What to do when sales are low during a launch (without sabotaging yourself)

Sales feeling a little… meh during your launch? 😬

Before you panic, slash your prices, or convince yourself your offer sucks. Take a deep breath and listen to this.

In this short and powerful episode, I’m giving you a pep talk and practical plan to stay in the game and turn things around.

I'll be talking about:

• What not to do when sales are slow. (and why it matters more than you think)
• How to stay in the energy of your offer’s value, even when doubts creep in.
• The truth about last-minute buyers and why showing up until the end is everything.
• How to use discovery calls to build trust. (without turning into a pushy salesperson)
• Why consistency, belief, and visibility are your most powerful tools mid-launch.

🎧 Press play, take notes, and let’s breathe life back into your launch, you’ve got this. If you enjoyed hanging out with me today, share this episode with a friend who might need a fresh take on goal-setting. And if you have a moment, leave a five-star review. It really helps me keep bringing you awesome content.

Until next time, keep shining and creating a life you love!

Transcript

0:05

Welcome to The Empowered Edupreneur Podcast. My name is Michelle Smit and I'm an ex-teacher turned online business coach for Edupreneurs the owner of Digiteach and a six-figure entrepreneur. I am in love with empowering educators just like you to create freedom filled online businesses and lives they love. If you are looking to uplevel your skills, your finances, your mindset, and change the trajectory of your life as an educator and business, then you are in the right place. Think of this podcast as your weekly dose of business and mindset development to help unlock the infinite potential within you. To play bigger with your life and go after your dreams. We are going to have so much fun together. So thank you so much for pushing play today. Now let's dive in. Hello. Hello. So good to be chatting to you right now. And I am sitting in my new home in Portugal. I'm looking out the window. It's a blue, sunny day and I've just come back from the organic market down the road. I walked down with Mike and we went and bought amazing organic produce and we had this beautiful walk where we walked through this forest and we haven't done that before. This is the first time the sun's shining. It's been raining the whole time and it was just so beautiful, like raw, untouched nature, just like wild. It really reminds me of South Africa and it's wildness very different to the Netherlands, which is super manicured. And here it's just natural, wild beauty and I was just blown away that this is where we live now. I'm living and breathing the visualization of me moving here for so many years, and honestly, I could not feel more happy. I feel ecstatic joy. So grateful to be here and to be just living my dream basically. This really is my dream to live at the sea with my ragdolls, with Mike, with the sun, and to be in a beautiful country surrounded by nature. That is just so important to me. Especially the sunshine, hence me leaving the Netherlands. Because the Netherlands is great. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's just not my place. I need more sunshine, I need more warmth, I need more nature. Like wild nature. I need the ocean. And Portugal has really, really delivered for that. So grateful. So I was thinking today what I wanted to chat to you about, and I think this is something that's coming up a lot. I've had a few clients have launches that haven't gone how they used to go. And so they're potentially having less sales or when they open cart and they open the doors to their course, they suddenly don't have the sales than what they used to have. And then a lot of fear kicks in, a lot of panic kicks in and it's just something that I wanted to talk about today because it is just the nature of business. Not every launch you do is going to be better than your last launch. It's not always going to be that situation. Maybe in the beginning it is. Like every time you launch, it keeps getting better. But sometimes you reach a point where actually your last launch performed better than this one. And sometimes that is just the way it goes, and there's so many factors that affect that. But I'm sure if you have sold courses or you've tried to sell courses and you've tried to get people buying a program of yours or an offering. Even if it isn't a course, an offer and you release it out into the world, and then no one buying, no sales or just very low sales than what you're used to. And then suddenly there's just fear. You're thinking, oh, no one wants my program. No one wants it anymore, or no one wants it at all. Everyone doesn't like me. The mind goes crazy. It starts making all these stories up. Like the economy's terrible. Everyone has no money, everyone's broke. And you go down like such a spiral of despair. And then often when you go down that rabbit hole, you just end up making bad decisions and tanking your launch or sabotaging yourself. So, that's what I want to chat about today. I'm going to give you a couple of things of what not to do during this situation and also a couple of things to do when you have this kind of situation. So the first thing that I want to share is what not to do. And it's really important you don't do this. The first one is do not panic and make decisions out of fear. And this is really the number one sabotage because when we are in fear, we lose a lot of things. We lose our creativity, we lose our magnetism. We start to doubt ourselves. We start to doubt our offer. We start to doubt everything about our stuff. And then when we're in that energy, we start to make really poor choices. And then we start changing things mid-launch . And it's not a strategic decision, it's really just an emotional decision that's coming from a place of discomfort and fear. And when you're coming from a place of discomfort and fear, you're not going to make the best decision for your business, ultimately. So here's the first reminder. Low sales does not mean your offer sucks or that the world's going to end, okay. Obviously, it's a crappy experience. It just means that there's more work to do in terms of your messaging, communicating the value of your offer. Maybe you haven't got enough people in front of your offer, so you haven't got enough traffic or leads in. There's so many things that would be impacting it. It doesn't mean that your offer sucks, it doesn't mean that's anything bad about you. And most importantly, the