October 11, 2022

EPISODE 251: Stir the Pot (if Instagram Reels aren’t growing your sales)

Welcome to another car chat with Kat. Today, Kat is addressing the common issue of not seeing the kind of results you’d like (and expect) to see from Instagram Reels. Using Instagram Reels to market and sell your products has become a good practice. But what happens when the work and time you’re spending on creating and posting these Reels see little in return? 

That is why Kat is sharing the importance of reviewing the numbers that are going into your funnel. She also reminds you why selling online isn’t the only way to sell. Kat shares why you shouldn’t be putting all your eggs into the Instagram Reels basket, and what opportunities are ahead of you when you get creative and sell offline. 

This is an episode that addresses the frustrations of slow growth, but it also provides you with the encouragement that you need to ensure that you’re exactly where you need to be. Tune in, learn how to stir the pot, and let’s get you more confident with engaging in sales activities.

In this episode, we cover:

  • Reviewing the numbers that are going into your funnel
  • Why you can sell your online course offline
  • Why you shouldn’t put all your emphasis on Instagram Reels
  • Why your personal growth equates to more value
  • Why your slow start could be the fuel you need 
  • How stirring the pot means you’re engaging in sales activities

Connect with ushttps://www.instagram.com/theguideculture/  

Kat:

Welcome back to another episode of School of Sales. It’s Kat here, and it’s a car chat with Kat. Hopefully you’re used to these by now, you’re in the car with me. And honestly, if you are in the passenger seat of my minivan right now, and you said Kat, I feel like I am being as consistent as I possibly could be on Instagram, I’m an online business. And I just am not having like as many sales as I want, people are not reaching out to me engaging with me, like I need to to make my business what I know that I want it to be and that it really should be and could be. And I know that this is a real thought, and a real conversation that we would be having because it literally just happened last night. Last night, we went to dinner with a sweet student of ours who’s a graduate and a member of GEICO Academy, which is the continuation program. After you graduate School of Sales, you get to stay in and keep your skills sharp in the right bubble of people, which is the Guide Culture Academy community. So she was in town and we all went to dinner. And she said, you know, I have this business. It’s an online business, meaning she has a course that people can take virtually to learn what she’s teaching, okay. And it was interesting, because we’re listening, we’re asking her questions like, well, what are you trying? What are you doing? And really what it came down to was, she does have some one on one clients. But she also like, outside of that to grow her business.

She is posting on Instagram reels is what she said, she said, I am doing Instagram reels. My goal is to do one a day. But she said I’m probably doing about one a week because of you know, just like normal procrastination things and whatever. So that was her goal, Instagram reels would get the traction to grow her conversations, which should, like let her use her sales skills to grow. And this brought up such an interesting conversation, because when we actually talked about her numbers, okay, so sales comes down to numbers a lot, right? Not just your sales, like your income. But what are the numbers that are funneling into that? So how many people are you reaching? Like, how many leads do you have? And what is 100%? True, that is a sales job. I know that it’s like called marketing, I know that I know what marketing is. I also know that getting people bought in at that top of funnel energy, they are bought into the belief they are bought into you, they trust you. That is a sales job through and through is a hill, I will die on. Because there’s only so much attention getting you can get right what needs to take to the next level is their decision to be bought in from you the decision to trust you all that stuff.

