Why Your Offer’s Messaging & Positioning Isn’t Converting (And What to Say Instead) with Chelsea Quint

Colie: Hello. Hello. Welcome back to the podcast. Okay, so I promised that she was gonna come and now she is here. If you have missed the multiple episodes this year where I have talked about my new, brilliant, amazing fractional CMO, her name is Chelsea and she is here to talk to us today about sales. Related to everything else that we have been discussing inside of this series, and so you guys are gonna get like a glimpse of probably why I hired her, and what it is that she actually does for me that I no longer have to fucking think about.

Chelsea, welcome to the podcast.

Chelsea: What a delightful intro. I also, I’m realizing, I think I forgot to tell you, have I told you that I’ve sent, my grandmother a couple of the episodes where you mentioned me? I did because I knew she would appreciate it. Yeah. So you’ve got, you’ve got a fan who will never hire you. Probably. I don’t know.

She’s like written a book in her 80s and like self -published. So who knows? Maybe she will. She might need systems at some point in her life, but yeah, I have shared those episodes because I knew, you know, my grandmother doesn’t really get what I do. And so that was a great example to be like, Hey, it’s, it’s kind of real.

Someone else made a podcast about it. Here you go, Gran.

Colie: Well, that’s lovely. I will say, those of you that are not watching on YouTube, I looked a little horrified because when someone says they sent an episode to their grandmother, I’m like, holy fucking shit. How many cuss words did I say in that episode?

Chelsea: swear around my grandmother as well. She does not. She’s quite proper. She’s very proper and does not swear. But, uh, yeah, I’ve long since. She’s, she’s aware of it. She’s, yeah.

Colie: I feel like, I mean, we’re gonna get into what we’re gonna talk about, but I actually, I think this is related though. I feel like all of us struggle to explain to people what we do in our job on the internet, especially those of us that help other business owners. So. I got a lot of doctors in the last couple years, like brand new doctors to me, and you know, they’re shooting the shit.

They ask you, what do you do for a living? And my answer as a photographer used to be really easy. Oh, I take family photos and then I would always clarify it with, but I don’t take outside portraits like I come to your house. And I photograph you while you and your kids make pancakes in the morning. And like that is a visual.

And my husband repeats it to everybody at his job. And so now I feel a little bad ’cause James actually doesn’t know how to explain to people what I do. And I feel like no one else does either. So all these doctors, ah, This is me. Oh, you know how you have, that program that will let me schedule my appointment, pay my, copay, fill out a questionnaire.

I was like, I set that up for small business owners. That is how I describe what I do now. I mean, you know, it’s bigger. There’s strategy, but like for my doctor, I’m like, basically I set up the portal for other small business owners like photographers, like website designers, blah, blah, blah.

Chelsea: love that. Do you feel like… They get it because you can tell when someone immediately kind of glosses over and is like, I don’t have a follow -up question. I do not understand what this person just said to me and or versus when they’re like, yes, cool. I know where to file you in my brain. Do you feel like they get it based on that?

Colie: I do feel like the doctors get it. I mean, if, if they’re not a doctor, I don’t explain it in that way, but I mean, literally everybody that I hire mostly has like some kind of software, right? Or I flip it on the back, and if they have, if they, if I’m talking to somebody who doesn’t like, have software like that for the business that they’re running, I will say something like, have you ever hired a photographer?

Did they allow you to schedule? I mean, so I flip it into like what I used to do and how the software would help a photographer, and then they’re like, oh yeah, that makes sense. And sometimes I get the, no. It was like a lot of fucking emails back and forth. And then I start laughing ’cause I’m like, yeah, then they

Chelsea: That’s what go back to them and refer them to me because they need me. I love that. I love that.

Colie: I feel like this is kind of what we’re gonna talk about today. So guys, what we’re gonna talk about today is basically how the fuck to figure out what to say to your audience when you are trying to sell to them.

That is what today’s episode is, and I think we can all agree we struggle with that so much. I mean, I feel like I know what to say, but then I question whether or not it is the most effective way to actually get somebody from discovering me to buying from me. I, I think I talk about my offer well, but I don’t know that I do it to the degree that it needs to be to convert someone to A to B in the fastest path possible, which is why Chelsea is here.

So Chelsea, what’s like the first thing that we really need to like get our head around if we are struggling with what to say when we are trying to sell our services?

Chelsea: first things first, you already identified this. First things first, I want you, I want everyone to acknowledge and like, take this as a truth in your brain and your body. We all struggle with this, and it makes sense, cause you’re too damn close to your own shit. You’re too close to it and you understand things and value things and have a different lexicon and literally you have a different mental model of your work, the offer, the value of your offer.

You have a completely different mental model also of like the internet and how you relate to emails and how you relate to threads, all of these things. You have a different mental model than the internet. Customers that’s normal. It’s part of what creates the friction. And all that means, though, is that we need to insert.

A process and really kind of a translation layer around. How do I translate my expertise, my knowledge, my genius, my relationship to emails, blah, blah, blah, all these different things. How do I translate that into? This is the work that I do, and this is what my ideal person needs to hear based on their current mental model of the problem of…

My photography business is a mess and I have to email 17 times back and forth to book a freaking project, right? Like we need to be able to speak to them in the language they are using before they’ve ever worked with you, before they’ve ever hired you. So that starts though, because a lot of times I tend to work with genius visionaries who are at times I mean, I say this about myself too, who are at times a bit bratty.

