THE EMAIL GROWTH SHOW EPISODE 135
In today’s episode, I wanted to specifically talk about how we can effectively sell through our email list and when we should start selling. Why?
Because I know for many of you that the idea of selling makes us pretty uncomfortable. But here’s a comforting thought: what if you started to think of selling – as serving – and as a new skill you just need to learn.
Let’s dive in and break that down in today’s episode!
Click play to listen below:
How You Can Think Of Selling as Serving
Let’s start by acknowledging the elephant in the room – the discomfort many of us feel when it comes to selling. I get it. I’ve been there myself. However, what helped me shift my mindset was reframing selling as serving. When we provide products or services to our audience, we are ultimately serving them by meeting their needs or solving their problems.
If you can view selling as a form of service, it can alleviate the pressure and make it feel more authentic. The other thing when it comes to our mindset when we are wanting to make more money or sales in our business, is the thought that it ‘needs to be perfect…’
This belief that selling successfully depends on having the perfect product, the perfect price, or a larger email list.
I’ve seen entrepreneurs become disheartened after a launch doesn’t meet their expectations, leading them to contemplate changing their offers, strategy o r business altogether. While adapting & pivoting is important in some circumstances, it’s crucial to approach it from a calm & rational standpoint, understanding that selling is a skill that requires practice.
Why Practice Is Important When It Comes To Selling Our Offers
To illustrate this point, think about learning to ride a bike. Watching videos and enrolling in courses might provide valuable knowledge, but true skill only comes from getting on the bike and actually practicing.
The same principle applies to selling.
It’s not about having everything perfect from the start; it’s about consistent practice, even when it feels awkward or uncomfortable. Embracing the learning process, including the occasional stumble, is crucial for developing effective selling skills.
As you start practicing selling to your email list, it’s natural to experience unsubscribes. Embrace this as a natural part of the process… not everyone on your list will be your ideal customer, and that’s okay. Additionally, be proactive in tracking the performance of your sales emails. Monitor open rates, click rates, and subscriber responses to gauge the effectiveness of different approaches.
This data will inform your future strategies and help you work smarter, not harder.
So… When Should We Start Selling To Our Email List?
The answer is simple: from the start.
Your email subscribers should be aware that you are a business and have products or services to offer. Directly or indirectly, every email you send is an opportunity to showcase what you do and build trust with your audience. Whether it’s guiding them to a free resource or sharing valuable content, each interaction contributes to the foundation of a strong and trusting relationship, that will eventually lead to sales.
Selling isn’t just about making direct pitches or big launches… it’s also about consistently providing value and building trust through authenticity and genuine connection.
Encouraging your email subscribers to engage with your content, whether it’s a blog post, podcast episode, or free resource, cultivates a sense of familiarity and trust. When you eventually present an offer, they are more likely to respond positively, knowing that they already value and trust your brand.
In wrapping up, I want to emphasise that selling is a journey. It’s about consistent practice, learning from experiences, and growing with each interaction. There’s no magic bullet or secret formula; the key is to start and continue practicing.
Remember, the scraped knees and stumbles are all part of the process when you’re learning to ride a bike, the same applies here. Embrace them as valuable learning moments that bring you closer to feeling confident in your selling abilities and achieving your business goals! Whether you’re just starting to build your email list or have been nurturing it for a while, don’t hesitate to embrace the process and start practicing selling from the very beginning.
Together, let’s continue to learn, grow, and master the art of selling. I’m here cheering you on every step of the way.
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Full Transcript:
Kylie Kelly [00:00:05]:
Hey. I’m Kylie Kelly and I’m obsessed with all things business and motherhood and helping you navigate the messy and magical seasons of both. I’m a boy mama that grew a successful photo biz before hanging up my straps in 2020 to pivot. Yes. We’re allowed to do that. Now I help other CEO moms just like you grow an audience of raving fans fast, but this podcast is way more than that. Think of it as your coffee date or happy hour with your girlfriends as we talk real life. Money, challenges, growth, frustrations, marketing, the messy middle, it’s all welcome here.
Kylie Kelly [00:00:37]:
So get comfy and join us. Welcome to this mama Means Business. I’m so glad you’re here. Hello, and welcome back to episode a 134 of This Mama Means Business. Now today, as you would have seen from the title of this episode, we are talking all about selling. We are gonna talk about how to effectively sell to your email list and when you should start selling. Why are we covering this? Because I know for many of you, the idea of selling makes you pretty uncomfortable. Let’s be honest.
