Ep #307: The REAL Overselling- How to Fill Your Launches and Create Demand

Welcome to the Make Money as a Life Coach® podcast where sales expert and master coach Stacey Boehman teaches you how to make your first 2K, 20K, and 200K using her proven formula.

Hey, coaches welcome to episode 307. Today we’re going to talk about overselling. But before you’re like, “Wait, she’s talked about that on the podcast before,” and we literally just ran a most valuable podcast episode a month or two ago with the same episode. And it’s not the same topic, so let me just tell you that right away. And then tell you that this has never happened in my business ever before or in my content creation or even my teachings.

It’s very strange. I mean I have human moments all the time, but this is a really human business, a weird moment. So, I kept thinking that I had recorded an episode on overselling. And then I had the hunch to talk about it again because I’m in a revenue challenge with my 200K Mastermind and a public one that you could purchase separately and so, I have 250 students in that. And I’ve been just thinking of messaging, things I can say to them that will be really helpful while they’re in their challenge. And I love to use the podcast to support my students in that way.

And so, I was like, “Let me go find that episode and see what I said on that episode, and then I’ll add to the conversation.” And so, I find the episode and I’m reading the description and I’m like, “This doesn’t sound right. This isn’t what I teach on overselling.” And then I listen and I’m like, “What? This is not right.” So, I think this episode, the concept originally aired on episode 35.

Now, keep in mind we’re in the 300s at this point. And at some point in my teaching career, I must have created the term ‘overselling’ and taught it to mean one thing and it’s evolved and means something almost the opposite and completely different now. So, if you’ve listened to the episode, in that episode, I was really talking about overworking and almost convincing in your selling. You’re working too hard when you’re selling. At the time, that’s the way I was thinking about it.

And then I must have just never talked about that idea again because then when I created it again it became something really useful in my 200K Mastermind that we use to actually create demand. And so, the only thing I can think about this is, that concept was wanting to come out and I just used it in the wrong way. I attached it to a different concept and idea and it wasn’t meant to be. That’s the only thing I could think of, of how this would ever happen.

So, this is not an episode where I’m going to talk about pushing and convincing and working too hard, so this might be a little confusing. The problem is, I’ve been teaching this concept for years in my 200K Mastermind, the way that I’m going to talk about it with you today. So, we just have to forget. I’m going to have my podcast team maybe rename that so there’s no confusion. And then we’re going to move forward from here on out.

Any time you hear me talk about overselling, it’s going to be in this regard. So, Stacey’s had a human moment. No idea what happened. A little bit weird. Never had it happen before, but we are going to reclaim this idea and this concept. I’m going to speak on it in a very different way today. So, this is originally in the 200K Mastermind where this concept came from and I’m going to give you some examples. But the way I talk and teach on overselling is from this idea.

I once heard this early in my career and I have found it to be true every time, which is that we only fail by underestimating the amount of effort required to achieve something. And what I have found for myself, I have some really good stories for myself, but for myself and a lot of times for my students, especially when they go to sell their first groups. This is when this concept starts to matter, but I also see it when you fill your one-on-one coaching and you run out of spots.

I see this happen where you improperly estimate the amount of effort required to achieve something because of the way your brain looks at it. So, I’m going to give the starting example with, if you’re launching your first group and your goal is 10 people. What the brain does is think of 10 people as the cap, as the big amount and then think the final finite number.

And then adjust for the amount of energy it believes, the amount of value, the amount of showing up, the amount of content, the amount of offers that will be required to fill 10 spots. But if you know that the brain and the only reason we fail is because our brains are not good, out of the gate or in general always, at estimating the proper amount of effort and energy required to achieve something that we haven’t achieved before.

So, if you’re thinking, I want to sign 10 clients into my group and then your brain is like, okay, this is what I think will be the plan, this is the launch, this is the value that we’re going to create. These are the amount of offers we’re going to make. This is the amount of energy and output that I’m going to have to have to achieve this. If that’s happening without intentional thought and work on this idea of overselling, your brain will not produce enough effort and energy and output. It will not make enough offers. It will not give enough value.

It will not show up enough to actually create the 10 people, which is where I see a lot of people creating two people in their launch, four people in their launch, six people in their launch. Now, if you’re in my 200K Mastermind or if you ever join me, one of the things you’re going to hear me reinforce constantly is also this idea that the only reason to do the first launch is for the second launch. Or if you’re in the revenue challenge, the only reason to do the first one is to do the next one even better because you really do have to have that initial measurement.