I don’t actually feel this about you, Colie. I’ve never felt it about

Colie: I mean, I’m like, she is really couching her fucking words. Y’all continue.

Chelsea: I genuinely haven’t. I would, I would say it if I had, I feel like you are. And I think some of it is like, you’ve, you’ve, you’ve been in the industry long enough and like been in business for yourself long enough. And I don’t know, maybe it’s the professor vibes.

Like you’ve just got a grit that like you’re, you’re, you are, you’re seasoned. I feel like you are seasoned.

Colie: I feel like we’re not gonna bring in human design, but I feel like after I learned my human design, I feel like that also explained a lot of, because my ideal audience does want me to tell it like it is, and so I feel like my struggle and when I start to sound. Inauthentic is when I’m trying to say it nicely.

And so in this last year, I’m just like, fuck it. I don’t have time to say it nicely. You have shitty ass systems if you want to continue with those systems, have at it. But if you are ready to do something about it, let’s work together. Like, I, I don’t wanna, you know, that your systems are shitty. It’s whether or not you’re gonna take action and do something about it.

Like, I can’t be nice anymore. Like it’s a, it’s a, here we go. Or no, you’re still stuck in indecision and like, I can’t deal with indecision. Like I am here to help you make decisions, but if you are not ready to like be in that place and you just wanna, you know, think about it somewhere. No, I’m not your girl.

Like I’m not.

Chelsea: Absolutely. And so this is where I think I love to start for People who are like so attached to their offers and like have a really strong sense of what the offer is and have a really strong attachment and like opinion about what the offer is and what the value of their services and things that like I know is valuable and I know what people need.

I really like to start with the offer promise and I think of it, I’m a creative at heart, so I think of it really in these sort of like two layers when I’m building for people, when I’m like working with people. Your offer. Is the first place where you are the artist and I like for you to have complete permission to drop into, okay, I’ve got this offer.

I want to know, like, what do you want that offer to be? What do you want that offer to deliver? What are the results? What are all of those things? And get into the entire messy creative process of like, what’s your dream offer and what does it deliver and what are all the things it does? That’s where you get to be the artist.

You’re the creative. We’re not even necessarily thinking about the ideal customer. But where a lot of people get funky is that’s where they stop the process and they end up describing the artist iteration of this is what I want to deliver to you. It’s like if you let any author name their book, generally authors are not really actually allowed to name their books.

Like a lot of other like marketing professionals help name books and subtitle books because authors create things that people don’t want to buy. Artists, entrepreneurs, we tend to name things or describe things or create offer promises that are rooted in too much of our artistry and expertise and not enough of them.

So we always start with the offer promise, but then we gotta go into, okay, cool, cool, cool. You’re telling me that, Oh, I’m trying to think of an example from this week. Hang on, so I was talking with someone who does, like both money mindset coaching and bookkeeping for entrepreneurs.

So it’s both there, like, financial advice, money, coaching and bookkeeping. And it’s from a feminine. Energy lens, so playing with the concept of like, money is divine and like those kind of elements. And they’re saying, their, their initial offer promise was like, feel confident around making your money decisions so you can, Colie can imagine what I, I, I, I initially, I did couch my feedback initially.

I was like, I’m so sorry for how harsh this is about to be. Nobody gives a shit about confidence. And I didn’t know at first what the price point was. I was like, I don’t know what you’re charging, but like, Nobody wants to buy confidence. I know that you know that matters. I know that your clients, after they’ve worked with you, are telling you, I’m confident with my money and now I can take this vacation, book this thing.

I’ve invested in my 401k. I started a 401k as an entrepreneur. Or they’re not for whatever they’re called. I can’t remember what. Are they for, we have 401ks?

Colie: Oh, I mean, it could be sep, it

Chelsea: different. Except, yeah, it’s different, yeah. Um, this is, this is why I have financial professionals who handle it for me and just take the money out of my account because I don’t know what I’m doing.

But we, we, that’s not a valuable. That’s not valuable to ideal customers. Right? And so that’s where we then need to zoom in on what do your ideal customers. Need, think they need. and know they want and in what language are they using?

Colie: I am gonna say yes to all that. But also, hey Kara, if you’re listening, I am gonna completely out the conversation that I had with Kara about confidence because I feel like it plays into this very well. So everyone, you listen to these case study episodes, right? I invite almost every one of my clients, whether they come on right after they finish systems and session or you know, a couple months down the line like it was with David.

But every person that I interview, those. Podcast like recordings get listened to by two different people. Well, actually now that Chelsea’s here, three different people on my team. Hailey listens to it while she’s editing it. Kara listens to it while she’s writing the case study and Chelsea listens to it to like see what people are saying so that we can modify the offer.

Think about the offer promise, all the things that she’s talking about today. But Kara Vox me after she listened to someone’s, and I’m not gonna say who it is because that would just be rude, but she’s like, I don’t understand Colie. She’s like, I am in systems in session. I love you. I love what you do, but I didn’t pay you $2,500 for confidence.

She’s like, why is everybody saying that? That is the result that they got? And I started laughing and I’m like, they do. And I realized I had really started talking about this confidence as like not an offer promise, but maybe like a tangential result of being in the program. So you lovingly were like, okay, but no.