And that is them getting bought in, which is incredible. Okay, so we’re talking about those things. Hey, what are you doing? That’s getting these people engaged if you’re not having enough quiet conversations, and like what’s happening up here. So if you are picturing a funnel, and maybe you’ve heard of a funnel before, from, you know, running ads, or just maybe your conversation funnel in general, obviously, please just picture a funnel, the widest part is at the top. And that is where the most like eyeballs or the most conversations are going to be happening before you qualified to maintain the sale. And most people only think of the sale as that final bottom skinny part. That’s like swiping the card for money. And like I said before, getting them bought in up at the top is what makes the middle part that qualifying them that close. And so it all makes it easier when they’re bought in at the top. So the episode today, what we’re going to be talking about, if you had this exact same question for me, and we’re in the minivan together, I would say, what are you doing at the top? And honestly, what I’m not saying is what’s your marketing plan? What’s your strategy? I’m not even asking you that I’m asking you, what are your sales activities? And listen, I have been in network marketing before this girl in particular is not in network marketing, but I have been in network marketing and I know the feeling of being terrible at it and basically flunking out of network marketing almost, and someone saying hey, do income producing activities, income producing activity that is sales activities. And they’re not calling them that, which is totally fine. Let’s just not confuse the fact that it absolutely is sales activities. And it is those sales activities that you do faithfully, and you do them consistently. And you do them with skill, so that the right conversations happen. The right, qualified ideal clients can come to you. It’s so cool. When you do income producing activities with sales skills, you do sales activity.

So here’s what happened in our conversation last night, what we really came down to was, what are your sales activities? And another way that we say that in School of Sales, in the actual training itself is how are you stirring the pot? How are you stirring the pot and I’m in the car right now leaning Guide Culture headquarters, and lowly, for the very first time called it shaking, the bushes are shaking the tree or something like what are you physically, literally doing to get motion and movement happening in your business. And I understand like how posting Instagram reels totally feels like action. And it is. What’s also true is that there are 1000s, hundreds and 1000s, and potentially millions of ways to stir the pot. And so what I want to tell you, with so much hope and excitement is that you don’t have to grow your business on Instagram. Just because you have an online course does not mean you have to sell online. This person in particular, to give you some context, she sells cello lessons, like the cello, like the big instrument that’s like a giant violin, she sells the ability to learn cello and you can take it as a virtual course. Like how cool is that? Did you know that when you hold a cello a begins like in the right form, it’s like up against your ribcage. When you just pull one string, there’s four strands on a cello if you can imagine that big instrument, when you pull one strand of the deepest note, it changes the vibrations of your heart rate, it changes the vibrations of the way your body is feeling. And it can literally calm you down almost instantly. Which is amazing for people who are actively engaged in improving their mental health. Who are potentially high performers who need to keep themselves steady.

Okay, so one of my point in telling you this is that what this woman is selling is impactful, it is impactful, she can make a huge difference for people when she sells it. And if it’s not selling, that it’s not helping people. So how do we do that? Well, I wanted to differentiate that really quick because having an online course and marketing online do not always have to coincide in there for her in this case, there was a level of hey, can we can use stir the pot in a different way? Like, what if you did not set your goal just to create Instagram reels and if it’s not successful, then you’re not a success. That’s crazy. That’s not true at all. What you have is impactful, it is meaningful. I don’t care if you you know I have the virtual platform or not. Where you will find yourself to be the most successful is wherever people are. And ideally, people whose brains are kind of primed to receive the information you have, like as cool of an impact as cello can have on your mental health, your body, your calmness, your creativity, even, like, that’s amazing. But most of the Instagram followers are probably not primed for that they’re probably not ready for that. But who could be and I hope that you’re not missing the point of what where your people could potentially be. Because what we did what we talked about with her was, hey, you know, what if the people at a music store, the people shopping around in music stores, the owners of music stores.

What if you could offer something to them? What if nursing homes, what if you could offer something to them knowing that the cello actually helps with mental health? What if high school band teachers want to help their kids? Their students feel really healthy and aligned and calm before test day? You know, like, what if there is a different market for you out there that requires you to knock on a door to go in person to break the mold of this Instagram reels, Tik Tok world that we’re living in right now, because I’m telling you, I don’t know for sure, I don’t know the timeline. But I guarantee you that if you’re listening to this podcast 10 years from now, and 2032, we’re gonna look back at Instagram reels like it’s MySpace, I have very little doubt in my mind about that, like, oh, remember, when we dance to trending sounds, it’s all temporary. It’s all changing. It’s all growing and adapting, as technology always does, and it should be doing. What doesn’t change is human nature. The laws of nature like cause and effect, you do the right activities, you get the right result. Human nature being people want to know what’s in it for them. That’s a human nature thing. Right. And then the third thing that doesn’t change is God. God will never change, all these things are consistent.

