual solopreneur living in a material world. I'm your host. Deborah Smith. I'm a holistic business coach with 17 years of experience, and I help my clients bust through mindset blocks and build a daily practice that prioritizes your business's financial growth as well as your personal health and wellness.

I'm here to offer you support, creativity, mindset, practical how-tos, and getting into imperfect messy actions so you can find balance while building the dream. Business. If you're a purpose-driven solepreneur, who's working on that dream one day at a time, then you're in the right place. Let's dive in.

Hey there. Welcome back. Um, thanks so much for joining me. As always. Before we dive in, I just wanna say this conversation is, especially for coaches, consultants, and service providers, people who, whose energy is the core of what people are buying from you, right? If you're a coach. Or consultant or a service provider.

A large part of what people are buying is your point of view, your lived experience, your service, which relies on your energy, your experience. Now, it still applies to anyone who has a product based business or if you sell physical products, depending on what you sell, your energy still plays a huge role, right?

Like ener Energy is the core of everything that we do in business. You know, it's what helps to establish trust, and trust is the cornerstone of relationships and sales. Um, but for example, with something like clothing, sometimes the product sells itself based on look and feel. Um, but with most products, especially anything that involves a relationship trust or a transformation, your energy in the sales process still really matters.

So, just wanted to point that out and my friend, these five signs can show up whether you're selling a $50,000 coaching package. A $5,000 service package or a $15 ebook. So alignment isn't about the number on the price tag, it is about the energy behind how you're showing up. And so if your sales have felt difficult or harder than they should feel based on what you're selling, stick with me because one of these signs might be exactly what has been blocking you.

So for each one, I'm gonna just tell you what it is, give you an example of what that looks like in practice. Uh, and then share my fix for it, like what I would do or how I think you can tweak this back into alignment. And then at the end, I'll just give you a mini prompt or a journal question to probe a little deeper.

And just on a personal note, I just wanna mention that I have been. Under the weather. I've been offline for the last like week almost. I've been fighting some kind of chest congestion that I hear is going around, but so apologies in advance if I sound like a little bit wheezy or just. You know, I've been coughing a lot, so my throat is really dry and rough.

So, um, I'm doing all the things and I'm feeling much better, but, and the show must go on, but I just wanted to mention that because I have some symptoms still. Okay. Let's get into this. So, sign number one that your, that something is out of alignment with your sales is if you are convincing instead of leading.

Right? So you're. You're trying to convince people that your product, that your service, that your offer is good enough is gonna get them the transformation and you find yourself really pushing. Um, and what that looks like in practice is like you feel energetically, like you're building up to this big pitch every time you talk about your offer or like you've gotta prove your value to your potential customer instead of just.

Confidently knowing that it's there, it's great, it's what they need. Um, and working to open the door for them to walk through and just holding that space. And so energetically it feels like leaning in, it feels like tension in your body, leading to mentioning the cost. Um, it feels like cringiness around your pricing.

And it feels like you've gotta, like, you're just trying to convince them, like layering, you know, bonus after bonus or really pushing for them to see the value. And my best example of this is early in my coaching business, let's hop in a little time machine and travel all the way back to the year 2006 when I just, you know, young Debra is fresh out of holistic health coaching school.

And eager to help people learn the magical ways of the holistic world. Right? I was so excited to teach people about detoxing and how they could get all the nutrients out of, you know, whole foods and, you know, just encouraging people to live a healthier lifestyle. But really what I was working with was this sort of like packaged up sales pitch that came from the school that I went to.

Which, if you're a health coach, you know what I'm talking about. You go through, you know, a year long training program and at the very end they're like, oh, and here's your sales packaging for your business. Like there's, it's not, you know, this is before I went to business coaching school, so this is like, I had no sales training whatsoever.

And so I thought if I said the perfect words that clients would buy, that people would naturally inevitably want what I was talking about, because who wouldn't wanna feel better? Um, I did not understand psychology of buyer mindset. I did not understand sales at all. Um, and so I was constantly like, I was almost like begging people to care about their body.

It just, it's cringey, it's so thinking about it now, I really do cringe. Um, I came across as needy, as insecure, as like hungry. And people backed away. Like people did not wanna spend their money on this young, eager beaver trying to convince them that they needed to feel better. It just, it's just not what people were looking for.