What are they confident in? That’s what we need to talk about raising their prices using a system that they were scared to use before. So I just wanted to bring this up, that yes, we’re not selling confidence. when every single one of them is mentioning how much systems in session increased their confidence as a business owner. I can’t, I can’t ignore that because all of them are saying it and I’m, I’m letting you guys hear it when they say it in the interviews, but I just thought that it was interesting that you brought that up and we had that whole side conversation as a team.

Y’all, I mean, I think Emily even got a piece of that like. Why are all of these people saying it? And so, yes, that is like not an offer promise, but it is certainly a result that many people have said. And so I do have to make sure that that is not what I’m focusing on because again, I can’t sell confidence.

That’s not something that you can bottle up necessarily and sell as an offer result.

Chelsea: I mean, you can, but it’s not a $2 ,500. And particularly, like, could you 15 years ago? Yes. 2010, 2011, confidence like early stage blogging, like, you could actually possibly sell confidence to a degree. It would be probably a lower price point even in like the first wave when I came up 10 years ago, like, there were some offer promises that performed well that.

Would not play today. There were many, many that would not play today, including mine. Most of mine, most of my early days. Um, but confidence is, I don’t want anyone to feel like I love this example because I, I don’t want you to feel like you can’t talk about confidence. What are my, uh, like, my red flag words, confidence, empowerment, Clarity, yep.

Yeah, those are three, those are three big ones. Confidence, empowerment, and clarity are three words that, yes, are ubiquitous results across many of the people that I work with. No matter like what service you provide, what industry you’re in, a lot of the times empowerment, confidence, and or clarity are byproducts of what you are doing.

And those are not $2 ,500 results.

Colie: Yes.

Chelsea: Where we get to, consider weaving this in, is confidence. This is always like the prompt that I give peeps when I see clarity, empowerment, confidence, or any of these other words. The prompt is always, okay, confidence so that you can what? Raise

Colie: Raise your prices.

Chelsea: prices, get more referrals, get more re -signs, get more re -bookings, right?

All of those things get more rave reviews. I gotta have you

Colie: She’s gotta get all the three R’s

Chelsea: get all the Rs. when we can identify And you might even be able to do this by looking at your testimonials. What do people say if you’re doing interviews, right? Uh, I see everyone says confidence. Okay, cool. What did that confidence let them either start doing, that they wanted to do, raise prices, stop doing, that they didn’t want to do, or keep doing in a way that is now less painful, friction -y, anxiety -inducing, whatever it is.

So that is the way that you can start to identify confidence in yourself. Thank you. Bye. So a way that you’re going to be more specific and stand out in your industry for one, because you’re speaking more directly to their lived experience by identifying this is the sort of big picture, intangible, fluffy result that I’m going to give you confidence.

Yay. But when you pay me $2500. You best believe I want confidence so that I can, you know, raise my prices or to pull another example, confidence so that I can, if you are a personal trainer, um, feel like comfortable wearing shorts when it’s hot as fuck outside. Right? Feel comfortable in your body. Or like, go on a first date without panicking for six hours before and not being able to, I’m just thinking, the examples my brain always comes up with are so random.

Right? But like, that is what allows you to start to tap into, you know, me going on a first date without losing a day to anxiety. That starts to be closer to 2 ,500 bucks. Yeah, okay, I’m interested in that. And actually feeling good about the first date and not rehashing it for hours later or wearing shorts all summer so I’m not sweating and like feeling uncomfortable in my body if I want to like, if I want you to hire you as my personal trainer.

Like, that’s where we start to tap into more value and can start to connect to the language our people are already operating inside of and the lived experience they’re already operating inside of and the words and solutions they already value. Thank you. Mhm.

Colie: Yes to all of that. I mean, and I feel like, I don’t wanna say that I have a leg up, but it’s, I’ve been interviewing my clients for five plus years even before this podcast existed, because when I’m telling my clients, no, you should interview your clients and see what they’re saying. Again, as part of your systems, like I want this to be on the back end after you’ve worked with them so that they can get the rave review all of the Rs that we’ve already talked about, but.

I think that they pushed back and they were like, well Colie, it’s just so easy for you. Have a podcast. And I’m like, I did 15 of these interviews like way before I even had a podcast. In my mind. I hopped on Zoom with my clients for 20, 30 minutes, and this was mostly to do interviews about the course when I was, you know, trying to really nail down what that offer promise was.

’cause yes, your Dubsado gets done, but like, what does that enable you to do? I feel like for the longest, I never made that connection of. Yes. I’m telling you, your Dubsado is going to be set up. Yes, I’m giving you the means to do it easily, but like what does that mean for your business and what does that mean for you?

And I feel like only now 13 years in business is that like second nature when I’m thinking about what I do for you. And I think it’s really only because like in the last year I’ve worked with lots of people that keep pushing me on, but what is the result? And I mean, even with Emily, I think it was like five months ago, she was like, okay, but no, what are the results?

And I was like, I rattled off some stuff. And she’s like, go sit in a corner. Come back when you like, basically when you have this list written and then that was the list that ended up, like we were talking about my results sequence the other day. That’s where, you know, those very specific results came from.