So when you take that into account, you are so free and potentially even more options than you realized. All these options open up for you to stir the pot in the into activity. I’m going to tell you one example that super tangible from my life, from when I was in network marketing, so that you can get a really good grasp on how creative you could potentially be. Because, honestly, like, my heart for you is to be free for you to take the passion, and possibly even lack of passion, if you’ve not been having traction, traction leads to passion, not the other way around. I will say that again, in a different way, passion does not lead to traction, traction leads to passion. So when you can get into your sales activities, and you can get into creating change for someone like a sale, $1 amount is just result of you helping someone. So when you help people that will be passionate. Because you’re actually doing something with your product or your gift or your service, whatever it is. Okay? That is exciting. And so I’ll tell you a quick example a little bit about my life. And some of I mean, if you’re listening to this, and you don’t even know who I am, then this could be interesting. But for a couple of years, I was very low traction in my network marketing business. All I want to say all throughout, I would say for most of those two years, I had very little traction. I was like, in so much confidence that this could work. I just knew it could work, I saw with my own two eyes, that it was working for people, it just, I was doing something wrong, I did not understand it.

And so sometimes I was like high on hope I was on fire, I was motivated. And I was consistent in doing those income producing activities that I was told, worked, right, for example, messaging a certain amount of people a day following up a certain amount of people a day, you know, hosting events. And he was like, man, like, you know, I’m trying to do this stuff, and something’s just not working. And I will just kind of say as a side note, caveat that activities work when you’re skilled at doing them. And I find that people who are really good at them, but they don’t realize it, it’s because they haven’t experienced that they don’t even know how to explain. So experience can lead to skill, because you were forced to learn something new. An example of this is a network marketing leader that I freaking adore so much. And in her past life, per se, she was a country singer. And she had to hand out she didn’t have to she wanted to get her CD out there. She’s a country singer. And so she would go up and down the aisles of the restaurants of the bars of the you know, the would you call it like the, the place that they were doing the music, and she would go up and down the aisles and she would sell her CDs. And you know that she was in action as a singer in communication with people. And so she was able to hone her skill of selling there and became a network marketing leader no doubt because of the grit and the honing in that sales skill, no doubt.

So a lot of times skilled people don’t even realize how they’re skilled and a lot of times it comes from experience and you cannot teach experience. Okay, so in many ways, I was unsuccessful in my network marketing job. Business like meant the bare minimum quota to stay remotely afloat, but like the income was, you know, anywhere from like $200 to $600, anyways, anyways, it was not good. And I knew that I was not a mediocre person. Listen, but I was getting mediocre sales. And that’s frustrating. And I can see that and a lot of people I talked to as well, they’re thinking I am better than this, like what is happening? So anyway, it was not until I learned sales skills that I could actually take income producing activities and put them to use, like make this conversation useful. Like how can I transfer the knowledge and the excitement I have into someone else, transfer the belief, communicate the product, help them see that it can help them, right. So after I learned sales skills, and I started to think, man, okay, I can do this. I’m excited. Again. I’m hopeful. I think that this can work. I haven’t, like done anything crazy. No crazy results had come. I think, to be honest, one of my biggest memories, like a core memory around this shift from not having sales skills to having sales skills was a girl from college who, in my dietician days I had like, never talked to her again. And she reached out to me. It was shortly after Christmas time, and she wanted to buy from me. And I was like, holy crap. This is working. Like this is something that people are paying attention to now people that aren’t just my friends and family. But other people actually want to buy this product. I’m making it seem good. So anyway, that was awesome.