beginning of a launch is not the be all and end all. A Launch isn't even over until it's over. Sales sometimes come in after the launch as well, depending on if you open the doors later, right? So if you don't have a lot of sales in the beginning, that doesn't mean your launch is tanked. You've still got multiple days to sell, multiple days to show up, multiple days to get your offer in front of people. So don't freak out and start making crazy decisions, please. That's like number one. The second thing not to do, which is what most people will revert back to when they're in a fear space, operating from a place of fear in a launch, is they will suddenly slap on a last minute radical discount or a flash sale, or something to cheapen their offer during the launch. So they've now sold it at a certain price and then they suddenly want to cheapen it halfway through or offer a flash sale or something. And this is just for me, a hard no. And I've seen people revert back to this all the time. And it's normally just from a place of fear and a place of doubt that someone's not going to purchase the product at the full price and suddenly they just want to scramble and make sales. So they're just going to slash the price. And instantly this will erode trust, I believe in your audience. And what is the most awful about this decision is that the people who already bought, if they see that you have then slashed the price. After they've bought, you are sending a message to those people and it's basically like this thing's not worth it. And they're going to be really pissed because they bought and then the next day it's like cheaper, right? That's not going to be good for your branding and for your reputation. And reputation is really important in business. Once your reputation's gone, you can't really come back from that. I have seen coaches and business coaches that I really, really respected do things like that. But also other things. And instantly trust gone. I will not forget it, I'm done. So we don't want that. People can sense that from a mile away. It's clear as day when you start slashing prices like crazy. And people can energetically feel that wobbly energy. So, if you do want to incentivize action, then I'll share with you a few things you can do. But please do not operate from fear and slash your price just to make a couple of sales mid-launch. If that was not part of your strategy, which it likely wasn't, then don't do it. All right, so now for the good stuff, what to actually do when sales are slow. So firstly, I want you to hold the energy of how valuable your offer truly is, and I want you to really visualize and get intimate with your offer and really visualize maybe the past students who've come through it and got an amazing results and tap into the testimonials if you have, and social proof that you have from the offer, the lives that you've changed. And really revisit the work of your offer and how it's going to be impacting people and get very connected to that work. So sometimes you forget about your offer and how amazing it is. So go and acquaint yourself again to it and go remind yourself of how amazing it is. And then what I want you to do is to sell your heart out. So from that energy of you really remembering this thing is amazing, and this needs to get into the hands of all people. I want you to go and remind people why this thing is amazing and why it's worth the investment and why they should be joining it. And I want you to talk about the transformation share stories, show up with conviction. Even if there's doubt lurking behind the scenes, what you want to do is just show up with conviction in the transformation and how you're going to help people. Because people feel that energy and that energy of certainty is very powerful. It's magnetic. So not the kind where you fake it and you're overly doing it because people can feel into it, right? You have to genuinely believe in the value that you're offering. And if you don't genuinely believe in the value that you're offering, then there's another problem at play and that's something else. Then you need to go and look at why is that the case? Are you selling something you believe in? And if not, you need to start doing that, and then you need to change something else. But basically I want you to just show up with genuine excitement for your thing, and I want you to get visible. So more heart, go live, share with excitement. Send the extra email if you need to. Post on the stories of your Instagram. Go in front of the camera and talk to people. Show your face, be bold. Chat with people in the dms. It's not a convincing thing, so you shouldn't come from a convincing energy. I want you to come from an energy of this thing is amazing and I cannot wait to tell people about it because it is so good. That's the energy you want to come with. So that's the first thing. The second thing is keep showing up all the way through to the end. Listen to me and really hear this. Most people buy at the end. I know, sometimes you have an early bird discount and you're like, why don't I have all the sales during my early bird discount? This is so weird. And maybe in your mind it's obviously someone's going to buy it early bird and they're not going to buy it full price. But I'm telling you, I've seen this time and time again. So many people miss the early bird because it's right at the beginning and so often people miss it and they will buy at the end because they just want to get in and they just want to buy, right? What often happens is someone you have an early bird discount and you get low sales during it, and then you start not showing up during the rest of your launch because you think that no one cares. So you just start sabotaging yourself. And that's when you actually tank your launch because you're sabotaging your whole thing. So keep showing up. You're not being annoying talking about it. You're not being desperate talking about it. You're a business owner who wants to consistently share the awesome thing that they have with excitement. So I have had this happen so many times where I have felt the fear and I felt the, oh my gosh, what the hell? All of that. I've gone through all of these experiences. I've gone through every emotion you can imagine. But I've had these launches where in the last 48 slash 24 hours of that launch, I've had basically all of my people by, and I've made 30 K in a day. And that just happens. People buy even right up until the few minutes before the doors are closed, people are buying. What I've noticed from launching for so