And yes, those are all things that maybe one person doesn’t want all seven, but I guarantee you one person is gonna see themselves in at least two or three of those results, and two or three is probably enough to pay me $2,500.

Chelsea: Correct. And I love that you, brought up that sequence because one thing I find when I try to, when I’m working with people to like hone in on the promise is inevitable feedback of, it does so many things. You want me to write one thing? Yeah, so list them, exactly.

And that is the process that I have people do. List them all, and then go through, and this is more art than science. It is not, like, there’s not a correct score. The correct score is gonna come from once we’ve got like, you know, 60 to 90 days of data of like, cool, is it working? No? Great. Let’s tweak it.

Let’s see what data tells us, right? But, um, I want you to look at what are all of the results and then from the lens of your ideal customer and understanding their lived experience, what they already know about their problem, how they define their problem, what they’d be Googling about their problem, what books have they tried to get to solve their problem, whatever, what freebies have they downloaded to solve it, et cetera, et cetera.

Based on that, I want you to look at what is the value of each of these results that I am offering them. and look at, okay, what is going to be the most valuable result for my person based on my understanding of them. And we also, if you like do that first and then look at, okay, cool, cool, cool. What’s my price point?

If my price point is we’re going to keep using $2 ,500, for the last couple, oh, it’s not, is it?

Colie: Oh, by the time this airs it will be 3000.

Chelsea: Three thousand. Yep.

Colie: whole time. Oh, well hey guys, it’s probably 3000 now.

Chelsea: probably three thousand by now. And if you, if, if not, you should buy it immediately. Go check if you’ve been on the fence. If, if you’re, you’ve got one of the last spots, but, I’m going to keep using 2 ,500 cause that’s where my brain is.

So if your offer is 2 ,500 bucks, we want to make sure to make your sales life easier, that the value perception. This is perception. It is not rooted in like science or logic as much, but the value perception of the result you’re telling people you give them is, I would say, at least double it. So I want you to feel confident that I’m putting out an offer promise that says, $2 ,500 is likely to get you.

We can’t necessarily make guarantees, we can’t, but it’s gonna yield $5 ,000 worth of results. That’s easier sometimes if we’re playing in like financial spaces or if we’re playing in like actual fiscal ROI. It’s perhaps a bit easier to quantify, but even still, if you are a pet photographer, we’re talking about pet photographers, if you are a pet photographer, what is the value?

As someone who is deeply obsessed with her pets, I can speak, like, deeply, problematically, concerningly, she might need help. Um, but as someone who is deeply obsessed with my pets, I can say, yes, if I think about, I don’t like to think about the times when they won’t be here, but having photos of them and keepsakes and the moment of remembering the experience of doing these photos with them, I mean, it’s invaluable.

It’s at least $5 ,000, like, no question. My wedding photography, as well. I’m obsessed with my wedding photos, almost 10 years later, absolutely love them. I just remembered someone asked me to send them some the other day, and I need to send them to them, and I was like, you’re asking a bride to send her wedding photos 9 years later?

Okay, twist my arm. How many is too many? You must give me a limit, because I will, I will overdo it. Um, but right, like. I don’t, at this point, I don’t even remember what we spent. I do know it was the biggest line item, because we DIY’d a lot. It was the biggest line item for sure, because the value for me was inside of, I know I’m going to cherish this.

Not for, you know, it’s not going to give me, I think it was around 10 ,000. It’s not going to give me $10 ,000 back. Like that’s not going to be the ROI, but being able to reconnect to this moment viscerally and remember it and feel all of those pieces. Yeah, deeply, deeply worth. And yes, to double it. Yes, would say nine and a half years in would say, yes, it is worth.

It would be worth $20 ,000 to me now. I didn’t have it back then, so I definitely would have struggled to make that work, but it is definitely worth it to me. So that’s where we want you to be listing what is the value of each of these results from the lens of your ideal customer. And when you find one that’s like, holy smokes, invaluable, I couldn’t even quantify it.

They wouldn’t even know. Gorgeous. That’s where we want to start to play with your promise.

Colie: So coming around to audience clarity, ’cause this is like the flip coin of the offer clarity, I feel like. Again, I have a leg up because I’ve had hundreds of clients in the system side of my business. By now, I mean some were, you know, one price tag for done for you. I now do the done with you. I had the course, I have templates.

I have hundreds. I can always go back and ask those people questions, but I know the thing every time we get into the. What does your ideal client want? There are those of us that are privileged to have lots of people to go ask, and there are those of us that are like, but I’m a newbie. I don’t have those people yet.

What should I do? So how do you get audience clarity when you actually don’t have any clients that have done the actual offer that you are working through the clarity for?

Chelsea: Yes. So… Option one, I will shamelessly plug, hire someone who has too many mirror neurons and is an actor who’s made a job out of doing messaging. So hire someone who will do this work for you because you can use your imagination. A lot of the times, sometimes clients come in with a lot of data and I can use their like voice of customer research, sure.

A lot of the times clients come in with like, this is a new offer. I don’t know what I’m, I don’t know. I don’t have any data. And so I’m using, there are also strategic things you can do, but you can either hire someone who can do this or genuinely use your own imagination. When I do this, I literally use tools from my acting and creative writing background.