And, you know, ironically, I had, you know, a marketing background already. This is like in my twenties, my mid twenties. And so I really did understand what needed to happen, but because I was so excited about what I wanted to give them, um, I was just. Trying to prove to them that I could help them prove to them that it would be worth it.

And so the fix for this, like the alignment around this issue of convincing versus leading, it really is about stepping into your own leadership. It's, it's an internal shift. It so you know, when you confidently outline the transformation that your offer provides, you can, that's enough. You do have to do the work of clarifying the transformation of your offer.

It has to be clear to people when they read your website page or have a conversation with you, the transformation that you are going to help walk them through. That's, but then that's it, right? That's your, that's your job is to guide them to that place, not to chase them through the door. Once you open the door to whatever your offer is, it's their decision to make.

And the more you lean back and the less you push, the more people have space to become curious and room for their imagination to vi, you know, visualize what it might look like for them to go through your process or, you know, get that transformation that your product or service offers. So my mini audit for this, my mini prompt for this is just to ask yourself.

It's really simply, do I feel like I'm convincing people in my sales calls or am I leading them to their future self? Right? So if it's the first and you feel like you're trying to convince people when you're selling, then I do think that the self audit that I created will show you how to shift this. So just ask yourself, do I feel like I'm convincing people in my sales calls or am I actually leading them?

Yet, it's an energetic feeling and you will know the answer. Be honest with yourself. Radical honesty is the quickest way to fix your business. Okay, sign number two, that something's out of alignment with your sales process is if you might be talking to the wrong audience. I did this four years. Um, what that looks like, talking to the wrong audience means you're speaking to people with your copy, right?

The words that are on your sales pages, the words that are on your, in your emails, who are not ready for the thing that you created, which it could be because you're, you're not crystal clear on your ideal client. Um, but basically people, this is what it looks like in practice. People are in your comments and in your dms they're telling you they love your posts, but they're never clicking the link to find out what you sell, right?

So you're marketing to people who love your free tips, love your free educational copy content, grab your freebies, um, even comment. Thank you, cheer you on like all your posts, but they're not actually. Interested in investing in or working with you. So sometimes people call this tire kickers or, um, I love this word so much, looky-loos.

Oh my God. It's like an old fashioned word and they use it all the time on law and order SVU and I love that. But yeah, people who are here to consume your free content, but they're not ready to, ready to step into the transformation. And so when you're speaking to the wrong audience, when you're speaking to people who are.

Not yet ready to buy. Um, you'll get a lot of attention and energy. That's kind of an illusion, but you won't make sales and that, so your sales will not be reflected in the kind of the audience interaction, which is confusing. So an example of this is I had a client who was creating these beautiful weekly tutorials and putting a lot of energy into creating these.

Educational pieces for her audience and getting tons of engagement, like lots of comments like, you know, a lot of energy and excited responses, but nobody would ever inquire about her coaching, and it's because her content was speaking to beginners who weren't really ready to hire their first coach. And so she needed to reevaluate that.

And she shifted her messaging to speak directly to ready to buy clients. And within a week of changing her front, you know, public facing copy on her social media, in her emails, and on her pages, she booked two premium clients in one week because she just simply changed the messaging and spoke to the right people.

So the fix here is, you know, aligned sales means speaking to people who already know that they want your support. And you don't have to drag them over the finish line, right? So in, in the case of my client, we didn't touch her offer, her offer was perfect. We just looked really closely at the struggles and the desires of the people in her audience who were ready to take action on this problem that they had.

And we spoke directly to them and it was hard to do because she felt like, oh my God, I'm closing the door on all these people who need me. And the thing is, I'm like, girl, you're not here to people please. Every person in the sea of the internet, you're, you're trying to run a business. So we need to ensure that you have consistent income, otherwise you have to, this is it that you, there's no business and deciding not to be for everyone and getting really clear who you are for, I think is one of the toughest decisions that an entrepreneur makes is like, you know, people call it niching down.

To me, it's just, it's an alignment thing. There are some people out there who are ready to go. They really want and need what you have, and you are a good fit for them energetically. And there's others who may consume a lot of your content, but they're not ready and they're not a good fit. And that's on you as an entrepreneur to recognize that and make the shift.