I thought that this amount of content, this amount of value, this amount of show up, this amount of offers would produce 10 people, but really it produced two so I was off by eight. I was off by 80% of the effort and energy required. So next time I have to produce 80% more effort and energy.

Now, for some of you that might feel overwhelming and scary. But the goal of entrepreneurship as a coach, as a salesperson, as a CEO is always challenging your capacity to do more, show up more, have more energy not in a hustly way, but because you are just infinitely capable. And I want you to imagine that if you produced two, it’s only because you tapped into 20% of your capability. The way I’m thinking right now is only producing 20% of my capability and 20% of my capacity.

The way I’m speaking to my people is actually only producing 20% of what I am capable of selling. When you think of it like that, then the solution becomes so different. Suddenly now you’re like, “Wait a minute. How do I access the other 80%?” And part of having done the first attempt is that now you can build upon it. This is one of the biggest lessons I teach people that I didn’t expect to come out on this episode, this is perfect.

When you’re first getting into launching and to selling groups, one of the most important things you can do is keep most of your launch components the same. That way you can add upon them. So, for example, when I was launching my 200K Mastermind years ago and I’m going to give a couple of examples of this, just because this is where I personally had to do this work over the years.

So, I remember over the years the first launch we did, we did three webinars. I gave myself three months to sell it. And I sold it from webinar to consult and then closed on the consult. And then the next time I decided to do a six week longer build up where I was releasing two episodes a week of the podcast and we were emailing people and we had really created such a good runway for ourselves. We would tell people as soon as one launch closed, when the next launch was so they could prepare.

And then we’d be seeding it the whole time and then six weeks out, we’d really start creating a lot of content and then we would just open. I didn’t do any webinars, I didn’t do any trainings or anything like that. The first time because I gave myself three months to sell it, I actually did fill it. But let’s say that I had only just with this analogy of two out of ten, let’s say I had only filled two spots out of ten spots. Let’s just say that that had happened.

The next round I would have taken the best performing emails, the best performing content, moved that forward and then recreated everything that I think I could have done different. I would have looked at the messaging and been like, “This I think could have been better. This could have been better.” I would refine it. I would maybe add more emails. So if I had a five email sequence now maybe it becomes a ten email sequence. And now I’m adding in this and I’m adding in that because I sat there and thought about what heaven I said, what haven’t I said?

And then I have a certain amount of pieces already prepared for the next one, so then I’m only using my energy to add on, but I am going to also see if I can increase my capacity and show up even more. So, this is why it’s really important that you don’t burn everything down all of the time so that you can use some pieces to increase your energy, but also you’re just as a coach, an entrepreneur, as a salesperson, you are going to be working to increase your capacity.

So, what I have found that I believe really reverses this or let’s say, adjusts for this thing that happens with our brain, where we underestimate the amount of effort and energy and offers and show up required to achieve the result. The workaround that I have found is thinking of the idea of overselling, not from a hustly way, not from a convincing way, but in adjusting for the goal and thinking of it infinitely instead of in a finite way.

So instead of thinking I want ten people in this launch, what I’m going to think about is, how many people do I want to enroll this year? How many people in the next 12 months do I want to sell spots, do I want to fill, enroll, however, you say it to yourself?

Now let’s flash forward and think about three years from now, what do I want this to look like? So, if I’m selling one-on-one coaching and I’m getting filled, I’m getting close to being full, then I might and I see this a lot as the second example I want to give. Let’s say we have two spots left of a 20 spot full one-on-one coaching practice. So, when I sell two spots, I’ll be full. What I typically see is, people start thinking I only need to fill two spots. I only have two spots left. And then they adjust the effort and energy and offers required to actually fill those spots,  they let off the gas.

Well, I know I only have two spots to fill, so I don’t need to be on social media all the time. I don’t need to be making offers. I don’t need to be emailing my list. Whatever it is that you do when you’re trying to really fill spots, that energy you put out, I don’t need to do that, there’s only two spots left. But then what filled the first 18 spots was that.

So, I’m always telling my people, “Yes, you only have two spots currently, but you also have spots that will eventually come up for renewal. And what about six months from now? What about 12 months from now? Do you want to create a group? If you do, the actions you take now will be what creates that.” And one of my favorite places to sell from is a place where I’m really in demand. So, if I only have two spots left, I’m going to be super selective of who I’m selling those two spots to.

And if I know I’m going to be creating a group and I’m riding the high of having filled my one-on-one coaching practice or if I know I want to raise my prices so I want to have a really big client pool and be prepared for more no’s. Every time you raise your price you typically get more no’s. So, I want to actually increase my client pool. What our brains tell us is we need to decrease our energy because our client pool is almost full, our practice is almost full. But the way I think about it is, I actually want at this moment in time to increase my client pool, increase my audience. Now is the time.