Like, I literally. Create a character study of, I created a character study of, uh, Colie’s Ideal Customer. And I think through, okay, and I do like, journaling around, okay, so I’m a photographer. And I am stressed because I’m writing all of these emails and I’m like, maybe doing this part -time, but it like, is stretching into full -time.

I created this entire persona. To live as and think as and write as into, okay, what is their lived experience and. I mean, all of our brains work differently, so maybe that won’t work for you. I do believe, like, we all, you played make -believe as a kid, right? Like, I think you can do it. I think you can do a minimum viable.

And, if you’re using AI, you can also set up a prompt where it’s like, Okay, I would like you to imagine that I am a… Describe some details of your ideal customer, just like the logistics that, you know, I am a photographer with pain points, ABCD, EFG, and desires X, Y, Z, and I’m making about this much money and I’m doing this and ask me questions about what my lived experience, ask me questions that would be, you know, relevant to my lived experience and go back and forth with an AI tool to help you start to shape this, right?

So those are some initial like More creative, imaginational, imaginal. I don’t know if either of those are actually words. But I, uh, imaginational, imaginal spaces to play in. More tactically. I’m going to plug these two, these next couple of concepts I originally learned from my first ever mentor, Regina Enajano.

Who is still in the space by Regina is, uh, where, where she hangs out on most of the internet and she is the absolute cat’s pajamas. you can also be a proper creep. Reddit, Threads, this is a newer one, Amazon, uh, or any like big book seller reviews. So there is a, there are a lot of people posting a lot of very vulnerable questions, desires, needs, wants all over the bloody internet that once you know, okay, let me look at the, um, wedding photographers.

Like, wedding photographers helping each other out in business, subreddit. Or the pet parents subreddit. Or the small business owner subreddit is one that I will creep, right? Or, search for some of those keywords on threads and see, okay, what kind of conversations are happening here? What questions are people asking?

What are people venting about? What are people mad about right now? What are people saying are hot takes? What’s getting like traction when people are saying it? And then I also love making a list of the top, um, and again you can have AI do this or just Google it, but what are the top, like topics that, of, of books that would be related to your niche?

This isn’t always, I’m like, would this work for photographers? It might, not all of these will work for everyone. Right, because, like, what would you’d have to be looking at? Like, what would my people who are going to have families and want me to take photos of them with pancakes? What books would they be reading?

This would be tougher for that. But if you work in personal development, any kind of consulting situation, um, any a lot of if you’re in any B to B. Industry that is probably going to be easier and some B to C. It’s going to be easier for you to go and look. What are the top, you know, 10 to 15 books my people would have read or considered looking at and go read both the 5 star reviews and the 1 star reviews.

You can read all of them if you want to, but I want you to at least do 5 stars and 1 stars because 5 stars tells us. This is what the humans like. This is what they’re looking for. This

Colie: this is what they don’t like.

Chelsea: And this is what they don’t like. And that then turns into, okay, great, great, great. I can solve for what they don’t like.

Here’s how, so those are, those are my house.

Colie: I mean, I feel like we haven’t really gotten around to organization, but so you’re getting clarity on your offer, you’re getting clarity on your audience, and then the middle is basically what you need to say to your audience in order to bring them from discovering you to a different stage of buying.

But I feel like the best thing that I ever did was. Keeping it all together because we do these things in spurts when we’re motivated and like sometimes we can’t remember what we looked up six months ago to bring it now. And that’s why, I mean, I’m in love with our new Notion dashboard, which funny enough, I interviewed Ania earlier this morning about that

Chelsea: I love that. I love that.

Colie: But I mean, having all of that information together and somewhere that you can access. And when Chelsea, when you work with Chelsea and she creates you this amazing dashboard where she’s done all of the work for you, like you have an entire page in notion on your offer clarity, your offer, promise, your audience clarity, and then she has these things of.

Like the season, the seasonal urgency, that’s what you call it, the seasonal urgency of like four photographers. For example, in the current month when we are recording this, which is the end of March, a lot of you guys are over. How busy Fall was. You’re also in this period where you are feeling stressed because you are not as busy as you hope to be, need to be.

However it is that we say that. So you feel differently about setting up systems now than you did two months ago on the end of busy season. Just like you feel differently about setting up your systems in July. And so I think part of the thing of working with you that, I mean, I knew these things. Having them written down and organized in a way that forces me to be like, okay, Colie.

But what you said in October is not gonna work. Now, they are not feeling that that is not the language that is going to get them to move on buying this offer. What is it now? So, I mean, I feel like organization is just you. You got all these pieces. You gotta figure out to put it in one place so that every time you’re thinking about your marketing plans, 60 days out, 90 days out, you have somewhere to go to kind of remember the shit that you already researched, that you already wrote down that may have done well or not.

’cause I mean, I, I almost interrupted Chelsea at one point, but I didn’t, you, you guys know, I like to, the first time that someone says data on this podcast, I like to say, okay, it was like 20 minutes in and we said the word data. I mean, data is important. You don’t do any of these things related to selling in a vacuum, and so you do need to constantly be looking at, okay, well, I said this thing and I got four sales.

Yay, woo-hoo. But why

Chelsea: tell, exactly.

Colie: sales?

Chelsea: And the more you have, because a lot of the times I’ve found, and this was my reality for the first, goodness, many years of my business, whenever I got success, I couldn’t. figure out why I was doing best guess iterations of why largely because I had no organization around where I was doing my messaging.