Kylie Kelly [00:01:07]:
It made me uncomfortable for the longest time. But what I found to be a comforting thought is thinking about selling differently. What have you started to think of selling as serving and as a new skill that you just need to learn? I wanted to dive in and break that down in today’s episode so that by the end of listening to this, you’re gonna be in a better place to think about selling differently, which means that you’re going to be able to start doing it better. You’re going to be able to start trying new things. You’re going to be able to start actually making money, which increases our confidence, which increases our revenue, obviously, which puts us in a position to be more successful to build the business that we ultimately want to build. So first, I wanted to talk about a little thinking error that I see all the time. I’ve experienced it and I see it in my clients, the members in my membership. I see it come up.
Kylie Kelly [00:01:53]:
And it’s just thinking that it’s all about having the perfect product, right, the perfect price, a bigger email list. I’ll see people go into launches and be disappointed by the result and think that they have to change the product, that they have to change the price, that they have to pivot, they have to try something different. And look, I’m all for that. I’m all for experimenting in our business, but only when it comes from a place of calm that isn’t emotionally wrapped up in a launch that might have fell short. Right? And I want you to know one thing that’s gonna change all of this. This. That is not true. Selling is actually all about practice.
Kylie Kelly [00:02:24]:
It’s a skill. And just like any skill, it requires practice. So to really bring this point home, I want you to think about learning to ride a bike. Now I know. What does a bike have to do with making sales? But think about learning to ride a bike. Imagine that you spend days watching videos and you enroll in courses and you’re asking for advice and you’re seeing how your friends do it and you’re watching all of this happen of people riding bikes. Right? But does that mean that when you jump on a bike, that you don’t fall? When you first get on a bike, it feels awkward. It feels uncomfortable.
Kylie Kelly [00:02:54]:
You wobble. You fall off and scrape your knee, and then you get on and try again. And you practice and you practice and you practice. And then finally, you get really good at riding that bike. The same thing goes for selling. It is all about practice. It is all about getting really good at this skill to then see the sales that we wanna see, to then be able to sell and feel comfortable doing it, to then be able to do a launch and actually have it go beyond your expectations. Right? It all comes back to the actual sales skills that you’re building.
Kylie Kelly [00:03:23]:
So how do you build these skills? We build them by getting started. Right? So often, especially in my membership with the Spotlight Cloud, people are building these beautiful email lists. They’re nurturing the shit out of these people. Right? They’re making them feel loved. They’re sharing content. They’re doing all the things. And then they’re like, so when do I start selling? And just like I tell them, I’m telling you now, you start selling from the start. Your email list needs to understand one thing clearly.
Kylie Kelly [00:03:44]:
They need to know that you’re a business. Right? And product So you can do this directly or indirectly. So you can directly be pitching a product, right, guiding them to a free resource or sharing valuable content that you know will benefit them. When you do this, you’re selling them an idea or a concept related to your business. Every email that you send is an opportunity to showcase who you are, who you wanna help, what you do in the world. It’s all about building trust one email at a time. Now sending them to a blog post might not feel like selling. Right? It’s not a big launch.
Kylie Kelly [00:04:23]:
It might not feel like that is doing anything. But, actually, those emails are just as important as the cart close email on a 5 day launch period. Right? Like, those emails asking them to read a blog post, directing them to a podcast episode, giving them a link to a free resource they might not have gotten yet, all of those build trust with your email subscribers as well as get them in the habit of opening and clicking and actually digesting your content, which means when you do have something to sell, when you’re like, hey, I know you loved this. This is what I have for $27. This is what I have have for $27.00. Whatever that is, when you have an offer to present to them, they already know, like, and trust you. They already are used to engaging with you and interacting with your content and they want more of you. Right? This is exactly why some businesses, some brands, you’ll get emails from them and it’s like they can sell anything.
Kylie Kelly [00:05:14]:
Right? While others seem just as fabulous, but they struggle. And it’s all because their audiences know, like, and trust them. It’s all about this credibility. It’s all about building this trust and this relationship with your email subscribers. And how do you build it? You build it through consistency, you build it through authenticity, being genuine, and you build it through offering genuine value. So then when that email subscriber hears about an offer that you have, it’s a no brainer. They’re going to jump in headfirst. Now, of course, if you’ve just started building your list and you’re like, I don’t even have anything to sell, as long as you have content that you’re creating, start to direct them there.
