Totally Clutch is a bi-weekly podcast and vlog that supports passionate female entrepreneurs through tactical and inspirational conversation.
We've got a whiz kid in the house today! Laura Vogel just graduated from CU Boulder and already has a booming handbag business. She tells us all about her seemingly fairytale start in this week’s episode. Check out her wears while you listen at www.vogelle.com.
Thank you for being a part of the conversation and please remember I believe in you and your business.
Women are amazing at doing whatever it takes to get shit done. We throw ourselves in, make sure everyone is taken care of, don’t ask for a thing while we make magic happen. In our business, in our families, with our friends.
But we can’t keep that up forever. It’s exhausting and we have the best intentions to keep everything out of the cracks but things inevitably fall through. A deadline gets missed, an invoice goes unpaid, a soccer snack gets forgotten, we cancel on our friends because we just can’t, maybe your health even starts to deteriorate. In your business, your customers and employees start to suffer right along with you.
I recently spoke with several women starting their companies. All of them believed that the most important thing for them to keep their eyes on were their clients and their finances. YET, all of them were spending hours and hours down some admin rabbit hole. What they were working on was really important but it was out of their wheelhouse so it was taking them more time and a lot more energy and was detracting from their clients and their finances. I can totally relate and even enjoy learning these kinds of things sometimes, that’s my cross to bear. I can also appreciate that it doesn’t feel like you have any other option if you don’t have an assistant. So, what do you do?
Thank you for joining us and please remember I believe in you and your business.
Online businesses are all the rage and for good reason. Have you ever wondered what it’s like behind the scenes to start an online business? Our guest, Nicole Colwell, is building a membership program and an online course and is here to fill us in on all the dirty details.
Nicole Colwell is a very special coach helping ambitious professionals and entrepreneurs to break through blocks, make their stress work for them and build profitable businesses and is currently developing La Societe, a membership program as well as an online course to support businesses with their strategic mission.
To find out more about Nicole’s offerings visit:
Curious if a membership business is right for you? You can take our online biz quiz at www.clutchbusinesses.com/onlinebizquiz
Thank you for joining us and please remember I believe in you and your business.
I’m flying solo again today to take a step back and talk about some business basics.
So, we have a teenager in the house and have been having a lot of “check yourself before you wreck yourself” conversations as her wings are starting to spread. Her heart is giant and she’s so smart, creative and adventurous. And in the midst of fighting for independence things get WILD. It’s easy for her to lose sight of the basics (thank you’s, asking instead of taking, asking instead of DEMANDING) that will get her further along in life than the alternative. I trust that you’re good on your pleases and thank you’s but Clutch is all about finding those “check yourself before you wreck yourself” basics in women’s businesses, so let’s look at one.
Last week, I stumbled upon a coaching site that was offering free 30 minute consultations to anyone interested in learning more about her work. Super common and a great way to build relationships with potential clients. It’s the only call-to-action on her site so I imagine she’d like to see a lot of appointments scheduled.
Out of curiosity, I clicked to book an appointment, found a date and time and was asked for my name and email address. All pretty standard. Except, this is where I see tons of businesses leave time and conversions on the table.
If you offer these to clients, you can relate to this. The first 10-15 mins of every call is usually you asking the same questions you ask everyone you talk to. You get different answers, which is the juicy part of the conversation, but how you get those answers is generally the same. This particular coach pays for a great appointment booking system that allows for a lot of really nice customizations. Customizations that would allow her to ask those questions when they were booking and store their answers in their client profile. You can see a comparison below of “what is” versus “what could be”. She could look them over quickly before their call and would have a record of them forever that she could refer back to. That cuts the call time in half!
Now this may not work for everyone. If you went to my site right now, my meeting requests only ask for a date, time and your contact information. Exactly what I saw on this other site. BUT, I work with a very select number of clients one-on-one and most don’t inquire about our work from my website. Because of that, I don’t rely on these calls as much and it’s, intentionally, kind of hard to find the appointment option on my site. This service is for a select few and I have plenty of other resources and ways to connect featured more prominently on my site for those seeking less tailored services, which makes up the bulk of my site visitors.
Ok, so back to the coaches site. By adding those questions to her booking forms, she cuts her call time in half. If her main goal is for people to book these appointments, let’s assume that she wants to talk to 4 people/day.
The time she dedicates to these calls goes from 2 hours/day to 1 hour and from 10 hours every week to 5 hours. That’s almost a 15% time savings. With that one minor change.
Some concerns may have popped up while we’ve been on this journey together. First, a 15 minute call may not grab people’s attention as much. If that’s the case, you could keep the calls at 30 minutes but swap out question asking for the chance to go deeper with your prospect and increase your sales conversion rate. That would be pretty awesome, wouldn’t it?
Another concern might be that people are deterred from booking if they have to put so much thought into it. I totally get that, in fact, I am that person. But I would be so satisfied if I was given an out and told, in a tactful way, that I’d be missing out on so much more if I didn’t do the homework before.
If this doesn’t relate directly to your business, can you identify any repetitive tasks, meetings, conversations that you could apply this same idea to?
If you want to learn more about the three areas we work with clients on to move from hustle to flow, you can download our free 3 Ways to Always Have Time, Energy and Business at:
www.clutchbusinesses.com/start-here
Thank you for joining us and please remember I believe in you and your business.