So my little prompt for you is. Who am I really speaking to in my posts and my calls? Is it the DIY or the ready to buy client? And I think the distinction there is that for every niche, for every industry, for every offer, there's gonna be people who are like, oh, I'm just gonna consume this and then go do it on my own.

Um, and by the way, I used to be that person I, I used to like follow people and learn from them for free. I was, in the beginning of my career, I did not have the money to invest in high ticket coaching. Many years later, I can see that I got so much further, so much faster by working with mentors. But you know, hindsight's always 2020 regardless of what you do.

You wanna speak to the people who have made that conclusion on their own already, that they want support. And because the people who are not there yet, it's gonna be an a misaligned. Conversation when it comes to sales. So ask yourself who you're really speaking to. Is it the D iyer or the ready to buy client?

Okay, moving on, sign number three. Sign number three is are you feeling drained after sales conversations? Like, is it exhausting? And what that looks like is you get off a sales call and you literally feel like you need to lay down and take a nap, or like you can't do any of the other tasks. On your docket for the day because you spent the whole time on the call, try like, giving away free advice, pouring into this potential client.

Um, coaching for free probably, right? Maybe convincing a little bit, like, again, going back to the potentially proving and giving away some of your best strategies, like giving them everything on the call. And I remember once, this was like two or three years ago, I had a 60 minute sales call where I practically built someone's business plan for them on the call.

And at the end they were like, thanks, I'll go try this out and maybe I'll circle back. Like I literally gave away the transformation and the work they needed to do instead of selling it. And if you are a coach, a consultant, or somebody who provides a service that's on you, you cannot give away. The full enchilada on a sales call.

Um, you really need to practice showing the transformation, um, but not giving away all of your work. And it's like a slippery slope because you get on these calls and you love this person. You connect, you feel aligned, and you're excited, like, oh my God, this person's gonna hire. But then they don't because you gave them everything that they needed.

They can just go do the work without you. So, and I know I'm not the only one who has done this, so this is a big sign to look for. This is a big red flag. If you feel drained after having a conversation around sales, that is a sign that you are probably leaking energy on those sales. And you're giving too much, and you need to stop talking and sit back and let people ask you questions and lead them to the possibility that they can achieve if they come and work with you.

So here's the fix and something I want you to think about. When you are aligned, when it's right, and you've got this right. A sales call feels energizing for both people on the call. You ask powerful questions and then you listen. You hold space. The win of the call is them getting more clear on their next step, not free coaching, right?

So if you wind up on a sales call, it's exciting, you know, you're connecting with somebody who you might work with. Like, I love sales calls. I, I don't, they don't always work out, but I often meet the most amazing people. And it's just a chance for me to learn, right? Even if somebody doesn't buy, I'm learning something.

So the win on a sales call is clarity for both people. Good match or not. That's clarity. Deciding to move forward or not clarity, right? We don't wanna give away everything, convince or give away free coaching or free service. So your mini prompt for this one is, am I leaving sales conversations, feeling drained or energized, and.

That's like a yes or no question, just you know the answer. Okay. Sign four that something is out of alignment with your sales process is if you are selling from a place of scarcity or need. And what that looks like is saying yes to misaligned clients, allowing people into your membership who are not the right fit because you need the money.

Um, agreeing to things that are outside of your boundaries, crossing your own boundaries. Uh oh. How about this one? Clarifying boundaries and like holding up your boundaries in the sales conversation, but then not actually enforcing them once they're in place. Lowering your price because you think maybe somebody would take the plunge if they just could save $20 or a hundred dollars or a thousand dollars, or rushing to close because you need the money, right?

So pushing people. Um, and I think I've talked about this before in the podcast, but you know, I once discounted my signature offer by almost 50% just to get somebody to say yes because I wanted more people. Like, I just needed the validation for myself. It was really ego driven and that client turned out to be the most difficult client I have ever.

Ever worked with, like constantly pushing me past my boundaries, constantly needing, needing reassurance, and second guessing everything I said. It was almost like because I discounted my price, she didn't trust me as much. In fact, that is what it was. And that sale cost me more like energy than I then I made in income.