I’m finally getting to sell from circumstantial demand. That’s the best place to sell from. A lot of times we don’t actually have the demand and we’re creating the thoughts and beliefs in our bodies about demand that people do want what we have to offer. People are waiting for us to make that offer. People really want this. And we’re having to go to our brains and our bodies to feel that, to believe that to then go take action.

But with circumstantial demand, where you’re actually filling up, this is the perfect place to sell from. But this is typically where, instead, the brain tells us, well, we only need to fill two spots. Adjust your level of effort and energy, and output that you’re giving. It’s such a missed opportunity.

I remember when I was launching 200K, so I said my 200K Mastermind was where I really learned this concept the most. I remember there was a time where I was working on my capacity to hold space for the room. I think two or three rounds we ran it we only sold to 30 people but also my students were renewing like crazy. So, I remember there was a launch where 23 people renewed from the previous class and there were only seven spots. And I’d coached with my coach about we’re really not going over that even one person.

And I’d actually gone through even the 23 people that wanted to renew and not offered spots to a couple of those people, I think, if it was that round. And so, I was being really fine tooth comb, making sure everybody was really perfect for the space and it was the best group of clients and I just knew they could get a big return. And so, I remember telling my coach, I was like, “I don’t even know if I need to launch.” And actually, I think this was my real wording and terminology.

I said, “I think I could get away with sending just a few emails. It’s going to fill. I only have seven spots, so it’s going to fill. So, I’m just going to send some emails and save my energy. I’m going to conserve my energy. I’m not going to work harder than I need to do. I won’t even do the full launch.”

And this blew my mind and changed my life forever. She said, “Yes, but don’t you want the biggest application pool to choose the best of the best from? And don’t you want to sell people today for the next round too? Don’t you want to be warming people up and getting people ready and selling them now? Because even if they’re not ready, they’re now going to work to sell themselves and be ready over the next six months.” And I was like, “Wait, what?”

And I remember we went full out for that launch. In fact, I think I sold bigger than I had the round before because I started thinking, wait a minute. So, for the next round, what if none of these people want to renew next time? So, I might need 30 new people next time. And I think at that time, I even decided we were going to grow it to maybe 40 people the next time. And then I thought, okay, this is when I had the thought, how many people do I actually want to enroll in this mastermind in the next 12 months? What about the next two years? What about the next three years?

Knowing that some people take that long to buy, I need to be reaching them right now. This changed everything in my selling. Everything. I started thinking about I’m selling today for tomorrow. I’m selling today for six months from now. I’m selling today for a year from now. I’m selling today for two or even three years from now. The messaging I put out there, the value that I give, and I have found this to be true. I can’t tell you how many times people buy from me today or in the present day, and then tell me they’ve been following me for one, two, three, four, five, and six years.

I just recently had someone sign up in my 2K for 2K that had been following me for eight years. Now, I also made millions of dollars and worked with 700 clients almost, I think actually over 700 clients since the conception of that mastermind in the in between. So it wasn’t, I had to wait that long to ever make any money. That’s never what I’m saying. But I don’t think I could have sold, worked with and created the demand that I created for that room if I hadn’t been thinking in this way very early on.

So overselling is this idea of if I want 10 in my group, what would I be doing if I were really trying to get 20 or 50 or 100? If I want 100 people enrolled in this in the next 12 months or the next two years or in the next three years, what would I be doing differently? If I knew that in every single sales attempt, every time I did a live stream or every time I posted on social or every time I did a webinar. That I was bringing in brand new people to consider me and think about what I can help them with for the very first time and that it’s normal and typical for people not to buy immediately the first time.

Only 20% of the people really do that and 60% of the people take anywhere from a day to a year to many years to buy from you. Then I want to make sure that every time I show up, I’m thinking about that, I’m in the future today with my effort and my energy. I’m going much bigger than I think I need to or I have to because I understand that the brain just typically underestimates the effort and energy required.

Now, where people get salty about this and yes, I’m saying salty because I feel this is the proper emotion to describe it, is when we think that we’ve estimated and we’ve oversold. We think that we showed up and we made enough offers and gave enough value and put enough effort and energy, knowing we wanted 10, we feel we gave 100 and it only created four and now we’re salty. This happens a lot.