I had, I had my data, but I was not necessarily good at like organizing it. So I could look at these little pockets of, okay, this particular email created for sales, but I wasn’t yet looking at, all right, this email created for sales or this thread created for sales, whatever. But what was the ecosystem around it?

What was the architecture leading up to it, right? And I, I think that one of the things that helps by having an organized messaging dashboard per offer, I would say, I do like having it per offer. or at least like concept, you might have like kind of one big one and then like a smaller zoomed in one.

But having that also helps you interpret what the data is telling you. Thank you. Because when you see, all right, this email worked well or didn’t work well. Okay, cool. Let me go back and look at. The different emotional season and just remind myself. Okay, cool. Cool. Cool. I was sending this in March and this is what like my people’s lived experiences.

This is what they’ve been saying because I’m updating my dashboard when I see relevant things on threads or I have updated client data. I’m updating it periodically. It allows you to make sense of the data. In a way that is even if even those of us who are like, really good at, like, Google analytics and looking at, what is it?

Hot jar, like, looking at the behind the scenes, like, even those of us who have the most data. Can still be flying a little bit best guess of, like, well, huh. Not hot jar and this says this and the Google says this, but I can’t quite tell where it came from. And like, what does it mean? It helps when you are able to zoom out and see I’ve got the overall organization of my messaging strategy, my offer positioning strategy, the lived experience of my people, what’s going on, why I wrote this post at this time, and then I can start to see you can add in that strategic context in your data analysis, which will help you make better decisions going forward.

Thank you so much.

Colie: And I feel like I just wanna sprinkle in. This is not Chelsea telling you that you have to be visible on Instagram and threads 10 times a day. Like

Chelsea: would rather eat bugs. I would rather eat bugs. me back to Fear Factor.

Colie: I’m really only bringing that in because when we talk about organizing this messaging and like doing all of these things. What Chelsea’s talking about to me is a lot of work, like gathering the data, writing the stuff.

But what she’s not saying is you do all this work on your positioning and your messaging, and then you gotta go create hours and hours and hours of content. Like having worked with Chelsea, I know that that’s not what she’s saying, and I just wanna make sure that we are making that clear and abundant because you want to be thoughtful.

Intentional with what you’re putting out there, and then you want to make sure that you are really thinking about how it landed, what that means before you make huge, you know, pivots in your messaging for the next time.

Chelsea: Absolutely. And I will… So the, the name of my initial, like, Sprint -style offer is the Say Less Sales Campaign Sprint. I intentionally, it took me a while, it had bad names. I, this is usually the case for me. It has like useless descriptive names. My things have useless descriptive names until I find what their name is.

Um, and I just accept that and keep moving. And so you can sell things with bad offer, or with bad names. You can sell offers with bad names, for the record. But, It’s called Say Less. Yes, because I was delighted when I came up with it and like, it’s cute and

Colie: I think it’s cute.

Chelsea: Yeah, it’s cute. And it obviously makes for like a lot of cute, there’s lovely wordplay inside of the marketing of it.

But, from an actual offer proposition, value proposition standpoint, I really do believe so much of what I have seen in nearly a decade of entrepreneurship, and doing Almost entirely online marketing, content marketing, attraction based marketing, very, very little paid, mostly organic. I’ve found that most of us default to more as the solution.

To. A sales problem. I’m not having the sales I want. I am not having the visibility I want. My list hasn’t grown and sometimes we do need to post more. Most of the people I work with do need to sell more again. You’re an exception. Um, you are very good at it, but most of the people I work with need to talk about their offers more.

Um, but we don’t necessarily need to just post, you know. Five stories a day. Five reels a day. Five anythings a day. Saying, buy my stuff, buy my stuff, buy my stuff, buy my stuff. Like, that’s not it, that’s not gonna work well. But also, throwing… spaghetti at the wall and trying to see like, okay, what works entirely because social media has damn good marketing and has like created this giant con that we think it’s the only place that we can like generate leads lies.

It’s a big con. Social media just has damn good marketing. We create this reality where like, we’re so many people’s marketing is reactive from the space of, ah, shit. I know I need to post something. Okay. Fuck. Let me hurry. I’m supposed to be posting five times a week. All right. Post the thing. What do I do now?

What do I talk about? What this kind of strategy work? Cause like it is work. Building these dashboards tends to take me the act. Once I go through the intake process four to five hours, it takes me to like do all of the research and build everything out. Usually. So, yes, it is work. I say that not to scare you.

Also, as I’ve said, like, I’m a huge nerd. I do, like, weird acting exercises inside of that. So, you don’t have

Colie: want a camera in your office when you build the next

Chelsea: I’ve filmed it. I’ll, I’ll film it again. I’ve filmed one. I’ve filmed it before. Um, yeah, it looks pretty crazy. Very beautiful mind and weird, like, It looks nuts. I absolutely

Colie: Well, I mean, and I’m not gonna say that you look nuts, but that first call, it was very funny because, you know, we were

Chelsea: We had the thing, yeah.

Colie: on your whiteboard on the side. Yeah. I mean, it was actually, it was very beautiful mind. I would’ve

Chelsea: very beautiful mind. Yeah. Bye.