There's no debate about that, so it was a big lesson. It's a big wake up call. You know, alignment. The fix here is that alignment means selling from sufficiency. So you trust that the right clients are coming to you no matter what, and you hold that belief for yourself. And you don't bend your business to close a sale, and you don't say yes to people who you can feel or out of alignment.

And you set boundaries that reflect your lifestyle choices, and then you hold those boundaries up with your actions and your behaviors. So if you say you're not available on the weekends. You're not available on the weekends if you, you know, if you have a price that you've decided on and it's the right price, hold that price.

The people who are ready for your work will pay that price and then some. And so it's really, the work is just finding the right people. So the prompt on this one is just ask yourself, am I selling from calm sufficiency and feeling confident? Or am I secretly hoping and praying that the sale will save me?

Right. Are the sale gonna save you this month? That's a red flag. All right, so sign number five is being out of integrity with your own offer. This is, you know, when, when you know when there's a problem with a sale, you gotta kind of look all the way down the pipeline and say, is it my offer? Is there something wrong there?

Is it my audience? Do I have the wrong ideal client? Am I speaking to the wrong person? Is it my energy? Am I needy and hungry? And coming from a place of proving and scarcity, right? So we're moving through the whole pipeline, and this is sort of at the very beginning is sometimes we fall out of integrity with our own content and the thing that we created.

So what that looks like in practice is you're selling something you've outgrown or you created something because maybe you, you saw what was working in the industry. And not that you necessarily copied, but you're like, oh, this great, you know, coach over here, or This consultant over here is doing it this way.

So I'm gonna quickly throw together my offer to reflect what's working without it being really truly aligned with what you do or the, the transformation that you are uniquely, uh, qualified to create for people. And it could also look like you're just not excited anymore about the offer that you created, like you've lost touch with it.

Um. I've seen this when the content inside the offer is outdated, like the industry that you're in has changed and people want a different approach. This could really be, you know, AI has changed so much in the digital online space. So I know a lot of people had offers two years ago that are no longer aligned because they didn't incorporate ai.

So it might look like having to modernize your offer. But when you're out of integrity with the thing that you sell, your energy shows that, and clients feel the disconnect. So if you can't like confidently say, I'm so stoked about this, blah, blah, blah. Or if you're not in touch with what's inside your core program and you're not sure that it's in alignment anymore, that's gonna be reflected when you try to sell it.

So an example of this from my own life is I used to, I created lots of courses right out of the pandemic. Sort of just to get my course creation skills flowing. And I have a couple of smaller courses that are still out there on the marketplace available. Um, one or two that I think are completely evergreen.

They just will always be true. And, and I haven't touched them and they're still good. And I checked them every once in a while. But I had this one offer, this one course that I kept selling long after I felt complete with it. Like I just. I was like, I no longer feel passionate about this, or I no longer feel that this is the right thing for me to be doing, but it's good content, but I'm just not excited about it.

And I noticed that every time I mentioned it, my energy sort of dipped. Like I was like, mm. Yeah, it's out there. Yeah. I mean, yeah, if you wanna check it out, like so not excited. Unsurprisingly sales for that offer, you know, slowed down and came to basically a stop. And I eventually retired that offer that course, and I created something that really felt aligned and much more like the me that I had become.

And it was so much more easy for me to talk about it and to open the door for that. And sales started flowing again with ease because I was really clear about what I'd created and, and excited about it. So alignment around this particular, uh, situation means like that you believe in your offer so fully that talking about it feels like a natural extension, like the same way you would talk about your kid or your.

You know, if you play a musical instrument or you know, going to take a walk in your favorite local park, like something just so organically aligned and natural, that feels great to talk about. That's how you wanna feel about your offer. It's integrity driven, not should driven, like, oh, I should create this thing that everybody seems to need.

So the prompt to ask yourself is, does my current offer feel exciting and true? Or does it feel heavy and forced? And just do a gut check on that one. If you feel like it's exciting and true, but maybe there's some other things to tweak. But if it feels heavy and forced, uh, you can do a lot of different things here.