And the reason I’m telling you this in such depth, is that the story I’m about to tell you, I do not want you to be like yeah, but that’s you can give that to you. You’re the co CEO of Guide Culture. Of course, this happened to you. Oh, no, no, no, my angel. Yes, my business was growing when he was growing by, you know, to scale, like $200 to $600 to $1,000. This wasn’t like, oh, $10,000 months in 90 days. No, no, no. It was growing. Yes, it was like for getting to be like twice as big, three times to speak. But that’s not very big numbers we’re playing with, right. But what you need to know what you need to believe about success is that moving forward is success. When you are in motion, towards your God given gift, towards your purpose, that is success. And what I have said before in a recent podcast is do the next right thing. And honestly, the more you grow yourself now, the more valuable you will be to be promoted.

And I’m not talking about network marketing ranking promotion. I’m not talking about a corporate promotion. Yes, those things are tangible, human things. I’m talking about you being valuable, valuable in your skill, giving your very best right now in the season and the place that you are in right now. Give it your absolute best. Give it all the excellence you possibly can because it’s that excellence that makes you stand out. It’s that excellence that makes people be like, man, I don’t care what ranking you are, who are you? Who are you? That’s amazing. No one cares what your ranking is. Literally, no one even knows what your ranking is. I don’t care how much money you make. It’s about how excellent can you be. So you are worth promoting. Whether someone promotes you by tagging you on Instagram stories. I’ll never forget the first person who tagged me on Instagram stories is that roommate from college, who also never bought from me. But she said y’all should follow Katherine and this is in the first like early days of Instagram stories and tagging. Okay, that’s kind of normal. Now, I guess.

No one had ever, ever said that about me is the first time I’ll never forget it because I thought man, I am worth promoting. Like I’m doing something with more excellence than I was last week, last month. And I’m worth promoting and that was just those are the little wins that you can take with you. I’m getting to my side of the story. Okay, I promise. But I need you to know that where you’re at now is getting you ready and prepared for your next step. I have no doubt in my mind. So my point is the sales were not skyrocketing, but they weren’t growing, they were in motion. I was in motion, the sales activities were actually bringing fruit even though it was just budding, unripe fruit, it was still fruit, so the end of January comes remember that first kind of straight purchase, my friend from college she bought from me, it’s now the end of January. So only about a few months into this whole sales skills thing. I’m fresh, fresh, fresh, fresh, but something in me because in the in the content in this School of Sales content is talking about stir the pot. And so something in my head is like you know what? If I want to do something, I want to put on an event at a Mexican restaurant, or I want to put it on at some place. I had known that people in my industry, were doing separate Mexican restaurants, for example. And they were like talking about the product and all this stuff. And what I thought was, well, I want to do and I want to make this like really fun. I want this to be something that people actually want to come to. It’s not like you invite your friend and like, you twist their arm to come like this is actually desirable. So how can we do that?

So anyways, and I’m making all the calls putting this together, I had no business, it ended up being at a, basically a brand new restaurant, and like our baseball park in Atlanta. And there was a, this is like, kind of embarrassing, but like we did an open bar, okay, and like appetizers, and I just wanted it to be a fun thing people wanted to come to, and I had, I partnered with about five other girls, three or four other girls to do it. And I had no business spending my money on this, if you think about it, like Carl had carried us as a family. And my mom had carried me a lot as far as my business, best customer, you know how it is. And there was just a poll, there was a poll to get out of Instagram. I didn’t even think about Instagram. Honestly, I just saw what is something new and different. That can be done that is fun, and that it stands out in the marketplace. So I ended up getting this event space booked. sold tickets to it. This is bold, I’m sorry, as I retell this, it’s just bold, sold tickets to it. And then, you know, invited people literally asked so many people if they would come and of course, like the majority of people just would not, could not, did not, right. And the night comes, and I mean, me and the girls who through it are fired up, so thankful, so excited. Just like nothing could get us down. Like I don’t even remember who was I do remember who was there but I don’t remember feeling discouraged about who couldn’t come. It just was like gave it we gave it our all to make this thing fun. And so we’re at the at the gathering, and this lady walks up. And I thought she was somebody’s mom. So I said, oh, are you so and so’s mom? And she was like, no, I’m a I’m a leader of this company. And I was like, oh, oh, hi, like, you know, ended up talking to her for something that was on her daughter because she didn’t have one there. And I was like, well, how did you find out about this? And she said, well, I saw your event on Eventbrite. Eventbrite is the ticket website that we use to like, describe the event. And all of a sudden, she said, I saw the event on Eventbrite. And I thought, oh, my gosh, people are finally doing fun stuff again. They’re finally doing fun stuff again. In that moment, I just remember feeling like, yes, like, yes, it is worth it. It is worth it to follow the poll. It is worth it to put yourself out there. And it was such a rewarding experience for someone to feel like, Yes, I saw it, it stood out to me. And now I’m here. And this actually goes back and it’s evidence perfectly if my point that no one cares what rank you are. I was at the lowest possible rank, you could be in this company at the time. I had no business doing it financially. It wasn’t like astronomical, I think I paid like 1000 bucks. Okay, so don’t think I paid $10,000 I think it’s like $1,000. And maybe even less, I don’t know, but I still had no business doing it. And this woman is like, man, someone’s doing something fun. And someone is leading the charge. And ended up building a pretty cool relationship with her.