I want you to imagine that this also is a normal occurrence. Again, what your perception of 100 is, is not the truth. It’s not factual. It’s our theory of value. And some people are better or more experienced at estimating that effort. So, if you’re thinking this is what 100 level effort would be, this is what, if I were going to try to close 100 people, this is what I would do. And if that closes four people, then what I would say to myself is, “Wow, I was dramatically off and that’s okay.” I’m going to get in here and I’m going to evaluate and I’m going to figure out what I missed.

I’m going to look for who is closing the amount of people I want to be closing and I’m going to look at what they’re doing. I’m going to look at how much effort they’re putting out. I used to always look at my coaches’ launches and be like, “I see.” And it’s not always the volume. Sometimes it’s just pure care.

I remember in the beginning when I was learning email marketing and I was learning how to craft really good emails, I was so precious about them. I would write them and then I would reread them and reread them and edit and reread. I would write them a couple of months ahead of time. And every couple of weeks, I’d recheck in and read them and re-edit them. And so, by the time they went out to people they had been edited and thought about so many times over and my close rate started going up. So, it’s not just about effort that you’re outputting. It’s care, intention, thoughts.

Our thoughts create our value. Our thoughts estimate the amount of effort and energy. Our thoughts show the percentage of belief, of understanding, of effort. So, it’s also about the way that we’re thinking when we’re putting everything together, when we’re out there showing up and creating value. So, I’m thinking about that too.

I remember one time my goal in the mastermind was to close 100 people and I had closed 85 before. And then the next round I closed 85. And instead of being salty, I asked myself what created that because I showed up more than ever before. I gave more than ever before. But when I really looked for it, what I found was that at the time, 85 had felt like a lot of people. The whole round I had worked really hard to show up for them and gave a lot, and it felt like it was beyond my capacity.

And I said, “Oh, okay, the universe gave me another try. This time let’s approach it, and let’s see if my capacity has expanded.” And that round it felt so easy to manage the space and hold space, to coach the room, to get everybody across the finish line, to help everyone create incredible results. And I didn’t feel I was working very hard. And then the next round I sold over 100, so it’s not always just launch effort. That’s why this episode really isn’t about selling, selling, selling, it’s a combination of things.

But I think that where we start with this concept and with this idea of overselling in its proper use is that we think of it as a tool to create demand. We think about the demand we want to have and every time we sell, regardless of whether we want five spots or ten spots or we have two spots left in our one-on-one, we think about, but if I were wanting to create massive demand for this, regardless of how many spots there are currently. What would I be doing differently? How many offers would I be making? How would I show up?

And the last thing I will say is, don’t be afraid. A lot of people don’t do this because they don’t want to turn people away. They don’t want to make offers if they don’t have something to give people. But I always tell my students, “That’s a better problem to have.” Imagine if you instead, fill the two spots and then you stop selling because you don’t have any spots left, and then you lose momentum because you don’t have any spots coming up for three or four months. So, then you haven’t been out there nurturing people.

If you’ve listened to the nurture offer sequence, you haven’t been out there nurturing people for the last four months. The spots come available, suddenly you’d show up and decide to start selling people again, and no one’s buying. And you’re like, “Oh, my gosh, what happened? I was in such demand. I filled all my spots. There were people that were wanting to work with me. Where are those people?” Well, they weren’t nurtured for the last four months. You didn’t make offers to them for the last four months.

And a lot of times we tell ourselves we don’t have anything to offer them, and that’s not even true. One of the things I do for my students in my 200K Mastermind is, every time this happens, when it’s a good problem to have, we fill their practice and now they don’t feel they have anything to offer them. We get creative about the strategy of the next offer and it can be a bunch of different things. Sometimes it’s selling spots ahead of time. Sometimes it’s a price increase. Sometimes it’s a group. Sometimes it’s something else.

There’s so many options. I want you to think about that, if the reason you aren’t going to sell, if you’re not going to go out and oversell is because I don’t want to tell people no. And believe me, I told a lot of people no over the years of wanting to join my 200K Mastermind. I actually think that this is a high place of integrity to be selling from is, I only sell people my offers that I think will do really, really well in. That I think they’ll get really good results and really good outcomes. And I believe that they have all of the qualities in the current moment that it takes to succeed.

And because I have created so much demand, I’ve found I can fill my coaching with only those people. I never have to let someone in that I question, maybe I won’t be able to help them or maybe they won’t be ready or have the capacity to go to this level. I have choice and that’s always a better problem. That’s always the thing we want to be working towards. And then eventually, here’s the beautiful thing. The people that you are willing to tell no to many of them, that’s a kick in the booty.