Kylie Kelly [00:05:50]:
So I know when you hit play on this episode, you probably wanted that magic bullet. Right? You probably wanted that secret that everybody else seems to have, that thing that helps them say, oh, I just had the most successful launch ever. We all want that thing. I’m here to tell you that thing doesn’t exist. That thing is practice. That thing is showing up, being consistent and practicing selling to your email list from the very beginning. So whether you have 1 person on your email list or whether you have a 1,000, I want you to be sending emails and practicing this art of selling, practicing those calls to action, practicing directing them places, asking them to do things. And a little note here, don’t be afraid of people leaving.
Kylie Kelly [00:06:40]:
Right? When you start to do this, you’re gonna see people leave. Right? You’re gonna see the unsubscribes happen. Just know that that is normal. Bless and release them. Know that they were never going to be the person to buy from you. If they’re leaving already, that’s not your perfect person. So I hope you found that helpful. I want you to know that I understand the hesitance.
Kylie Kelly [00:06:57]:
I understand how awkward it feels. I understand why we don’t do it, why we feel like we’re not ready, especially if we’re new to an online business, especially if we’re not used to it. But I want you to remember, this is a journey. It’s a learning process. It’s not about having a perfect product. It’s not about having a perfect price. It’s not about having a bigger email list. It’s about practising the skill of selling, knowing that because we’re practising, there’s no such thing as failure.
Kylie Kelly [00:07:22]:
What I want all of you to get from this is to just start. Just create a product and start practising selling it. Don’t go into something thinking that you have to have this big launch, you have to make all of this money, putting all of this pressure on yourself because this is a skill we have to practice in order to get good at. So the sooner you start, the sooner you will be in a place where you’re really good at it. Right? So embrace the times that you’re falling off the bike. Right? Embrace the scraped knees. Know that that is one step closer to actually feeling confident selling, actually feeling like selling is second nature. Right? Actually achieving the goals that you want to achieve financially in your business.
Kylie Kelly [00:07:59]:
Don’t overthink it. Start to practice. And a little side tip here as we wrap up this episode, as you’re sending these emails, take notice. Take notice of the open rates. Take notice of the click rates. Take notice of how many people are unsubscribing. And I would actually create a Google spreadsheet and just track this stuff. If you’re sending sales emails about a certain product that you’ve just created, you can see which one’s performing well.
Kylie Kelly [00:08:21]:
And then next time you wanna send an email, you don’t have to start from scratch. You can go back, look at which ones worked, repurpose them, or make them better if they didn’t perform that well. So make sure, as always, we’re being the scientists of our business, that we’re tracking this stuff so that we’re working smarter and not harder. So here’s to learning, growing and mastering the art of selling. Know that I am cheering you on. Remember that it is all about practice and together, we have totally got this. Now if you liked this episode or if you need any support, please don’t hesitate to drop into my DMs. I will never say that I’m an expert when it comes to this stuff, but I have got some runs on the board.
Kylie Kelly [00:09:00]:
I have spent the last 18 months actually practicing this to a point where when I launched my membership at the Spotlight Club, I had a 100 people jump in in the 1st 3 months. Right? They bought really quickly. And no, it’s not because it was the perfect price. It’s not because it was the perfect offer. It’s not because my email list was certain size. It’s because I had spent the previous 18 months practising selling to them, practising talking about things, practising guiding them to where I wanted them to go. They knew to click on things. They knew to open my emails.
Kylie Kelly [00:09:29]:
It’s such a journey, and I am here with you on it. So please reach out if you need any support whatsoever. I am cheering you on, and I will speak to you again soon. Alright. Bye for now. Every single week I do my best to bring you 2 episodes that are going to really add value to your life, whether they speak to your motherhood journey or your business one. I pour my heart and soul into this podcast recording and editing them all myself. So there is a really simple way you could return the favor if you will leave me a review.
Kylie Kelly [00:10:05]:
Head on over to Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts and let me know how I’m doing. Leave me a few words that let me know what content you like best or what you might like to hear in the future. I create this for you, so I would appreciate that so very much. For the show notes and links from today, please head over to my website, kyliekelly.com/podcast. I cannot wait to bring you more value and more juicy content to your earbuds soon. But for now, I hope you continue to have an incredible day and know that, mama, you’ve totally got this shit. Okay. Bye for now.