But the even cooler part, I guess was that a few months later through staying in relationship with this woman is that she had invited me to this corporate event that was local to our area this particular month, and asked me to tell my story on stage. Now how I had seen growth after two years in business. And that is hopefully also some encouragement to you. Because sometimes your slow season, your slow start is the exact thing that will be the fuel and encouragement for a lot of people. The story of being a fast start and the high earner, it’s all kind of an eye roll until you hear someone struggle. So I know that if you’re struggling, good, good, enjoy it. And please gain the skill to get yourself out of the struggle and start struggling toward leveling up instead of getting traction in the first place. Okay? Please join School of Sales, get some skills, have fun in this, let your leveling up be the struggle not you’re getting traction to begin with. So ended up speaking on stage, just that March.

So just a few months later, and this is all within six months of me learning sales skills to begin with. And coming back to our cello player, our sweet girl who has an online course, who feels like she needs to be selling on Instagram in order to sell an online course, it’s just not true. So we’re telling her, hey, get out where the people are, do something different, stand out. And you never know what will happen. You never know who’s waiting on you to show up and they don’t even realize they’re waiting on you. Stirring the pot, remember, it means you’re doing sales activities, activities that could breed and bring in conversations that could lead to business, whether it’s a speaking engagement, and speak for free, oh my gosh, please, offer yourself to speak for free. Right? Like, get out where people are, and you never know what will come of it. The worst thing that can happen is that you’re better because of it. The worst thing that can happen is that you get stronger, you get numb to rejection. That’s the worst thing that can happen. The best thing that can happen is you end up in the right conversation at the right time. You end up being someone that is valuable, a valuable speaker to a group, maybe the EU port open to a high schooler because the cello made them stress less before an exam. I want you to know that you are free. You are free to run your business to market your business.

And I hope when I say market now you hear sales activities, sales activity, sales activity sales activities, because you can post all day long and wonder why no one’s messaging you. Or you could go stir the pot using sales activities. And just see what comes of it how much sharper you get because of it. I promise your life when you do this with a relentless pursuit of just excellence and growth and hope and you stir that pot we say vigorously, continuously aggressively. Stir, stir, stir. Offer to be a guest speaker, offer to be a podcast host. I don’t care if you feel unqualified or not. In fact, I hope you feel unqualified for the things that you’re trying to go after. Because it’s not until you get put in the hot seat like that, that you have to prepare for something that you haven’t done before. And that’s how you know that you’re growing, you start feeling successful, you start feeling that that good pressure to grow. That’s what diamonds are right? Diamond is just coal under a ton of pressure. And that’s why it’s so amazing. That’s why we love them. But they weren’t always that way.