I remember when I was in my $1 dollar mentoring, I didn’t hit $1 million but mostly I don’t even think it was about that. I don’t think I got kicked out because I didn’t hit a million. I think I got kicked out because it was a really hard year for me and I really struggled. It was fight or flight the whole year for me. I was going from 300K to a million, it’s a really big jump. And I had a lot of things that I hadn’t set up properly in my business. I was missing skill sets.

So, I had to just work three times harder than I feel anyone else in the room had to work to kind of overcompensate for those things and to catch up. And I wasn’t as sophisticated at coaching myself yet. And so, my coach had said, “I want you to do master coach training and then talk about it.” And in that moment, I remember telling my husband, “I’m going to make $1 million whether I get back in this room or not.” But also, I really want this and I’m willing to be in fight or flight. I am willing to work harder than anyone else. I am willing to do more than I have to do.

And so, I said, “Listen, I’ll do master coach training and anything else you think I should do, but please let me be in this room. I will work so hard every day. I want to be in this room. It means everything to me. Please do not kick me, I want to be in this room.” And they let me back in. So, telling people no or that you don’t think they’re ready sometimes, for not everyone, but for some people, that is everything they needed to hear. It’s not what they wanted to hear. It’s what they needed to hear. And they decide, what does it take for me to get ready? I’m in. Let’s go.

So, you can’t be afraid to tell people no on your way to creating demand, but also especially just because you don’t have spots for them yet, you keep nurturing always. You keep making offers always, because if people show up to you and you don’t have something to sell them but they show up ready to buy, you’ll figure it out. I promise. Good problem to have. And you allow that to be okay. We’re just nurturing people always.

I would think about, something else I do is when I constantly find there’s a specific thing that keeps people from being ready. In the applications when I’m reading them, I’m like, “Okay, how do I create content to serve them and get them ready?” I think creating demand, having demand and working to oversell and produce this demand makes us so much better. It’s just such a better elevated problem to have and it helps adjust for this thing that our brain does of underestimating the amount of effort, energy, offers, value required to create an outcome, to create a result.

So, I teach this in depth in my 200K Mastermind. Enrollment is coming up. If you are interested in diving into this concept even deeper and really working at it in every one of your sales cycles or ongoing, if you’re selling one-on-one, it works literally for everything, I really encourage you to apply. And if you want that information, when we’re opening, what are the requirements, if you want to get value every single week. I send a message out every week to my wait list people, to foster and encourage development between masterminds.

So, if you want to be on that list, it’s Staceyboehman.com/200kmastermind. And also, I would invite you, I’m going to be talking about overselling. I’m doing a five day free training on all five steps of my 200K Mastermind. I’ve never done this before. The only thing I’ve ever done, free community wise, other than the podcast for my 200K Mastermind has been my three year plan webinar. So this is the very first time, I can’t believe I haven’t. It’s mostly been a capacity thing and having the idea, but I’m going to open it up and we’re going to do a five day training.

I’m going to do a training on every single step of the main five steps of the 200K Mastermind on the simple offer, advanced marketing, advanced selling, advanced delivering and the 200K self-concept. So, we’re going to talk every day on each of these concepts. And so, you can also join that completely free at staceyboehman.com/the200kfive. So staceyboehman.com/the200kfive, and you’ll get all the information you need. And you can join that training for free if you want to dive further into concepts related to and deeper into overselling.

But for now, I really encourage you to use what I’ve said today and really contemplate how this can serve you right now. If you’re in the revenue challenge, if you’re in the current mastermind, if you’re just a business owner of any kind. And you’re out there selling and making offers, use this episode now, contemplate this idea that maybe the only reason that you fail is you underestimate the amount of value, the type of value, the effort, the energy, the amount of offers, the amount of emails.

Maybe you just underestimate how much you truly have to show up and where your brain and your thoughts have to be in order to create the amount you want to create. And the answer to that is going bigger in your mind so that you can adjust for that underestimation. You think bigger, you think longer term, you go out infinitely in your brain and in doing that you will at least adjust for some of the missed opportunities and failures from just underestimating.

Alright, I hope this was really helpful and I apologize for the confusion. It’s such a weird thing that I might have used the same word to describe two concepts at one time in my business, but it happens. So, I love you all from here on out, overselling this is the way we will describe it. I will see you next week.

Hey, if you’re ready to make money as a life coach, I want to invite you to join my 2K for 2K program where you’re going to make your first $2,000 the hardest part, using my simple five step formula for getting consults and closing new clients. Just head over to www.staceyboehman.com/2kfor2k. We’ll see you inside.