Colie: Okay. So all of these things that we’ve talked about, and I have a few other people inside of this series, um, Kelsey’s actually coming up next and she’s gonna really talk about this warmup period, because I feel like you teed her episode up perfectly in that.

You know, it is not about selling 24 7. Your audience does need to know more about you, more about your offer, more about what they will get from your offer before you ever put a link in front of them. And so, you know, stay tuned, everyone. This series is gonna take you through the wide gamut of selling to your audience.

But Chelsea, I mean, I wanna kind of come back around to like wrap up what you and I are talking about specifically in that. People are always struggling with what to say and when to say it, and I think that you’ve given us a lot of tools today in how we can think about what the offer actually does.

What our audience actually needs. And then making sure that when you are putting together content, which doesn’t have to be a lot for your audience, that you are constantly considering both before you hit publish. So is there anything else that we should like kind of pay attention to? I would say. Number one, if someone’s gonna try to DIY it, or number two, if they are actually looking for someone to hire and help them with this, because I’m gonna say one more thing guys.

Um, if you’re listening to this, I hired Chelsea for the first thing. I hired her for the dashboard. I wanted something that I could go back to and reference. She gave me my dashboard, I gasped. We had a call where I got to ask you questions and I didn’t really ask you a fucking question. I was like, no, can you just tell me about the other,

Chelsea: You immediately started the call with, I was like, I am not prepared for a sales call, but here, yeah, I was like, this is not what I was, I’m, I’m beautiful mind Chelsea right now. I was not prepared. I was like, I’ve got my like markers and I’ve got my post -its. I was not ready for that. So the additional thing that I want you to consider Offer Promise, 

\ the three frames I want you to consider here are, first, Third, Fourth, Based on your understanding of your ideal customer, who they are, you’ve maybe done the weird acting exercise, you’ve gone through some of these questions, you understand them to a degree to the best of your ability.

I want you to always ask yourself whenever you’re creating sales or marketing content, what does this person need to know, believe, or experience in order to take the action I want them to take? So this might be book a sales call. It might be subscribe to my podcast. It might be listen to this episode, right?

It’s going to vary. And so that’s also always going to be something I want you thinking about is what action do I want them to take based on where this content is going? What results I want in my business right now, et cetera, et cetera. So that’s the first one. Then I want you to think about their, what I call emotional schedule.

That’s where I want you to think about, we kind of teased around this, but When Colie is saying, you know, photographers thinking about getting their systems done right after busy season in January feels very different than in March, where you’re feeling the strain feels very different than in September, October, when you’re back in the weeds and you’re back in busy, busy season.

So I want you to be thinking about what is my person’s lived experience either right now, if you’re creating content, that’s going to go out today, or if you’re a little ahead. What’s their experience going to be for when this comes across their feed or lands in their inbox in May, in June, in July, what is that going to be?

And again, these pieces play together. What do they need to know, believe, experience based on their July brain, their July relationship to their problem, desire that you help with, right? That is another piece that I always want you to layer in because that is one of the ways that you will always be able to create this.

Right place, right time kind of moment of holy moly. How did you know I needed to hear this right now? Because I was strategic and I thought about it and I listened to this great podcast.

Colie: There you go.

Chelsea: great. There we go. Fantastic. And it does also allow you, I want to plug, we had a conversation earlier this week with the team about how for systems in session.

Busy season for photographers is not going to be like September, October, November is not going to be. The time that anyone is going to be wanting to think, like, allow me to invest time in my system because it’s just like, oh, I got to get through it. Right. They’re already in it. So we recognize that said, okay, cool.

What are the business goals? We have. These are the business goals. Great. Therefore, this tells us in order to hit those business goals. We need some visibility. Activities, so we’ll have a different call to action. Get on the email list. Listen to the podcast, follow the podcast, but we have some visibility goals around bringing in people who are going to be in a different lived experience, a different emotional schedule in September, October, November when we want to be.

Selling those systems and session spots. Right? So that helps you shape, not just what content am I putting out, it helps you shape. What’s the theme of the webinar I’m going to do. When should I do my launch? Who do I need to be reaching out to for referrals or what podcasts should I be pitching to go on?

This is so much bigger than just. What do I say on social media? It’s what do I say? Across the entire ecosystem and helping shape the strategy and timeline of everything. Frame number three is that I want you to always be able to be thinking about why now. This is going to tie into your emotional schedule, but I want you to always think about what is at stake.

What are the particular stakes based on when I’m putting this content out? What are the stakes for my person if they don’t take action? In late March, in April, in May, what’s at stake for them that’s different based on, again, their emotional schedule. Then I always want you to be thinking about why you or your company slash why the offer.

So why Coley? Why systems in session? Why Chelsea? Why say less campaign sprint, right? I want you to be able to think about what is unique about your opinions, your concepts, your frameworks, the way you approach things. Like one example for me. I don’t, I’m sure there are plenty of other people, I just don’t know any of them.

My like, I do weird acting shit and creative writing shit for messaging and look all beautiful mindy, that is genuinely just my process, but by sharing it, it creates a differentiating factor for if someone’s like, I do not like the concept of that, that sounds weird. Fantastic. I have repelled you. You’re not a client.