So want you to embrace doing things that are different. Getting out there and breaking out of the status quo posting on reels like yes, do that. Do whatever. And consider what what else is out there. Where are the people who need you, think about it, really just like how the cello player might need to go to talk to music teachers contact them, get their name, contact them on Facebook or LinkedIn or whatever appropriate. Talk to them. They’re people, that’s a sales conversation. That is a sales conversation. They might not be swiping their card with you, but they might say yes, I love the meaning. That is the sale, hello. And nothing will make you high on life. Like a an appointment for a sales conversation. And I hope I hope I hope I hope that you are prepared when that time comes. Because luck in quotes. My fingers are doing the bunny air quotes. Luck is an opportunity meets preparation and I hope you stay prepared. I hope you are getting prepared and staying prepared for when your moment comes. I hope you get creative. I hope you have fun, so, I hope you know that your efforts are not in vain. And like I said, the worst case scenario is that you get better. Like the saying that they, you know, what is the thing about failure, like fail forward. And that saying always bugged me, because it’s like, well, I don’t want to fail. Like, I literally don’t want to keep doing stuff wrong, it is so frustrating.

But when you have skill, when you do this failing forward thing with skill, you can refine and adapt what you’re doing. You can tweak it to be better. But if you don’t really know what to even look for in the first place, then of course, you can’t really refine it and adapt. That’s why I hope that you’re saying prepared, I hope that one day you join School of Sales, and you can feel that you know exactly how to prepare for that big conversation for that big meeting that big presentation. I’m in the thick of creating a very big conversation right now, a big presentation right now. And my one goal, was it the people on the other end of that presentation, when that is the one goal, they will only win. If I sell them on a belief, they will only win if I sell them on a belief. That is it. And I actually have a very eye opening thought right now this is crazy. And then we’re going to wrap it up. This presentation that I am in the thick of preparing for right now came because of the stir the pot activities. Macy and I decided we were going to do about a year ago, we said hey, let’s reach out to everyone we know and see, like how we can help them with content? Like can we do a team call for you? Can we teach your people about sales? Is there a place for that? Would that be helpful for you? In sometimes it works.

And sometimes they said like not right now like whatever, no, they stir the pot activity that sometimes things end up coming out of left field because of that, I never in a million years thought that that question would have led to this presentation. And I’m not saying it’s a direct correlation, I’m just saying that when you plant the seeds, fruit will come in its time, fruit will come in due time when you plant the seed and you continue to cultivate it. It cannot be overstated that you cannot just plant a seed and wait. You cannot just plant a seed and wait, you have to cultivate the seed. That means watering. Watering, it means fertilizing it, it means possibly moving into a bigger pot if you need to. Just know that there is a process and it is normal and it is good. The process is the fun part. It is what makes you happy. It is what makes you passionate. Because remember, passion doesn’t lead to traction, traction leads to passion. It’s the traction of watering your seed of seeing it grow, getting that traction, that’s what makes you happy that you planted. Right? It’s not until you see it’s our budding that you’re happy. If you don’t see your flower budding or your fruit or your garden budding, then you’re frustrated, you’re confused, you’re not happy. But when you do the when you do the, in the gardening case, like the producing activities, right, the producing activities, that’s when you start to see growth, real growth. And that’s when you’re happy in your business.

And I hope it’s been clear that the income producing activities, the producing activities, the sales activities are what you need to be doing by stirring the pot. But getting out there, doing something different, mixing it up and seeing what comes of it. I hope this encouraged you. I’m so proud of you, even for listening to the end of this podcast. Because I know that you are a winner. I know that you want the best for yourself, for your family, for the people in your circle. And you’re just trying to stay the path as a winner. And I just believe that about you that you are a winner. And winners stay in motion. You know, I’ve talked a little bit about skill. And I just hope you know that it is always an open invitation for you to talk to us about School of Sales. And if it’s the right time for you, if it’s the right fit for you, how could it work for your business for your life? And the next cohort is not until February but it will be here before we know it. And I don’t even have an exact date in my head right now. I just know that it’s early February. So February of 2023, to be exact. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you you so much for listening to this episode and we will see you on the next one.

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