many years is that you'll have most of the sales on the first day, and most of the sales on the last day. And then the middle's a bit quiet. But I think what's now changed is in the beginning it used to be most sales on the first day and the second most sales would come on the last day. But now most of the sailors seem to come on the last day because people just want to take longer to make the decision. And that's fine. The key is, if you stop showing up and you get like slop or you get like a bit salty so you then don't show up because you think people don't care, they're not paying attention. Then you're sabotaging yourself and then no one's going to be reminded and they're going to forget about your thing. There's going to be minimal excitement around it and people aren't going to buy. So you have to keep sharing that energy of excitement right up until cart close. Right until the finish line. It's like running a race. You're running this long race, you've got no more energy, but you've got a hundred meters ahead of you. You've got that finish line in sight. If you were to just stop running at that point, it would be such a shame and so many people stop running at that point during their launch. They give up mid-launch. They just stop doing all the things and tank themselves. But that's not you. You keep going right up until that finish line and you cross that finish line with such pride that you made it. It's a different energy. So then the next thing you can do, if you're noticing low sales, and this depends on the price point. Because I wouldn't do this for low ticket offers. I would say, if your offer is a thousand dollars and above. Then what you could do is offer a limited number of short 30 minute discovery calls for those who are interested but are not a hundred percent sure the offer is for them. So you can put out like five free calls on your email list in your community, and you can take a few calls. And this just will allow you to have another touch point with people. Give people an opportunity to meet you, and maybe they feel like they need to ask you a few questions and then maybe they just need that extra level of trust. Ideally I would only do this over$2,000 products, but it's fine to do it over a thousand dollars products if it makes a difference. It makes people trust you and then buy. Just offer a handful of them so you're not doing a million calls and position them well. Make sure you mentioned it as a no pressure call or a clarity call for the person who's seriously considering joining the program, but they want to talk things through. And this does two things. So it gives people the safety to voice their doubts and get some clarity and chat to you. And it reminds them that you're a human being behind this experience. And they can speak to a real human offering a real thing. I've had webinar launches where a few people just wanted that extra conversation and I had that extra conversation and then they joined because they felt a lot more trust in the experience. And for some people that is just how it will be. The other thing you could do is offer a surprise bonus an extended payment plan. Because that might be the thing. So if you've got a six month payment plan, you could make a 12 month payment plan or something like that. A surprise bonus that's really juicy that, you know your audience would love. Something that someone would pay for, but you're giving it to them for free. Those are a few other things you could do to spark some more energy in the launch and some more sales. So if the sales are feeling slow, because obviously we're living in a time where things are a bit slower. Across all businesses, all niches, people are seeing slower sales and things like that. It is just one of those times in business that it is a little bit more challenging. So if you are in that space and you've had a launch that hasn't gone well, or hasn't gone hard used to. And you're panicking, then I just want to you to hear this loud and clear. You are not failing. This has nothing to do with you. Don't let that result of your launch mean anything about you as a person or your business or your offer. Your offer's not broken. The economy isn't a complete disaster. No one has money. There are people who have money. There are people who are investing. Your offer actually just needs to be positioned in the right way, and your messaging needs to be really speaking to your people during this time right now. So maybe your messaging needs a little bit of an update and it's outdated and things have changed and you need to update your messaging. There's so many things, and obviously your offer needs to be something that people want and there needs to be a demand in that, obviously. Just know that. This means nothing to do with you and that the world isn't going to end. Sometimes you have a shitty launch, and that's okay. You're a business owner. It doesn't mean anything bad about you as a person, and it doesn't mean that your next launch is going to be as shitty. You just have to learn from the experience. Take a bit of a break afterwards. Fully deliver that launch. Don't give up halfway. Finish the race wholeheartedly. Stay grounded. Stay visible. Stay connected to why your offer is amazing and how you want to help people. Stay committed to why you're doing this in the first place, which is to obviously impact people and make some money. If you can just stay connected to the vision and not so much the dollars in the bank account that'll really serve you. It's just part of being a business. Like it's not always going to be sunshine and butterflies, and that's okay. You just got to ride the wave of our entrepreneurship. And honestly, you'd be surprised at how many people are going to buy at the end. So keep holding the vision. Keep holding the faith. Keep selling your heart out. Don't abandon the mission before the miracle happens. All right, so that is it. That's my little strategy sesh and pep talk for you. Thank you for coming. As always, I love chatting to you and I will chat to you again next week. Bye. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. If you love what you heard today, then be sure to share it with me by leaving a five star review so I can continue delivering these goodies. If you aren't already following me on social media, then come tune into some daily inspiration on Instagram by following @_digiteach_ or visiting my website at digiteach.biz. I appreciate you so much, and I can't wait to connect with you in the next episode. In the meantime, go create a business and life you love.