Great. Love this. Beautiful. And for someone who’s like, that sounds cool. That’s going to give me an interesting concept. I like that. They might lean closer. They might want to follow me, get on my email list, whatever the hell. And so I want you to always be able to have, what’s the why now factor of this thing, I’m this asset I’m creating the promise I have right now, the sales page updates, whatever, what’s the, why now?

And what is the, why you slash why your offer differentiation?

Colie: So everyone that’s listening to this, you’re welcome. This is the brilliance that I get from Chelsea all of the time. It has truly made me think about the way that I talk differently because for me, I will say, and my professor brain, I explain to you. What we’re gonna do, how we’re gonna do it, and what is going to be done at the end of our time.

And while that is great and that is needed, that is not what gets people a majority of the time to hit buy on an offer. Me explaining to them that your workflows will no longer be broken is not enough. Me telling you it will take this many days. I have this many video trainings, I have this many templates.

It does appeal to a certain kind of buyer, but it does not appeal to all buyers, and so I just wanted to have Chelsea and everybody else who’s in this sales series this month on the podcast to give you guys different ways of thinking about selling your offers.

Because the one thing that I ask my clients all the time is, but when is the last time that you made an offer? To someone and you know, they’re like, oh, I posted on Instagram. Did you ask for the sale? They’re like, oh, no, no, no. I just shared content. Yeah, no, asking for the sale is a needed. It’s required.

It’s a must. And so if that makes you feel uncomfortable. I am hoping that what Chelsea has shared inside of this episode is going to help you get over the hump of being uncomfortable asking people to pay you money. I have no problems asking people to pay me money, none, but I do need help in making sure that when I ask for the money, I’m focusing on the part that my audience needs to hear and not necessarily what is second nature to me to explain as your systems professor.

Chelsea: Precisely. And that is, you know, getting stuck. I say, this is one of the most common things I say is, love this copy, you’re too much in the how. You’re too much explaining how and not the so you can. Across industries, across all the things with my, like, my healer people, my woo people, my yoga teachers, my, like, systems people, all of them, my finance people.

So often it’s like, fantastic, I love that you’re doing my books. Tell me more about what this differentiates. Tell me more about what this means for me. Tell me more about what this gets me. Who do I get to become on the other side of this? Is there an aspirational identity? There’s so many ways you can take this, and it’s not that we don’t include the how.

All of this info about what’s included, what you get, what is the da -da -da -da, all those pieces are useful and our analytical buyers need those. Those are just usually pieces that come later in a sales decision for the analytical buyer or anyone else. It’s like the confirmation gut check after I’ve identified, Oh, I like, I like what you’re putting.

I like, I like this promise. I’m interested. This is cool. I think I want that. Let me move closer. Then I go into logistics.

Colie: I mean, I just had a conversation with someone on Instagram and it was that, I mean, there were all the things that she was looking at. She heard me do guest teaching, and then her questions started to be about the how, but I never would’ve gotten to the how. If there wasn’t something else that I said that, like triggered for her that it’s, it’s the aspirational identity, it’s that I’m gonna help her finally complete this thing that’s been on her to-do list for months.

Now, she wants to make sure that she understands exactly how we’re gonna do it, but the first part is needed or they won’t care about the second part when you’re explaining how

Chelsea: Correct. Or they will care, but they’re going to be price checking you. They’re going to be in their analytical brain only and not connected to their actual desire. And this isn’t about manufacturing desire. It’s about effectively connecting to existing desire. We’re not creating shit that isn’t there. We are creating content that connects to existing desire and demand that people have.

Those people will come forward and then we have the conversation where when you’ve done the work of like, yeah, my $2 ,500 offer does for my right fit people feel like a $5 ,000 ROI of like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe like this is.

Colie: Sounds, it feels like a bargain.

Chelsea: Exactly. Exactly. They’re delighted. And so that’s where then we get to have the analytical, you know, logistical conversation.

And we’re basically just that’s like sales calls for me. Most of the time are genuinely, even when I’m not prepared for them, they’re genuinely logistics conversations because my initial content, which I don’t post a ton of has done a lot of the work of here’s what I do. Here’s what I can deliver. Do you want it?

Do you like it?

Colie: and I can attest to that. I don’t remember which email it was, but there was one particular, you know, I’m gonna go, I’m gonna go find it for you. There was one email that I was like, Nope, this is the email. Okay, let me buy this sprint and then let me buy the bigger offer.

Chelsea: Well, you wrote back to my free, you wrote back to

Colie: I wrote back to that one, but it was actually

Chelsea: it was something else? Okay. Okay. Alright. I know the one you actioned

Colie: ’cause I told you in that email that I had already considered buying the audit, and then when you sent the email I was like, oh, let me just send this now because I was about to do the audit. Yeah, no, it was like one or two emails before that. Okay. Usually this is the part of the conversation where I say, Chelsea is mine.

You cannot have her. And I do truly mean that. But also, all of Chelsea’s information is in the show notes. She is around, all of her awesomeness if you are not following her on threads or her podcast. Again, these things are listed for you in the show notes, but Chelsea was my Christmas present to myself.

It has been amazing and I am just really looking forward to where I go forward in my business for 2026 with my one single offer. That we did the other day. Um,

Chelsea: new. Breaking news.

Colie: I know. So, uh, I’m gonna cut it off here and I’m gonna say that’s it for this episode. We’ll see you next time.