You could go back to the offer and, you know, throw the clay back on the wheel and reshape it, right? That's why you're an entrepreneur. You get to decide. What's included and what's not. You get to reshape the container, and I'll just add with this one that you know, that's something that you can and should be doing all the time.

You should be paying attention to what your audience is saying. If people on sales calls tell you something about your offer that they feel is not a match for them, pay attention. If more than one person says that same thing, maybe it's time to reshape the structure of how you're delivering your content.

So. Yeah, but just ask yourself if your offer feels exciting or it feels kind of heavy and enforced. And if you recognized yourself in even one of these signs, like if you're convincing instead of leading, if you're talking to the wrong people in your, in your marketing materials, maybe if you're leaving sales calls, feeling really drained.

Um, if you find that you are selling from that scarcity mentality like that, ah, man, I really need this to work out. Or if you just feel like you're out of integrity with your offer, then it is time for a reset. And the good news is that you don't need to go, like redo everything and you don't need another script.

You don't need to hustle harder. It's really just about aligning your energy in the sales process. I, I make it sound simple. It is not the simplest thing, it was not the simplest thing for me. I'm not gonna lie to you. Uh, I had to really step away from processes that were already in place. Systems that were already in place, you know.

Automations that were already running and get honest with myself about where I was out of alignment in most, a lot of these places and going through that process. And so doing some of this deeper inner work is definitely when things shifted for me. I've shared about this before on this podcast. Um, obviously, you know, systems like the funnels and the tech piece of this.

Online business world and client attraction and building things and designing flyers and creating events and holding spaces. All of that stuff comes pretty easily for me after the career that I've had in marketing and event production and you know, years and years of online marketing. So for me, the hardest part of getting myself.

Stable with income and just as an online coach has absolutely been the sales piece. And I, you know, going through a lot of these inner deeper journal questions and prompts was what helped me get clear about where I had changes to make internally and then do the work. So if that is ringing a bell for you, um, that is why I created the premium client energetic self audit.

And inside that process, it's six audios. It's just, it's kind of like podcast style, but there's also an interactive piece because I want you to get feedback. So I know for personally, for me, when I'm doing any kind of process, I'd like to get feedback. So I set it up inside a as a course, but it's just audio.

So it's like a podcast. But with the course element of being able to post your homework and get feedback, and inside there I'm walking you through how to spot these leaks. How to shift your energy, how to bring your sales process back into alignment so that when you do that, sales do become easier, they become more consistent, they become more aligned, and all of it starts to feel more fun.

So when you open the doors for a launch or an open house or some type of way to share your work, you feel excited, energized, and ready to connect because you've got the right people coming in and you. Are aligned with what you're sharing and the transformation. So I'm gonna put a link for the energetic self-audit in the show notes, and you can grab it right now.

You can also grab it at the link in my Instagram bio, um, also linked to this podcast, and you can just also DM me, dm me or email me if you want me to send it to you. Uh, but don't keep spinning in misaligned sales energy. It's something that you're going to have to fix at some point. You're going, if you're having these problems, you have to address them at some point.

So let's clear it up now. So the next client, uh, sales call that you have feels like a natural Yes. And feels truly aligned with what you're moving towards. Okay. So I hope you found this helpful. And the final thought I wanna leave you with is just, I truly do know. How it feels to have done all of the things really shown up, really tried, really built something, really created an amazing offer.

And then you're still struggling to make sales and you just kind of start to question like, is there something wrong with me? Did I like, what is, what is going wrong here? And again, I, it sounds so easy for me to say this kind of from the other side of having overcome that challenge. But when you're in it.

It feels heavy, it feels difficult. So I just want you to know you are not alone. If you feel this way, um, if you're struggling with sales, if you're, you know, struggling to know what to say on these sales calls or if you're not even having sales calls, 'cause you're afraid to do it, just know that you're not alone.

You can fix this. You will fix this, and I support you and I know that you will be on the other side of this at some point, but you've just gotta keep going and. Give yourself permission to shift this energy. It is lighter when you do so and so with that, my friend, I hope you have an amazing week. I hope you found this helpful.

DM me any of your questions, please leave a five star rating for this podcast. If you appreciate the work, it really makes a difference and I will see you next week. Gonna bring some great interviews coming down the pipeline soon. And with that, may you be vibrant.